System is quite
under our control in spite of what these rebellious, underground groups
say."

"Underground groups?" asked Mr. Tanter mildly. Just his left eye seemed
to blink this time. And the edge of his mouth gave the veriest twitch.

"Oh, you know," said Krayton, "the organization that calls itself the
Prims. Prim for Primitive. They leave little cards and pamphlets around
damning the Computer System. I saw one the other day. It had a big title
splashed across it: OUR NEW TYRANT--THE COMPUTER. The article complained
that some of the new labor and food regulations were the result of
conscious reasoning on the part of The Computer. Devices to build the
Computer bigger and bigger and bigger at the expense of ordinary
workers. You know the sort of thing."

"But it is true that the living standard is going down all the time,
isn't it?" asked Mr. Tanter, keeping his ephemeral smile. "What about
those three thousand starvation deaths up in Hydroburgh?"

Krayton waved an impatient hand. "There will always be problems like
that here and there." He turned and stared almost reverently at the long
control rack. "Be thankful we have The Computer to solve them."

"But the deaths were due to diverting that basic carbon shipment down
here to Computer City for computer-building, weren't they?"

"Now, there--you see how powerful the propaganda of the Prims can be?"
Krayton put his hands on his hips. "That statement is not true! It
simply isn't true at all! It was analyzed on The Computer some days ago.
Here, let me show you." He took several steps down the corridor again
and stopped at another panel.

"We first collected from the various departments--Food, Production,
Labor and so forth--all the _possible_ causes of the starvation deaths
in Hydroburgh. Computer Administration had its machine translate them
into symbols. We're getting a huge new plant and machine addition over
at Administration, by the way.

"At any rate, we simply registered all the possible causes with the
Master Computer, threw in this circuit marked _Validity Selector_. Out
of all those causes The Computer picked the one that was most valid. The
Hydroburgh tragedy was due to lack of foresight on the part of
Hydroburgh's planners. If they'd had a proper stockpile of basic carbon
the thing never would have happened."

"But no community ever stockpiles," said the little man.

"That," said Krayton, "doesn't alter the fundamental fact. The Computer
never