"I'd offered it to the Power Board," said Hoddan, with satisfaction, "and I was thrown out. You had me thrown out! What did it do?"
"It substituted for the receptor you smashed," said the attorney. "It continued to supply some two hundred million kilowatts for the Mid-Continent industrial area. In fact, your crime was only discovered because the original receptor had to be regularly serviced. Being set to draw peak power at all times, the unused power is wasted by burning carbon. So when the attendants went to replace the supposedly burned carbon and found it unused, they discovered what you had done."
"My receptor saved carbon, then," said Hoddan triumphantly. "That means it saved money. I saved the Power Board plenty while it was connected! They wouldn't believe I could. Now they know. I did!"
The justice said:
"Irrelevant. You have the charges. In legal terms, you are charged with burglary, trespassing, breaking and entering, unlawful entry, malicious mischief, breach of the peace, sabotage, and endangering the employment of citizens. Discuss the charges, please!"
"I'm telling you!" protested Hoddan. "I offered the thing to the Power Board. They said they were satisfied with what they had and wouldn't listen. So I proved what they wouldn't listen to! That receptor saved them ten thousand credits' worth of carbon a week! It'll save half a million credits a year in every power station that uses it! If I know the Power Board, they're going right on using it while they arrest me for putting it to work!"
The courtroom, in its entirety, visibly shivered.
"Aren't they?" demanded Hoddan belligerently.
"They are not," said the justice, tight-lipped. "It has been smashed and melted down."
"Then they'll look at my patents!" insisted Hoddan. "It's stupid—"
"The patent records," said the justice with unnecessary vehemence, "have been destroyed. Your possessions have been searched for copies. Nobody will ever look at your drawings again—not if they are wise!"
"Wha-a-at?" demanded Hoddan incredulously. "Wha-a-at?"
"I will amend the record of this hearing before it is published," said the justice shakily. "I should not have made that comment. I ask permission of the citizen's representative to amend."
"Granted," said the representative before he had finished. The justice said quickly:
"The charges have been admitted by the defendant. Since the complainant does not wish punitive action taken against him—"
"He'd be silly if he did," grunted Hoddan.
"—and merely wishes security against repetition of the offense, I rule that the defendant may be released upon posting suitable bond for good behavior in the future. That is, he will be required to post bond which will be forfeited if he ever again enters a power station enclosure, passes no-trespassing signs, ignores no-admittance signs, and-or smashes apparatus belonging to the complainant."
"All right," said Hoddan indignantly. "I'll raise it somehow. If they're too stupid to save money . . . How much bond?"
"The court will take it under advisement and will notify the defendant within the customary two hours," said the justice at top speed. He swallowed. "The defendant will be kept in close confinement until the bond is posted. The hearing is ended."
He did not look at Hoddan. Courtroom guards put stun-pistols against Hoddan's body and ushered him out.
Presently his friend Derec came to see him in the tool-steel cell in which he had been placed. Derec looked white and stricken.
"I'm in trouble because I'm your friend, Bron," he said miserably, "but I asked permission to explain things to you. After all, I caused your arrest. I urged you not to connect up your receptor without permission!"
"I know," growled Hoddan, "but there are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn't realize that there are people so stupid you can't show them anything!"
"You showed something you didn't intend," said Derec miserably. "Bron, I—I have to tell you. When they went to charge the carbon bins at the power station, they—they found a dead man, Bron!"
Hoddan sat up.
"What's that?"
"Your machine . . . killed him. He was outside the building at the foot of a tree. Your receptor killed him through a stone wall! It broke his bones and killed him." Derec wrung his hands. "At some stage of power-drain your receptor makes death rays!"
Hoddan had had a good many shocks today. When Derec arrived, he'd been incredulously comparing the treatment he'd received and the panic about him, with the charges made against him in court. They didn't add up. This new, previously undisclosed item left him speechless. He goggled at Derec, who fairly wept.
"Don't you see?" asked Derec pleadingly. "That's why I had to tell the police it was you. We can't have death rays! The police can't let anybody go free who knows how to make them! This is a wonderful world, but there are lots of crackpots. They'll do anything! The police daren't let it even be suspected that death rays can be made! That's why you weren't charged with murder. People all over the planet would start doing research, and sooner or later would come up with what you discovered. With such a tool in the hands of the crackpots, life would be cheap, indeed! For the sake of our civilization your secret has to be suppressed—and you with it. It's terrible for you, Bron, but there's nothing else to do!"
Hoddan said dazedly:
"But I only have to put up a bond to be released!"
"The justice," said Derec tearfully, "didn't name it in court, because it would have to be published. But he's set your bond at fifty million credits. Nobody could raise that for you, Bron! And with the reason for it what it is, you'll never be able to get it reduced!"
"But anybody who looks at the plans of the receptor will know it can't make death rays!" protested Hoddan blankly.
"Nobody will look," said Derec tearfully. "Anybody who knows how to make it will have to be locked up. They checked the patent examiners. They've forgotten. Nobody dared examine the device you had working. They'd be jailed if they understood it! Nobody will ever risk learning how to make death rays—not on a world as civilized as this, with so many people anxious to kill everybody else. You have to be locked up forever, Bron. You have to!"
Hoddan said inadequately:
"Oh."
"I beg your forgiveness for having you arrested," said Derec in abysmal sorrow, "but I couldn't do anything but tell . . ."
Hoddan stared at his cell wall. Derec went away weeping. He was an admirable, honorable, not-too-bright young man who had been Hoddan's only friend.
Hoddan stared blankly at nothing. As an event, it was preposterous, and yet it was wholly natural. When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked. The high brass on the Power Board considered that everything was moving smoothly. There was no need to consider new devices. Hoddan's drawings and plans had simply never been bothered with, because there was no recognized need for them. And when he forced acknowledgment that his receptor worked, the unwelcome demonstration was highly offensive in itself. It was natural, it was inevitable, it should have been infallibly certain that any possible excuse for not thinking about the receptor would be seized upon. And a single dead man found near the operating demonstrator . . . Now, if one assumed that the demonstrator had killed him, why one could react emotionally, feel vast indignation, frantically command that the device and its inventor be suppressed together—and then go on living happily without doing any thinking or making any other change in anything at all.