THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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next morning; a rear-rank vice-president, a front-rank legal-eagle, and
three engineers. They were horrified at what they saw. The /Harriet
Barne/ had been gutted. Bulkheads and decks had been ripped out and
relocated incomprehensibly; the bridge and the control room under it
were gone; she had been stripped to her framework, and the whole
underside was sheathed in shimmering collapsium.

"Great Ghu!" the vice-president almost howled. "That isn't /our/ ship!"

"That's the /Harriet Barne/," her captain said. "She looks a little
ragged now, but?"

"You helped these pirates do this to her?"

"If I hadn't, they'd have cut my throat and gotten somebody else to help
them. My throat's more valuable to me than the ship is to you; I can't
get anybody to build me a new one."