THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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Conn thought that it might be possible to build a hyperdrive ship here,
without having to go to Koshchei at all.

Closer examination disabused him of this hope. There was nothing of
which the framework of a ship could be built, and no way of producing
heavy structural steel. The rolling-mill was good enough to turn out
eighth-inch sheet material which when plated with a few micromicrons of
collapsium would be as good as a hundred feet of lead against
space-radiations, but that was the ship's skin. A ship needed a
skeleton, too. The only thing to do was go on with the /Harriet Barne/.

It was sunset before he finished his tour of inspection and let his jeep
down in a vehicle hall off the lower gallery outside what had originally
been the spaceport officers' club. It was crowded, and a victory
celebration seemed to be getting under way. He saw his father with Yves
Jacquemont, Sylvie, Tom Brangwyn, and Captain Nichols. Nichols had
gotten clean clothes from the pirates' store of loot, and had bathed and