k loaded
with provisions and bringing new recruits--for instance, the teaching
of physics and mathematics almost stopped at Storisende College
because the professors had been virtually shanghaied.

Conn found himself losing touch with affairs on Poictesme. Ships had
landed on both Janicot and Horvendile and were sending back claims to
abandoned factories. By that time they had all the decks into the
_Ouroboros II_, and he was working aboard, getting the astrogational
and hyperspace instruments put in place. The hypership _Andromeda_ was
back from the Gamma System; there was close secrecy about what the
expedition had found, but the newscasts were full of conjectures about
Merlin, and the market went into another dizzy upward spiral.
Litchfield Exploration & Salvage opened a huge munitions depot, and
combat equipment, once almost unsalable, was selling as fast as it
came out. The Government was buying some, but by no means all of it.

"Conn, can you come back here to Poictesme for a while?" his father
asked. "Things have turned serious. I don't like to talk about it by
screen--too many people know our scrambler combinations. But I wish
you were here."

He started to object; there were millions, well, a couple of hundred,
things he had to attend to. The look on his father's face stopped him.

"Ship leaving Sickle Mountain tomorrow morning," he said. "I'll be
aboard."

The voyage back to Poictesme was a needed rest. He felt refreshed when
he got off at Storisende Spaceport and was met by his father and Wade
Lucas in one of the slim recon-cars. They greeted him briefly and took
the car up and away from the city, where it was safe to talk.

"Conn, I'm scared," his father said. "I'm beginning to think there
really is a Merlin, after all."

"Oh, come off it! I know it's contagious, but I thought you'd been
vaccinated."

"I'm beginning to think so, too," Lucas said. "I don't like it at
all."

"You know what that gang who took the _Andromeda_ to Panurge found?"

"They were looking for the plant that fabricated the elements for
Merlin, weren't they?"

"Yes. They found it. My Barton-Massarra operatives got to some of the
crew. This place had been turning out material for a computer of
absolutely unconventional design; the two computermen they had with
them couldn't make head or tail of half of it. And every blueprint,
every diagram, every scrap of writing or recording, had been
destroyed. But they found one thing, a