"Conn, I'm scared," his father said. "I'm beginning to think there really is a Merlin, after all." "Oh, come off it! I know it's contagious, but I thought you'd been vaccinated." "I'm beginning to think so, too," Lucas said. "I don't like it at all." "You know what that gang who took the _Andromeda_ to Panurge found?" "They were looking for the plant that fabricated the elements for Merlin, weren't they?" "Yes. They found it. My Barton-Massarra operatives got to some of the crew. This place had been turning out material for a computer of absolutely unconventional design; the two computermen they had with them couldn't make head or tail of half of it. And every blueprint, every diagram, every scrap of writing or recording, had been destroyed. But they found one thing, a big empty fiber folder that had fallen under something and been overlooked. It was marked: TOP SECRET. PROJECT MERLIN." "Project Merlin could have been anything," Conn started to say. No. Project Merlin was something they made computer parts for. "Dolf Kellton's research crew, at the Library here, came across some references to Project Merlin, too. For instance, there was a routine division court-martial, a couple of second lieutenants, on a very trivial charge. Force Command ordered the court-martial stopped, and the two officers simply dropped out of the Third Force records, it was stated that they were engaged in work connected with Project Merlin. That's an example; there were half a dozen things like that." "Tell him what Kurt Fawzi and his crew found," Wade Lucas said. "Yes. They have a fifty-foot shaft down from the top of the mesa almost to the top of the underground headquarters. They found something on top of the headquarters; a disc-shaped mass, fifty feet thick and a hundred across, armored in collapsium. It's directly over what used to be Foxx Travis's office." "That's not a tenth big enough for anything that could even resemble Merlin." "Well, it's something. I was out there day before yesterday. They're down to the collapsium on top of this thing; I rode down the shaft in a jeep and looked at it. Look, Conn, we don't know what this Project Merlin was; all this lore about Merlin that's grown up since the War is pure supposition." "But Foxx Travis told me, categorically, that there was no Merlin Project," Conn said. "The War's been over forty years; it's not a military secret any longer. Why would he lie to me?" "Why did you lie to Kurt Fawzi and the others and tell them there was a Merlin? You lied because telling the truth would hurt them. Maybe Travis had the same reason for lying to you. Maybe Merlin's too dangerous for anybody to be allowed to find." "Great Ghu, are you beginning to think Merlin is the Devil, or Frankenstein's Monster?" "It might be something just as bad. Maybe worse. I don't think a man like Foxx Travis would lie if he didn't have some overriding moral obligation to."