Dan scowled. "But my life depends on it! My identity is going to be taken away. The least you could have done was look!"

"Come on, Mannion," one of the guards growled. "The time to make your pitch is during the trial, not after the sentence has been pronounced." Dan felt himself shoved forward.

The machine loomed up before him—gigantic, monstrous, a mindless instrument of horror. Within minutes he was going to undergo mnemonic erasure, to have his mind blanked, his identity removed—

For a crime I didn't commit!

Suddenly he felt sure of his innocence. Despite the evidence, despite the testimony, he knew in his heart that he was innocent.

It was a frameup of some sort. It had to be.

He allowed himself to be led up to the machine. But abruptly, as they were unhinging some apparatus to strap to his head, he spun away from the guards who held him lightly, dove, grabbed at a blaster that protruded from a black leather holster—

"Okay," he said. "Get against that wall, all of you. One move I don't like and I'll destroy the whole lab."

His fingers were shaking with inner tension. All his life he had been raised to obey authority, to accept the commands of his superior officers—

And now he was rebelling. He was threatening the destruction of one of Earth's most expensive pieces of equipment.

The threat worked. The four technicians and the two guards backed against the wall.

"What do you want?" the head technician asked.

"I told you before. I want you to probe my mind, to look into that period that's a blank for me. If you find that I'm guilty, I'll—I'll submit to the erasure. If not, I'll demand a new trial. But I won't allow myself to be wiped out without at least a look!"

"All right. We'll probe you," said the technician. "You'll have to be under anesthetic, of course."

"How can I trust you? How do I know you won't put me through mnemonic erasure the moment I submit to being anesthetized?"

The technician had no answer. "I'll tell you," Mannion said. "You're all doctors, aren't you? All four?"

They nodded.

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