When Pendred assumed the post of Admiral of the Fleet, he found that he had inherited Radlov's plan for the mobilization of the First World for its final battle.
The plan comprised seven hundred pages of closely typed print plus another three hundred pages of supporting graphs, charts, and tables to back it up. As a military man, Pendred was hypnotized by the incredible scope of the plan. Radlov had called for the opening of more than thirty Black Libraries—the fact that this might involve the Islands in several minor wars was taken for granted. Embassies were to be sent to the twenty-nine nations which supposedly still had some of the First World's essence in them. An expeditionary force was to capture the Grayfields in as inconspicuous a manner as possible; there they would, by cannibalizing wrecked aircraft, attempt to produce the first air fleet since the battle at the Tyne delta. Out of the estimated ten thousand planes that Radlov thought had landed there after the Tyne Battle, a total of twenty heavy and thirty light aircraft might be put into flying condition. Confronted by such an overwhelming collection of raw power, on paper at least, Pendred could not help but feel optimistic in his later years. It was in one of these brighter moods that the Admiral composed an addition to Radlov's end-ofthe-First-World hypothesis. The battle would be joined, but from it would spring not only spiritual victory, but total physical victory. Confronted by such a mighty host, Pendred conceived, the Dark Powers would be crushed in the battle for their gigantic toy. With the enormous booty that would follow such a triumph, the true and honest reconstruction of the World might begin. And he would be remembered as the ultimate fountainhead of it all; some credit would be given to Radlov, of course, but he was such a defeatist.