big empty fiber folder that had
fallen under something and been overlooked. It was marked: TOP
SECRET. PROJECT MERLIN."

"Project Merlin could have been anything," Conn started to say. No.
Project Merlin was something they made computer parts for.

"Dolf Kellton's research crew, at the Library here, came across some
references to Project Merlin, too. For instance, there was a routine
division court-martial, a couple of second lieutenants, on a very
trivial charge. Force Command ordered the court-martial stopped, and
the two officers simply dropped out of the Third Force records, it was
stated that they were engaged in work connected with Project Merlin.
That's an example; there were half a dozen things like that."

"Tell him what Kurt Fawzi and his crew found," Wade Lucas said.

"Yes. They have a fifty-foot shaft down from the top of the mesa
almost to the top of the underground headquarters. They found
something on top of the headquarters; a disc-shaped mass, fifty feet
thick and a hundred across, armored in collapsium. It's directly over
what used to be Foxx Travis's office."

"That's not a tenth big enough for anything that could even resemble
Merlin."

"Well, it's something. I was out there day before yesterday. They're
down to the collapsium on top of this thing; I rode down the shaft in
a jeep and looked at it. Look, Conn, we don't know what this Project
Merlin was; all this lore about Merlin that's grown up since the War
is pure supposition."

"But Foxx Travis told me, categorically, that there was no Merlin
Project," Conn said. "The War's been over forty years; it's not a
military secret any longer. Why would he lie to me?"

"Why did you lie to Kurt Fawzi and the others and tell them there was
a Merlin? You lied because telling the truth would hurt them. Maybe
Travis had the same reason for lying to you. Maybe Merlin's too
dangerous for anybody to be allowed to find."

"Great Ghu, are you beginning to think Merlin is the Devil, or
Frankenstein's Monster?"

"It might be something just as bad. Maybe worse. I don't think a man
like Foxx Travis would lie if he didn't have some overriding moral
obligation to."

"And we know who's been making most of the trouble for us, too," Lucas
added.

"Yes," Rodney Maxwell said, "we do. And sometime I'm going to invite
Klem Zareff to kick my pants-seat. Sam Murchison, the Terran
Federation Minister-General."

"How'd you get that?"

"Barton-Massarra got some o