Randall Garrett
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The telephone, Malone realized belatedly, had had a particularly nasty-sounding ring. He might have known it would be bad news.
As a matter of fact, he told himself sadly, he had known.
"Nothing at all wrong?" he said into the mouthpiece. "Not with any of the computers?" He blinked. "Not even one of them?"
"Not a thing," Mitchell said. "I'll be sending a report up to you in a little while. You read it; we put them through every test, and it's all detailed there."
"I'm sure you were very thorough," Malone said helplessly.
"Of course we were," Mitchell said. "Of course. And the machines passed every single test. Every one. Malone, it was beautiful."
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