new, big ships, coming here and getting all the copper Earth needs!"

He was, Carlin knew, trying to reach home to the dimming mind with that reassurance, that assurance that the dying man had not given away life in vain.

It didn't reach Jonny Land. He wasn't Jonny Land any longer, he was just a living creature dying in pain, and he couldn't feel or know anything but pain. And then the pain went, and life went with it, and his face was a lax, empty mask that had no meaning for them.

Loesser sobbed: "He didn't know—he didn't know what I was saying!"

Carlin felt dull, tired, drained of emotion. He had just seen the only hero he had ever known die, but a hero's death was just death, just mortal pang and final release.

He went forward to the pilot room.

"Jonny's dead," he said to Harb Land.

Harb's shoulders sagged, but he did not turn as he guided the "Phoenix" on spaceward to where the grim Control cruisers waited.

Control Court here in New York was only a small room in the building by the spaceport. There were no officials in it except the three middle-aged judges who sat behind a small table and prepared to pass sentence on Laird Carlin and his seven comrades.

There were no lawyers, no oratory, no jurymen. They were not needed. The government psychologists who had quietly questioned the accused men during their four days in prison had submitted the factual hypnosis records which were complete and incontrovertible evidence.

The chief judge, the man in the middle, quietly read the decision as Carlin and the others faced him.

"This court is placed in a peculiarly difficult position in assessing your offense. On the one hand, you men deliberately broke a Control Council regulation and defied its officers. On the other hand, your action has proved the practicability of a process of Sun-mining which will be of incalculable value to this and every other System in the galaxy.

"To forgive your offense because the ultimate result was good would be to set a fatal precedent. It would establish the principle that illegal means do not matter if end-purposes are good. We cannot permit such a precedent to be established. Therefore, regretfully, this court must pass the prescribed punishment for your offense."

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