Bors growled to himself. The Isis floated a hundred thousand miles off Garen. There was no challenge. There was no query from the planet. But Gwenlyn said that there were riots down below. They could be serious enough to absorb the attention usually given to routine. But there was another reason for this inattention. Garen was a part of the Mekinese empire which was not encouraged to trade off-planet except through Mekin. Very few non-Mekinese ships would ever land there, and therefore wouldn't be watched for. It was unlikely that a long-range radar habitually swept space off Garen. The battleship should be more alert, but again there was no danger of space-borne rebellion, and the affair of Kandar might not have been bruited so far away.
But the spaceport would respond to calls, certainly. Bors considered these circumstances. A large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffs requisitioned to be sent to Mekin. A population which had been rebellious before—witness the battleship aground to overawe resistance—and now was rioting.
Bors called for the extra members of his crew. He uncomfortably outlined the action he had in mind. There was one part that he disliked. He had to stay on board ship. The important action, as he saw it, would take place elsewhere. It was so obviously painful for him to outline a course of action in which other men must take risks he couldn't share, that his men regarded him with pleased affection which he did not guess at. In the end he asked for twenty volunteers, and got fifty.
He swung the Isis around to the night side of the planet. Its two port blisters opened and two boats floated free in the orbit Bors had established. The ship moved on ahead.
Just at sunup where the spaceport stood, a voice growled down from outer space.
"Calling ground!" it said contemptuously. "Calling ground! This is the last ship left of the fleet of Kandar. We're pirates now and we're looking for trouble! There's a battleship down there. Come up and fight or we blast you in your spaceport! Just to prove we can do it—watch!"
Bors said, "Fire one," and a missile went off toward the planet. It was fused to detonate at the very tip of the fringes of the planet's atmosphere.
It did. There was light more brilliant than a thousand suns. The long low shadows of sunrise vanished. The new-rising sun turned dim by comparison.
The voice from space spoke with intolerable levity. "Come up with your missiles ready! We'll give you ten thousand miles of height. And if you try to duck out in overdrive...."
The voice was explicit about what it would do to the Mekinese-occupied areas of Garen if the battleship fled.