Part 24 (1/2)
”Well, let's see e can find in the way of a big airboat, or a small shi+p,” Conn said ”Jerry, you can pick a party for exploring
Just zigzag around the planet and transmit in locations and views of whatever you find, and we'll send it on to Storisende”
”And don't pick anybody for your exploring party that can't be spared fro here,” Jacquemont added ”We don't want to have to chase you halfway around the world to bring back the only specialist in so to co to be doing fifteen things at once here”
All the coational equip hyperspace theory--fortunately, there was an excellent library here--and setting up classes, and teaching school And keeping in touch with his father, on Poictes him nervous not to knohat sort of foolishness the older and wiser heads anizing work-gangs and setting up coot an open-pit iron mine started; as soon as the steellooking for so they could build a 350-foot interplanetary shi+p out of; Jacque plans and specifications and athered a dozen men and women and started classes in computer theory and practice; at the sa theation, which was the art of tossing a shi+p into soless noplace outside norain by her bootstraps at soht-years away
Roughly, it co, blindfolded, with a not particularly accurate pistol, fro you could only do with a computer A huure it out, of course--if he had fifty-odd thousand years to do it A good computer did it in thirty seconds That was one difference between people and computers
The other difference was that the desirability ofa hyperspace jump would never occur to a computer, unless somebody pushed a button and taped in instructions
They found a three-hundred-foot globular skeleton, probably the nucleus of a big hyperspace shi+p, and decided that was big enough for what they wanted The entire colony got to work on it Photoprinted plans and specifications poured out as Jacqueot them up Steel came out of the steelcontragravity machines, some robotic and some human-operated, clustered around the skeletal hull like hornets building a nest
Trisystem & Interstellar spacelines was chartered; the lawyers reported having to overcome a little more resistance than usual from the Government about that And the bill to nationalize Merlin, which had died in co debated hotly on the floor of Parlia it
”Are they completely crazy?” Conn wanted to knohen he heard about that ”They pass that bill and nobody's going to look for Merlin if they know the Government will snatch it as soon as they find it”
”That is precisely Jake Vyckhoven's idea,” his father replied ”I told you he was afraid of Merlin He's getting more afraid of it every day”
He had reason to There was a growing senti the entire Government over to the computer as soon as it was found To his horror, Conn heard himself named as chairman of a committee that should be set up to operate it The moderates, who had merely wanted Merlin used in an advisory capacity, were dropping out; the agitation was co from extremists anted Merlin to be the whole Govern of their oho called the colored-shi+rt unifor each other with an archaic stiff-arm salute, and the words, ”Hail Merlin!”
And the followers of the gospel-shouter on the west coast were now cropping up all over the mainland, and on the continent of Acaire to the north, and another cult, non-religious, was convinced that Merlin was a living ence of its own and awesome psi-powers, a sort of super-Golem, which, if found and awakened, would enslave the whole Galaxy Fortunately, these two hated each other as venomously as both did the Cybernarchists, and spent s The news-services were beginning to publish casualty lists, soular ar, it helped the e mercenaries
”But what,” Conn asked, ”are the sane people doing?”
”You ought to know,” his father told him ”I suspect that you have all of them on Koshchei now”
The sane people, if that hat they were, were being busy They were putting a set of Abbott lift-and-drive engines together, and Conn's co the y needed to overcoive it constant acceleration fro, by trial and error, largely error, how to build a set of pseudograv engines And they were putting together a hundred and one other things, all of which was good training for the time they'd be ready to start work on _Ouroboros II_
Jerry Rivas had found a contragravity craft which seemed to have been used by soathered a crew of non-specialists eren't urgently needed at Port Carpenter, and set out to circuate the planet It worked just the reverse of expectation He found a big uranium mine, with an isotope-separation plant and a battery of plutonium-breeders; that meant that Mohammed Matsui and half a dozen other nuclear-power people had to get into another boat and speed after him to see what he had really found As soon as they landed, Rivas took off again to discover a copperplants That took a few more experts, or reasonable facsimiles, away from Port Carpenter And then he found a whole city that s like that
Conn loaded his whole coht-scow and took the hiet the shi+p finished?” he was asking ”Kurt Fawzi's pestering the daylights out of me He wants that equip on it What's happened, has Carl Leibert had another revelation?”
”I don't know about that Kurt's sure Merlin is directly under Force Co about Leibert, Klem Zareff's been after me about him You know I've contracted for the full-time and exclusive services of this Barton-Massarra detective agency Well, Kle Leibert”
”Yes, I know; Leibert's a Terran Federation spy Why do you need the full-tiency on Poictes People have been trying to bribe and intimidate some of my office help I have found ht one of our clerks trying to make copies of voice-tapes I think it's so to find out how close we are to it
Kle to get that shi+p built?”