THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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"Men and women, all officers or civilians," Klem Zareff said. "Didn't
even have enlisted men to cook for them. And we haven't found a scrap of
paper with writing on it, or an inch of recorded sound-tape or
audiovisual film. Remember those big wire baskets, down at the
mass-energy converters? Before they left, they disintegrated every scrap
of writing or recording. This is where Merlin is; they were the people
who worked with it."

And above, offices. General Staff. War Planning, with an incredibly
complex star-map of the theater of war. Judge Advocate General.
Inspector General. Service of Supply. They were full of computers, each
one firing the hopes of people like Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and Judge
Ledue, but they were only special-purpose machines, the sort to be[Pg
62] found in any big business office. The Storisende Stock Exchange
probably had much bigger ones.

Then they found big ones, rank on rank of cabinets, long consoles