glow of unholy glee on Gus Brannhard's face; Coombes didn't
like the idea at all.

"Your Honor, I trust that that suggestion was only made facetiously," he
said.

"It wasn't, Mr. Coombes."

"Then if your Honor will not hold me in contempt for saying so, it is the
most shockingly irregular--I won't go so far as to say improper--trial
procedure I've ever heard of. This is not a case of accomplices charged
with the same crime; this is a case of two men charged with different
criminal acts, and the conviction of either would mean the almost
automatic acquittal of the other. I don't know who's going to be named to
take Mohammed O'Brien's place, but I pity him from the bottom of my heart.
Why, Mr. Brannhard and I could go off somewhere and play poker while the
prosecutor would smash the case to pieces."

"Well, we won't have just one prosecutor, Mr. Coombes, we will have two.
I'll swear you and Mr. Brannhard in as special prosecutors, and you can
prosecute Mr. Brannhard's client, and he yours. I think that would remove
any further objections."

It was all he could do to keep his face judicially grave and unmirthful.
Brannhard was almost purring, like a big tiger that had just gotten the
better of a young goat; Leslie Coombes's suavity was beginning to crumble
slightly at the edges.

"Your Honor, that is a most excellent suggestion," Brannhard declared. "I
will prosecute Mr. Coombes's client with the greatest pleasure in the
universe."

"Well, all I can say, your Honor, is that if the first proposal was the
most irregular I had ever heard, the record didn't last long!"

"Why, Mr. Coombes, I went over the law and the rules of jurisprudence very
carefully, and I couldn't find a word that could be construed as
disallowing such a procedure."

"I'll bet you didn't find any precedent for it either!"

Leslie Coombes should have known better than that; in colonial law, you
can find a precedent for almost anything.

"How much do you bet, Leslie?" Brannhard asked, a larcenous gleam in his
eye.

"Don't let him take your money away from you. I found, inside an hour,
sixteen precedents, from twelve different planetary jurisdictions."

"All right, your Honor," Coombes capitulated. "But I hope you know what
you're doing. You're turning a couple of cases of the People of the Colony
into a common civil lawsuit."

Gus Brannhard laughed. "What else is it?" he demanded. "_Friends of Little
Fuzzy_ versus _The chartered Zarathust