THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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Jerry Rivas, Mack Vibart and Luther Chen-Wong had been keeping things
running on Koshchei. Work on the interplanetary ship at Port Carpenter,
had stopped when the Sickle Mountain ships had been found; it had never
been[Pg 151] resumed. When Conn returned, he found work started on the
/Ouroboros II/. Some of the two hundred newcomers who came in on the
/Helen O'Loy/ had special skills needed on the hypership; most of them
went with Clyde Nichols and Charley Gatworth to Sickle Mountain to train
as normal-space officers and crewmen. Some of them, it was hoped, would
later qualify for hyperspace work. Sylvie, who had been one of the star
pupils in the computer class, was now helping him with the long lists of
needed materials, some of which had to be brought from other places as
much as a thousand miles away. Jerry Rivas went back to exploring;
Nichols had to drop his space-training work temporarily to organize a
fleet of air-freighters; usually, the men best able to operate them were
urgently needed on some job at the construction dock.

Ships lifted out almost daily from Sickle Mountain. They tried to get