THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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it had gone a mile without triggering anything, the jeep followed Anse
Dawes[Pg 79] piloting and Conn at the snooper controls watching what it
transmitted back. The two lorries followed, loaded with men and
equipment, and another jeep brought up the rear. They had cut
screen-and-radio communication with the outside; they weren't even using
inter-vehicle communication.

At length, the snooper emerged into a big cavern, swinging slowly to
scan it. The walls and ceiling were rough and irregular; it was natural
instead of excavated. Only the floor had been leveled smooth. There were
a lot of things in it, machinery and vehicles, all battered and in poor
condition, dusty and cobwebbed: the spaceport junkheap. A passage, still
large enough for one of the gunboats, led deeper into the mountain
toward the crater. They sent the snooper in and, after a while, followed.

They came to other rectangular, excavated caverns. On the plans, they
were marked as storerooms. Cases and crates, indeterminate shrouded