rt. 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. The one under
construction seemed to be of cruciform design, like an old-fashioned
pre-contragravity winged airplane. The design puzzled everybody at
Barathrum. Yves Jacquemont thought that perhaps there would be decks
in the cross-arm which would be used when the ship was running on
combined lift and drive.

"Well, till we can get a shipyard going on Koshchei and build some
real spaceships, there are going to be some rare-looking objects
traveling around the Alpha System. I wonder what the next one's going
to look like--a flying sky-scraper?" Conn said.

"What I wonder," Yves Jacquemont replied, "is where all the old
interplanetary ships got to. There must have been hundreds of them
running back and forth from here to Janicot and Koshchei and Jurgen
and Horvendile during the War. They must have gone somewhere."

"Couldn't they all have been fitted with Dillingham hyperdrive
engines and used in the evacuation?"

"Possible. But the average interplanetary ship isn't very big; five
hundred to seven-fifty feet in diameter. One of those things couldn't
carry more than a couple of hundred people, after you put in all t