“No, sir. I don’t know any more about enemy intentions and plans than the rest of you. Only—” Donal looked down into the dark face below his, wavering on the verge of speaking his mind. Since the affair with Anea he had been careful to keep his flights of mental perception to himself. “Possibly I’m just suspicious, sir.”

“So are all of us, man!” said Lludrow, with a hint of impatience. “What about it? In our shoes what would you be doing?”

“In your shoes,” said Donal, throwing discretion to the winds, “I’d attack Newton,”

Lludrow’s jaw fell. He stared at Donal.

“By heaven,” he said, after a moment. “You’re not shy about expedients, are you? Don’t you know a civilized world can’t be conquered?”

Donal allowed himself the luxury of a small sigh. He made an effort to explain himself, once again, in terms others could understand.

“I remember the marshal saying that,” he said. “I’m not so sanguine, myself. In fact, that’s a particular maxim I’d like to try to disprove some day. However — that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to suggest we attempt to take Newton; but that we attack it. I suspect the Newtonians are as maxim-ridden as ourselves. Seeing us try the impossible, they’re very like to conclude we’ve suddenly discovered some way to make it possible. From their reactions to such a conclusion we might learn a lot — including about the Oriente affair.”

Lludrow’s look of amazement was tightening into a frown.

“Any force attacking Newton would suffer fantastic losses,” he began.

“Only if they intended to carry the attack through,” interrupted Donal, eagerly. “It could be a feint — nothing more man that. The point wouldn’t be to do real damage, but to upset the thinking of the enemy strategy by introducing an unexpected factor.”

“Still,” said Lludrow, “to make their feint effective, the attacking force would have to run the risk of being wiped out.”

“Give me a dozen ships—” Donal was beginning; when Lludrow started and blinked like a man waking up from a dream.

“Give you—” he said; and smiled. “No, no, commandant, we were speaking theoretically. Staff would never agree to such a wild, unplanned gamble; and I’ve no authority to order it on my own. And if I did — how could I justify giving command of such a force to a young man with only field experience, who’s never held command in a ship in his life?” He shook his head. “No, Graeme — but I will admit your idea’s interesting. And I wish one of us at least had thought of it.”

“Would it hurt to mention it—”

“It wouldn’t do any good — to argue with a plan Staff has already had in operation for over a week, now.” He was smiling broadly. “In fact, my reputation would find itself cut rather severely. But it was a good idea, Graeme. You’ve got the makings of a strategist. I’ll mention the fact in my report to the marshal.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Donal.

“Back to your ship, then,” said Lludrow.

“Good-by, sir.”

Donal saluted and left. Behind him, Lludrow frowned for just a moment more over what had just been said — before he turned his mind to other things.

Space battles, mused Donal, are said to be held only by mutual consent. It was one of those maxims he distrusted; and which he had privately determined to disprove whenever he should get the chance. However — as he stood now by the screen of the Control Eye in the main control room of the C4J, watching the enemy ships appearing to swell with the speed of their approach — he was forced to admit that in this instance, it was true. Or true at least to the extent that mutual consent is involved when you attack an enemy point that you know that enemy will defend.

But what if he should not defend it after all? What if he should do the entirely unexpected—

“Contact in sixty seconds. Contact in sixty seconds!” announced the speaker over his head.

“Fasten all,” said Andresen, calmly into the talker before him. He sat, with his First and Second Officers duplicating him on either side, in a “dentist’s chair” across the room — “seeing” the situation not in actual images as Donal was doing, but from the readings of his instruments. And his knowledge was therefore the more complete one. Cumbersome in his survival battle suit, Donal climbed slowly into the similar chair that had been rigged for him before the Eye, and connected himself to the chair. In case the ship should be broken apart, he and it would remain together as long as possible. With luck, the two of them would be able to make it to a survival ship in orbit around Oriente in forty or fifty hours — if none of some dozens of factors intervened.

He had time to settle himself before the Eye before contact was made. In those last few seconds, he glanced around him; finding it a little wonderful in spite of all he knew, that this white and quiet room, undisturbed by the slightest tremor, should be perched on the brink of savage combat and its own quite possible destruction. Then mere was no more time for thinking. Contact with the enemy had been made and he had to keep his eyes on the scene.

Orders had been to harry the enemy, rather than close with him. Estimates had been twenty per cent casualties for the enemy, five per cent for the defending forces. But such figures, without meaning to be, are misleading. To the man in the battle, twenty per cent, or even five per cent casualties do not mean that he will be twenty per cent or five per cent wounded. Nor, in a space battle, does it mean that one man out of five, or one man out of twenty will be a casualty. It means one ship out of five, or one ship out of twenty — and every living soul aboard her; for, in space, one hundred per cent casualties mean ninety-eight per cent dead.

There were three lines of defense. The first were the light craft that were meant to slow down the oncoming ships so that the larger, more ponderous craft, could try to match velocities well enough to get to work with heavy weapons. Then there were the large craft themselves in their present orbits. Lastly, there were the second line of smaller craft that were essentially antipersonnel, as the attackers dropped their space-suited assault troops. Donal in a C4J was in the first line.

There was no warning. There was no full moment of battle. At the last second before contact, the gun crews of the C4J had opened fire. Then—

It was all over.

Donal blinked and opened his eyes, trying to remember what had happened. He was never to remember. The room in which he lay, fastened to his chair, had been split as if by a giant hatchet. Through the badly-lit gap, he could see a portion of an officer’s stateroom. A red, self-contained flare was burning somewhere luridly overhead, a signal that the control room was without air. The Control Eye was slightly askew, but still operating. Through the transparency of his helmet, Donal could see the dwindling lights that marked the enemy’s departure on toward Oriente. He struggled upright in his chair and turned his head toward the Control panel.

Two were quite dead. Whatever had split the room open had touched them, too. The Second officer was dead, Andresen was undeniably dead. Coa Benn still lived, but from the feeble movements she was making in the chair, she was badly hurt. And there was nothing anyone could do for her now that they were without air and all prisoners in their suits.

Donal’s soldier-trained body began to react before his mind had quite caught up to it. He found himself breaking loose the fastenings that connected him to his chair. Unsteadily, he staggered across the room, pushed the lolling head of Andresen out of the way, and thumbed the intership button.

“C4J One-twenty-nine,” he said. “C4J One-twenty-nine—” he continued to repeat the cabalistic numbers until the screen before him lit up with a helmeted face as bloodless as that of the dead man in the chair underneath him.