office, yesterday. Conn, would you
please repeat what you told us? Elaborate as you see fit."

Conn rose. He talked briefly about his studies on Terra to qualify
himself as an expert. Then he began describing the wealth of abandoned
and still undiscovered Federation war material and the many
installations of which he had learned, careful to avoid giving clues
to exact locations. The spaceport; the underground duplicate Force
Command Headquarters; the vast underground arsenals and shops and
supply depots. Everybody was awed, even his father; he hadn't had time
to tell him more than a fraction of it.

Finally, somebody from the long table interrupted:

"Well, Conn; how about Merlin? That's what we're interested in."

Wade Lucas snorted indignantly.

"He's telling you about real things, things worth millions of sols,
and you want him to talk about that idiotic fantasy!"

There was an angry outcry. Nobody actually shouted "_To the stake with
the blasphemer!_" but that was the general idea. Judge Ledue was
rapping loudly for order.

"I don't know the exact location of Merlin." Conn strove to make
himself heard. "The whole subject's classified top secret. But I am
certain that Merlin exists, if not on Poictesme then somewhere in the
Alpha System, and I am equally certain that we can find it."

Cheers. He waited for the hubbub to subside. Lucas was trying to yell
above it.

"You admit you couldn't learn anything about this so-called Merlin,
but you're still certain it exists?"

"Why are you certain it doesn't?"

"Why, the whole thing's absurdly fantastic!"

"Maybe it is, to a layman like you. I studied computers, and it isn't
to me."

"Well, take all these elaborate preparations against space attack you
were telling us about. I think Colonel Zareff, here, who served in the
Alliance Army, will bear me out that such an attack was plainly
impossible."

Zareff started to agree, then realized that he was aiding and
comforting the enemy. "Intelligence lag," he said. "What do you
expect, with General Headquarters thirty parsecs from the fighting?"

"Yes. A computer can only process the data that's been taped into it,"
Conn said. That was a point he wanted to ram home, as forcibly and as
often as possible. "I suppose Merlin classified an Alliance attack on
Poictesme as a low-order probability, but war is the province of
chance; Clausewitz said that a thousand years ago. Foxx Travis wasn't
the sort of commander to l