spent the rest of
our lives trying to suppress any mention of Merlin or the Merlin
Project. You have no idea how shocked both General Travis and I were
when you told us that the story was still current here on Poictesme.
And when we found that you'd been getting into the records of the
Third Force, I took the next ship I could, a miserable little
freighter, and when I landed and found out what was happening, I
contacted Murchison and scared the life out of him with stories about
a secessionist conspiracy. All this Armageddonist, Human Supremacy,
Merlin-is-the-Devil, stuff that's been going on was started by
Murchison. And he succeeded in scaring Vyckhoven with the
Cybernarchists, too."

"This computation on the future of the Federation is still in the
back-work file?" Conn asked.

Shanlee nodded. "We were criminally reckless; I can see that, now. Let
me beg, again, that you destroy the whole thing."

"We'll have to talk it over among ourselves," Judge Ledue said. "The
five of us, here, cannot presume to speak for everybody. We will, of
course, have to keep you confined; I hope you will understand that we
cannot accept your parole."

"Is there anything you want in the meantime?" Conn asked.

"I would like something to smoke, and some clothes," General Shanlee
said. "And a shave and a haircut."

XXI

All through the night, a shifting blaze of many-colored light rose and
dimmed the stars above the mesa. They stared in awe, marveling at the
energy that was pouring out of the converters into a tiny spot that
inched its way around the collapsium shielding. It must have been
visible for hundreds of miles; it was, for there was a new flood of
rumors circulating in Storisende and repeated and denied by the
newscasts, now running continuously. Merlin had been found. Merlin had
been blown up by Government troops. Merlin was being transported to
Storisende to be installed as arbiter of the Government. Merlin the
Monster was destroying the planet. Merlin the Devil was unchained.

Conn and Kurt Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and Judge Ledue and Tom Brangwyn
clustered together, talking in whispers. They had told nobody, yet, of
the interview with Shanlee.

"You think it would make all that trouble?" Kellton was asking
anxiously, hoping that the others would convince him that it wouldn't.

"Maybe we had better destroy it," Judge Ledue faltered. "You see what
it's done already; the whole planet's in anarchy. If we let this