ere being busy. They
were putting a set of Abbott lift-and-drive engines together, and
Conn's computer class was estimating the mass of the finished ship and
the amount of energy needed to overcome gravitation and give it
constant acceleration from Koshchei to Poictesme. They were learning,
by trial and error, largely error, how to build a set of pseudograv
engines. And they were putting together a hundred and one other
things, all of which was good training for the time they'd be ready to
start work on _Ouroboros II_.

Jerry Rivas had found a contragravity craft which seemed to have been
used by some top official for business and inspection trips, had
gathered a crew of non-specialists who weren't urgently needed at Port
Carpenter, and set out to circumnavigate the planet. It worked just
the reverse of expectation. He found a big uranium mine, with an
isotope-separation plant and a battery of plutonium-breeders; that
meant that Mohammed Matsui and half a dozen other nuclear-power people
had to get into another boat and speed after him to see what he had
really found. As soon as they landed, Rivas took off again to discover
a copper mine and a complex of smelters and processing plants. That
took a few more experts, or reasonable facsimiles, away from Port
Carpenter. And then he found a whole city that manufactured nothing
but computers and robo-controls and things like that.

Conn loaded his whole computer-theory class onto a freight-scow and
took them there. By the time he landed, his father was screening him
from Storisende.

"When are you going to get the ship finished?" he was asking. "Kurt
Fawzi's pestering the daylights out of me. He wants that equipment you
promised him."

"We're working on it. What's happened, has Carl Leibert had another
revelation?"

"I don't know about that. Kurt's sure Merlin is directly under Force
Command. And speaking about Leibert, Klem Zareff's been after me about
him. You know I've contracted for the full-time and exclusive services
of this Barton-Massarra detective agency. Well, Klem wants me to put
them to work investigating Leibert."

"Yes, I know; Leibert's a Terran Federation spy. Why do you need the
full-time services of the biggest private detective agency on
Poictesme?"

"There have been some odd things happening. People have been trying to
bribe and intimidate some of my office help. I have found microphones
and screen-pickups planted around. I caught one of our cler