ends in obscurity However, when human genius combines with movement in fee fades of the people, new directions result Such a combination was the Butlenan Jihad Sheivvun was the first historian to point out that the Empire rested on a tnpedal structure, consisting of House Comno (backed by the Sardaukar), the Spacing Guild, and CHOAM The Jihad cleared the way for the establishment of all three of the organizations, none of which had existed before the Great Revolt In researching the conditions that led to the foundation of the Empire, Sheivvun was necessarily drawn to considering the events that had cleared the path He began by examining the systems of commerce and government Trade depends, of course,, on transportation, and politics on communication Bom of these functions, prior to the Great Revolt, were coordinated by computers-both the patchwork of larger and smaller groups of planetary systems and the traders who served them depended on faster-than-kght ships whose progress through hyperspaee was controlled by computers For example, consider Transcom, a trading corporation lasting for almost seven thousand years the aU-biifr-overwheming amounts of data processed m split-seconds during hyperspatial travel led Transcom to direct its ships from a central computer-bank, Centrans, located on an artificial satellite, Xenophon As a ship entered hyperspaee, its destination was transmitted to Centrans via Holtzman Waves During the ship's progress to pre-designated points en route, Centrans processed the information and prepared course corrections When the ship reached the first "mail drop," it reentered normal space and received course updates from Centrans The computer-bank simultaneously handled routing for Tramcom's more-than-twelve-thousand ships, during its long history, various mercantile associations subscribed to Transcom's service-the Van Rijn combine, A&ionel, Far Traveler Couriers, and many others With a clear perception of the indispensabihty of the communications satellites, the crusaders of the Jihad struck early at Xenophon and similar establishments The result was immedi ate and final the utter collapse of regular interstellar trade Had Transcom (and companies like it) not been destroyed by the Jihad, there would have been no transportation vacuum for the Spacing Guild to fill As with trade, so with government Political organization before the Jihad took many forms, although few planets were absolutely independent Most together with their nearest neighbors, formed federations, confederations, unions, pastorates heterarchies, feudocracies, neofeudocracies coalitions, commonwealths, colonial empires, autonomous dominions- every form ol defoliation thai the ingenuity of ten thousand worlds could create These groupings varied in size from a handful of worlds to mighty parliaments of hundreds of systems Yet every one depended on communication should one member of a federation be endangered, the tall for help was sent forth b)