Explore "Talents, Incorporated" by Murray Leinster on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.
One actual fighting ship, he stipulated, would form part of this illusory space-navy. He volunteered the _Horus_ for it. That ship would signal to the Mekinese when they arrived. It would make the king's proposal to surrender, on the Mekinese promise to spare the civilian population of Kandar. If the enemy admiral agreed to these terms and the king believed him, then the true Kandarian fleet could appear and yield to its overwhelmingly-powerful enemy. If the admiral arrogantly refused to pledge safety to Kandar's population, then the dummy formation might be destroyed, but the fleet would fight. Hopelessly and uselessly -- though the new low-power drive worked well in action -- but it would fight.