"I'm headed for the fleet," said Bors. "Take me there, will you? I wanted to say something before I left, anyhow."
"I can guess," he said blandly. "Deepest gratitude and all that, but the rush of events blocked any way to arrange a suitable recompense for what Talents, Incorporated has done."
Bors blinked. "That's the substance of what I meant to say," he admitted.
"We'll take it up later," Morgan told him. "We'll get in touch with you after the battle."
"I doubt it," said Bors. "I'm not likely to be around."
"What's so amusing?" asked Bors. "I don't mean to strike an attitude, but I do hate everything Mekin stands for, and I've a chance to throw a brick at it. The price may be high but throwing the brick is necessary!"
"We," said Gwenlyn, "have Talents, Incorporated information, some of which is in that letter Father gave you. Our Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks has been busy. You'll see. But we've other information, too."
Bors frowned at her. He put the letter away.
"More information--and you'll see me after the fight. You're not telling me you know the future?"
"Of course not! That's nonsense! If one knew the future, one could change it, and then it wouldn't be what one knew! You haven't had any prophecies from me! Prophecy's absurd! All we've told you is about events whose probability approaches unity."
"What Father means," Gwenlyn told him, "is that you can't be told beforehand about anything you can prevent, because if you can prevent it you can make your knowledge false. So it isn't knowledge. What we want to say, though, is that we aren't through."
"I'm going to retire," said Morgan blandly. "But I want to do something first that I can gloat over later."
"He wants," added Gwenlyn, "to repose in the satisfaction of his vanity." She laughed again at her father's expression.
"Seriously, Captain, we wanted to give you the letter and to ask you not to be surprised if we turn up somewhere. There's a Talent," she added, "a young boy who can find people. He doesn't know how he does it, but.... We'll find you!"
The ground-car turned in at the fleet's take-off ground. The normal interstellar traffic of a planet, of course, was handled by a spaceport, with ships brought down to ground and lifted out to space again by the force-fields generated in a giant landing-grid. But a war-fleet could not depend solely on ground installations. The fighting ships of Kandar were allowed to use the planet's spaceport only for special reasons. Emergency rocket take-offs and landings were necessary training for war conditions anyhow. So the take-off ground was pitted and scarred with burnt-over circles, where no living thing grew and where very often the clay beneath the humus top-layer was vitrified by rocket-flames.