"Without a trial?"
"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd let him live after all the things he's done, do you?"
Red Mask was stunned in Quadrant Four in a corridor by a policeman named Terryl Placer on the 201st day. The criminal was carried to the assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. In the assembly hall his mask was whipped off. The crowd gasped. Nobody knew him.
Ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he remembered the face, and Captain Branson, who came to have a look at him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. His name was Harrel Critten and he was a record keeper third class.
"Well, Critten," Branson roared at him, "what have you got to say for yourself?"
"Go to hell," Critten said quietly. As if it were an afterthought, he spat at the captain.
Branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there and then.
It was a long trial—from the 220th to the 241st day—and there didn't seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for Critten didn't help his own cause during any of it.
Lemuel Tarper, who was appointed prosecutor, asked him, "What did you do with the loot, Critten?"