THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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undiscovered; most of the important installations were built in
duplicate, sometimes triplicate, as a precaution against space attack. I
know where all of them are."

"Space attack!" Klem Zareff was indignant. "There never was a time we
could have attacked Poictesme. Even if we'd had the ships, we were
fighting a purely defensive war. Aggression was no part of our policy?"

He interrupted: "Excuse me, Colonel. The point I was trying to make is
that, with all I was able to learn, I could find nothing, not one single
word, about any giant strategic planning computer called Merlin, or any
Merlin Project."

There! He'd gotten that out. Now go on and tell them about the old man
in the dome-house on Luna. The room was silent, except for the small
insectile hum of the electric clock. Then somebody set a glass on the
table, and it sounded like a hammer blow.