THE COSMIC COMPUTER

Back Forward Menu

All the eyes around him began to look troubled. Most of them had been
expecting precisely that. His father was watching him anxiously.

"But it's still here on Poictesme, isn't it?" one of the melon planters
asked. "They didn't take it away with them?"

"Most of you gentlemen," he said, "contributed to sending me to school
on Terra, to study cybernetics and computer theory. It wouldn't do us
any good to find Merlin if none of us could operate it. Well, I've done
that. I can use any known type of computer, and train assistants. After
I graduated, I was offered a junior instructorship to computer physics
at the University."

"You didn't mention that, son," his father said.

"The letter would have come on the same ship I did. Besides, I didn't
think it was very important."