n look. There had been a few people
there all the time of the War.

"Men and women, all officers or civilians," Klem Zareff said. "Didn't
even have enlisted men to cook for them. And we haven't found a scrap
of paper with writing on it, or an inch of recorded sound-tape or
audiovisual film. Remember those big wire baskets, down at the
mass-energy converters? Before they left, they disintegrated every
scrap of writing or recording. This is where Merlin is; they were the
people who worked with it."

And above, offices. General Staff. War Planning, with an incredibly
complex star-map of the theater of war. Judge Advocate General.
Inspector General. Service of Supply. They were full of computers,
each one firing the hopes of people like Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and
Judge Ledue, but they were only special-purpose machines, the sort to
be found in any big business office. The Storisende Stock Exchange
probably had much bigger ones.

Then they found big ones, rank on rank of cabinets, long consoles
studded with lights and buttons, programming machines.

"It's Merlin!" Fawzi almost screamed. "We've found it!"

One of the reporters who had followed them in snatched his radio
handphone from his belt and jabbered, then, realizing that the
collapsium shielding kept him from getting out with it, he replaced it
and bolted away.

"Hold it!" Conn yelled at the others, who were also becoming
hysterical. "Wait till I take a look at this thing."

They managed to calm themselves. After all, he should know what it
was; wasn't that why he'd gone to school on Terra? They followed him
from machine to machine, first hopefully and then fearfully. Finally
he turned, shaking his head and feeling like the doctor in a film
show, telling the family that there's no hope for Grandpa.

"This is not Merlin. This is the personnel-file machine. It's taped
for the records and data of every man and woman in the Third Force for
the whole War. It's like the student-record machine at the
University."

"Might have known it; this section in here's marked G-1 all over
everything; that's personnel. Wouldn't have Merlin in here," Klem
Zareff was saying.

"Well, we'll just keep on hunting for it till we do find it," Kurt
Fawzi said. "It's here somewhere. It has to be."

The next level up was much smaller. Here were the offices of the top
echelons of the Force Command Staff. They, unlike the ones below, had
been used; from them, too, every scrap of writin