"They're no more able to make the decision than we are," Conn said. "But we've got to; they have a right to know...." "If you decide to destroy Merlin, you'll have to decide to kill me, first," Kurt Fawzi said, his voice deadly calm. "You won't do it while I'm alive." "But, Kurt," Ledue expostulated. "You know why these people here at Storisende are rioting? It's because they've lost hope, because they're afraid and desperate. The Terran Federation is something everybody feels they have to have, for peace and order and welfare. If people thought it was breaking up, they'd be desperate, too. They'd do the same insane things these people here on this planet are doing. General Shanlee was right. Don't destroy the hope that keeps them sane." "We don't need to do that," Kurt Fawzi argued. "We can use Merlin to solve our own problems; we don't need to tell the whole Federation what's going to happen in two hundred years." "It would get out; it couldn't help getting out," Ledue said. "Let's not try to decide it ourselves," Conn said. "Let's get Merlin into operation, and run a computation on it." "You mean, ask Merlin to tell us whether it ought to be destroyed or not?" Ledue asked incredulously. "Let Merlin put itself on trial, and sentence itself to destruction?" "Merlin is a computer; computers deal only in facts. Computers are machines; they have no sense of self-preservation. If Merlin ought to be destroyed, Merlin will tell us so." "You willing to leave it up to Merlin, Kurt?" Tom Brangwyn asked. Fawzi gulped. "Yes. If Merlin says we ought to, we'll have to do it." Toward noon, a telecast went out from Koshchei, on a dozen different wave-lengths. Conn, half asleep in a chair in the commander-in-chief's office, saw Simon Macquarte, the young mathematics professor from Storisende College who had become one of the leaders of the colony, appear in the screen. The next moment, he was fully awake, shocked by Macquarte's words: "This is not a threat; this is a solemn, even a prayerful, warning. We do not want to use genocidal weapons of mass destruction against the world of our birth. But whether we do or not rests solely with you. "We came here with a dream of a better world, a world of happiness and plenty for all. We have been working, on Koshchei, to build such a world on Poictesme. Now you are smashing that dream. When it is gone, we will have nothing to live for--except revenge. And we will take that revenge, make no mistake. "We have the weapons with which to take it. Remember, this was a Federation naval base and naval arsenal during the War. Here the Federation Navy built their super-missiles, the missiles which devastated Ashmodai, and Belphegor, and Baphomet, and hundreds of these weapons are here. We have them, ready for launching. Once they are launched, with the robo-pilots set for targets on Poictesme, you will have a hundred and sixty hours, at the most, to live.