THE COSMIC COMPUTER

Back Forward Menu

getting in the way.

At eleven, Rodney Maxwell went aboard the /Lester Dawes/ to use the
radio and telescreen equipment. By then, two time zones west in
Storisende, the Claims Office was opening; he filed preliminary claim to
an underground installation with at least two entrances in uninhabited
country, and claimed a ten-mile radius around it. By that time, the gang
working on top had uncovered a vitrified slab over the hundred-foot
circle of the vertical shaft and were cracking it with explosives.
According to the scanners, it was full of loose rubble for a hundred
feet down. Below that, the microrays hit something impenetrable.

Toward midafternoon, the tunnel in the canyon was cleared. It had been
vitrified solid; the scanners reported that it was plugged for ten feet.
A contragravity tank let down in front of it, with a solenoid jackhammer
mounted where the gun should have been, and began pounding, running a
hole in for a blast shot. There were more explosions topside; when Conn