ied. "At last, the Great
Computer! Those who come after will reckon this the Year Zero of the
Age of Regeneration. I will go to my chamber and return thanks in
prayer."

"He's been doing a lot of praying lately," Tom Brangwyn remarked,
after Leibert had gone out. "He's moved into the chaplain's quarters,
back of the pandenominational chapel on the fourth level down. Always
keeps his door locked, too."

"Well, if he wants privacy for his devotions, that's his business.
Maybe we could all do with a little prayer," Veltrin said.

"Probably praying to Sam Murchison by radio," Klem Zareff retorted.
"I'd like to see inside those rooms of his."

He called Yves Jacquemont at Port Carpenter after dinner. When he told
Jacquemont what he wanted and why, the engineer remarked that it was a
pity screens couldn't be fitted with olfactory sensors, so that he
could smell Conn's breath.

"I am not drunk. I am not crazy. And I am not exercising my sense of
humor. I don't know what Fawzi and his gang have here, but if it isn't
Merlin it's something just as hot. We want at it, soonest, and we'll
have to dig a couple of hundred feet of rock off it and open a
collapsium can."

"How are we going to get that stuff on a ship?"

"Anything been done to that normal-space job we started since I saw it
last? Can you find engines for it? And is there anything about those
mining machines or the cutter that would be damaged by space-radiation
or re-entry heat?"

Yves Jacquemont was silent for a good deal longer than the
interplanetary time-lag warranted. Finally he nodded.

"I get it, Conn. We won't put the things in a ship; we'll build a ship
around them. No; that stuff can all be hauled open to space. They use
things like that at space stations and on asteroids and all sorts of
places. We'll have to stop work on _Ouroboros_, though."

"Let _Ouroboros_ wait. We are going to dig up Merlin, and then
everybody is going to be rich and happy, and live happily forever
after."

Jacquemont looked at him, silent again for longer than the usual five
and a half minutes.

"You almost said that with a straight face." After all, Jacquemont
hadn't been cleared yet for the Awful Truth About Merlin, but, like
his daughter, he'd been doing some guessing. "I wish I knew how much
of this Merlin stuff you believe."

"So do I, Yves. Maybe after we get this thing open, I'll know."

To give himself a margin of safety, Jacquemont had estimated the
arrival