THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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one trouser leg slit to the belt and his right thigh splinted and
bandaged; he took over the /Lester Dawes/' missile controls, which he
could manage[Pg 75] sitting in one place. Fred Karski and Charley
Gatworth went aboard their craft and lifted out.

For a long time, nothing happened. Conn got out the plans of the volcano
spaceport and the photomaps of the surrounding area. The principal
entrance, the front door of the spaceport, was the crater of the extinct
volcano itself. It was ringed, outside, with launching-sites and gun
positions, and according to the data he had, some of the guns were as
big as 250-mm. How many outlaws there were to man them was a question a
lot of people could get killed trying to answer. The ship docks and
shops were down on the level of the crater floor, in caverns, both
natural and excavated, that extended far back into the mountain. There
were two galleries, one above the other, extending entirely around the
inside of the crater near the top; passages from them gave access to the
outside gun and missile positions.