ringing tones. "The Great God of the Unspeakable Name has
revealed to me whom the defendant most loves. As soon as he is freed,
seize him and slay him. For the only being he loves is--himself."

There was an instant's silence, and then a roar. The Medorans howled
in frustration.

But The Eel, still guarded but unchained, stood up and laughed aloud.

"Your Great God is a fool!" he said blasphemously. "I deny that I love
myself. I care nothing for myself at all."

The priestess-judge sighed. "Since this is your sworn denial, it must
be true," she said. "So then we cannot kill you. Instead, we grant
that you do indeed love no one. Therefore you are a creature so far
outside our comprehension that you cannot come under our laws, no
matter how you have broken them. We shall notify the Federation that
we abandon our jurisdiction and hand you over to our sister-planet
which is next in line to judge you."

Then all the viewers on tridimens on countless planets saw something
that nobody had ever thought to see--The Eel's armor of
self-confidence cracked and terror poured through the gap.

He dropped to his knees and cried: "Wait! Wait! I confess that I
blasphemed your god, but without realizing that I did!"

"You mean," pressed the priestess-judge, "you acknowledge that you
yourself are the only being dear to you?"

"No, not that, either. Until now, I have never known love. But now it
has come upon me like a nova and I must speak the truth." He paused,
still on his knees, and looked piteously at the priestess-judge.
"Are--are you bound by your law to--to believe me and to kill, instead
of me, this--this being I adore?"

"We are so bound," she stated.

"Then," said The Eel, smiling and confident again, rising to his feet,
"before all the Galaxy, I must declare the object of my sudden but
everlasting passion. Great lady, it is you!"

* * * * *

The Eel is still in his pit, which has been made most comfortable by
his sympathizers, while the Council of the Galactic Federation seeks
feverishly and vainly, year after year, to find some legal way out of
the impasse.

Agsk, however, requests all Federation citizens to submit solutions,
the grand prize for a workable answer being a lifetime term as
president of the planet. A secondary contest (prize: lifetime
ambassadorship to the Galactic Federation) is offered for a legal way
around the statute barring criminals (specifically The Eel) fro