"I'm Officer Soltan Gris of the Apparatus," I said. I tremblingly offered my identoplate.

"Apparatus? Well, fellow, you don't belong here. The Apparatus has its own courts, if they ever use them. I think you've come to the wrong place."

I was terrified that they would put me out that door. By now the Domestic Police would have heard of that crash, and even though they might not know of the Apparatus alert, they would, the second they saw the identifying numbers.

"Your Lordship," I quaked. "The crimes are against the state. I'm the criminal. I am turning myself in."

"Oh, see here, now, this is very irregular," said the justiciary. A man had come through a side door, getting into his coat. His Lordship called to him. "Do we have any Royal warrant for a Soltan Gris?"

"No, Your Lordship. The only outstanding Royal warrants unserved are against Prince Mortiiy and some of his associates. I know all the names and Soltan Gris is not one of them."

The justiciary started to lift his hand to the guards.

"Oh, please, dear Gods," I cried. "Don't put me out that door. I swear to you that I am a criminal. For the love of Heavens, arrest me!"

The justiciary frowned. "I could turn you over to the Domestic Police for creating a disturbance. Would that do?"

The bluebottles would turn me over to Lombar in a second! "Oh, Your Lordship, no! My crimes are Royal, I swear it!"

"Fellow," said His Lordship, "without a warrant and without even a stated crime, there's nothing for you here. Take him away."

"No, no!" INSPIRATION! "A Royal officer was bringing me in to you."

"Really?" said the justiciary. "Well, where is he?"

I was about to say that I had escaped. That would be bad. I was really sweating now. The servants of Hisst could be right outside that door!

"He stopped off somewhere," I cried. "I promised I would report in to you!"

"Oh, come now," said the justiciary. "I think you're just making all this up. Whoever heard of a prisoner reporting in like that?"

INSPIRATION! "Your Lordship," I cried, "I have a witness. Commander Crup at the Emergency Fleet Reserve knows I was under arrest and being brought here."

The justiciary started to shake his head. My knees were shaking. I fell on them. I cupped my hands pleadingly. "Call him– oh, dear Gods, for your hopes of Heavens, please call Commander Crup."

The justiciary was shaking his head in puzzlement at me. But he motioned to the clerk and that worthy picked up a communications instrument, and after some button punching and questions, handed it to the justiciary.

"Commander Crup? This is Lord Turn at the Royal Courts and Prison. Sorry to trouble you at such an hour but we have a rather strange situation here. A man identifying himself as Soltan Gris claims he was being brought here by a Royal officer and that you're a witness to the fact." His Lordship listened. "Well, you don't say. Who? . .. Jettero Heller? Oh, yes, the bullet-ball champion. . . . Oh, yes. I won five credits on him once. Oh, yes, a splendid athlete.... Well, I'm glad that straightens that out. Thank you for your courtesy. Good-bye."

Lord Turn gave back the instrument and looked at me. "Jettero Heller. Fine man. So he was bringing you here, was he?"

"Oh, yes!" I said.

"Well, Commander Crup did not know what the crime was, but I'm sure if Jettero Heller was bringing you here it would have been against the state."

"You can hold me?" I cried with joy.

"Oh, yes. We can put you in a cell. But we need something for the charge sheet. What was the crime?"

"Oh, everything!" I said. "Just everything!"

"That's pretty general," said Lord Turn. "Can't you tell me something more specific?"

"Oh, that would take hours!" I said, anxious to get actually on their books.

"Well, supposing you just write it all down and then we'll know what this is all about."

"All of it?" I said. A new inspiration hit me. A new hope dawned. "If I tell you everything, then can I expect leniency?"

Lord Turn said, "The Royal Court is always ready to be fully just. If you omit nothing and tell the truth, I will give you a very fair hearing. Clerk, have them charge him with 'Conduct against the State in contravention of Royal statutes and decrees.' Order him some medical treatment so he can write, and provide him with pens, papers and a vocoscriber, that sort of thing. Oh, yes, and put him in the tower where there is some light."

I could breathe again.

The justiciary was rising, so I stood. "By the way," he said, "did you know Jettero Heller personally?"

"Oh, yes!" I said. 

"You're fortunate," said Lord Turn. "I'd like to meet him sometime myself. A great bullet-ball player. Good night."

They took me away and put me in a big cell in the tower that had tables and chairs and through the barred windows of which the lights of Government City glittered. They locked the massive door on me.

I stood staring at the sky. There were Domestic Police cars in quite close. Two Apparatus vessels hovered in the sky.

I laughed shakily. They couldn't get me here. I was a prisoner of the State, beyond even Lombar's call!

I was still laughing when a doctor came to handle my wrists and bandage my hands.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the writing materials came.

Oh, I would tell all. I had my records and my logs. I would tell everything I knew about Mission Earth.

Who knew where Heller was?

And the longer I wrote, the longer I would stay alive.

And so this is my narrative. I give it to you, Lord Turn. I do not know another blessed thing.

Be lenient.

But please don't turn me out.

Just execute me quickly!

* SOLTAN GRIS Attested that the foregoing was confessed by said prisoner:

Gummins

Tower Guard, Royal Prison

Scritch

Life Prisoner, adjacent cell

Needless to say, Soltan Gris did NOT get his quick execution. Had this occurred, I would never have gotten the chance to finish this story for you, for myself or for Voltar. (Long Live His Majesty, Wully the Wise!)

Instead of just bursting in upon you unannounced without so much as a trumpet blast, thus shocking your sense of proper decorum and protocol, perhaps I had better introduce myself.

I am Monte Pennwell, lately graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts. I am of average height, average coloration and, according to my mother and innumerable relatives, near and distant, a below-average chance of amounting to anything in life unless I give up the silly notion of becoming a writer of renown. How do you do?

My involvement—and, I trust, yours—in this matter of MISSION EARTH began in a quite bizarre way.

Every month, it is my duty to have lunch with my great-uncle, Lord Dohm, at the Royal Courts and Prison on the hill above Government City. These luncheons are part of a family-wide conspiracy (in which innumerable relatives take part) to get me talked to in the hope that I can be persuaded in some unsubtle way to get busy and amount to something in life, be a credit to my lineage and all that. Lord Dohm favors that I should now take up law. So every month I have to hear from him how I should run my life: He has no use for "scribblers," particularly ones who have never published anything. He means well, of course. They all do.

So I was sitting in his clerical office, waiting for him to finish a briefing on why he should lop off somebody's head. His staff were bustling about, emptying some cabinets which, it seemed, were overstuffed. They were throwing an inordinate quantity of mildew about and a shaft of late morning sunlight, swording through the towering windows, was alive with dust motes.

Suddenly I conceived a poem: I would call it "An Ode to the Dancing Air." It was already wafting through my head and I didn't have anything to write it on.