He waved his hand with the grand air of someone assuring a grammar-grade pupil that multiplication tables were quite reliable and could be used with confidence. But his eyes fixed themselves on Bors's face. As the Captain realized the implications of his statement, the eyes of the Mathematical Talent of Talents, Incorporated shone with gratified vanity.
"We'll go out in a couple of tin cans," said Bors fiercely, "and try this out with dummy warheads!"
Gwenlyn said quickly, "Marvelous! Marvelous, Logan!"
"It's nothing," said Logan modestly.
But it was a very great deal. Bors, impatient to try it out, nevertheless realized that Logan hadn't made the suggestion out of a brilliant perception of a solution to a problem in ballistics, but because he thought in terms of mathematical processes. He didn't think of a new missile operation, but a new kind of computation. And he reveled in the fact that he had showed off his brilliance.
In the ground-car on the way to the fleet, Bors said helplessly to Gwenlyn, "I'm not the right man to be the liaison with you people. But this might make us a pretty costly conquest for Mekin! With luck, we may trade them ship for ship! They won't miss the ships they lose, but it'll be a lot of satisfaction to us!"
"You expect to be killed," Gwenlyn said flatly.
"My uncle," explained Bors, "considers that he should have gotten killed when Mekin took over Tralee. It would have set a good example. Since we didn't do it for Tralee, we'll do it for Kandar. The king's going along too. After all, that's one of the things kings are for."
"To get killed?"
"When necessary," Bors told her. "Kandar shouldn't surrender even though there will be at least ten Mekinese to one Kandarian."