He turned to me as calmly as my own servant. His neat denim jacket, now standard fatigue uniform for Soths, was unfastened. His muscular chest was bare. "They were tormenting me with that." He pointed to a small electric generator from which ran thin cables ending in sharp test prods. "I told Professor Kahnovsky it was not allowed, but he stated I was his property. The three boys tried to hold me with those straps while the professor touched me with the prods. "My conditioning forbade me from harming them, but there was a clear violation of the terms of the covenant. I was in the proscribed condition of immobility when the generator was started. When the pain grew unbearable, the prime command of my conditioning was invoked. I must survive. I threw them all out the window." The Soth went with us peacefully enough, and submitted to the lockup without demur. For a few days, before the state thought up a suitable indictment, the papers held a stunned silence. Virtually every editor and publisher had a Soth in his own home. Then the D.A., who also owned a Soth, decided to drop the potentially sensational first degree murder charges that might be indicated, and came out instead with a second degree indictment. * * * * * That cracked it. The press split down the middle on whether the charge should be changed to third degree murder or thrown out of court entirely as justifiable homicide by a non-responsible creature. This was all very sympathetic to the Soth's cause, but it had a fatal effect. In bringing out the details of the crime, it stirred a certain lower element of our society to add fear and hate to a simmering envy of the wealthier Soth-owners. Mobs formed in the streets, marching and demonstrating. The phony rape story was given full credence, and soon they were amplifying it to a lurid and rabble-rousing saga of bestiality. Soth households kept their prized servants safely inside. But on the afternoon of the case's dismissal, when the freed Soth started down the courthouse steps, someone caved his head in with a brick. Ollie Johnson and I were on either side of him, and his purple blood splashed all over my light topcoat. When the mob saw it, they closed in on us screaming for more. An officer helped us drag the stricken Soth back into the courthouse, and while the riot squad disbursed the mob, we slipped him out the back way in an ambulance, which returned him to the Willow Run plant for repairs. It hit the evening newscasts and editions: ACQUITTED SOTH MURDERED ON COURTHOUSE STEPS! * * * * * I was halfway home when the airwaves started buzzing. The mobs were going wild. Further developments were described as Jack and I landed on the wind-blown lake. The State Guard was protecting the Ollies' Willow Run Plant against a large mob that was trying to storm it, and reinforcements had been asked by the state police.