formation in their banks than a
man can in his memory, they can combine it faster, they don't get tired
or absent-minded. But they can't imagine, they can't create, and they
can't do anything a human brain can't."

"You know, I'd wondered about just that," said his father. "And none of
the histories of the War even as much as mentioned the Brain. And I
couldn't see why, after the War, they didn't build dozens of them to
handle all these Galactic political and economic problems that nobody
seems able to solve. A thing like the Brain wouldn't only be useful for
war; the people here aren't trying to find it for war purposes."

"You didn't mention any of these doubts to the others, did you?"

"They were just doubts. You knew for sure, and you couldn't tell them."

"I'd come home intending to--tell them there was no Brain, tell them to
stop wasting their time hunting for it and start trying to figure out
the answers themselves. But I couldn't. They don't believe in the Brain
as a tool, to use; it's a machine god that they can bring all their
troubles to. You can't take a thing like that away from people without
giving them something better."

"I noticed you suggested building a spaceship and agreed with the
professor about building a computer. What was your idea? To take their
minds off hunting for the Brain and keep them busy?"

Conn shook his head. "I'm serious about the ship--ships. You and Colonel
Zareff gave me that idea."

His father looked at him in surprise. "I never said a word in there, and
Klem didn't even once mention--"

"Not in Kurt's office; before we went up from the docks. There was Klem,
moaning about a good year for melons as though it were a plague, and you
selling arms and ammunition by the ton. Why, on Terra or Baldur or
Uller, a glass of our brandy brings more than these freighter-captains
give us for a cask, and what do you think a colonist on Agramma, or
Sekht, or Hachiman, who has to fight for his life against savages and
wild animals, would pay for one of those rifles and a thousand rounds of
ammunition?"

His father objected. "We can't base the whole economy of a planet on
brandy. Only about ten per cent of the arable land on Poictesme will
grow wine-melons. And if we start exporting Federation salvage the way
you talk of, we'll be selling pieces instead of job lots. We'll net
more, but--"

"That's just to get us started. The ships will be used, after that, to
get to Tubal-Cain and Hia