So the _Isis_ was left with a solar-system drive and rockets and nothing else. If the drive used only in solar systems were put on full, and the _Isis_ headed for Glamis, and if the food and water held out, it would arrive at that distant world in eighty-some years. It could reach Tralee in fifty. But there were emergency rations for a few weeks only. It was not conceivable that repairs could be made. This was no occasion calling for remarkable ingenuity to make some sort of jury-rigged drive. This was final.
Talents, Incorporated couldn't improvise or precognize or calculate an answer to this! And all previous plans had to be cancelled. Absolutely. He dismissed at once and for all time the idea that the _Isis_ could be repaired short of months in a well-equipped space-yard on a friendly planet. She should be blown up, after adequate pains were taken to destroy any novelties in her make-up. There were the tables of Logan's calculation. Bors found himself thinking sardonically that Logan should be shot because he had no obligation of loyalty to Kandar, and could as readily satisfy his hunger for recognition in the Mekinese service as in Kandar's. The crew....
That was the heart of the situation. The _Isis_ could not be salvaged. She should be destroyed. There was only one world within reach on which human beings could live. That world was Garen. The _Isis_ could sit down on Garen, disembark her crew, and be blown up before Mekinese authorities could interfere. Perhaps--possibly--her crew could try to function on Garen as marooned pirates, as outlaws, as rebels against the puppet planetary government. But they knew too much. Every man aboard knew how the interceptor-proof missiles worked. Logan might be the only man who had ever calculated the tables for their use, but if any member of the _Isis's_ crew were captured and made to talk, he could tell enough for Mekinese mathematicians to start work with. If Logan were captured he could tell more. He could re-compute not only the tables for the missiles, but the data for low-power overdrive which would make any fleet invincible.
And there was the Kandarian fleet. If its existence became known, it would mean the destruction of Kandar. Every soul of all its millions would die with every tree and blade of grass, every flower, beast and singing bird, even the plankton in its seas.