Hell, at the time of the surrender, we didn't have--"
"They weren't taking chances on that, Colonel. But the point I want to
make is that with everything I did find, I never found, in any official
record, a single word about the giant computer we call the Third
Fleet-Army Force Brain."
For a time, the only sound in the room was the tiny insectile humming of
the electric clock on the wall. Then Professor Kellton set his glass on
the table, and it sounded like a hammer-blow.
"Nothing, Conn?" Kurt Fawzi was incredulous and, for the first time,
frightened. The others were exchanging uneasy glances. "But you must
have! A thing like that--"
"Of course it would be one of the closest secrets during the war,"
somebody else said. "But in forty years, you'd expect _something_ to
leak out."
"Why, _during_ the war, it was all through the Third Force. Even the
Alliance knew about it; that's how Klem heard of it."
"Well, Conn couldn't just walk into the secret files and read whatever
he wanted to. Just because he couldn't find anything--"
"Don't tell _me_ about security!" Klem Zareff snorted. "Certainly they
still have it classified; staff-brass'd rather lose an eye than
declassify anything.
Pages:
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37