THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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"That's right," Shanlee said. "We had trouble believing it, too.
Remember, we were Federation officers. The Federation was our religion.
Just like patriotism used to be, back in the days of nationalism. We
checked for error. We made[Pg 174] detail analyses. We ran it all over
again. It was no use.

"In two hundred years, there won't be any Terran Federation. The
Government will collapse, slowly. The Space Navy will disintegrate.
Planets and systems will lose touch with Terra and with one another. You
know what it was like here, just before the War? It will be like that on
every planet, even on Terra. Just a slow crumbling, till everything is
gone; then every planet will start sliding back, in isolation, into
barbarism."

"Merlin predicted that?" Kurt Fawzi asked, shocked.

If Merlin said so, it had to be true.