* * * * *

He pushed me away savagely. "If you killed her for this stuff or
because of that crazy yarn you gave me, I'm a cop and you're no
friend. You're just a plain killer I happened to have known once, and
I'll make sure you fry."

"You always did have a taste for that kind of dialogue. Go ahead and
wrap me up in an airtight case, have them throw the book at me, send
me up the river, put me in the hot squat. But you'll have to do the
proving, not me."

He headed for the stairs. "I will. And don't try to make a break or
I'll plug you as if I never saw you before."

He put in a call at the phone upstairs. I didn't give a particular
damn who it was he'd called. I was too relieved that I hadn't killed
May Roberts; destroying anything that beautiful, however evil, would
have stayed with me the rest of my life. There was another reason for
my relief--if I'd killed her and left the evidence for Lou to find,
he'd never help me. No, that's not quite so; he'd probably have tried
to get me to plead insanity on the basis of my unbelievable
explanation.

But most of all, I couldn't get rid of the look on her face when I'd
shot her through the arm, the arm that was so wonderful to look at and
that had held a murderous little gun to greet me with.

She was in the future now. She wouldn't be executed by them; they
regarded crime as an illness, and they'd treat her with their
marvelously advanced therapy and she'd become a useful, contented
citizen, living out her existence in an era that had given me more
happiness than I'd ever had.

I sat and tried to stupefy myself with brandy that should long ago
have dried to brick-hardness, while Lou Pape stood at the door with
his hand near his holster and glared at me. He didn't take his eyes
off me until somebody named Prof. Jeremiah Aaronson came in and was
introduced briefly and flatly to me. Then Lou took him upstairs.

It was minutes before I realized what they were going to do. I ran up
after them.

I was just in time to see Aaronson carefully take the housing off the
hooded motors, and leap back suddenly from the fury of lightning
sparks.

* * * * *

The whole machine fused while we watched helplessly--motors, switches,
panel and mesh cage. They flashed blindingly and blew apart and melted
together in a charred and molten pile.

"Rigged," Aaronson said in the tone of a bitter curse. "Set to short
if it