IV

The alarm chimed softly beside his bed; he reached out and silenced

it, and lay looking at the early sunlight in the windows, and found

that he was wishing himself back in his dorm room at the University.

No, back in this room, ten years ago, before any of this had started.

For a while, he imagined himself thirteen years old and knowing

everything he knew now, and he began mapping a campaign to establish

himself as Litchfield's Juvenile Delinquent Number One, to the end

that Kurt Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and the rest of them would never

dream of sending him to school on Terra to find out where Merlin was.

But he couldn't even go back to yesterday afternoon in Kurt Fawzi's

office and tell them the truth. All he could do was go ahead. It had

seemed so easy, when he and his father had been talking on the Mall;

just get a ship built, and get out to Koshchei, and open some of the

shipyards and engine works there, and build a hypership. Sure;

easy--once he got started.

He climbed out of bed, knuckled the sleep-sand out of his eyes, threw

his robe around him, and started across the room to the bath cubicle.

They had decided to have breakfast together his first morning home.

The party had broken up late, and then there had been the excitement

of opening the presents he had brought back from Terra. Nobody had had

a chance to talk about Merlin, or about what he was going to do, now

that he was home. That, and his career of mendacity, would start at

breakfast. He wanted to let his father get to the table first, to run

interference for him; he took his time with his toilet and dressed

carefully and slowly. Finally, he zipped up the short waist-length

jacket and went out.

His father and mother and Flora were at the table, and the

serving-robot was floating around a few inches off the floor, steam

trailing from its coffee urn and its tray lid up to offer food. He

greeted everybody and sat down at his place, and the robot came around

to him. His mother had selected all the things he'd been most fond of

six years ago: shovel-snout bacon, hotcakes, starberry jam, things he

hadn't tasted since he had gone away. He filled his plate and poured a

cup of coffee.

"You don't want to bother coming out to the dig with me this morning,

do you?" his father was saying. "I'll be back here for lunch, and

we'll go to the meeting in the afternoon."

"Meeting?" Flora asked. "What meeting?"

"Oh, we didn't have time to tell you," Rodney Maxwell said. "You know,

Conn brought back a lot of information on locations of supply depots

and things like that. An amazing list of things that haven't been

discovered yet. It's going to be too much for us to handle alone;

we're organizing a company to do it. We'll need a lot of labor, for

one thing; jobs for some of these Tramptowners."

"That's going to be something awfully big," his mother said dubiously.

"You never did anything like that before."

"I never had the kind of a partner I have now. It's Maxwell & Son,

from now on."

"Who's going to be in this company?" Flora wanted to know.

"Oh, everybody around town; Kurt and the Judge and Klem, and Lester

Dawes. All that crowd."

"The Fawzis' Office Gang," Flora said disparagingly. "I suppose

they'll want Conn to take them right to where Merlin is, the first

thing."

"Well, not the first thing," Conn said. "Merlin was one thing I

couldn't find out anything about on Terra."

"I'll bet you couldn't!"

"The people at Armed Forces Records would let me look at everything

else, and make microcopies and all, but not one word about computers.

Forty years, and they still have the security lid welded shut on

that."

Flora looked at him in shocked surprise. "You don't mean to tell me

you believe in that thing?"

"Sure. How do you think they fought a war around a perimeter of close

to a thousand light-years? They couldn't do all that out of their

heads. They'd have to have computers, and the one they'd use to

correlate everything and work out grand-strategy plans would have to

be a dilly. Why, I'd give anything just to look at the operating

panels for that thing."

"But that's just a silly story; there never was anything like Merlin.

No wonder you couldn't find out about it. You were looking for

something that doesn't exist, just like all these old cranks that sit

around drinking brandy and mooning about what Merlin's going to do

for them, and never doing anything for themselves."

"Oh, they're going to do something, now, Flora," his father told her.

"When we get this company organized--"

"You'll dig up a lot of stuff you won't be able to sell, like that

stuff you've been bringing in from Tenth Army, and then you'll go

looping off chasing Merlin, like the rest of them. Well, maybe that'll

be a little better than just sitting in Kurt Fawzi's office talking

about it, but not much."

It kept on like that. Conn and his father tried several times to

change the subject; each time Flora ignored the effort and returned to

her diatribe. Finally, she put her plate and cup on the robot's tray

and got to her feet.

"I have to go," she said. "Maybe I can do something to keep some of

these children from growing up to be Merlin-worshipers like their

parents."

She flung out of the room angrily. Mrs. Maxwell looked after her in

distress.

"And I thought it was going to be so nice, having breakfast together

again," she lamented.

Somehow the breakfast wasn't quite as good as he'd thought it was at

first. He wondered how many more breakfasts like that he was going to

have to sit through. He and his father finished quickly and got up,

while his mother started the robot to clearing the table.

"Conn," she said, after his father had gone out, "you shouldn't have

gotten Flora started like that."

"I didn't get Flora started; she's equipped with a self-starter. If

she doesn't believe in Merlin, that's her business. A lot of these

people do, and I'm going to help them hunt for it. That's why they all

chipped in to send me to school on Terra; remember?"

"Yes, I know." Her voice was heavy with distress. "Conn, do you really

believe there is a ... that thing?" she asked.

"Why, of course." He was mildly surprised at how sincerely and

straightforwardly he said it. "I don't know where it is, but it's

somewhere on Poictesme, or in the Alpha System."

"Well, do you think it would be a good thing to find it?"

That surprised him. Everybody knew it would be, and his mother didn't

share his father's attitude about things everybody knew. She hadn't

any business questioning a fundamental postulate like that.

"It frightens me," she continued. "I don't even like to think about

it. A soulless intelligence; it seems evil to me."

"Well, of course it's soulless. It's a machine, isn't it? An aircar's

soulless, but you're not afraid to ride in one."

"But this is different. A machine that can think. Conn, people weren't

meant to make machines like that, wiser than they are."

"Now wait a minute, Mother. You're talking to a computerman now."

Professional authority was something his mother oughtn't to question.

"A computer like Merlin isn't intelligent, or wise, or anything of the

sort. It doesn't think; the people who make computers and use them do

the thinking. A computer's a tool, like a screwdriver; it has to have

a man to use it."

"Well, but...."

"And please, don't talk about what people are _meant_ to do. People

aren't _meant_ to do things; they _mean_ to do things, and nine times

out of ten, they end by doing them. It may take a hundred thousand

years from a Stone Age savage in a cave to the captain of a hyperspace

ship, but sooner or later they get there."

His mother was silent. The soulless machine that had been clearing the

table floated out of the room, the dishwasher in its rectangular belly

gurgling. Maybe what he had told her was logical, but women aren't

impressed by logic. She knew better--for the good old feminine reason,

_Because_.

"Wade Lucas wanted me to drop in on him for a checkup," he mentioned.

"That's rubbish; I had one for my landing pratique on the ship. He

just wants to size up his future brother-in-law."

"Well, you ought to go see him."

"How did Flora come to meet him, anyhow?"

"Well, you know, he came from Baldur. He was in Storisende, looking

for an opening to start a practice, and he heard about some medical

equipment your father had found somewhere and came out to see if he

could buy it. Your father and Judge Ledue and Mr. Fawzi talked him

into opening his office here. Then he and Flora got acquainted...."

She asked, anxiously: "What did you think of him, Conn?"

"Seems like a regular guy. I think I'll like him." A husband like Wade

Lucas might be a good thing for Flora. "I'll drop in on him, sometime

this morning."

His mother went toward the rear of the house--more soulless machines,

like the housecleaning-robot, and the laundry-robot, to look after. He

went into his father's office and found the cigar humidor, just where

it had been when he'd stolen cigars out of it six years ago and

thought his father never suspected what he was doing.

Now, why didn't they export this tobacco? It was better than anything

they grew on Terra; well, at least it was different, just as Poictesme

brandy was different from Terran bourbon or Baldur honey-rum. That was

the sort of thing that could be sold in interstellar trade anytime and

anywhere; the luxury goods that were unique. Staple foodstuffs,

utility textiles, metal products, could be produced anywhere, and

sooner or later they were. That was the reason for the original,

pre-War depression: the customers were all producing for themselves.

He'd talk that over with his father. He wished he'd had time to take

some economics at the University.

He found the file his father kept up-to-date on salvage sites found

and registered with the Claims Office in Storisende. Some of the

locations he had brought back data for had been discovered, but, to

his relief, not the underground duplicate Force Command Headquarters,

and not the spaceport on the island continent of Barathrum, to the

east. That was all right.

He went to the house-defense arms closet and found a 10-mm Navy

pistol, and a belt and spare clips. Making sure that the pistol and

magazines were loaded, he buckled it on. He debated getting a vehicle

out of the hangar on the landing stage, decided against it, and

started downtown on foot.

One of the first people he met was Len Yeniguchi, the tailor. He would

be at the meeting that afternoon. He managed, while talking, to

comment on the cut of Conn's suit, and finger the material.

"Ah, nice," he complimented. "Made on Terra? We don't see cloth like

that here very often."

He meant it wasn't Armed Forces salvage.

"Father ought to be around to see you with a bolt of material, to have

a suit made," he said. "For Ghu's sake, either talk him into having a

short jacket like this, or get him to buy himself a shoulder holster.

He's ruined every coat he ever owned, carrying a gun on his hip."

A little farther on, he came to a combat car grounded in the middle of

the street. It was green, with black trimmings, and lettered in black,

GORDON VALLEY HOME GUARD. Tom Brangwyn was standing beside

it, talking to a young man in a green uniform.

"Hello, Conn." The town marshal looked at his hip and grinned. "See

you got all your clothes on this morning. You were just plain

indecent, yesterday.... You know Fred Karski, don't you?"

Yes, now that Tom mentioned it, he did. He and Fred had gone to school

together at the Litchfield Academy. But the six years since they'd

seen each other last had made a lot of difference in both of them. He

was beginning to think that the only strangers in Litchfield were his

own contemporaries. They shook hands, and Conn looked at the combat

car and Fred Karski's uniform.

"What's going on?" he asked. "The System States Alliance to business

again?"

Karski laughed. "Oh, that's the Colonel's idea. Green and black were

his colors in the War, and he's in command of the regiment."

"Regiment? You need a whole regiment?" Conn asked.

"Well, it's two companies, each about the size of a regular army

platoon, but we have to call it a regiment so he can keep his old

Rebel Army rank."

"We could use a regiment, Conn," Tom Brangwyn said seriously. "You

have no idea how bad things have gotten. Over on the east coast, the

outlaws are looting whole towns. About four months ago, they sacked

Waterville; burned the whole town and killed close to a hundred

people. That was Blackie Perales' gang."

"Who is this Blackie Perales? I heard the name mentioned in connection

with the _Harriet Barne_."

"Blackie Perales is anybody the Planetary Government can't catch,

which means practically any outlaw," Fred Karski said.

"No, Fred; there is a Blackie Perales," Tom Brangwyn said. "He used to

be a planter, down in the south. The banks foreclosed on him when he

couldn't pay his notes, and he turned outlaw. That's the way it's

going, all around. Every time a planter loses his plantation or a

farmer loses his farm, or a mechanic loses his job, he turns outlaw.

Take Tramptown, here. We used to plant nothing but melons. Then, when

the sale for wine and brandy dropped, the melon-planters began cutting

their melon crops and raising produce, instead of buying it from up

north, and turning land into pasture for cattle. The people we used to

buy foodstuffs from couldn't sell all they raised, and that threw a

lot of farmhands out of work. So they got the idea there was work

here, and they came flocking in, and when they couldn't get jobs, they

just stayed in Tramptown, stealing anything they could. We don't even

try to police Tramptown any more; we just see to it they don't come up

here."

"Well, where do these outlaws and pirates who are looting whole towns

come from?"

"Down in the Badlands, mostly. None of them have been bothering us,

since we organized the Home Guard. They tried to, a couple of times,

at first. There may have been a few survivors; they spread it around

that Gordon Valley wasn't any outlaws' health resort."

"Why don't you join us, Conn?" Fred Karski asked. "All our old gang

belong."

"I'd like to, but I'm afraid I'm going to be kind of busy."

Brangwyn nodded. "Yes. You will be, at that," he agreed.

"So I hear," Fred Karski said. "Do you really know where it is,

Conn?"

"Well, no." He went into the routine about Merlin being still

classified triple-top secret. "But we'll find it. It may take time,

but we will."

They talked for a while. He asked more questions about the Home Guard.

His father, it seemed, had donated all the equipment. They had a

hundred and seventy men on the active list, but they had a reserve of

over eight hundred, and combat vehicles and weapons on all the

plantations and in all the towns along the river. The reserve had only

been turned out twice; both times, outlaw attacks had been stopped

dead--literally. The Home Guard, it appeared, was not given to making

arrests or taking prisoners. Finally, he parted from them, strolling

on along the row of stores and business places, many vacant, under the

south edge of the Mall, until he saw a fluorolite sign, WADE

LUCAS, M. D. He entered.

Lucas wasn't busy. They went into his consultation office, and Conn

took off his gun-belt and hung it up; Lucas offered cigarettes, and

they lighted and sat down.

"I see you've started carrying one," he said, nodding to the pistol

Conn had laid aside.

"Civic obligation. I'm going to be too busy for Home Guard duty, but

if I can protect myself, it'll save somebody else the job of

protecting me."

"Maybe if there weren't so many guns around, there wouldn't be so much

trouble."

He felt his good opinion of Wade Lucas start to slip. The Liberals on

Terra had been full of that kind of talk, which was why only four out

of ten of last year's graduating class at Armed Forces Academy had

been able to get active commissions. The last war had been a disaster,

so don't prepare for another one; when it comes, let it be a worse

disaster.

"Guns don't make trouble; people make trouble. If the troublemakers

are armed, you have to be armed too. When did you last see an Air

Patrol boat around here, or even a Constabulary trooper? All we have

here is the Home Guard and Tom Brangwyn and three deputies, and his

pay and theirs is always six months in arrears."

Lucas nodded. "A bankrupt government, an unemployment rate that rises

every year, currency that buys less every month. And do-it-yourself

justice." The doctor blew a smoke ring and watched it float toward the

ventilator-intake. "You said you're going to be busy. This company

your father's talking about organizing?"

"That's right. You're going to be at the meeting at the Academy this

afternoon, aren't you?"

"Yes. Just what are you going to do, after you get it organized?"

"Well, I brought back information on a great deal of undiscovered

equipment and stores that the Third Force left behind...." He talked

on for some time, keeping to safe generalities. "It's too big for my

father and me to handle alone, even if we didn't feel morally

obligated to take in the people who contributed toward sending me to

school on Terra. You ought to be interested in it. I know of six fully

supplied hospitals, intended to take care of the casualties in case of

a System States space-attack. You can imagine, better than I can, what

would be in them."

"Yes. Medical supplies of all sorts are getting hard to find. But look

here; you're not going to let these people waste time looking for this

alleged computer, this thing they call Merlin, are you?"

"We're looking for any valuable war material. I don't know the

location of Merlin, but--"

"I'll bet you don't!" Lucas said vehemently. That was the same thing

Flora had said.

"--but Merlin is undoubtedly the most valuable item of abandoned TF

equipment on this planet. In the long run, I'd say, more valuable than

everything else together. We certainly aren't going to ignore it."

"Good heavens, Conn! You aren't like these people here; you were

educated at the University of Montevideo."

"So I was. I studied computer theory and practice. I have some doubts

about Merlin being able to do some of the things these laymen like

Kellton and Fawzi and Judge Ledue think it could. Those sorts of

misconceptions and exaggerations have to be allowed for. But I have no

doubt whatever that the master computer with which they did their

strategic planning is probably the greatest mechanism of its sort ever

built, and I have no doubt whatever that it still exists somewhere in

the Alpha System."

He almost convinced himself of it. He did not, however, convince Wade

Lucas, who was now regarding him with narrow-eyed suspicion.

"You mean you categorically state that that computer actually exists?"

"That, I think, was the general idea. Yes. I certainly do believe that

Merlin exists."

Maybe he was telling the truth. Merlin existed in the beliefs and

hopes of people like Dolf Kellton and Klem Zareff and Judge Ledue and

Kurt Fawzi. Merlin was a god to them. Well, take Ghu, the Thoran

Grandfather-God. Ghu was as preposterous, theologically, as Merlin was

technologically; Ghu, except to Thorans, was a Federation-wide joke.

But he'd known a couple of Thorans at the University, funny little

fellows, with faces like terriers, their bodies covered with matted

black hair. They believed in Ghu the way he believed in the Second Law

of Thermodynamics. Ghu was with them every moment of their lives. Take

away their belief in Ghu, and they would have been lost and wretched.

As lost and wretched as Kurt Fawzi or Judge Ledue, if they lost their

belief in Merlin. He started to say something like that, and then

thought better of it.

Yes, Virginia, there _is_ a Santa Claus.

V

The meeting was at the Academy; when Conn and his father arrived, they

found the central hall under the topside landing stage crowded. Kurt

Fawzi and Professor Kellton had constituted themselves a reception

committee. Franz Veltrin was in evidence with his audiovisual

recorder, and Colonel Zareff was leaning on his silver-headed sword

cane. Tom Brangwyn, in an unaccustomed best-suit. Wade Lucas, among a

group of merchants, arguing heatedly. Lorenzo Menardes, the

distiller, and Lester Dawes, the banker, and Morgan Gatworth, the

lawyer, talking to Judge Ledue. About four times as many as had been

in Fawzi's office the afternoon before.

Finally, everybody was shepherded into a faculty conference room;

there was a long table, and a shorter one T-wise at one end. Fawzi and

Kellton conducted them to this. Both of them were trying to preside,

Kellton because it was his Academy, and Fawzi ex officio as mayor and

professional leading citizen, and because he had come to regard Merlin

as his own private project. After everybody else was seated, the two

rival chairmen-presumptive remained on their feet. Fawzi was saying,

"Let's come to order; we must conduct this meeting regularly," and

Kellton was saying, "Gentlemen, please; let me have your attention."

If either of them took the chair, the other would resent it. Conn got

to his feet again.

"Somebody will have to preside," he said, loudly enough to cut through

the babble at the long table. "Would you take the chair, Judge Ledue?"

That stopped it. Neither of them wanted to contest the honor with the

president-judge of the Gordon Valley court.

"Excellent suggestion, Conn. Judge, will you preside?" Professor

Kellton, who had seen himself losing out to Fawzi, asked. Fawzi threw

one quick look around, estimated the situation, and got with it. "Of

course, Judge. You're the logical chairman. Here, will you sit here?"

Judge Ledue took the chair, looked around for something to use as a

gavel, and rapped sharply with a paperweight.

"Young Mr. Conn Maxwell, who has just returned from Terra, needs no

introduction to any of you," he began. Then, having established that,

he took the next ten minutes to introduce Conn. When people began

fidgeting, he wound up with: "Now, only about a dozen of us were at

the informal meeting in Mr. Fawzi's office, yesterday. Conn, would you

please repeat what you told us? Elaborate as you see fit."

Conn rose. He talked briefly about his studies on Terra to qualify

himself as an expert. Then he began describing the wealth of abandoned

and still undiscovered Federation war material and the many

installations of which he had learned, careful to avoid giving clues

to exact locations. The spaceport; the underground duplicate Force

Command Headquarters; the vast underground arsenals and shops and

supply depots. Everybody was awed, even his father; he hadn't had time

to tell him more than a fraction of it.

Finally, somebody from the long table interrupted:

"Well, Conn; how about Merlin? That's what we're interested in."

Wade Lucas snorted indignantly.

"He's telling you about real things, things worth millions of sols,

and you want him to talk about that idiotic fantasy!"

There was an angry outcry. Nobody actually shouted "_To the stake with

the blasphemer!_" but that was the general idea. Judge Ledue was

rapping loudly for order.

"I don't know the exact location of Merlin." Conn strove to make

himself heard. "The whole subject's classified top secret. But I am

certain that Merlin exists, if not on Poictesme then somewhere in the

Alpha System, and I am equally certain that we can find it."

Cheers. He waited for the hubbub to subside. Lucas was trying to yell

above it.

"You admit you couldn't learn anything about this so-called Merlin,

but you're still certain it exists?"

"Why are you certain it doesn't?"

"Why, the whole thing's absurdly fantastic!"

"Maybe it is, to a layman like you. I studied computers, and it isn't

to me."

"Well, take all these elaborate preparations against space attack you

were telling us about. I think Colonel Zareff, here, who served in the

Alliance Army, will bear me out that such an attack was plainly

impossible."

Zareff started to agree, then realized that he was aiding and

comforting the enemy. "Intelligence lag," he said. "What do you

expect, with General Headquarters thirty parsecs from the fighting?"

"Yes. A computer can only process the data that's been taped into it,"

Conn said. That was a point he wanted to ram home, as forcibly and as

often as possible. "I suppose Merlin classified an Alliance attack on

Poictesme as a low-order probability, but war is the province of

chance; Clausewitz said that a thousand years ago. Foxx Travis wasn't

the sort of commander to let himself get caught, even by a very

low-order probability."

"Well how do you explain the absence, after forty years, of any

mention, in any history of the War, of Merlin? How do you get around

that?"

"I don't have to. How do you get around it?"

"_Huh?_" Lucas was startled.

"Yes. Stories about Merlin were all over Poictesme, all through the

Third Force, even to the enemy. Say the stories were unfounded; say

Merlin never existed. Yet the belief in Merlin was an important

historical fact, and no history of the War gives it so much as a

footnote." He paused for effect, then continued: "That can mean only

one thing. Systematic suppression, backed by the whole force of the

Terran Federation. A gigantic conspiracy of silence!"

Brother! If they swallow that, I have it made; they'll swallow

anything!

They did, all but Lucas. He banged his fist on the table.

"Now I've heard everything!" he shouted in disgust.

"Not quite everything, Doctor," Morgan Gatworth said. "You will hear,

one of these days, that we have found Merlin."

"Yes, that'll be the day!" Lucas sprang to his feet, his chair

toppling behind him. He shoved it aside with his foot. "I'm not going

to argue with you. Conn Maxwell gave you a thousand-year-old

quotation; I'll give you another, from Thomas Paine: 'To argue with

those who have renounced the use and authority of reason is as futile

as to administer medicine to the dead.' I'll add this. Conn Maxwell

knows better than this balderdash he's been spouting to you. I don't

know what his racket is, and I'm not staying to find out. You will,

though--to your regret."

He turned and strode from the room. There was a moment's silence,

after the door slammed behind him. Too bad, Conn thought. He would

have made a good friend. Now he was going to make a very nasty enemy.

"Well, let's get to business," his father said. "We don't have to

argue about the existence of Merlin; we know that. Let's discuss the

question of finding it."

"I still think it's somewhere off-planet," Lorenzo Menardes said. "The

moons of Pantagruel...."

Evidently he'd read something, or seen an old film, about the moons of

Pantagruel.

"No, that's too far; they'd keep it where they could use it."

"The old GHQ," Lester Dawes suggested. "Suppose it's down under that,

like the place Rodney found under Tenth Army."

"I hope not," Gathworth said. "The Planetary Government took that

over."

"Well, wherever it is, finding it is going to be expensive," Rodney

Maxwell said. "Now, to finance the search, I propose we use this

information my son brought back from Terra. Doctor Lucas was right

about one thing; that's worth millions of sols. Well, I propose, also,

that we set up a company and get it chartered; a prospecting company,

to operate under the Abandoned Property Act of 867. My son and I will

contribute this information as our share in the capitalization of the

company. The work of opening these Federation installations can go on

concurrently with the search for Merlin, and the profits can finance

it."

Silence for a moment, then a bedlam of cheering.

"Well, let's get organized," Gatworth said. "What will we call this

company?"

A number of voices shouted suggestions. Rodney Maxwell managed to get

recognition and partial silence.

"It is of the first importance," he said, "that we keep our real

objective--Merlin--as close a secret as possible. The Planetary

Government would like to get hold of it--and I leave you to ask

yourselves how far Jake Vyckhoven and his cronies are to be trusted

with anything like that--and I have no doubt the Federation might try

to take it away from us."

"Couldn't do it, Rodney," Judge Ledue objected. "Everything the

Federation abandoned in the Trisystem is public domain now. We have a

Federation Supreme Court ruling--"

"What's legality to the Federation?" Klem Zareff demanded. "They

fought a criminally illegal war of aggression against my people."

Down the table, somebody started singing "Rally Round the Banner, the

Banner Black and Green."

"Well, I think it's a good idea to keep quiet about it, myself," Kurt

Fawzi said.

"All right," Rodney Maxwell said. "Then we don't want this company to

sound like anything but another salvage company. I suggest we call it

Litchfield Exploration & Salvage."

"Good name, Rodney," Dawes approved. "That a motion? I second it."

Unanimously carried. They had a name, now, anyhow. Everybody began

suggesting other topics for consideration--capitalization, application

for charter, election of officers, stock issues. Conn paid less and

less attention. Industrial finance and organization wasn't his

subject, either. His father was plunging happily into it as though he

had been promoting companies all his life. Conn sat and doodled with

his six-color pen, mostly spherical hyperspace ships.

"We can't get all this cleared up now," Lester Dawes was protesting.

"Your Honor, I mean, Mr. Chairman; I suggest that committees be

appointed...."

More hassling; everybody wanted to be on all the committees. Finally,

they appointed enough committees to include everybody.

"Well, that seems to be cleared up," Judge Ledue said, "I suggest a

meeting day after tomorrow evening; the committees should have

everything set up, and we should be able to organize ourselves and

elect permanent officers. Is there anything else to discuss, or do I

hear a motion to adjourn?"

Somebody thought they ought to have some idea of what the first

operation would be.

"You heard me mention a spaceport," Conn said. "I can tell you, now,

that it's over on Barathrum, inside the crater of an extinct volcano.

I think we ought to have a look at that, first of all."

"I know you seemed to think yesterday that Merlin is off-planet,"

Fawzi said, "I'm inclined to disagree, Conn. I think it's right here

on Poictesme."

"We ought to nail that spaceport down first," Conn argued.

"Conn, you mentioned an underground duplicate of Travis's general

headquarters," Zareff said. "They thought we'd possibly send a fleet

here to blitz Poictesme, or they wouldn't have built that. And this

underground headquarters would be the safest place on the planet;

they'd make sure of that. Staff brass don't like to get caught out in

the rain, not when it's raining hellburners and planetbusters. Merlin

would be too big to take there along with them, so they'd put it there

in the first place."

That made sense. If he'd been Foxx Travis, and if there had been a

Merlin, that was exactly where he'd have put it himself. But there was

no Merlin, and he wanted a ship. He argued mulishly for a little, then

saw that it was hopeless and gave in.

"I want to find Merlin as much as any of you," he said. "More. Merlin

was the only thing I was trained for. We'll look there first."

Somebody asked where, approximately, this underground Force Command

headquarters was.

"Why, it's in the Badlands, over between the Blaubergs and the east

coast."

"Great Ghu! We'll need an army to go in there!" Tom Brangwyn said.

"That's where all these outlaws have been coming from, Blackie Perales

and all."

"Then we'll get an army together," Klem Zareff said happily. "Might

make a little of that reward money that's been offered."

"We'll need more than that. Well need excavation equipment, and labor.

Lots of labor," Conn said. "It's a couple of hundred feet below the

surface; from the plans, I'd say they just dug a big pit, built the

headquarters in it, and filled it in. There are two entrances, a

vertical shaft and a horizontal tunnel."

"When they pulled out, they probably filled the shaft and vitrified

the rock at the outer ends," his father added. "That was what they did

at Tenth Army."

Another idea hit him. "Mr. Mayor, do you think you could set up some

kind of a public-works program here in Litchfield? We can't start this

till after the wine-pressing's over, and we'll need a lot of labor, as

I pointed out. Now, it's important that we keep all our projects a

secret until we can get our claims filed. If we start this municipal

fix-up-and-clean-up program, we can give work to a lot of these

drifters who haven't been able to get jobs on the plantations, get

them organized into gangs, and keep them together till we're ready for

the Force Command job."

Lorenzo Menardes supported the idea. "And while they were boondoggling

around in Litchfield, we could pick out the best workers, get rid of

the incompetents, and train a few supervisors. That's going to be one

of our worst headaches; getting capable supervisors."

"You telling me?" Rodney Maxwell asked. "That was what I was wondering

about: where we'd get gang-bosses. And another thing; this municipal

housecleaning would mask our real preparations."

"Well, we need something like that," Fawzi said. "We've needed it for

a long time. I guess it took Conn, coming home from Terra, to see how

badly we've let the town get run down. Franz, suppose you and Tom

Brangwyn and Lorenzo form a committee on that. Look around, see what

needs fixing up worst, and set up a project. Who's city engineer now?"

"Abe O'Leary; he died six years ago," Dawes said. "You never appointed

his successor."

"Well, I guess I never got around to that," the mayor of Litchfield

admitted.

When the meeting finally adjourned, they went up and got in the car;

his father lifted it straight up to thirty thousand feet and started

circling. An aircar was one place where they could talk safely.

"Conn, I was kind of worried, down there. You were being a little too

positive. You know, you're only twenty-three. As long as you agree

with those people, you're a brilliant young man; you start getting

ideas of your own, and you're just a half-baked kid. You let the older

and wiser heads run things. You can't begin to hope to foul things up

the way they can. Look at all the experience they've had."

"But we've got to have a ship. Everything depends on that."

"I know it does. We'll get a ship. Let Kurt Fawzi and Klem Zareff and

the rest of them have this duplicate Force Command thing first,

though. Keep them happy. As soon as we have that opened, you can take

a gang and run over to Barathrum and grab your spaceport. Wait till

they find out that Merlin isn't at Force Command Duplicate. Then you

can convince them it's really on Koshchei."