Chapter 5
Nobody had ever found any use for the Glamis solar system. There was a sun of highly irregular variability. There were two planets, of which the one farther out might have been useful for colonization except that it was subject to extreme changes of climate as its undependable sun burned brightly or dimly. The nearer planet was so close to its primary that it had long ceased to rotate. One hemisphere, forever in sunshine, remained in a low, red heat. Its night hemisphere, in perpetual darkness, had radiated away its heat until there were mountains of frozen atmosphere piled above what should have been a mineral surface. It was a matter of record that a hundred standard years before, a ship had landed there and mined oxygen-containing snow, which its air apparatus was able to refine so the crew could breathe while they finished some rather improbable repairs and could go on to more hospitable worlds.
The farther-out planet was sometimes a place of green vegetation and sprawling seas, and sometimes of humid jungles with most of its oceans turned to a cloud-bank of impenetrable thickness. Also, sometimes, it was frozen waste from pole to pole. The vegetation of that planet had been studied with interest, but the world itself was simply of no use to anybody. Even the sun of the Glamis system was regarded with suspicion.
The fleet of Kandar made rendezvous at the galactic-north pole of the second planet. On arrival the massed cruisers and battleships went into orbit. The smaller craft went on a scouting mission, verifying that there was no new colony planted, that there was no man-made radiation anywhere in the system, that there was no likelihood of the fleet's presence—or for that matter its continued existence—becoming known to anybody not of its ship-crews.
The scout-ships came back, reporting all clear. The great ships drew close to one another and small space-boats shuttled back and forth, taking commanders and captains and vice-admirals to the ship, which, by convention, was commanded by King Humphrey VIII of Kandar.
Captain Bors got to the conference late. There were some grave faces about the conference room, but there were also some whose expressions were unregenerate and grimly satisfied. As he entered the room the king was speaking.
"I don't deny that it was a splendid victory, but I'm saying that our victory was a catastrophe! To begin with, we happened to hit the Mekinese fleet when it was dispersed and disorganized. That was great good fortune—if we'd wanted a victory. The enemy was scattered over light-minutes of space. His ships could not act as a massed, maneuverable force. They were simply a mob of fighting ships who had to fight as individuals against our combat formation."
"Yes, Majesty," said the gray vice-admiral, "but even when we broke formation—"
"Again," said the king, more fretfully still, "I do not deny that the fighting ability of our ships was multiplied by the new way of using missiles. What I do say is that if we'd come upon the Mekinese fleet in combat formation instead of dispersed; if we'd attacked them when they were ready for us, it would be doubtful that we'd have been so disastrously successful! Say that the new missile settings gave each of our ships fire-power as effective as two or three or five of the enemy. The enemy was ten to one! If we hadn't hit them when they were in confusion, we'd have been wiped out. And if we'd hit their fleet anyhow, we'd be dead. We did not hit the main fleet. We annihilated a division of it, a small part. We are still hopelessly inferior to the vast Mekinese fleet."
Bors took a seat at the rear of the room.