seven
were going to scream to high heaven, and Agsk was least likely to be
able to retaliate against any expressions of indignation.

* * * * *

Agskians, as everyone knows, are fairly humanoid beings, primitives
from the outer edge of the Galaxy. They were like college freshmen
invited to a senior fraternity. This was their Big Chance to Make
Good.

The Eel, taciturn as ever, was delivered to a delegation of six of
them sent to meet him in one of their lumbering spaceships, a low
countergrav machine such as Earth had outgrown several millennia
before. They were so afraid of losing him that they put a metal belt
around him with six chains attached to it, and fastened all six of
themselves to him. Once on Agsk, he was placed in a specially made
stone pit, surrounded by guards, and fed through the only opening.

In preparation for the influx of visitors to the trial, an anticipated
greater assembly of off-planeters than little Agsk had ever seen, they
evacuated their capital city temporarily, resettling all its citizens
except those needed to serve and care for the guests, and remodeled
the biggest houses for the accommodation of those who had peculiar
space, shape, or other requirements.

Never since the Galactic Federation was founded had so many beings,
human, humanoid, semi-humanoid and non-humanoid, gathered at the same
time on any one member-planet. Every newstape, tridimens, audio and
all other varieties of information services--even including the drum
amplifiers of Medoris and the ray-variants of Eb--applied for and were
granted a place in the courtroom. This, because no other edifice was
large enough, was an immense stone amphitheater usually devoted to
rather curious games with animals; since it rains on Agsk only for two
specified hours on every one of their days, no roof was needed. At
every seat, there was a translatophone, with interpreters ready in
plastic cages to translate the Intergalactic in which the trial was
conducted into even the clicks and hisses of Jorg and the eye-flashes
of Omonro.

And in the midst of all this, the cause and purpose of it all, sat the
legendary Eel.

Seen at last, he was hardly an impressive figure. Time had been going
on and The Eel was in his fifties, bald and a trifle paunchy. He was
completely ordinary in appearance, a circumstance which had, of
course, enabled him to pass unobserved on so many planets; he looked
like a salesman or