"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."
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.