LITMIR.BIZ

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it's going to end in a big smash. And then she gets onto Merlin. You know, she won't say Merlin, she always calls it, 'that thing.'"

      "I've noticed that."

      "Then she begins talking about all the horrible things that'll happen when it's found, and that sets Flora off. Flora says Merlin's a big fake, and you and your father are using it to rob thousands of widows and orphans of their life savings, and that sets your mother off again. Self-sustaining cyclic reaction, like the Bethe solar-phoenix. And every time I try to pour a little oil on the troubled waters, I find I've gotten it on the fire instead. And then, Flora had this fight with Wade Lucas, and of course, she blames you for that."

      "Good heavens, why?"

      "Well, she couldn't blame it on herself, could she? Oh, you mean why the fight? Lucas is in business with your father now, and she can't convince him that you and your father are a pair of quadruple-dyed villains, I suppose. Anyhow, the engagement is phttt! Conn, is my father going back to Koshchei?"

      "As soon as we can round up some people to help us on the ship."

      "Then I'm going along. I've had it, Conn. I'm a combat-fatigue case."

      "But, Sylvie; that isn't any place for a girl."

      "Oh, poo! This is Sylvie. We're old war buddies. We soldiered together on Barathrum; remember?"

      "Well, you'd be the only girl, and...."

      "That's what you think. If you expect to get any kind of a gang together, at least a third of them will be girls. A lot of technicians are girls, and when work gets slack, they're always the first ones to get shoved out of jobs. I'll bet there are a thousand girl technicians out of work here—any line of work you want to name. I know what I'll do; I'll make a telecast appearance. I still have some news value, from the Barathrum business. Want to bet that I won't be the working girl's Joan of Arc by this time next week?"

      That cheered him. A girl can punch any kind of a button a man can, and a lot of them knew what buttons to punch, and why. Say she could find fifty girls....

      He had a slightly better chance to talk to his father before the banquet at the Executive Palace that evening. They shared the same suite at the Ritz-Gartner, and even welcoming committees seldom chase their victims from bedroom to bath.

      "Yes, I know all about it," Rodney Maxwell said bitterly. "I was home, a couple of weeks ago. Flora simply will not speak to me, and your mother begged me, in tears, to quit everything we're doing here. I tried to give her some idea of what would happen if I dropped this, even supposing I could; she wouldn't listen to me." He finished putting the studs in his shirt. "You still think this is worth what it's costing us?"

      "You saw the views we sent back. There's work on Koshchei for a million people, at least. Why, even these two makeshift ships they're putting together here at Storisende are giving work, one way or another, to almost a thousand. Think what things will be like a year from now, if this keeps on."

      Rodney Maxwell gave a wry laugh. "Didn't know I had a real Simon-pure altruist for a son."

      "Pardner, when you call me that, smile."

      "I am smiling. With some slight difficulty."

      He didn't think well of the banquet. Back in Litchfield, Senta would have fired half her human help and taken a sledgehammer to her robo-chef for a meal like that. Even his father's camp cook would have been ashamed of it. And there were more speeches.

      President Vyckhoven managed to get hold of him and Yves Jacquemont afterward, and steered them into his private study.

      "Have you any real reason for thinking that Merlin might be on Koshchei?" the Planetary President asked.

      "Great Ghu, no! We weren't looking for Merlin, Mr. President. We were looking for a hypership. We have one, too. Calling her Ouroboros II. Twenty-five-hundred-footer. We expect to have her to space in a few months. I surely don't need to tell you what that will do toward restoring planetary prosperity."

      "No, of course not; a hypership of our own. But...." He looked from one to the other of them. "But I understood.... That is, Mr. Kurt Fawzi was saying...."

      "Mr. Fawzi is looking for Merlin here on Poictesme. If anybody finds it, that's where it'll be found. I'm interested in getting business started again. If Merlin is found, it would help, of course." He shrugged.

      "Don't look at me," Jacquemont said. "Mr. Maxwell—both of them, father and son—want some spaceships. They hired me to help build them. That's all I have in it." Then he relit the cigar the President had given him and leaned back in his chair, staring at the stuffed alcesoid head with the seven-foot hornspread above the fireplace.

      Conn described the interview to his father after they were back at the hotel.

      "I hope you convinced him. You know, he's afraid of Merlin. A lot of people have been saying that if Merlin's found, it should be used to determine Government policy. A few extremists are beginning to say that Merlin ought to be the Government, and Jake Vyckhoven and his cronies ought to be dumped. Into the handiest mass-energy converter, preferably. You know, if anybody found Merlin and started it auditing the Planetary Treasury, Jake Vyckhoven'd be the one who'd be wanting a hypership."

      Tom Brangwyn ran him down the next morning in the dining room.

      "Conn, I wish you'd come along with me," he said. "Some of us are up in Kurt's suite; we'd all like to talk to you."

      Somehow, he was acting as though he were making an arrest. That might have been nothing but professional habit. Conn went up to Fawzi's suite, and found Fawzi and Judge Ledue and Dolf Kellton and close to a dozen others there.

      "I'm glad you could come, Conn," the Judge greeted him. Now that the defendant had arrived, the trial could begin. "I wish your father could have gotten here. I asked him to come, but he had a prior engagement. A meeting with some of the financial people here, about some company he's interested in."

      "That's right; Trisystem & Interstellar Spacelines."

      "Interstellar!" Kurt Fawzi almost howled. "Great Ghu! Now it isn't enough to go out to Koshchei; he wants to go clear out of the Trisystem. That's what we wanted to talk about; all this nonsense you and your father are in. Merlin's right here on Poictesme. It's right at Force Command, and if your father hadn't robbed us of all our best men, like Jerry Rivas and Anse Dawes, we'd have found it by now. I don't think you and your father care a hoot if we ever find Merlin or not!"

      "Kurt, that's a dreadful thing to say," Dolf Kellton objected in a shocked voice.

      "It's a dreadful thing to have to say," Fawzi replied, "but you tell me what Conn Maxwell or Rodney Maxwell are doing to help find it."

      "Who showed you where Force Command was?" Klem Zareff asked.

      Nobody could think of any good quick comeback to that.

      Conn took advantage of the pause to ask, "Why do you want to find Merlin?"

      "Why do we ..." Fawzi spluttered indignantly. "If you don't know...."

      "I know why I do. I want to see if you do. Do you?"

      "Merlin would answer so many questions," Dolf Kellton told him gently. "Questions I can't answer for myself."

      "With Merlin, we could set up a legal code and a system of jurisprudence that would give everybody absolute justice," Judge Ledue said.

      As if absolute justice wasn't the last thing anybody in his right senses would want; a robot-judge would have the whole planet in jail inside a month.

      "We have a man who joined us after you went off to Koshchei, Conn," Franz Veltrin said. "A Mr. Carl Leibert. He's some kind of a clergyman, from over Morven way. He says that Merlin could formulate an entirely new religion, which would regenerate humanity."

      "Well, I don't have any such lofty ideas," Fawzi said. "I just want Merlin to show us how to get some prosperity here; bring things back to what they were before Poictesme went broke."

      "And that's what Father and

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