THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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His father shuddered.

"And if we don't, how long do you think civilization will last here, if
it blows up all over the rest of the Federation?"[Pg 181]

The big machine cut on, a little spot of raw energy grinding away the
collapsium, inch by inch; the undulating curtains of colored light
illuminated the Badlands for miles around. Then, when the first hint of
dawn came into the east, they went out. The steady roar of the
generators that had battered every ear for over twenty-four hours
stopped. There was unbelieving silence, and then shouts.

The workmen swarmed out to man lifters. Slowly the heavy apparatus?the
reactor and the converters, the cutting machine, and the shielding
around it?was lifted away. Finally, a lone lifter came in and men in
radiation-suits went down to hook on grapples, and it lifted away,
carrying with it a ten-foot-square sheet of thin steel that weighed