"Sir, I request special permission to go out there and investig—sir!"

Dubrow was throwing open the airlock—and the androids came rushing in!

He's crazy, Lieutenant Mannion thought. I've got to take charge—keep those androids from wrecking the Project—

"Get away from there, sir! Close the lock!"

"Don't give me orders, Mannion!"

Dan shook his head and started to run toward his superior officer. But suddenly Dubrow charged him.

The abrupt assault bowled him over. Dan ducked and tried to land a punch but Dubrow had his blaster out. A blow crashed into Mannion's forehead. He tried to clear away the cobwebs but Dubrow hit him again and all went dim.

He had a vague memory of Dubrow's directing the androids in a methodical destruction of the Project. Then it was all over and the androids were back where they belonged. Dubrow was holding a hypnomech in front of his eyes, spinning around and around, a dizzying sleep-inducing confusing blare of many colors, around and around, around and around....

And then he was asleep.

"We owe you a great apology, Lieutenant Mannion," the technician was saying. "If you hadn't forced us to probe your mind we would have sent an innocent man to mnemonic erasure. But now we have the record of what actually happened—"

"Hang on to it," Mannion said. "I've got to get upstairs and find Dubrow before he gets out of here."

Without waiting for a word of protest, Dan threw off the mind-probe apparatus, jumped off the table, and raced out into the hall.

He caught the lift tube going up. In all likelihood Dubrow, Virginia, and the judge would still be in the courtroom, working out some settlement of the former Lieutenant Mannion's private property.

He was right.

"Mannion! What are you doing—"

Dan ignored the judge's outcry. "Hello, Dubrow. I just had some of my amnesia removed. That was a pretty clever story you told, wasn't it?"

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