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Updated: June 15, 2025
Conn shook his head. "I'm serious about the ship ships. You and Colonel Zareff gave me that idea." His father looked at him in surprise. "I never said a word in there, and Klem didn't even once mention " "Not in Kurt's office; before we went up from the docks. There was Klem, moaning about a good year for melons as though it were a plague, and you selling arms and ammunition by the ton.
"Klem Zareff says that everybody in the Alliance army heard of the Brain," his father said. "That was why he came here in the first place." He puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. "You said a computer like the Brain would be an impossibility. Why? Wouldn't it be just another computer, only a lot bigger and a lot smarter?" "Dad, computermen don't like to hear computers called smart," Conn said.
"Conn, that's a dangerous idea. That was what brought on the System States War. The Alliance planets took themselves outside the Federation economic orbit and the Federation crushed them." Conn swore impatiently. "You've been listening to old Klem Zareff ranting about the Lost Cause and the greedy Terran robber barons holding the Galaxy in economic serfdom while they piled up profits.
"But, Rod, I've been waiting to hear what he's found out ever since he went away," Fawzi protested in a hurt tone. Brangwyn and Colonel Zareff joined them. They were close friends, probably because neither of them was a native of Poictesme. The town marshal had always been reticent about his origins, but Conn guessed it was Hathor.
His father was turning toward him from one side, and from the other Tom Brangwyn and Colonel Zareff were approaching more slowly, the older man leaning on a silver-headed cane. "Don't bother him about it now, Kurt," Rodney Maxwell scolded the mayor. "He's just gotten off the ship; he hasn't had time to say hello to everybody yet."
When we get out to the industrial planets, we may find one ready except for perhaps some minor alterations." "But how are we going to finance all this?" Klem Zareff demanded querulously. "We're poorer than snakes, and even one hyperdrive ship's going to cost like Gehenna." "I've been thinking about that, Klem," Fawzi said.
For instance, all the important installations exist in duplicate, some even in triplicate, as a precaution against Alliance space attack." "Space attack!" Colonel Zareff was indignant. "There never was a time when the Alliance could have taken the offensive against Poictesme, even if an offensive outside our own space-area had been part of our policy. We just didn't have the ships.
Old Klem Zareff never hesitated to tell anybody where he came from he was from Ashmodai, one of the System States planets, and he had commanded a division that had been blasted down to about regimental strength, in the Alliance army. "Hello, boy," he croaked, extending a trembling hand. "Glad you're home. We all missed you."
"When I start pressing, I don't know where in Gehenna I'm going to vat the stuff till it ferments," Colonel Zareff said. "Or why. You won't be able to handle all of it." "Now, now!" Fawzi reproved. "Let's not start moaning about our troubles. Not the day Conn's come home. Not when he's going to tell us how to find the Third Fleet-Army Force Brain."
Another bit from Eirrarsson's poem came back to him: We sit in the twilight, the shadows among, And we talk of the happy days when we were brave and young. That was for the old ones, for Colonel Zareff and Judge Ledue and Dolf Kellton, maybe even for Tom Brangwyn and Franz Veltrin and for his father. But his brother Charley and the boys of his generation would have a future to talk about.
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