Bors said coldly, "The fleet's going to be destroyed, certainly. If that will defeat Mekin. But Gwenlyn is not to stay aboard to be destroyed with it! How are you going to get her away?"
"The king's waiting for the _Sylva_ to come back," Morgan said indignantly, "so he'll know--my ship-arrival Talent went to find out--if the Mekin fleet's going to Kandar, and when. He insists that if they know the fleet exists, they know where it is and will come here looking for it. But Madame Porvis couldn't have told that in her daydreaming. She didn't _know_ what planet we're circling! She couldn't have spread that fact by contagion!"
"She spread plenty more!" said Bors. "Her daydreams were too damned true!"
Gwenlyn said, "It's a contradiction in terms for a fleet to win a battle by letting itself be destroyed. Perhaps the Captain--"
"It's also a contradiction in terms," said Bors bitterly, "for all our troubles to come because we won a victory. Now we regret that we weren't all killed. But it's madness for the king to propose to get us all slaughtered in hope of rousing the Mekinese better nature!"
"Maybe you can resolve it, Captain," said Gwenlyn thoughtfully. "Could it be that it isn't a contradiction but only a paradox?"
Bors spread his hands helplessly. Of all times and circumstances, this particular moment and situation seemed the least occasion for quibbling over words.
Then he said, "Yes.... It could be a paradox. If this prediction by that wild Talent is true, there is a way it could win a fight. I don't believe it, but I'm going to put something in motion. Nothing can make matters worse!"
He turned and strode back to the council room where King Humphrey and the high commanders of his fleet sat like dead men, waiting for the moment to be killed, to no purpose.
Bors got nowhere, of course. His proposal had all the ear-marks of lunacy of purest ray serene. He proposed urgently to equip all the ships of the fleet with the low-power overdrive fields. It could be done in days. Instructions were already distributed and would have been studied and understood. The fleet would then go to Kandar--if it appeared that the Mekinese grand fleet would go there--and set up a dummy fleet of target-globes in war array. This would be a fleet, but not of fighting ships. It would be a fleet of metal-foil inflated balloons.