THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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The view changed. The aircraft was down, now, below the crest of the
mountain, circling slowly above the plain. Hundreds, no, over a
thousand, of them; two- and three-and five-hundred-footers, and here and
there a thousand-footer that could have been converted into a hypership
if anybody had wanted to take the trouble. The view changed again; this
time from an aircar dropped from the ship, he supposed; it was down
almost to the tops of the ships, and he could read names and home ports:
/Pixie/, Chloris; /Helen O'Loy/, Anaïtis. They were from Jurgen.
/Sky-Rover/, Port Saunders; she was from Horvendile. Ships from
Storisende, and Yellowmarsh on Janicot, and....

"Now we know where they all went."

It was logical, of course. Most of the hyperships used in the evacuation
had been built here. It had been less trouble to lead the troops and the
civilian workers from Poictesme and the other planets onto small
normal-space ships and bring them here than to take the big ships away