THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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"Well, how about engineering and construction equipment? I know where
there's a lot of that, down to the southwest."

"That's farming country; that stuff'll be useful down there. I'll do that."

The next morning, Rodney Maxwell scorched the stratosphere to Storisende
in his recon-car. The day after he got back, there was a big discovery
of engineering equipment to the southwest and, as he had anticipated, a
second rush of prospectors. They had the vertical shaft clear now, and
the /Lester Dawes/ was shuttling back and forth between Force Command
Duplicate and Storisende. Other ships were coming in, now, mostly
privately owned freighting ships. They bought almost anything, as fast
as it came out.

The stock market had been paralyzed for a couple of days after the
discovery of Force Command; nobody seemed to[Pg 66] know what to sell
and what to hold. Now it was going perfectly insane. Twenty or thirty