THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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and no matter how many switches they shoved in, there was no power
output. The inside telemetered equipment, of course, was self-powered.
Some of them were dead, too, but from those which still worked Mohammed
Matsui got a uniformly disheartening story.

"You know what happened?" he said. "When this gang bugged out, back in
854, they left the power on. Now the conversion mass is all gone, and
the plutonium's all spent. We'll have to find more plutonium, and tear
this whole thing down and refuel it, and repack the mass-conversion
chambers?provided nothing's eaten holes in itself after the mass inside
was all converted."

"How long will it take?" Conn asked.

"If we can find plutonium, and if we can find robots to do the work
inside, and if there's been no structural damage, and if we keep at it?a
couple of days."