So he went out into the corridor and along it; there was only one way to go. A hundred yards along the corridor two uniformed guards were waiting near an automatic door. They were armed with holstered heaters.
He didn’t speak to them, nor they to him. He fell in between them and the door opened by itself as they approached it. He knew it wouldn’t have opened for him alone. He knew, too, that he could easily take both of them before either could draw a heater. A backhand blow to the guard on his left and then a quick swing across to the other one.
But getting down those thirty stories to the street would be something else again. A chance in a million, with all the safeguards between here and there.
So he walked between them down the ramp to the floor below and to the door of one of the rooms on that floor. And through the door.
He was the last arrival, if you didn’t count the two guards who came in after him. The others were waiting. The six jurors in the box; of whom three would be Guilders and three Gilded. The two attorneys-one of whom had talked to him yesterday in his cell and had told him how hopeless things looked. The operator of the recording machine. And the judge.
He glanced at the judge and almost let an expression of surprise show on his face. The judge was Jon Olliver.
Crag quickly looked away. He wondered what the great Jon Olliver was doing here, judging an unimportant criminal case. Jon Olliver was a great man, one of the few statesmen, as against politicians, of the entire System. Six months ago Olliver had been the Guild candidate for Coordinator of North America. He’d lost the election, but surely he would have retained a more important niche for himself, in the party if not in the government, than an ordinary criminal judge’s job.
True, Olliver had started his political career as a judge; four years ago he’d been on the bench the one previous time Crag had been arrested and tried. The evidence had, that time, been insufficient and the jury had freed him. But he still remembered the blistering jeremiad Olliver had delivered to him afterward, in the private conversation between judge and accused that was customary whether the latter was convicted or acquitted.
Ever since, Crag had hated Jon Olliver as a man, and had admired him as a judge and as a statesman, after Olliver had gone into politics and had so nearly been elected Coordinator.
But Coordinator was the highest position to which any man could aspire. The only authority higher was the Council of Coordinators, made up of seven Coordinators of Earth and four from the planets, one from each major planet inhabited by the human race. The Council of Coordinators was the ultimate authority in the Solar System, which, since interstellar travel looked a long way off, meant the ultimate authority in the known-to-be-inhabited universe. So it seemed almost incredible to Crag that a man who’d almost been a Coordinator should now, in the six months since his candidacy, have dropped back down to the unimportant job he’d held five years ago. But that was politics for you, he thought, in this corrupt age; an honest man didn’t have a chance.
No more of a chance than he was going to have against this frameup the police had rigged against him.
The trial started and he knew he’d been right. The evidence was there-on recording tapes; there were no witnesses-and it proved him completely guilty. It was false, but it sounded true. It took only ten minutes or so to run it off. The prosecuting attorney took no longer; he didn’t have to. His own attorney made a weak and fumbling-but possibly sincere-effort to disprove the apparently obvious.
And that was that. The jury went out and stayed all of a minute, and came back. The defendant was found guilty as charged.
Judge Jon Olliver said briefly, “Indeterminate sentence on Callisto.”
The technician shut off the recording machine; the trial was over.
Crag let nothing show on his face, although there was relief in his mind that it had not been the psycher. Not too much relief; he’d have killed himself if it had been, and death wasn’t much worse than life on Callisto. And he knew that indeterminate sentence on Callisto meant life sentence-unless he volunteered to be psyched. That was what an indeterminate sentence really meant; it gave the convicted his choice between a life sentence and the psycher.
A signal from the judge and the others began to leave. Crag did not move; he knew without being told that he was expected to wait for the customary private conversation with the judge. That always came after the sentencing and, in very rare cases, could make a change in the sentence. Sometimes, but not often, after private conversation with a prisoner a judge lessened or increased the sentence; he had power to do so up to twenty-four hours after his original pronouncement.
It was optional with the judge whether the guards remained; if he thought there was a possibility of the prisoner attempting physical violence, he could have them remain, with heaters ready, but back out of hearing range in a far corner of the room. That was what Olliver had done the last tune Crag had appeared before him, after the acquittal. Undoubtedly it was because he had recognized the violence in Crag and had feared to provoke him by the things he was going to say.
But this time Oliver signaled to the guards to leave the room with the others.
Crag stepped forward. He thought, I can reach across that bench and kill him easily. He was tempted, simply by how easy it would be, even though he knew that it would mean the psyche or his own private alternative.
Olliver said, “Don’t do it, Crag.”
Crag didn’t answer. He didn’t intend to, unless he found himself provoked beyond endurance by what he was going to have to hear. But he knew the best way to handle one of these interviews was to keep it strictly a one-way conversation by refusing to talk back. Silence might annoy Olliver, but it would not annoy him sufficiently to make him increase the sentence. And nothing he could say would make Olliver lessen it.
“You’d be sorry if you did, Crag. Because I’m not going to ride you this time. In fact, I’m going to make you a proposition.”
What kind of a proposition, Crag wondered, could a judge want to make to a man he’d just sentenced to life on Callisto? But he didn’t ask; he waited.
Olliver smiled. His face was handsome when he smiled.
He leaned forward across the bench. He said softly, “Crag, how would you like your freedom, and a million credits?”
CHAPTER TWO
Escape to Danger
CRAG SAID hoarsely, “You’re kidding. And if you are-“
He must have swayed forward or, without knowing it, started to lift his hand, for Olliver jerked back and his face was a bit white as he said “Don’t” again, this time sharply.
And he went on, fast: “I’m not-kidding, Crag. A million credits, enough to keep you drunk the rest of your life. Freedom. And a chance to help humanity, to null the human race out of the bog into which it has sunk in this period of mankind’s decadence. A rare chance, Crag.”
Crag said, “Save that for your speeches, Judge. The hell with humanity. But I’ll settle for my freedom and a million. One thing, though. This trial was a frameup. I didn’t do it. Was it your frameup?”
Olliver shook his head slowly. He said, “No, not mine. But I rather suspected it was framed. The evidence was too good. You don’t leave evidence like that, do you, Crag?”
Crag didn’t bother to answer that. He asked, “Who did it, then?”
“The police, I imagine. There’s an election coming up-and the Commissioner’s office is elective. A few convictions like yours will look good on the records. You’re pretty well known, Crag, in spite of the fact that there’s never been a conviction against you. The newscasts from the stations on the Gilded side are going to give Commissioner Green plenty of credit for getting you.”