Part 29 (2/2)
As soon as Rodney Maxas off the screen, there was a call-signal
It was one of the news-services, wanting a statean talking:
”This statement of General Travis's is completely false There is a Merlin, and we've found it”
They found soh Merlin for the next thirty hours That superstructure was just big enough for the manually operated parts of a co uardso they had, at best, been homeless drifters, and not a few had been outlaws Now they were soldiers, well fed, clothed, quartered and equipped, and well and regularly paid They had a good thing; they illing to fight to keep it, Merlin or no Merlin Conn left theather the workue, but that wasn't really necessary They had a good thing, too, andtoward a better thing They could be depended upon, too
They caot the heavy collapsiu down around the cutting-head After that, there were only four men who could work, each in his own heavily shi+elded cabin In spite of the shi+elding that covered the actual work, there was an aweso in theon where that tiny rotating bea at the collapsiuined
Conn would have liked to stay outside; he could not Tooin toohad broken out in Storisende and in a dozen other places He saw, on a news-screen, ain front of the Executive Palace; yellow-shi+rted Cybernarchists were battling with city police and Planetary troops, Ar both and one another Above all the confused noise of shouting and shooting, an a: ”_It's a lie! It's a lie! Merlin has been found!_” News--Zareff's h the cordon that had been put up around Force Coh
They could tell hi on
J Fitzwilliam Sterber called Rodney Maxwell had been arrested, on a farrago of fraud charges--”I don't knoho he's supposed to have defrauded; the Planetary Governally denied Sterber's lawyerly soul was outraged, but he was grioing to start a false-arrest suit--”
”If you're alive to” Apparently Sterber hadn't thought of that ”What do you think's going to happen when the Stock Exchange opens?”
”It's going to be bad But don't worry; your father ave me instructions, and instructed a few more people” He named some of the Trisyste to try to brace theto lose anything in the long run”
Luther Chen-Wong called from Port Carpenter, on Koshchei He and Clyde Nichols and a youngthe colony, in Conn's absence and since Yves Jacqueone to space in the _Ouroboros II_
”Well, they caught up with you,” he said Evidently he had figured out what the search for Merlin was all about, too ”What do we do about it?”
”Well, we are just before finding Merlin, here I hope we find it before things get too bad” He told Luther the situation of the moment ”Have you people started on another hypershi+p yet?”
”We're getting organized to I don't suppose it's advisable to send any more shi+ps in to Storisende for a while? And are you sure this thing you've found is Merlin?”
”I don't knohat it is It's only big enough for the apparatus they'd need to operate a thing like Merlin--Yes, Luther I a looked at hi else that can stop this business”
Toas in the room when he turned from the screen
”We searched Leibert's--Shanlee's--rooms,” he said ”We found a bomb”
”What kind of a bootten the fissionables by taking apart a couple of light tactical 's packed inside a hundred-pound power-cartridge case It was in a traveling-bag under his bed And you knoas to be fired? With a regular 40-mm flare-pistol, welded into the end of the boe, and it had been reloaded with a big charge of rifle-powder I suppose it would blow one subcritical mass into another But the only way he could have fired the bo hi with it He must have wanted Merlin destroyed pretty badly
”Have you questioned him yet?”