sergeant jumped back in the jeep, slammed the top down, and whirled away.

Rhinklav'n turned to the two EXTS officers. "Gentlemen, I've assigned you quarters here, near the Machine. Will you follow me?" Kim and Barnaby followed the Martian a short distance from the edge of the amphitheater to a lone adobe building, one story high and about ten meters square. "Here are your quarters, where you'll stay tonight. Your judging is set for tomorrow morning."

Captain Barnaby glanced into the building and was surprised to see that it closed with an airlock, had terrestrial canned foods on neat shelves, and had regular Service cots in place of the rough mal-leather mats that the Martians slept on. "It was good of you to go to all this trouble just for myself and Lieutenant Kim, Rhinklav'n," the Captain said.

The Martian paused at the door. "It's not just for you, Captain. Five other terrestrials have committed crimes of various proportions within the last few weeks. They will also be tried here, after your case is disposed of." Rhinklav'n left, considerately closing the airlock door and starting the pump on his way out.

Lieutenant Kim took a can of "B" ration beans down from the shelf and thoughtfully began to open it with his Service knife. "Captain," he said, "this sort of thing could drive our Service from Mars. If the Marties consider it their right to judge every Earthling who runs a jeep into a farmer's mal or lands half a meter too near one of their cities, we won't have a man on the planet in a couple of years."

"Kim, we're precedents."

"What do you mean, Yankee?"

"If the Marties succeed in convicting us of murder in some unheard-of degree by using that overgrown Erector Set of theirs, we'll be only the first two of a long string of EXTServicemen to be executed under Mars law. We can't let them do it." Captain Barnaby paused a moment to pour himself out a plateful of beans. "Kim, what was that process you used to rely on back in EXTS Academy in Denver? The one that gave you the right answers after you found that your first solutions to our astrogation problems were a few hundred thousand kilometers off?"

Kim stopped chewing for a moment in surprise. "You mean that you got through the Academy without using the 'finagle factor'? No wonder you made captain so soon. It's simple: I'd look up the right answer in the Service charts, find by what factor my solution was off, and 

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