"You are accused of entering this Department in a tracked vehicle being driven by its own power. The vehicle is of a type no longer receiving maintenance by the Intergalactic Technical Alliance, and therefore could no longer function."
"But, Senior, my vehicle is one which had, by chance, been so well constructed that it never suffered breakdown until—"
"Prisoner, you are lying, and you know the penalty for perjury! Stenosmith, make note of the prisoner's falsehood to the Court. The charges continue: You, Jon Kane, have been apprehended in neighboring Departments within the last two and one-half cycles, on various occasions, at the practice of making tools, and on one occasion at least, of using such tools in the attempted repair of malfunctioning facilities awaiting the legally prescribed maintenance of the ITA. Do you deny this?"
"I—"
"It is therefore the conclusion of this Court that the vehicle in which you rode into this Department was repaired and set into motion by yourself! Do you deny that?"
And suddenly Kane felt something stir inside him; felt it through the fatigue, through the pain, through the torture that threatened to be all-consuming. He stood straight.
"No, Senior! No, I do not deny it! And I not only repaired the track-car, I built it! I built it from parts I stole at night from abandoned scrap heaps! And I made it run!"
The words had barely left his lips before the Troopers who had kept the prescribed distance from him during interrogation by the Court were closed in upon him, their muscular hands on his arms and shoulders like so many vises.
The Prokyman judge had suddenly ceased toying with his mace, and then only the Stenosmith was moving, furiously recording Kane's unthinkable admission.
Then again the magistrate's voice; a slow, measured thing now, of sound without movement, of Death itself.