"
"I'd come home intending to--tell them there was no Brain, tell them to
stop wasting their time hunting for it and start trying to figure out
the answers themselves. But I couldn't. They don't believe in the Brain
as a tool, to use; it's a machine god that they can bring all their
troubles to. You can't take a thing like that away from people without
giving them something better."
"I noticed you suggested building a spaceship and agreed with the
professor about building a computer. What was your idea? To take their
minds off hunting for the Brain and keep them busy?"
Conn shook his head. "I'm serious about the ship--ships. You and Colonel
Zareff gave me that idea."
His father looked at him in surprise. "I never said a word in there, and
Klem didn't even once mention--"
"Not in Kurt's office; before we went up from the docks. There was Klem,
moaning about a good year for melons as though it were a plague, and you
selling arms and ammunition by the ton. Why, on Terra or Baldur or
Uller, a glass of our brandy brings more than these freighter-captains
give us for a cask, and what do you think a colonist on Agramma, or
Sekht, or Hachiman, who has to fight for his life against savages and
wild animals, would pay for one of those rifles and a thousand rounds of
ammunition?"
His father objected.
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