Cold sweat drenched his body. Now that he was but feet away from the room where the erasure would take place, he wanted out desperately, wanted some chance to prove that he hadn't conspired with the androids, hadn't aided in the revolt, hadn't helped to murder 12 fellow Patrolmen and wreck the Iapetus project.

"You go in here," someone said to him.

The door marked Mnemonics Laboratory was swinging open to receive him.

There was no way out.

Four gray-smocked technicians waited inside for him. One of the guards with him said, "This is Mannion. He was just sentenced upstairs."

"I know. The order came down the pneumotubes a minute ago. Total erasure."

"That's right," the guard said. "He gets wiped clean."

"Will you lead him to the machines, please?"

Dan went forward and faced a complex angle of probes and dials, "Is this the machine that does it?" he asked uneasily.

"That's right. It'll be over in a minute, Lieutenant Mannion. We clamp the electrodes to your scalp and run preliminary tests with an electoencephalograph—and then we use the Eraser."

"Will it be painful?"

"It'll be quick. There won't be anything more than a faint tickling sensation, and then—"

"Then Dan Mannion ceases to exist." He stared appealingly at the technician in charge and said, "Listen—does the sentence have to be carried out at once?"

"The order says immediately. We have the machine all ready for you."

Dan felt perspiration trickling down his body. "Can you wait a few minutes? There's something I'd like you to do for me?"

"What's that?"

"Probe my mind. I'm suffering from amnesia—a short-range blockage of the critical era around the time the android mutiny took place. Couldn't you—?"

"Impossible. Not without a court order, at any rate. And the trial's over."

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