With some degree of reluctance, Baker stepped into the left of twin vertical boxes. The lid closed in his face and locked. Before he could have time to begin worrying about his air supply, the cover sprang open, and he stepped out. "Test over?" There was an echo. A man stood in front of the second coffin. Baker had entered the one on the left and he was still in front of the left box. But he was also now in front of the cabinet on the right. He had been completely duplicated. "That damned feedback again," Gentle grumbled. In the first shock of this duplication and therefore seeming negation of his individual ego, Baker almost went mad. "You did this to me!" said Baker and Baker to Gentle, each drawing a concealed weapon and shooting the old man in the heart. "You two fellers drop your guns and stand still," the voice behind them said. "The professor was always saying I was the most simple-minded assistant he ever had, but I've got brains enough to pull this trigger on this old shotgun if you move." (The ETI chief explained: "The rest is hearsay. Those miners spyproof their towns.") The trial was short with Jeb, the assistant's, testimony, but the jury deliberation was unaccountably long on the primitive world where justice ran fast for a blind woman. "We waited long enough," Jeb said to the other men in the saloon. "Let's break them out of the cellar and hang 'em." The miners didn't let the jury set a precedent. They hoisted a few inside the bar and went out of Lone Splyg Hill and hoisted two more. "What have you idiots done?" the sheriff yelled as they trooped back into Klondike City. "Anticipated the verdict a mite," Jeb admitted. "That's just it," the sheriff groaned. "It was ruled justifiable homicide. Temporary insanity. At the time of the crime, each of the defendants was beside himself!" IV "Obviously," Street said, "this is no more than a folk legend." "Are you sure?" the director of the ETI asked, fingering the report. "It can't be anything else. Granted that all the other events were true, I would know Baker was still alive--only one, because neither could stand the threat of the other, to his ego. You see, the case would never have come to trial. It would have been immediately dismissed." "Why?" "My dear fellow, both Bakers could not have been put on trial for the same murder, as any student of law would know. This would have violated the basic protection of double jeopardy." V A fast spaceship to put him well ahead of the law, and a place to hide out until things simmered down, that was all Baker wanted and it was what he had. He was too hot for more. ("This is how we reconstruct it from our informant's version," the ETI chief said.)