THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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/The fountains are dusty in the Graveyard of Dreams;/
/The hinges are rusty, they swing with tiny screams./

Was Poictesme a Graveyard of Dreams? No; Junkyard of[Pg 10] Empire. The
Terran Federation had impoverished a hundred planets, devastated a
score, actually depopulated at least three, to keep the System States
Alliance from seceding. It hadn't been a victory. It had only been a
lesser defeat.

There was a crowd, almost a mob, on the dock; nearly everybody in
topside Litchfield. He spotted old Colonel Zareff, with his white hair
and plum-brown skin, and Tom Brangwyn, the town marshal, red-faced and
bulking above everybody else. Kurt Fawzi, the mayor, well to the front.
Then he saw his father and mother, and his sister Flora, and waved to
them. They waved back, and then everybody was waving. The gangway-port
opened, and the Academy band struck up, enthusiastically if inexpertly,
as he descended to the dock.