THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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and we didn't want to do anything that would embarrass the Federation
Government later. We fed Merlin every scrap of available information on
political and economic conditions everywhere in the Federation, and set
up a long-term computation of the general effects of the War.

"The extrapolation was supposed to run five hundred years in the future.
It didn't. It stopped, at a point a trifle over two hundred years from
now, with a statement that no computation could be made further because
at that point the Terran Federation would no longer exist."

The others, who had taken chairs facing him, looked at him blankly.

"No more Federation?" Judge Ledue asked incredulously. "Why, the
Federation, the Federation...."

The Federation would last forever. Anybody knew that. There just
couldn't be no more Federation.