THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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The voyage back to Koshchei had been a week-long nightmare. When she had
been the pride and budget-wrecker of Transcontinent & Overseas Airline,
the /Harriet Barne/ had accommodated two hundred first-class and five
hundred lower-deck passengers, but the conversion to a spaceship had
drastically reduced her capacity. The three hundred men and women who
had been recruited for the Koshchei colony had been crammed into her
with brutal disregard for comfort, privacy or anything else except the
ability of the air-recyclers to keep them breathing. When Captain
Nichols set her down at the administration building at Port Carpenter, a
few had had to be carried off, but they were all alive, which made the
trip an unqualified success.

The dozen leaders of the expedition were congratulating themselves on
that in one of the executive offices after the first dinner at Port
Carpenter. Rodney Maxwell, in Storisende,[Pg 136] had joined them in
screen-image; he was mostly listening, and sometimes contributing a
remark apropos of something the rest of them had said five minutes ago.