Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine February 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed. 

 Graveyard of Dreams

 By H. Beam Piper

 _Despite Mr. Shakespeare, wealth and name are both dross compared with the theft of hope-- and Maxwell had to rob a whole planet of it!_

Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watchingthe mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped themetal hand-rail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold backthe airship by force. Thirty minutes--twenty-six and a fraction of theTerran minutes he had become accustomed to--until he'd have to face it. 

Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as"sir, " he turned. 

"I beg your pardon?"

It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniformof forty years, or about ten regulation-changes, ago. That was the sortof thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he wasnoticing it everywhere. 

"Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir, " the ship's officer repeated. "You'll go off by the midship gangway on the starboard side. "

"Yes, I know. Thank you. "

The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. "Would you mindchecking over this, Mr. Maxwell? Your baggage list. "

"Certainly. " He glanced at the slip of paper. Valises, eighteen andtwenty-five kilos, two; trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two;microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a littleflicker of anger in him, not at any person, even himself, but at thesituation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing. 

"Yes, that's everything. I have no hand-luggage, just this stuff. "

He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip; the otherpapers were all freight and express manifests. "Not many passengers leftaboard, are there?"

"You're the only one in first-class, sir, " the mate replied. "Aboutforty farm-laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at theother stops. Litchfield's the end of the run. You know anything aboutthe place?"

"I was born there. I've been away at school for the last five years. "

"On Baldur?"

"Terra. University of Montevideo. " Once Conn would have said it almostboastfully. 

The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned andnodded. "Of course; I should have known. You're Rodney Maxwell's son, aren't you? Your father's one of our regular freight shippers. Beensending out a lot of stuff lately. " He looked as though he would haveliked to continue the conversation, but said: "Sorry, I've got to go. Lot of things to attend to before landing. " He touched the visor of hiscap and turned away. 

The mountains were closer when Conn looked forward again, and he glanceddown. Five years and two space voyages ago, seen from the afterdeck ofthis ship or one of her sisters, the woods had been green with newfoliage, and the wine-melon fields had been in pink blossom. He tried topicture the scene sliding away below instead of drawing in toward him, as though to force himself back to a moment of the irretrievable past. 

But the moment was gone, and with it the eager excitement and thehalf-formed anticipations of the things he would learn and accomplish onTerra. The things he would learn--microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. One of the steel trunks was full of things he had learned andaccomplished, too. Maybe they, at least, had some value. .. . 

The woods were autumn-tinted now and the fields were bare and brown. 

They had gotten the crop in early this year, for the fields had all beenharvested. Those workers below must be going out for the wine-pressing. That extra hands were needed for that meant a big crop, and yet itseemed that less land was under cultivation than when he had gone away. He could see squares of low brush among the new forests that had grownup in the last forty years, and the few stands of original timber lookedlike hills above the second growth. Those trees had been standing whenthe planet had been colonized. 

That had been two hundred years ago, at the middle of the SeventhCentury, Atomic Era. The name of the planet--Poictesme--told that: theSurromanticist Movement, when the critics and professors wererediscovering James Branch Cabell. 

 * * * * *

Funny how much was coming back to him now--things he had picked up fromthe minimal liberal-arts and general-humanities courses he had taken andthen forgotten in his absorption with the science and tech studies. 

The first extrasolar planets, as they had been discovered, had beennamed from Norse mythology--Odin and Baldur and Thor, Uller and Freya, Bifrost and Asgard and Niflheim. When the Norse names ran out, thediscoverers had turned to other mythologies, Celtic and Egyptian andHindu and Assyrian, and by the middle of the Seventh Century they werenaming planets for almost anything. 

Anything, that is, but actual persons; their names were reserved forstars. Like Alpha Gartner, the sun of Poictesme, and Beta Gartner, abuckshot-sized pink glow in the southeast, and Gamma Gartner, out ofsight on the other side of the world, all named for old Genji Gartner, the scholarly and half-piratical adventurer whose ship had been thefirst to approach the three stars and discover that each of them hadplanets. 

Forty-two planets in all, from a couple of methane-giants on Gamma toairless little things with one-sixth Terran gravity. Alpha II had beenthe only one in the Trisystem with an oxygen atmosphere and life. SoGartner had landed on it, and named it Poictesme, and the settlementthat had grown up around the first landing site had been calledStorisende. Thirty years later, Genji Gartner died there, after seeingthe camp grow to a metropolis, and was buried under a massive monument. 

Some of the other planets had been rich in metals, and mines had beenopened, and atmosphere-domed factories and processing plants built. Noneof them could produce anything but hydroponic and tissue-culturefoodstuffs, and natural foods from Poictesme had been less expensive, even on the planets of Gamma and Beta. So Poictesme had concentrated onagriculture and grown wealthy at it. 

Then, within fifty years of Genji Gartner's death, the economics ofinterstellar trade overtook the Trisystem and the mines and factoriesclosed down. It was no longer possible to ship the output to aprofitable market, in the face of the growing self-sufficiency of thecolonial planets and the irreducibly high cost of space-freighting. 

Below, the brown fields and the red and yellow woods were merging into aten-mile-square desert of crumbling concrete--empty and roofless shedsand warehouses and barracks, brush-choked parade grounds and landingfields, airship docks, and even a spaceport. They were more recent, dating from Poictesme's second brief and hectic prosperity, when theTerran Federation's Third Fleet-Army Force had occupied the GartnerTrisystem during the System States War. 

 * * * * *

Millions of troops had been stationed on or routed through Poictesme;tens of thousands of spacecraft had been based on the Trisystem; themines and factories had reopened for war production. The Federation hadspent trillions of sols on Poictesme, piled up mountains of stores andarms and equipment, left the face of the planet cluttered withinstallations. 

Then, ten years before anybody had expected it, the rebellious SystemStates Alliance had collapsed and the war had ended. The Federationarmies had gone home, taking with them the clothes they stood in, theirpersonal weapons and a few souvenirs. Everything else had been leftbehind; even the most expensive equipment was worth less than the costof removal. 

Ever since, Poictesme had been living on salvage. The uniform the firstofficer was wearing was forty years old--and it was barely a month outof the original packing. On Terra, Conn had told his friends that hisfather was a prospector and let them interpret that as meaning anexplorer for, say, uranium deposits. Rodney Maxwell found plenty ofuranium, but he got it by taking apart the warheads of missiles. 

The old replacement depot or classification center or training area orwhatever it had been had vanished under the ship now and it was allforest back to the mountains, with an occasional cluster of desertedbuildings. From one or two, threads of blue smoke rose--bands of farmtramps, camping on their way from harvest to wine-pressing. Then theeastern foothills were out of sight and he was looking down on thegranite spines of the Calder Range; the valley beyond was sloping awayand widening out in the distance, and it was time he began thinking ofwhat to say when he landed. He would have to tell them, of course. 

He wondered who would be at the dock to meet him, besides his family. Lynne Fawzi, he hoped. Or did he? Her parents would be with her, andKurt Fawzi would take the news hardest of any of them, and be the firstto blame him because it was bad. The hopes he had built for Lynne andhimself would have to be held in abeyance till he saw how her fatherwould regard him now. 

But however any of them took it, he would have to tell them the truth. 

 * * * * *

The ship swept on, tearing through the thin puffs of cloud at ten milesa minute. Six minutes to landing. Five. Four. Then he saw the riverbend, glinting redly through the haze in the sunlight; Litchfield wasinside it, and he stared waiting for the first glimpse of the city. Three minutes, and the ship began to cut speed and lose altitude. Thehot-jets had stopped firing and he could hear the whine of the cold-jetrotors. 

Then he could see Litchfield, dominated by the Airport Building, sothick that it looked squat for all its height, like a candle-stump in apuddle of its own grease, the other buildings under their carapace ofterraces and landing stages seeming to have flowed away from it. Andthere was the yellow block of the distilleries, and High Garden Terrace, and the Mall. .. . 

At first, in the distance, it looked like a living city. Then, second bysecond, the stigmata of decay became more and more evident. Terracesempty or littered with rubbish; gardens untended and choked with wildgrowth; windows staring blindly; walls splotched with lichens and grimywhere the rains could not wash them. 

For a moment, he was afraid that some disaster, unmentioned in hisfather's letters, had befallen. Then he realized that the change had notbeen in Litchfield but in himself. After five years, he was seeing it asit really was. He wondered how his family and his friends would look tohim now. Or Lynne. 

The ship was coming in over the Mall; he could see the cracked pavingsprouting grass, the statues askew on their pedestals, the waterlessfountains. He thought for an instant that one of them was playing, andthen he saw that what he had taken for spray was dust blowing from theempty basin. There was something about dusty fountains, something he hadlearned at the University. Oh, yes. One of the Second Century MartianColonial poets, Eirrarsson, or somebody like that:

 _The fountains are dusty in the Graveyard of Dreams; The hinges are rusty and swing with tiny screams. _

There was more to it, but he couldn't remember; something about emptygardens under an empty sky. There must have been colonies inside the SolSystem, before the Interstellar Era, that hadn't turned out any betterthan Poictesme. Then he stopped trying to remember as the ship turnedtoward the Airport Building and a couple of tugs--Terran Federationcontragravity tanks, with derrick-booms behind and push-poles where theguns had been--came up to bring her down. 

He walked along the starboard promenade to the gangway, which the firstmate and a couple of airmen were getting open. 

 * * * * *

Most of the population of top-level Litchfield was in the crowd on thedock. He recognized old Colonel Zareff, with his white hair andplum-brown skin, and Tom Brangwyn, the town marshal, red-faced andbulking above the others. It took a few seconds for him to pick out hisfather and mother, and his sister Flora, and then to realize that thehandsome young man beside Flora was his brother Charley. Charley hadbeen thirteen when Conn had gone away. And there was Kurt Fawzi, themayor of Litchfield, and there was Lynne, beside him, her red-lippedface tilted upward with a cloud of bright hair behind it. 

He waved to her, and she waved back, jumping in excitement, and theneverybody was waving, and they were pushing his family to the front andmaking way for them. 

The ship touched down lightly and gave a lurch as she went offcontragravity, and they got the gangway open and the steps swung out, and he started down toward the people who had gathered to greet him. 

His father was wearing the same black best-suit he had worn when theyhad parted five years ago. It had been new then; now it was shabby andhad acquired a permanent wrinkle across the right hip, over thepistol-butt. Charley was carrying a gun, too; the belt and holsterlooked as though he had made them himself. His mother's dress was newand so was Flora's--probably made for the occasion. He couldn't be surejust which of the Terran Federation services had provided the material, but Charley's shirt was Medical Service sterilon. 

Ashamed that he was noticing and thinking of such things at a time likethis, he clasped his father's hand and kissed his mother and Flora. Everybody was talking at once, saying things that he heard only as happysounds. His brother's words were the first that penetrated as words. 

"You didn't know me, " Charley was accusing. "Don't deny it; I saw youstanding there wondering if I was Flora's new boy friend or what. "

"Well, how in Niflheim'd you expect me to? You've grown up since thelast time I saw you. You're looking great, kid!" He caught the gleam ofLynne's golden hair beyond Charley's shoulder and pushed him gentlyaside. "Lynne!"

"Conn, you look just wonderful!" Her arms were around his neck and shewas kissing him. "Am I still your girl, Conn?"

He crushed her against him and returned her kisses, assuring her thatshe was. He wasn't going to let it make a bit of difference how herfather took the news--if she didn't. 

She babbled on: "You didn't get mixed up with any of those girls onTerra, did you? If you did, don't tell me about it. All I care about isthat you're back. Oh, Conn, you don't know how much I missed you . .. Mother, Dad, doesn't he look just splendid?"

Kurt Fawzi, a little thinner, his face more wrinkled, his hair grayer, shook his hand. 

"I'm just as glad to see you as anybody, Conn, " he said, "even if I'mnot being as demonstrative about it as Lynne. Judge, what do you thinkof our returned wanderer? Franz, shake hands with him, but save theinterview for the _News_ for later. Professor, here's one studentLitchfield Academy won't need to be ashamed of. "

He shook hands with them--old Judge Ledue; Franz Veltrin, the newsman;Professor Kellton; a dozen others, some of whom he had not thought of infive years. They were all cordial and happy--how much, he wondered, because he was their neighbor, Conn Maxwell, Rodney Maxwell's son, homefrom Terra, and how much because of what they hoped he would tell them?Kurt Fawzi, edging him out of the crowd, was the first to voice that. 

"Conn, what did you find out?" he asked breathlessly. "Do you know whereit is?"

Conn hesitated, looking about desperately; this was no time to starttalking to Kurt Fawzi about it. His father was turning toward him fromone side, and from the other Tom Brangwyn and Colonel Zareff wereapproaching more slowly, the older man leaning on a silver-headed cane. 

"Don't bother him about it now, Kurt, " Rodney Maxwell scolded the mayor. "He's just gotten off the ship; he hasn't had time to say hello toeverybody yet. "

"But, Rod, I've been waiting to hear what he's found out ever since hewent away, " Fawzi protested in a hurt tone. 

Brangwyn and Colonel Zareff joined them. They were close friends, probably because neither of them was a native of Poictesme. 

The town marshal had always been reticent about his origins, but Connguessed it was Hathor. Brangwyn's heavy-muscled body, and his ease andgrace in handling it, marked him as a man of a high-gravity planet. Besides, Hathor had a permanent cloud-envelope, and Tom Brangwyn's skinhad turned boiled-lobster red under the dim orange sunlight of AlphaGartner. 

Old Klem Zareff never hesitated to tell anybody where he came from--hewas from Ashmodai, one of the System States planets, and he hadcommanded a division that had been blasted down to about regimentalstrength, in the Alliance army. 

"Hello, boy, " he croaked, extending a trembling hand. "Glad you're home. We all missed you. "

"We sure did, Conn, " the town marshal agreed, clasping Conn's hand assoon as the old man had released it. "Find out anything definite?"

Kurt Fawzi looked at his watch. "Conn, we've planned a littlecelebration for you. We only had since day before yesterday, when thespaceship came into radio range, but we're having a dinner party for youat Senta's this evening. "

"You couldn't have done anything I'd have liked better, Mr. Fawzi. I'dhave to have a meal at Senta's before really feeling that I'd comehome. "

"Well, here's what I have in mind. It'll be three hours till dinner'sready. Suppose we all go up to my office in the meantime. It'll give theladies a chance to go home and fix up for the party, and we can have adrink and a talk. "

"You want to do that, Conn?" his father asked, a trifle doubtfully. "Ifyou'd rather go home first. .. "

Something in his father's voice and manner disturbed him vaguely;however, he nodded agreement. After a couple of drinks, he'd be betterable to tell them. 

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Fawzi, " Conn said. "I know you're all anxious, butit's a long story. This'll be a good chance to tell you. "

Fawzi turned to his wife and daughter, interrupting himself to shoutinstructions to a couple of dockhands who were floating the baggage offthe ship on a contragravity-lifter. Conn's father had sent Charley offwith a message to his mother and Flora. 

Conn turned to Colonel Zareff. "I noticed extra workers coming out fromthe hiring agencies in Storisende, and the crop was all in across theCalders. Big wine-pressing this year?"

"Yes, we're up to our necks in melons, " the old planter grumbled. "Gehenna of a big crop. Price'll drop like a brick of collapsium, andthis time next year we'll be using brandy to wash our feet in. "

"If you can't get good prices, hang onto it and age it. I wish you couldsee what the bars on Terra charge for a drink of ten-year-oldPoictesme. "

"This isn't Terra and we aren't selling it by the drink. Only place wecan sell brandy is at Storisende spaceport, and we have to take what thetrading-ship captains offer. You've been on a rich planet for the lastfive years, Conn. You've forgotten what it's like to live in apoorhouse. And that's what Poictesme is. "

"Things'll be better from now on, Klem, " the mayor said, putting onehand on the old man's shoulder and the other on Conn's. "Our boy's home. With what he can tell us, we'll be able to solve all our problems. Comeon, let's go up and hear about it. "

They entered the wide doorway of the warehouse on the dock-level floorof the Airport Building and crossed to the lift. About a dozen othershad joined them, all the important men of Litchfield. Inside, KurtFawzi's laborers were floating out cargo for the ship--casks of brandy, of course, and a lot of boxes and crates painted light blue and markedwith the wreathed globe of the Terran Federation and the gold triangleof the Third Fleet-Army Force and the eight-pointed red star of OrdnanceService. Long cases of rifles, square boxes of ammunition, machine guns, crated auto-cannon and rockets. 

"Where'd that stuff come from?" Conn asked his father. "You dig itup?"

His father chuckled. "That happened since the last time I wrote you. Remember the big underground headquarters complex in the Calders?Everybody thought it had been all cleaned out years ago. You know, it'snever a mistake to take a second look at anything that everybodybelieves. I found a lot of sealed-off sections over there that had neverbeen entered. This stuff's from one of the headquarters defensearmories. I have a gang getting the stuff out. Charley and I flew inafter lunch, and I'm going back the first thing tomorrow. "

"But there's enough combat equipment on hand to outfit a private armyfor every man, woman and child on Poictesme!" Conn objected. "Where arewe going to sell this?"

"Storisende spaceport. The tramp freighters are buying it for newlycolonized planets that haven't been industrialized yet. They don't paymuch, but it doesn't cost much to get it out, and I've been clearingabout three hundred sols a ton on the spaceport docks. That's not bad, you know. "

Three hundred sols a ton. A lifter went by stacked with cases of M-504submachine guns. Unloaded, one of them weighed six pounds, and even aused one was worth a hundred sols. Conn started to say something aboutthat, but then they came to the lift and were crowding onto it. 

He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father, and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality andrambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays. Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, andthe government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined, made fewdemands on his time and did not prevent the office from being a favoredloafing center for the town's elders. The lights were bright only overthe big table that served, among other things, as a desk, and the wallswere almost invisible in the shadows. 

As they came down the hallway from the lift, everybody had begunspeaking more softly. Voices were never loud or excited in Kurt Fawzi'soffice. 

Tom Brangwyn went to the table, taking off his belt and holster andlaying his pistol aside. The others, crowding into the room, added theirweapons to his. 

That was something else Conn was seeing with new eyes. It had been fiveyears since he had carried a gun and he was wondering why any of thembothered. A gun was what a boy put on to show that he had reachedmanhood, and a man carried for the rest of his life out of habit. 

Why, there wouldn't be a shooting a year in Litchfield, if you didn'tcount the farm tramps and drifters, who kept to the lower level orcamped in the empty buildings at the edge of town. Or maybe that was it;maybe Litchfield was peaceful because everybody was armed. It certainlywasn't because of anything the Planetary Government at Storisende did tomaintain order. 

After divesting himself of his gun, Tom Brangwyn took over thebartending, getting out glasses and filling a pitcher of brandy from akeg in the corner. 

"Everybody supplied?" Fawzi was asking. "Well, let's drink to ourreturned emissary. We're all anxious to hear what you found out, Conn. Gentlemen, here's to our friend Conn Maxwell. Welcome home, Conn!"

"Well, it's wonderful to be back, Mr. Fawzi--"

"No, let's not have any of this mister foolishness! You're one of thegang now. And drink up, everybody. We have plenty of brandy, even if wedon't have anything else. "

"You telling us, Kurt?" somebody demanded. One of the distillerycompany; the name would come back to Conn in a moment. "When this cropgets pressed and fermented--"

"When I start pressing, I don't know where in Gehenna I'm going to vatthe stuff till it ferments, " Colonel Zareff said. "Or why. You won't beable to handle all of it. "

"Now, now!" Fawzi reproved. "Let's not start moaning about our troubles. Not the day Conn's come home. Not when he's going to tell us how to findthe Third Fleet-Army Force Brain. "

"You _did_ find out where the Brain is, didn't you, Conn?" Brangwynasked anxiously. 

That set half a dozen of them off at once. They had all sat down afterthe toast; now they were fidgeting in their chairs, leaning forward, looking at Conn fixedly. 

"What did you find out, Conn?"

"It's still here on Poictesme, isn't it?"

"Did you find out where it is?"

He wanted to tell them in one quick sentence and get it over with. Hecouldn't, any more than he could force himself to squeeze the trigger ofa pistol he knew would blow up in his hand. 

"Wait a minute, gentlemen. " He finished the brandy, and held out theglass to Tom Brangwyn, nodding toward the pitcher. Even the first drinkhad warmed him and he could feel the constriction easing in his throatand the lump at the pit of his stomach dissolving. "I hope none of youexpect me to spread out a map and show you the cross on it, where theBrain is. I can't. I can't even give the approximate location of thething. "

Much of the happy eagerness drained out of the faces around him. Some ofthem were looking troubled; Colonel Zareff was gnawing the bottom of hismustache, and Judge Ledue's hand shook as he tried to relight his cigar. Conn stole a quick side-glance at his father; Rodney Maxwell waswatching him curiously, as though wondering what he was going to saynext. 

"But it is still here on Poictesme?" Fawzi questioned. "They didn't takeit away when they evacuated, did they?"

Conn finished his second drink. This time he picked up the pitcher andrefilled for himself. 

"I'm going to have to do a lot of talking, " he said, "and it's going tobe thirsty work. I'll have to tell you the whole thing from thebeginning, and if you start asking questions at random, you'll get memixed up and I'll miss the important points. "

"By all means!" Judge Ledue told him. "Give it in your own words, inwhat you think is the proper order. "

"Thank you, Judge. "

Conn drank some more brandy, hoping he could get his courage up withoutgetting drunk. After all, they had a right to a full report; all of themhad contributed something toward sending him to Terra. 

"The main purpose in my going to the University was to learn computertheory and practice. It wouldn't do any good for us to find the Brain ifnone of us are able to use it. Well, I learned enough to be able tooperate, program and service any computer in existence, and trainassistants. During my last year at the University, I had a part-timepaid job programming the big positron-neutrino-photon computer in theastrophysics department. When I graduated, I was offered a position asinstructor in positronic computer theory. "

"You never mentioned that in your letters, son, " his father said. 

"It was too late for any letter except one that would come on the sameship I did. Beside, it wasn't very important. "

"I think it was. " There was a catch in old Professor Kellton's voice. "One of my boys, from the Academy, offered a place on the faculty of theUniversity of Montevideo, on Terra!" He poured himself a second drink, something he almost never did. 

"Conn means it wasn't important because it didn't have anything to dowith the Brain, " Fawzi explained and then looked at Conn expectantly. 

All right; now he'd tell them. "I went over all the records of the ThirdFleet-Army Force's occupation of Poictesme that are open to the public. On one pretext or another, I got permission to examine thenon-classified files that aren't open to public examination. I even gota few peeps at some of the stuff that's still classified secret. I havemaps and plans of all the installations that were built on thisplanet--literally thousands of them, many still undiscovered. Why, wehaven't more than scratched the surface of what the Federation leftbehind here. For instance, all the important installations exist induplicate, some even in triplicate, as a precaution against Alliancespace attack. "

"Space attack!" Colonel Zareff was indignant. "There never was a timewhen the Alliance could have taken the offensive against Poictesme, evenif an offensive outside our own space-area had been part of our policy. We just didn't have the ships. It took over a year to move a million anda half troops from Ashmodai to Marduk, and the fleet that was based onAmaterasu was blasted out of existence in the spaceports and in orbit. Hell, at the time of the surrender, we didn't have--"

"They weren't taking chances on that, Colonel. But the point I want tomake is that with everything I did find, I never found, in any officialrecord, a single word about the giant computer we call the ThirdFleet-Army Force Brain. "

For a time, the only sound in the room was the tiny insectile humming ofthe electric clock on the wall. Then Professor Kellton set his glass onthe 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 musthave! 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_ toleak out. "

"Why, _during_ the war, it was all through the Third Force. Even theAlliance knew about it; that's how Klem heard of it. "

"Well, Conn couldn't just walk into the secret files and read whateverhe wanted to. Just because he couldn't find anything--"

"Don't tell _me_ about security!" Klem Zareff snorted. "Certainly theystill have it classified; staff-brass'd rather lose an eye thandeclassify anything. If you'd seen the lengths our staff went to--hell, we lost battles because the staff wouldn't release information thetroops in the field needed. I remember once--"

"But there _was_ a Brain, " Judge Ledue was saying, to reassure himselfand draw agreement from the others. "It was capable of combining data, and scanning and evaluating all its positronic memories, and formingassociation patterns, and reasoning with absolute perfection. It wasmore than a positronic brain--it was a positronic super-mind. "

"We'd have won the war, except for the Brain. We had ninety systems, ahundred and thirty inhabited planets, a hundred billion people--and wewere on the defensive in our own space-area! Every move we made wasknown and anticipated by the Federation. How could they have done thatwithout something like the Brain?"

"Conn, from what you learned of computers, how large a volume of spacewould you say the Brain would have to occupy?" Professor Kellton asked. 

Professor Kellton was the most unworldly of the lot, yet he was askingthe most practical question. 

"Well, the astrophysics computer I worked with at the Universityoccupies a total of about one million cubic feet, " Conn began. This washis chance; they'd take anything he told them about computers as gospel. "It was only designed to handle problems in astrophysics. The Brain, being built for space war, would have to handle any such problem. And ifhalf the stories about the Brain are anywhere near true, it handled anyother problem--mathematical, scientific, political, economic, strategic, psychological, even philosophical and ethical. Well, I'd say that ahundred million cubic feet would be the smallest even conceivable. "

They all nodded seriously. They were willing to accept that--or anythingelse, except one thing. 

"Lot of places on this planet where a thing that size could be hidden, "Tom Brangwyn said, undismayed. "A planet's a mighty big place. "

"It could be under water, in one of the seas, " Piet Dawes, the banker, suggested. "An underwater dome city wouldn't be any harder to build thana dome city on a poison-atmosphere planet like Tubal-Cain. "

"It might even be on Tubal-Cain, " a melon-planter said. "Or Hiawatha, oreven one of the Beta or Gamma planets. The Third Force was occupying thewhole Trisystem, you know. " He thought for a moment. "If I'd been incharge, I'd have put it on one of the moons of Pantagruel. "

"But that's clear out in the Alpha System, " Judge Ledue objected. "Wedon't have a spaceship on the planet, certainly nothing with ahyperdrive engine. And it would take a lifetime to get out to the GammaSystem and back on reaction drive. "

Conn put his empty brandy glass on the table and sat erect. A newthought had occurred to him, chasing out of his mind all the worries andfears he had brought with him all the way from Terra. 

"Then we'll have to build a ship, " he said calmly. "I know, when theFederation evacuated Poictesme, they took every hyperdrive ship withthem. But they had plenty of shipyards and spaceports on this planet, and I have maps showing the location of all of them, and barely a thirdof them have been discovered so far. I'm sure we can find enough hulks, and enough hyperfield generator parts, to assemble a ship or two, and Iknow we'll find the same or better on some of the other planets. 

"And here's another thing, " he added. "When we start looking into someof the dome-city plants on Tubal-Cain and Hiawatha and Moruna andKoshchei, we may find the plant or plants where the components for theBrain were fabricated, and if we do, we may find records of where theywere shipped, and that'll be it. "

"You're right!" Professor Kellton cried, quivering with excitement. "We've been hunting at random for the Brain, so it would only be anaccident if we found it. We'll have to do this systematically, and withConn to help us--Conn, why not build a computer? I don't mean anotherBrain; I mean a computer to help us find the Brain. "

"We can, but we may not even need to build one. When we get out to theindustrial planets, we may find one ready except for perhaps some minoralterations. "

"But how are we going to finance all this?" Klem Zareff demandedquerulously. "We're poorer than snakes, and even one hyperdrive ship'sgoing to cost like Gehenna. "

"I've been thinking about that, Klem, " Fawzi said. "If we can findmaterial at these shipyards Conn knows about, most of our expense willbe labor. Well, haven't we ten workmen competing for every job? Theydon't really need money, only the things money can buy. We can raisefood on the farms and provide whatever else they need out of Federationsupplies. "

"Sure. As soon as it gets around that we're really trying to dosomething about this, everybody'll want in on it, " Tom Brangwynpredicted. 

"And I have no doubt that the Planetary Government at Storisende willgive us assistance, once we show that this is a practical and productiveenterprise, " Judge Ledue put in. "I have some slight influence with thePresident and--"

"I'm not too sure we want the Government getting into this, " Kurt Fawzireplied. "Give them half a chance and that gang at Storisende'll squeezeus right out. "

"We can handle this ourselves, " Brangwyn agreed. "And when we get somekind of a ship and get out to the other two systems, or even just toTubal-Cain or Hiawatha, first thing you know, we'll _be_ the PlanetaryGovernment. "

"Well, now, Tom, " Fawzi began piously, "the Brain is too big a thing fora few of us to try to monopolize; it'll be for all Poictesme. Of course, it's only proper that we, who are making the effort to locate it, shouldhave the direction of that effort. .. . "

While Fawzi was talking, Rodney Maxwell went to the table, rummaged hispistol out of the pile and buckled it on. The mayor stopped short. 

"You leaving us, Rod?"

"Yes, it's getting late. Conn and I are going for a little walk; we'llbe at Senta's in half an hour. The fresh air will do both of us good andwe have a lot to talk about. After all, we haven't seen each other forover five years. "

 * * * * *

They were silent, however, until they were away from the AirportBuilding and walking along High Garden Terrace in the direction of theMall. Conn was glad; his own thoughts were weighing too heavily withinhim: I didn't do it. I was going to do it; every minute, I was going todo it, and I didn't, and now it's too late. 

"That was quite a talk you gave them, son, " his father said. "Theybelieved every word of it. A couple of times, I even caught myselfstarting to believe it. "

Conn stopped short. His father stopped beside him and stood looking athim. 

"Why didn't you tell them the truth?" Rodney Maxwell asked. 

The question angered Conn. It was what he had been asking himself. 

"Why didn't I just grab a couple of pistols off the table and shoot thelot of them?" he retorted. "It would have killed them quicker andwouldn't have hurt as much. "

His father took the cigar from his mouth and inspected the tip of it. "The truth must be pretty bad then. There is no Brain. Is that it, son?"

"There never was one. I'm not saying that only because I know it wouldbe impossible to build such a computer. I'm telling you what the one manin the Galaxy who ought to know told me--the man who commanded the ThirdForce during the War. "

"Foxx Travis! I didn't know he was still alive. You actually talked tohim?"

"Yes. He's on Luna, keeping himself alive at low gravity. It took me acouple of years, and I was afraid he'd die before I got to him, but Ifinally managed to see him. "

"What did he tell you?"

"That no such thing as the Brain ever existed. " They started walkingagain, more slowly, toward the far edge of the terrace, with the sky redand orange in front of them. "The story was all through the Third Force, but it was just one of those wild tales that get started, nobody knowshow, among troops. The High Command never denied or even discouraged it. It helped morale, and letting it leak to the enemy was goodpsychological warfare. "

"Klem Zareff says that everybody in the Alliance army heard of theBrain, " his father said. "That was why he came here in the first place. "He puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. "You said a computer like the Brainwould be an impossibility. Why? Wouldn't it be just another computer, only a lot bigger and a lot smarter?"

"Dad, computermen don't like to hear computers called smart, " Conn said. "They aren't. The people who build them are smart; a computer only knowswhat's fed to it. They can hold more information in their banks than aman can in his memory, they can combine it faster, they don't get tiredor absent-minded. But they can't imagine, they can't create, and theycan't do anything a human brain can't. "

"You know, I'd wondered about just that, " said his father. "And none ofthe histories of the War even as much as mentioned the Brain. And Icouldn't see why, after the War, they didn't build dozens of them tohandle all these Galactic political and economic problems that nobodyseems able to solve. A thing like the Brain wouldn't only be useful forwar; the people here aren't trying to find it for war purposes. "

"You didn't mention any of these doubts to the others, did you?"

"They were just doubts. You knew for sure, and you couldn't tell them. "

"I'd come home intending to--tell them there was no Brain, tell them tostop wasting their time hunting for it and start trying to figure outthe answers themselves. But I couldn't. They don't believe in the Brainas a tool, to use; it's a machine god that they can bring all theirtroubles to. You can't take a thing like that away from people withoutgiving them something better. "

"I noticed you suggested building a spaceship and agreed with theprofessor about building a computer. What was your idea? To take theirminds off hunting for the Brain and keep them busy?"

Conn shook his head. "I'm serious about the ship--ships. You and ColonelZareff gave me that idea. "

His father looked at him in surprise. "I never said a word in there, andKlem 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 youselling arms and ammunition by the ton. Why, on Terra or Baldur orUller, a glass of our brandy brings more than these freighter-captainsgive us for a cask, and what do you think a colonist on Agramma, orSekht, or Hachiman, who has to fight for his life against savages andwild animals, would pay for one of those rifles and a thousand rounds ofammunition?"

His father objected. "We can't base the whole economy of a planet onbrandy. Only about ten per cent of the arable land on Poictesme willgrow wine-melons. And if we start exporting Federation salvage the wayyou talk of, we'll be selling pieces instead of job lots. We'll netmore, but--"

"That's just to get us started. The ships will be used, after that, toget to Tubal-Cain and Hiawatha and the planets of the Beta and GammaSystems. What I want to see is the mines and factories reopened, peopleemployed, wealth being produced. "

"And where'll we sell what we produce? Remember, the mines closed downbecause there was no more market. "

"No more interstellar market, that's true. But there are a hundred andfifty million people on Poictesme. That's a big enough market and a bigenough labor force to exploit the wealth of the Gartner Trisystem. Wecan have prosperity for everybody on our own resources. Just what do weneed that we have to get from outside now?"

His father stopped again and sat down on the edge of a fountain--thesame one, possibly, from which Conn had seen dust blowing as the airshiphad been coming in. 

"Conn, that's a dangerous idea. That was what brought on the SystemStates War. The Alliance planets took themselves outside the Federationeconomic orbit and the Federation crushed them. "

Conn swore impatiently. "You've been listening to old Klem Zareffranting about the Lost Cause and the greedy Terran robber barons holdingthe Galaxy in economic serfdom while they piled up profits. TheFederation didn't fight that war for profits; there weren't any profitsto fight for. They fought it because if the System States had won, halfof them would be at war among themselves now. Make no mistake about it, politically I'm all for the Federation. But economically, I want to seeour people exploiting their own resources for themselves, instead ofgrieving about lost interstellar trade, and bewailing bumper crops, andsearching for a mythical robot god. "

"You think, if you can get something like that started, that they'llforget about the Brain?" his father asked skeptically. 

"That crowd up in Kurt Fawzi's office? Niflheim, no! They'll go onhunting for the Brain as long as they live, and every day they'll beexpecting to find it tomorrow. That'll keep them happy. But they're allold men. The ones I'm interested in are the boys of Charley's age. I'mgoing to give them too many real things to do--building ships, exploringthe rest of the Trisystem, opening mines and factories, producingwealth--for them to get caught in that empty old dream. "

He looked down at the dusty fountain on which his father sat. "Thatghost-dream haunts this graveyard. I want to give them living dreamsthat they can make come true. "

Conn's father sat in silence for a while, his cigar smoke red in thesunset. "If you can do all that, Conn. .. . You know, I believe you can. I'm with you, as far as I can help, and we'll have a talk with Charley. He's a good boy, Conn, and he has a lot of influence among the otheryoungsters. " He looked at his watch. "We'd better be getting along. Youdon't want to be late for your own coming-home party. "

Rodney Maxwell slid off the edge of the fountain to his feet, hitchingat the gunbelt under his coat. Have to dig out his own gun and startwearing it, Conn thought. A man simply didn't go around in publicwithout a gun in Litchfield. It wasn't decent. And he'd be spending alot of time out in the brush, where he'd really need one. 

First thing in the morning, he'd unpack that trunk and go over all thosemaps. There were half a dozen spaceports and maintenance shops andshipyards within a half-day by airboat, none of which had been looted. He'd look them all over; that would take a couple of weeks. Pick thebest shipyard and concentrate on it. Kurt Fawzi'd be the man to recruitlabor. Professor Kellton was a scholar, not a scientist. He didn't knowbeans about hyperdrive engines, but he knew how to do library research. 

They came to the edge of High Garden Terrace at the escalator, longmotionless, its moving parts rusted fast, that led down to the Mall, andat the bottom of it was Senta's, the tables under the open sky. 

A crowd was already gathering. There was Tom Brangwyn, and there wasKurt Fawzi and his wife, and Lynne. And there was Senta herself, fat anddumpy, in one of her preposterous red-and-purple dresses, bustlingabout, bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at somelaggard waiter the next. 

The dinner, Conn knew, would be the best he had eaten in five years, andafterward they would sit in the dim glow of Beta Gartner, sipping coffeeand liqueurs, smoking and talking and visiting back and forth from onetable to another, as they always did in the evenings at Senta's. Anotherbit from Eirrarsson's poem came back to him:

 _We sit in the twilight, the shadows among, And we talk of the happy days when we were brave and young. _

That was for the old ones, for Colonel Zareff and Judge Ledue and DolfKellton, maybe even for Tom Brangwyn and Franz Veltrin and for hisfather. But his brother Charley and the boys of his generation wouldhave a future to talk about. And so would he, and Lynne Fawzi. 

--H. BEAM PIPER