ver loved anybody.

[Illustration]

His mother? His father? He had been an undutiful and unaffectionate
son, and his parents were long since dead in any case. He had never
had a brother, a sister, a wife or a child. No probing could find any
woman with whom he had ever been in love. He had never had an intimate
friend.

He did nothing to help, naturally. He simply sat in his chains and
smiled and waited. He was perfectly willing to be escorted from the
court every evening, relieved of his fetters and placed in his pit. It
was a much pleasanter existence than being executed inch by inch by
the Medorans. For all he cared, the Agskians could go on spending
their planetary income until he finally died of old age.

The priestess-judge and her co-adjutors wore themselves out in
discussions far into the night. They lost up to 15 pounds apiece,
which on Agsk, where the average weight of adults is about 40, was
serious. It began to look as if The Eel's judges would predecease him.

_Whom_ did The Eel love? They went into minutiae and subterfuges. He
had never had a pet to which he was devoted. He had never even loved a
house which could be razed. He could not be said to have loved the
immense fortune he had stolen, for he had concealed his wealth and
used little of it, and in any event it had all been confiscated and,
so far as possible, restored proportionately to those he had robbed.

What he had loved most, doubtless, was his prowess in stealing
unimaginable sums and getting away with it--but there is no way of
"killing" a criminal technique.

* * * * *

Almost a year had passed. Agsk was beginning to wish The Eel had never
been caught, or that they had never been awarded the glory of trying
him.

At last the priestess-judge, in utter despair, took off her judge's
robes, put on the cassock and surplice of her sacred calling, and laid
the problem before the most unapproachable and august of the gods of
Agsk.

The trial was suspended while she lay for three days in a trance on
the high altar. She emerged weak and tottering, her skin light blue
instead of its healthy purple, but her head high and her mouth curved
in triumph.

At sight of her, renewed excitement surged through the audience.
News-gatherers, who had been finding it difficult of late to get
anything to report, rushed to their instruments.

"Remove the defendant's chains and set him free," the priestess-judge
ordered in