The Cosmic Computer

by H. Beam Piper

  VII

  Fifty-two years before, they had come to the mesa in the Badlands anddug a pit on top of it, a thousand feet in diameter and more than fivehundred deep, and in it they built a duplicate of the headquarters forThird Fleet-Army Force Command. They built a shaft a hundred feet indiameter like a chimney at one side, and they ran a tunnel out throughsolid rock to the head of a canyon half a mile away. Then they buriedthe whole thing. Twelve years later, when the War was over, theysealed both entrances and went away and left it.

  For a month each winter, cold rains from the east lashed the desert;for the rest of the year, it was swept by windblown sand. Wiregrasssprouted, and thornbush grew; Nature, the master-camoufleur, completedthe work of hiding the forgotten headquarters. Little things notunlike rabbits scampered over it, and bigger things, vaguely foxlike,hunted them. Hunted men came, too, their aircars skimming low. None ofthem had the least idea what was underneath.

  The mesa-top came suddenly to life, just as the sun edged up out ofthe east. Conn and his father and Anse Dawes came in first, in therecon-car with which they had scouted and photographed the site a fewdays before. They circled at a thousand feet, fired a smoke bomb, andthen let down near where Conn's map showed the head of the verticalshaft. The rest followed, first a couple of combat cars that circledslowly, scanning the ground, and then the _Lester Dawes_ with her bigguns and her load of equipment, and behind a queue of boats and scowsand heavy engineering equipment on contragravity and troop carriersfull of workmen and guards, flanked by air cavalry, which circledabove while everything else landed, then scattered out over afifty-mile radius. Occasionally there was a hammering of machine guns,either because somebody saw something on the ground that might needshooting at or simply because it was a beautiful morning to make anoise.

  The ship settled quickly and daintily, while Conn and Anse and RodneyMaxwell sat in the car and watched. Immediately, she began openinglike a beetle bursting from its shell, large sections of armorswinging outward. Except for the bridge and the gun turrets, almostthe whole ship could be opened; she had been designed to land in themiddle of a battle and deliver ammunition when seconds could mean thedifference between life and death. Jeeps and lifters and manipulatorsand things floated out of her. Scows began landing and unloadingprefab-hut elements. A water tank landed, and the cook-shed begangoing up beside it; a lorry came in with scanning and probingequipment, and a couple of men jumped off and huddled over aphotoprint copy of one of Conn's maps.

  Conn lifted the car again and coasted it half a mile to where thecleft in the mesa started. There were half a dozen claw-armedmanipulators already there, and two giant power shovels. Jerry Rivasand one of the engineers Kurt Fawzi had hired had gotten out of a jeepand were looking at another photoprint of the map. Rivas pointed tothe head of the canyon, where a mass of rock had slid down.

  "That's it; you can still see where they put off the shots."

  The canyon was long enough and wide enough for the _Lester Dawes_to land in it; she could be loaded directly from the tunnel. Themanipulators began moving in, wrestling with the larger chunks ofrock and dragging or carrying them away. Power shovels began gruntingand clanking and rumbling; dust rose in a thick column. Towardmidmorning, the troop carriers which served as school buses inLitchfield arrived, loaded with more workmen. A lorry letteredSTORISENDE HERALD-GUARDIAN came in, hovered over the canyon, andbegan transmitting audiovisuals. More news-folk put in an appearance.

  The earth and rock at the top of the tunnel entrance fell away,revealing the vitrified stone lintel; everybody cheered and dugharder. More aircars arrived, getting in each other's and everybodyelse's way. Raymond Fitch, Lester Dawes, Lorenzo Menardes and MorganGatworth. Dolf Kellton, playing hookey from school. Kurt Fawzi; helanded in the canyon and watched every shovelful of rock lifted, asthough trying to help with mental force. Tom Brangwyn, with a score ofthe Home Guard to reinforce the Company Police. Klem Zareff called inhis air cavalry to help control the sightseers. Nobody was makingtrouble; they were just getting in the way.

  At eleven, Rodney Maxwell went aboard the _Lester Dawes_ to use theradio and telescreen equipment. By then, two time zones west inStorisende, the Claims Office was opening; he filed preliminary claimto an underground installation with at least two entrances inuninhabited country, and claimed a ten-mile radius around it. By thattime, the gang working on top had uncovered a vitrified slab over thehundred-foot circle of the vertical shaft and were cracking it withexplosives. According to the scanners, it was full of loose rubble fora hundred feet down. Below that, the microrays hit somethingimpenetrable.

  Toward midafternoon, the tunnel in the canyon was cleared. It had beenvitrified solid; the scanners reported that it was plugged for tenfeet. A contragravity tank let down in front of it, with a solenoidjackhammer mounted where the gun should have been, and began pounding,running a hole in for a blast shot. There were more explosionstopside; when Conn took a jeep up to observe progress there, he foundthe vitrified rock blown completely off the vertical shaft, exposingthe rubble that had been dumped into it. The gang on the mesa-top haddiscovered something else; a grid of auro-copper bussbars buried fourfeet underground. Ten to one, radio and telescreen signals would betransmitted to that from below, and then probably picked up andrebroadcast from a relay station on one or another of the high buttesin the neighborhood. Time enough to look for that later. He returnedto the canyon, where the lateral tunnel was now almost completelyopen.

  When it was clear, they sent a snooper in first. It was a robot,looking slightly like a short-tailed tadpole, six feet long by threefeet at the thickest. It transmitted a view of the tunnel as it wentslowly in; the air, it found, was breathable, and there were noharmful radiations or other dangers. According to the plans, thereshould be a big room at the other end, slightly curved, a hundred feetwide by a hundred on either side of the tunnel entrance. The robotentered this, and in its headlight they could see reconnaissance-cars,and contragravity tanks with 90-mm guns. It swerved slightly to theleft, and then the screen stopped receiving, the telemeteredinstruments went dead and the robot's signal stopped.

  "Tom," Rodney Maxwell said, "you keep the crowd back. Klem, stay withthe screens; I'll transmit to you. I'm going in to see what's wrong."

  He started to give Conn an argument when he wanted to accompany him.

  "No," Conn said. "I'm going along. What do you think I went to Terrato study robotics for?"

  His father snapped on the screen and pickup of the jeep that wasstanding nearby. "You getting it, Klem?" he asked. "Okay, Conn. Let'sgo."

  Half a mile ahead, at the other end of the tunnel, they could see aflicker of light that grew brighter as they advanced. The snooperstill had its light on and was moving about. Once they caught amomentary signal from it. As Rodney Maxwell piloted the jeep, Connkept talking to Klem Zareff, outside. Then they were at the end of thetunnel and entering the room ahead; it was full of vehicles, like theone on the bottom level at Tenth Army HQ. As soon as they were inside,Klem Zareff's voice in the radio stopped, as though the set had beenshot out.

  "Klem! What's wrong? We aren't getting you," his father was saying.

  The snooper was drifting aimlessly about, avoiding the parkedvehicles. Conn used the manual control to set it down and deactivateit, then got out and went to examine it.

  "Take the jeep over to the tunnel entrance," he told his father."Move out into the tunnel a few feet; relay from me to Klem."

  The jeep moved over. A moment later his father cried, "He's gettingme; I'm getting him. What's the matter with the radio in here? Thesnooper's all right, isn't it?"

  It was. Conn reactivated it and put it up above the tops of thevehicles.

  "Sure. We just can't transmit out."

  "But only half a mile of rock; that set's good for more than that.It'll transmit clear through Snagtooth."

  "It won't transmit through collapsium."

  His father swore disgustedly, repeating it to Zareff outside. Conncould hear the old soldier
, in the radio, make a similar remark. Theyshould have all expected that, in the first place. If the Third ForceHigh Command was expecting to sit out a nuclear bombardment in thisplace, they'd armor it against anything.

  "Bring the gang in; it's safe as far as we've gotten," his fathersaid. "We'll just have to string wires out."

  Conn used his flashlight and found the power unit for the room lights;all the overhead lights were wired to one unit, if wired were the wordfor gold-leaf circuits cemented to the walls and covered withinsulating paint. For the heavy stuff, like the ventilator fans,they'd have to find the central power plant. He looked around the bigroom, poking into some of the closets that lined it. Radiation-proofclothing. Tools. Arms and ammunition. First-aid kits. Emergencyrations. All the vehicles were plated in shimmering collapsium.

  The crowd started coming in: the work-gangs selected for the firstexploration work, most of them old hands of Rodney Maxwell's; theengineers they had recruited; Mohammed Matsui--he had a gang of hisown, the same one he had been using in tearing down the converter atTenth Army; the stockholders and officials; the press. And everybodyelse Tom Brangwyn's police hadn't been able to keep out.

  The power plant was at the extreme bottom; Matsui began looking it overat once. Above it they found the service facilities--air-and-waterplant; pumps for the artesian well; sewage disposal. Then repair ships,and a laboratory, and laundries and kitchens above that.

  "Where do you suppose it is?" Kurt Fawzi was asking. "Up at the verytop, I suppose. Let's go up and work down; I can't wait till we'vefound it."

  Like a kid on Christmas Eve, Conn thought. And there was no SantaClaus, and Christmas had been abolished.

  The place was built in concentric circles, level above level. Combatequipment nearest the tunnel exit and nearest the vertical shaft, andambulances and decontamination units and equipment for relief andrebuilding next. Storerooms, mile on circular mile of them. Not thehasty packrat cramming he'd seen at Tenth Army; everything had beenbrought in in order, carefully piled or racked, and then left. Morestores for the next three levels up; then living quarters. Enlistedmen's and women's quarters, no signs of occupancy. Enlisted kitchensand mess halls, untouched.

  Most of the officers' quarters were similarly unused, but here andthere some had been occupied. A sloppily made bed. A used cake of soapin the bathroom. An empty bottle in a closet. Officers' commissarystores had been used from and replaced; the officers' mess hall andkitchen had been in constant use, and the officers' club had acomfortably scuffed and lived-in look. There had been a few peoplethere all the time of the War.

  "Men and women, all officers or civilians," Klem Zareff said. "Didn'teven have enlisted men to cook for them. And we haven't found a scrapof paper with writing on it, or an inch of recorded sound-tape oraudiovisual film. Remember those big wire baskets, down at themass-energy converters? Before they left, they disintegrated everyscrap of writing or recording. This is where Merlin is; they were thepeople who worked with it."

  And above, offices. General Staff. War Planning, with an incrediblycomplex star-map of the theater of war. Judge Advocate General.Inspector General. Service of Supply. They were full of computers,each one firing the hopes of people like Fawzi and Dolf Kellton andJudge Ledue, but they were only special-purpose machines, the sort tobe found in any big business office. The Storisende Stock Exchangeprobably had much bigger ones.

  Then they found big ones, rank on rank of cabinets, long consolesstudded with lights and buttons, programming machines.

  "It's Merlin!" Fawzi almost screamed. "We've found it!"

  One of the reporters who had followed them in snatched his radiohandphone from his belt and jabbered, then, realizing that thecollapsium shielding kept him from getting out with it, he replaced itand bolted away.

  "Hold it!" Conn yelled at the others, who were also becominghysterical. "Wait till I take a look at this thing."

  They managed to calm themselves. After all, he should know what itwas; wasn't that why he'd gone to school on Terra? They followed himfrom machine to machine, first hopefully and then fearfully. Finallyhe turned, shaking his head and feeling like the doctor in a filmshow, telling the family that there's no hope for Grandpa.

  "This is not Merlin. This is the personnel-file machine. It's tapedfor the records and data of every man and woman in the Third Force forthe whole War. It's like the student-record machine at theUniversity."

  "Might have known it; this section in here's marked G-1 all overeverything; that's personnel. Wouldn't have Merlin in here," KlemZareff was saying.

  "Well, we'll just keep on hunting for it till we do find it," KurtFawzi said. "It's here somewhere. It has to be."

  The next level up was much smaller. Here were the offices of the topechelons of the Force Command Staff. They, unlike the ones below, hadbeen used; from them, too, every scrap of writing or film orrecord-tape had vanished.

  Finally, they entered the private office of Force-General Foxx Travis.It had not only been used, it was in disorder. Ashtrays full, many ofthe forty-year-old cigarette ends lipstick tinted. Chairs shovedaround at random. Three bottles on the desk, with Terran bourbonlabels; two empty and one with about an inch of whisky left in it. Butno glasses.

  That bothered Conn. Somehow, he couldn't quite picture the commanderand staff of the Third Fleet-Army Force passing bottles around anddrinking from the neck. Then he noticed that the wall across the roomwas strangely scarred and scratched. Dropping his eye to the floorunder it, he caught the twinkle of broken glass. They had gatheredhere, and talked for a long time. Then they had risen, for a finaltoast, and when it was drunk, they had hurled their glasses againstthe wall and smashed them.

  Then they had gone out, leaving the broken glass and the emptybottles; knowing that they would never return.