THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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"Oh, Gehenna of a big crop!" he heard Klem Zareff's voice, chuckling
happily, above the babble in the room. "You wouldn't believe it. Why, we
had to build six new vats...."

The thin-faced, white-haired man in the chair beside him said something.
Mike Shanlee and Klem Zareff, old enemies, were now fast friends.
Shanlee had come in from Force Command with Conn that morning. He had
stayed on Poictesme as nominal head of Project Merlin, and intended to
remain there for the rest of his life.

"Oh, there aren't any more farm-tramps," Zareff replied. "Everybody's
getting factory jobs off-planet. I have an awful time getting help, and
what I can get won't work for less than ten sols a day. Why, they're
even organizing a union...."

There were feminine shrieks from across the room, and a stampede. The
housecleaning-robot had come in, running its vacuum-cleaning hose around