He struggled unaided to his feet, faced the wooden throne like structure upon which the magistrate, girdled in coarse ruuk hide, sat toying with his polished mace of office. Beside him stood his Stenosmith. The Stenosmith held a slender scroll in one hand, but for the moment his legal superior let it go unnoticed, and fixed the Court's prisoner with a gaze as hard as Terrestrial diamonds. "Jon Kane, aged 17 Sol III years, second generation Sol III descendant, renegade colonial resident of the Sol III agricultural Department of J'iira-IX: do you understand the charges against you?" He struggled to make his tongue move to form the clipped syllables of the Interplanetary. It was an old language, but he had never spoken it as easily as the one which his father had taught him, the one which he said had come from Terra. But he must learn the Interplanetary, his father had said for some day, he might venture beyond the blue fields of the Department where he lived; someday, perhaps, even use it to speak with the starmen of the great ITA, who landed on Procyon V every seven cycles. Some day, perhaps, and the work of the language tutors would not have gone in vain. "Charges? These men have uttered no charges, Senior. They have pursued and threatened--" "Silence! Civil use of your tongue, or no tongue at all! The law prescribes trial even for heretics under the age of eleven cycles, or you would not be so fortunate as to be standing where you are! Stenosmith, your scroll!" In a quick motion the slender scroll was in the magistrate's hands, and in another it was spread before him. "You are accused of entering this Department in a tracked vehicle being driven by its own power. The vehicle is of a type no longer receiving maintenance by the Intergalactic Technical Alliance, and therefore could no longer function." "But, Senior, my vehicle is one which had, by chance, been so well constructed that it never suffered breakdown until--" "Prisoner, you are lying, and you know the penalty for perjury! Stenosmith, make note of the prisoner's falsehood to the Court. The charges continue: You, Jon Kane, have been apprehended in neighboring Departments within the last two and one-half cycles, on various occasions, at the practice of making tools, and on one occasion at least, of using such tools in the attempted repair of malfunctioning facilities awaiting the legally prescribed maintenance of the ITA. Do you deny this?" "I--" "It is therefore the conclusion of this Court that the vehicle in which you rode into this Department was repaired and set into motion by yourself! Do you deny that?" And suddenly Kane felt something stir inside him; felt it through the fatigue, through the pain, through the torture that threatened to be all-consuming. He stood straight. "No, Senior! No, I do not deny it! And I not only repaired the track-car, I built it! I built it from parts I stole at night from abandoned scrap heaps! And I made it run!"