THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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had been hiding there since. As soon as the real prisoners saw and
recognized him, they had fallen upon him and clubbed, kicked and stamped
him out of any resemblance to humanity. At that, what he got was
probably only a fraction of what he deserved.

The egg breakage had been heavy, and not at all confined to the bad
eggs. A third gunboat, the /Banshee/, had been destroyed with all hands
during the final attack from outside; in addition, a dozen men had been
killed during the fighting in the galleries. Everybody was shocked,
except Klem Zareff, who had been in battles before. He was surprised
that the casualties had been so light.

At first glance, the spaceport looked like a handsome prize of victory.
The docks and workshops were all in good condition; at worst, they only
needed cleaning up. There was a collapsium plant, with its own
mass-energy converter. There[Pg 91] were foundries and machine-shops and
forging-shops and a rolling-mill, almost completely robotic. At first,