"Excellent suggestion, Conn. Judge, will you preside?" Professor Kellton, who had seen himself losing out to Fawzi, asked. Fawzi threw one quick look around, estimated the situation, and got with it. "Of course, Judge. You're the logical chairman. Here, will you sit here?" Judge Ledue took the chair, looked around for something to use as a gavel, and rapped sharply with a paperweight. "Young Mr. Conn Maxwell, who has just returned from Terra, needs no introduction to any of you," he began. Then, having established that, he took the next ten minutes to introduce Conn. When people began fidgeting, he wound up with: "Now, only about a dozen of us were at the informal meeting in Mr. Fawzi's office, yesterday. Conn, would you please repeat what you told us? Elaborate as you see fit." Conn rose. He talked briefly about his studies on Terra to qualify himself as an expert. Then he began describing the wealth of abandoned and still undiscovered Federation war material and the many installations of which he had learned, careful to avoid giving clues to exact locations. The spaceport; the underground duplicate Force Command Headquarters; the vast underground arsenals and shops and supply depots. Everybody was awed, even his father; he hadn't had time to tell him more than a fraction of it. Finally, somebody from the long table interrupted: "Well, Conn; how about Merlin? That's what we're interested in." Wade Lucas snorted indignantly. "He's telling you about real things, things worth millions of sols, and you want him to talk about that idiotic fantasy!" There was an angry outcry. Nobody actually shouted "_To the stake with the blasphemer!_" but that was the general idea. Judge Ledue was rapping loudly for order. "I don't know the exact location of Merlin." Conn strove to make himself heard. "The whole subject's classified top secret. But I am certain that Merlin exists, if not on Poictesme then somewhere in the Alpha System, and I am equally certain that we can find it." Cheers. He waited for the hubbub to subside. Lucas was trying to yell above it. "You admit you couldn't learn anything about this so-called Merlin, but you're still certain it exists?" "Why are you certain it doesn't?" "Why, the whole thing's absurdly fantastic!" "Maybe it is, to a layman like you. I studied computers, and it isn't to me." "Well, take all these elaborate preparations against space attack you were telling us about. I think Colonel Zareff, here, who served in the Alliance Army, will bear me out that such an attack was plainly impossible." Zareff started to agree, then realized that he was aiding and comforting the enemy. "Intelligence lag," he said. "What do you expect, with General Headquarters thirty parsecs from the fighting?"