though he never wanted to ask another
witness another question as long as he lived. "Mr. Brannhard?"

Gus got up, holding a sapient member of a sapient race who was hanging
onto his beard, and thanked Ernst Mallin fulsomely.

"In that case, we'll adjourn until o-nine-hundred tomorrow. Mr. Coombes, I
have here a check on the chartered Zarathustra Company for twenty-five
thousand sols. I am returning it to you and I am canceling Dr. Kellogg's
bail," Judge Pendarvis said, as a couple of attendants began getting
Mallin loose from the veridicator.

"Are you also canceling Jack Holloway's?"

"No, and I would advise you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. The
only reason I haven't dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that I
don't want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in the
prosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consider
your client, Dr. Kellogg."

"Frankly, your Honor, so do I," Coombes admitted. "My protest was merely
an example of what Dr. Mallin would call conditioned reflex."

Then a crowd began pushing up around the table; Ben Rainsford, George Lunt
and his troopers, Gerd and Ruth, shoving in among them, their arms around
each other.

"We'll be at the hotel after a while, Jack," Gerd was saying. "Ruth and I
are going out for a drink and something to eat; we'll be around later to
pick up her Fuzzies."

Now his partner had his girl back, and his partner's girl had a Fuzzy
family of her own. This was going to be real fun. What were their names
now? Syndrome, Complex, Id and Superego. The things some people named
Fuzzies!

XVI

They stopped whispering at the door, turned right, and ascended to the
bench, bearing themselves like images in a procession, Ruiz first, then
himself and then Janiver. They turned to the screen so that the public
whom they served might see the faces of the judges, and then sat down. The
court crier began his chant. They could almost feel the tension in the
courtroom. Yves Janiver whispered to them:

"They all know about it."

As soon as the crier had stopped, Max Fane approached the bench, his face
blankly expressionless.

"Your Honors, I am ashamed to have to report that the defendant, Leonard
Kellogg, cannot be produced in court. He is dead; he committed suicide in
his cell last night. While in my custody," he added bitterly.

The stir that went through the courtroom was not shocked surprise, it was
a sigh of fulfilled exp