THE COSMIC COMPUTER

Back Forward Menu

everybody feels they have to have, for peace and order and welfare. If
people thought it was breaking up, they'd be desperate, too. They'd do
the same insane things these people here on this planet are doing.
General Shanlee was right. Don't destroy the hope that keeps them sane."

"We don't need to do that," Kurt Fawzi argued. "We can use Merlin to
solve our own problems; we don't need to tell the whole Federation
what's going to happen in two hundred years."

"It would get out; it couldn't help getting out," Ledue said.

"Let's not try to decide it ourselves," Conn said. "Let's get Merlin
into operation, and run a computation on it."

"You mean, ask Merlin to tell us whether it ought to be destroyed or
not?" Ledue asked incredulously. "Let Merlin put itself on trial, and
sentence itself to destruction?"