"Your Great God is a fool!" he said blasphemously. "I deny that I love myself. I care nothing for myself at all." The priestess-judge sighed. "Since this is your sworn denial, it must be true," she said. "So then we cannot kill you. Instead, we grant that you do indeed love no one. Therefore you are a creature so far outside our comprehension that you cannot come under our laws, no matter how you have broken them. We shall notify the Federation that we abandon our jurisdiction and hand you over to our sister-planet which is next in line to judge you." Then all the viewers on tridimens on countless planets saw something that nobody had ever thought to see--The Eel's armor of self-confidence cracked and terror poured through the gap. He dropped to his knees and cried: "Wait! Wait! I confess that I blasphemed your god, but without realizing that I did!" "You mean," pressed the priestess-judge, "you acknowledge that you yourself are the only being dear to you?" "No, not that, either. Until now, I have never known love. But now it has come upon me like a nova and I must speak the truth." He paused, still on his knees, and looked piteously at the priestess-judge. "Are--are you bound by your law to--to believe me and to kill, instead of me, this--this being I adore?" "We are so bound," she stated. "Then," said The Eel, smiling and confident again, rising to his feet, "before all the Galaxy, I must declare the object of my sudden but everlasting passion. Great lady, it is you!" * * * * * The Eel is still in his pit, which has been made most comfortable by his sympathizers, while the Council of the Galactic Federation seeks feverishly and vainly, year after year, to find some legal way out of the impasse. Agsk, however, requests all Federation citizens to submit solutions, the grand prize for a workable answer being a lifetime term as president of the planet. A secondary contest (prize: lifetime ambassadorship to the Galactic Federation) is offered for a legal way around the statute barring criminals (specifically The Eel) from entering the primary contest. --MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD * * * * *