lace, after dinner. They were all too tired to start
the cutting that night, and at the same time excited and anxious. They
talked in disconnected snatches, and then somebody put on one of the
telecast screens. A music program was just ending; there was a brief
silence, and then a commentator appeared, identifying his
news-service. He spoke rapidly and breathlessly, his professional
gravity cracking all over.

"The hypership _City of Asgard_, from Aton, has just come into
telecast range," he began. "We have received an exclusive Interworld
News Service story, recently brought to Aton on the Pan-Federation
Spacelines ship _Magellanic_, from Terra.

"News of revived interest in the Third Force computer, Merlin, having
reached Terra by way of Odin, representatives of Interworld News, to
which this service subscribes, interviewed retired Force-General Foxx
Travis, now living, at the advanced age of a hundred and fourteen, on
Luna. General Travis, who commanded the Third Fleet-Army Force here
during the War, categorically denied that there had ever existed any
super-computer of the sort.

"We bring you, now, a recorded interview with General Travis, made on
Luna...."

For an instant, Conn felt the room around him whirling dizzily, and
then he caught hold of himself. Everybody else was shouting in sudden
consternation, and then everybody was hushing everybody else and
making twice as much noise. The screen flickered; the commentator
vanished, and instead, seated in the deep-cushioned chair, was the
thin and frail old man with whom Conn had talked two years before, and
through an open segment of the dome-roof behind him the full Earth
shone, the continents of the Western Hemisphere plainly
distinguishable. A young woman in starchy nurse's white bent forward
solicitously from beside the chair, handing him a small beaker from
which he sipped some stimulant. He looked much as he had when Conn had
talked to him. But there was something missing....

Oh, yes. The comparative youngster of seventy-some--"Mike Shanlee ...
my _aide-de-camp_ on Poictesme ... now he thinks he's my keeper...."
He wasn't in evidence, and he should be. Then Conn knew where and when
he had seen the man who claimed to be a preacher named Carl Leibert.

"There is absolutely no truth in it, gentlemen," Travis was saying.
"There never was any such computer. I only wish there had been; it
would have shortened the War by years. We did, of course, use
comput