THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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everything around it. Fred Karski was talking to Colonel Zareff, back at
Force Command, giving him the radiation count.

"That's occupied," the old soldier replied. "Mass-energy[Pg 72]
converter going. Now, Fred, don't start any shooting unless you have to,
but don't get yourself blown to MC waiting on them to fire the first shot."

The dark cone bulked higher and higher in the screen. It must be seven
miles around the crater, and a mile deep; when that thing blew out, ten
or fifteen thousand years ago, it must have been something to see,
preferably from a ship a thousand miles off-planet. It was so huge that
it was hard to realize that the jumbled foothills around it were
themselves respectably lofty mountains.

When they were within five miles of it, something twinkled slightly near
the summit. An instant later, the missileman, in his turret overhead,
shouted: