Honor, I mean, Mr. Chairman; I suggest that committees be
appointed...."

More hassling; everybody wanted to be on all the committees. Finally,
they appointed enough committees to include everybody.

"Well, that seems to be cleared up," Judge Ledue said, "I suggest a
meeting day after tomorrow evening; the committees should have
everything set up, and we should be able to organize ourselves and
elect permanent officers. Is there anything else to discuss, or do I
hear a motion to adjourn?"

Somebody thought they ought to have some idea of what the first
operation would be.

"You heard me mention a spaceport," Conn said. "I can tell you, now,
that it's over on Barathrum, inside the crater of an extinct volcano.
I think we ought to have a look at that, first of all."

"I know you seemed to think yesterday that Merlin is off-planet,"
Fawzi said, "I'm inclined to disagree, Conn. I think it's right here
on Poictesme."

"We ought to nail that spaceport down first," Conn argued.

"Conn, you mentioned an underground duplicate of Travis's general
headquarters," Zareff said. "They thought we'd possibly send a fleet
here to blitz Poictesme, or they wouldn't have built that. And this
underground headquarters would be the safest place on the planet;
they'd make sure of that. Staff brass don't like to get caught out in
the rain, not when it's raining hellburners and planetbusters. Merlin
would be too big to take there along with them, so they'd put it there
in the first place."

That made sense. If he'd been Foxx Travis, and if there had been a
Merlin, that was exactly where he'd have put it himself. But there was
no Merlin, and he wanted a ship. He argued mulishly for a little, then
saw that it was hopeless and gave in.

"I want to find Merlin as much as any of you," he said. "More. Merlin
was the only thing I was trained for. We'll look there first."

Somebody asked where, approximately, this underground Force Command
headquarters was.

"Why, it's in the Badlands, over between the Blaubergs and the east
coast."

"Great Ghu! We'll need an army to go in there?" Tom Brangwyn said.
"That's where all these outlaws have been coming from, Blackie Perales
and all."

"Then we'll get an army together," Klem Zareff said happily. "Might
make a little of that reward money that's been offered."

"We'll need more than that. Well need excavation equipment, and labor.
Lots of labor," Conn said. "It's a couple of hundred feet below