The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper

Author:H. Beam Piper
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Science fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017-07-05T22:08:43+00:00

* * *

Mer­lin was now a po­lit­i­cal is­sue. A bill had been in­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment to amend the Aban­doned Prop­erty Act of 867 and na­tion­al­ize Mer­lin, when and if dis­cov­ered and re­gard­less by whom. The sup­port seemed to come from an ex­trem­ist mi­nor­ity; ev­ery­body else, in­clud­ing the Ad­min­is­tra­tion, was op­posed to it. There was con­sid­er­able ac­ri­mony, how­ever, on the propo­si­tions: 1) that Mer­lin was too im­por­tant to the pros­per­ity of Poictesme to be­come a pri­vate mo­nop­oly; and 2) that Mer­lin was too im­por­tant, etc., to be­come a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball and pa­tron­age plum.

It was dis­cov­ered, af­ter they were half as­sem­bled, that the con­trols for the Har­riet Barne would only work while she was in a hor­i­zon­tal po­si­tion. The whole thing had to be torn out and re­built. There was also trou­ble with the air-and-wa­ter re­cy­cling sys­tem. The City of Ne­fer­titi came in from Aton for Odin; Rod­ney Maxwell was al­most fran­tic be­cause they hadn’t got­ten to­gether a cargo of med­i­cal stores from the first hos­pi­tal to be opened.

“There’s all sorts of stuff,” he was fum­ing, by screen. “Stuff that’s in short sup­ply any­where and that we could get good prices for off-planet. Get Fed­er­a­tion sols for it, too.”

“The City of As­gard will be along in six months,” Conn said. “You can have a real cargo as­sem­bled by then. You can make ar­range­ments in ad­vance to dis­pose of it on Terra or Bal­dur or Mar­duk.”

“There are a cou­ple of other com­pa­nies in­ter­ested in in­ter­plan­e­tary ships now,” his fa­ther added. “One of them had got­ten four old freighters off Moth­ball Row, and they’re tear­ing them down and can­ni­bal­iz­ing them into one space­ship. That work’s be­ing done here at Storisende Space­port. And an­other com­pany has got­ten ti­tle to a cou­ple of old of­fice build­ings and has a gang at work dis­man­tling them for the struc­tural steel. I think they’re go­ing to build a real space­ship.”

That wasn’t any­thing to worry about ei­ther. The Har­riet Barne was bet­ter than half fin­ished. There was a col­lap­sium plant at Storisende Space­port, but Yves Jac­que­mont said it was only half the size of the one at Barathrum; it would be three months be­fore it could pro­duce ar­mor for one, let alone both, ships.

The crack­pots were get­ting into the act, now, too. A spirit medium on the con­ti­nent of Acaire, to the north, had pro­duced a com­mu­ni­ca­tion pur­port­ing to orig­i­nate with a de­ceased Third Force Staff of­fi­cer, now in the Spirit World. There was con­sid­er­able de­tail, all lu­di­crous to Conn’s pro­fes­sional ear. And a fa­natic in one of the small towns on the west coast was quot­ing the Bi­ble, the Ko­ran, and the Bha­gavadgita to prove that if Mer­lin were ever found, Divine vengeance in a spec­tac­u­lar form would fall not only on Poictesme but on the en­tire Galaxy.

The space­ship that was build­ing at Storisende got into the news; on-screen, it ap­peared that the work was pro­gress­ing rapidly. So was the work of de­mol­ish­ing a block of empty build­ings to get gird­ers for the sec­ond ship, on which work had not yet been started.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.