n instant, a large section of its interior was
visible to the instruments of the watchers on Earth; then the picture
blurred and vanished again. Presumably automatic anti-scanning devices
had gone into action.

The photographed view was disappointing in that it revealed no details
of the engines or their instruments. It did show, however, that the
ship had been designed for the use of one man, and that it was neither
armored or armed. Its hull was therefore bathed with paralytics, which
in theory should have left the pilot helpless, and ships of the
Machine were then sent up to tow the interstellar captive down to
Earth.

At that point, the procedure collapsed. The ship was in atmosphere
when an escape capsule was suddenly ejected from it, which later was
found to contain Rainbolt, alert and obviously not affected by the
paralysis beams. A moment later, the ship itself became a cloud of
swiftly dissipating hot gas.

The partial failure of the capture might have been unavoidable in any
case. But the manner in which it occurred still reflected very poorly,
Menesee thought, on the thoroughness with which the plans had been
prepared. The directors who had been in charge of the operation would
not be dealt with lightly--

He became aware suddenly that the proceedings of the day had begun and
hastily put down the transcript.

* * * * *

Spokesman Dorn, the Machine's executive officer, sitting beside
Administrator Bradshaw at a transparent desk on the raised platform to
Menesee's left, had enclosed the area about the prisoner with a sound
block and was giving a brief verbal resume of the background of the
situation. Few of the directors in the Tribunal Hall would have needed
such information; but the matter was being carried on the Grand
Assembly Circuit, and in hundreds of auditoriums on Earth the first
and second echelons of the officials of the Machine had gathered to
witness the interrogation of the Mars Convict spy.

The penal settlements on Mars had been established almost a century
earlier, for the dual purpose of mining the mineral riches of the
Fourth Planet and of utilizing the talents of political dissidents
with a scientific background too valuable to be wasted in research and
experimental work considered either too dangerous to be conducted on
Earth or requiring more space than could easily be made available
there. One of these projects had been precisely the development of