The Cosmic Computer, H. Beam Piper [best sci fi novels of all time .TXT] 📗

and factories on Koshchei, or talking about all the things now in short supply that could be produced there. They were talking about Merlin, and they were all positive, now, that something found at Force Command Duplicate had convinced Litchfield Exploration & Salvage that the giant computer was somewhere off-planet.

Rodney Maxwell flew in from Storisende; he was accompanied by Wade Lucas, who shook hands cordially with Conn.

“Can you spare us Jerry Rivas for a while?” Rodney Maxwell asked.

“Well, ask Yves Jacquemont; he’s vice-president in charge of operations. As an influential non-office-holding stockholder, I’d think so. He’s only running around helping out here and there.”

“We want him to take charge of opening those hospitals you were telling us about. Wade and I are forming a new company, Mainland Medical Materials, Ltd. Going to act as broker for L. E. & S. in getting rid of medical stores. Nobody in the company knows where to sell that stuff or what we ought to get for it.”

Wade Lucas began to talk about how desperately some types of drug and some varieties of diagnostic equipment were needed. Conn had it on the tip of his tongue to ask Lucas whether he thought that was a racket, too. Lucas must have read his mind.

“I really didn’t understand how much good this would do,” he said. “I wouldn’t have spoken so forcefully against it if I had. I thought it was nothing but this Merlin thing⁠—”

“Aaagh! Don’t talk to me about Merlin!” Conn interrupted. “I have to talk to Kurt Fawzi and that crowd about Merlin till I’m sick of the whole subject.”

His father shot him a warning glance; Lucas was looking at him in surprise. He hastened to change the subject:

“I see Len made you a suit out of that material,” he said to his father. “And I see you’re not bulging the coat out behind with a hip-holster.”

“Oh, I stopped carrying a gun; I’m a city man, now. Nobody carries one in Storisende. Won’t even be necessary in Litchfield before long. Our new marshal had a regular reign of terror in Tramptown for a few days, and you wouldn’t know the place. Wade, here, is acting mayor now.”

They went back to talking about the new company. “You’re going to have so many companies you won’t be able to to keep track of them before long,” Conn said.

“Well, I’m doing something about that. A holding company; Trisystem Investments, Ltd.; you’re a non-office-holding stockholder in that, too.”

Merlin was now a political issue. A bill had been introduced in Parliament to amend the Abandoned Property Act of 867 and nationalize Merlin, when and if discovered and regardless by whom. The support seemed to come from an extremist minority; everybody else, including the Administration, was opposed to it. There was considerable acrimony, however, on the propositions: 1) that Merlin was too important to the prosperity of Poictesme to become a private monopoly; and 2) that Merlin was too important, etc., to become a political football and patronage plum.

It was discovered, after they were half assembled, that the controls for the Harriet Barne would only work while she was in a horizontal position. The whole thing had to be torn out and rebuilt. There was also trouble with the air-and-water recycling system. The City of Nefertiti came in from Aton for Odin; Rodney Maxwell was almost frantic because they hadn’t gotten together a cargo of medical stores from the first hospital to be opened.

“There’s all sorts of stuff,” he was fuming, by screen. “Stuff that’s in short supply anywhere and that we could get good prices for off-planet. Get Federation sols for it, too.”

“The City of Asgard will be along in six months,” Conn said. “You can have a real cargo assembled by then. You can make arrangements in advance to dispose of it on Terra or Baldur or Marduk.”

“There are a couple of other companies interested in interplanetary ships now,” his father added. “One of them had gotten four old freighters off Mothball Row, and they’re tearing them down and cannibalizing them into one spaceship. That work’s being done here at Storisende Spaceport. And another company has gotten title to a couple of old office buildings and has a gang at work dismantling them for the structural steel. I think they’re going to build a real spaceship.”

That wasn’t anything to worry about either. The Harriet Barne was better than half finished. There was a collapsium plant at Storisende Spaceport, but Yves Jacquemont said it was only half the size of the one at Barathrum; it would be three months before it could produce armor for one, let alone both, ships.

The crackpots were getting into the act, now, too. A spirit medium on the continent of Acaire, to the north, had produced a communication purporting to originate with a deceased Third Force Staff officer, now in the Spirit World. There was considerable detail, all ludicrous to Conn’s professional ear. And a fanatic in one of the small towns on the west coast was quoting the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavadgita to prove that if Merlin were ever found, Divine vengeance in a spectacular form would fall not only on Poictesme but on the entire Galaxy.

The spaceship that was building at Storisende got into the news; on-screen, it appeared that the work was progressing rapidly. So was the work of demolishing a block of empty buildings to get girders for the second ship, on which work had not yet been started. The one under construction seemed to be of cruciform design, like an old-fashioned pre-contragravity winged airplane. The design puzzled everybody at Barathrum. Yves Jacquemont thought that perhaps there would be decks in the cross-arm which would be used when the ship was running on combined lift and drive.

“Well, till we can get a shipyard going on Koshchei and build some real spaceships, there are going to be some rare-looking objects traveling around the Alpha System. I wonder what the next one’s going to look like⁠—a flying