THE COSMIC COMPUTER

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Sudden acceleration pushed them back in their seats. The calibrations on
the gauge rose swiftly; the pink-lighted peak grew swiftly in the
teleview screen. The gauge hadn't been bragging, it had been
understating; the car had more speed than the instrument could register.
Two and a half minutes from Litchfield, they were decelerating and
swinging slowly around Snagtooth, looking down on a tilted plateau that
ended on the western side in a sheer drop of almost a thousand feet.[Pg 44]

There were ruinous buildings on it: barracks and storehouses and
offices, an airship dock and an air-traffic control tower from which all
the glass had long ago vanished, a great steel telecast tower that had
fallen, crushing a couple of buildings. Young trees had already grown
among the wreckage.

"Look over there, on the slope below it; there's one entrance to the
shelters." There was a clearing among the evergreens, half a mile from
the buildings, and raw earth, and a couple of big scows grounded near.