"Obviously. This sentence automatically carries with it loss of all privileges, pensions, and honors that go with your high rank in the Space Patrol. Your name will be wiped from its roster. After the erasure, you will never have existed, Lieutenant Mannion. Your body will be restrained under a new name and will make a fresh start in life. It will even be possible for your new personality to enter the Space Patrol, if it so chooses. No prejudice against your body will be entertained for your mind's previous acts." In the background, Mannion heard his wife's faint sobbing. "I hear and accept the sentence, sir," he said quietly. "The act of erasure will be carried out immediately, in the Space Patrol's mnemonic laboratories on the 14th level of this building." The gavel rapped three times. "The case of Earth versus Daniel Mannion is hereby considered closed." "No!" Virginia suddenly shouted. All eyes in the courtroom swivelled to focus on her as she rose from the audience to protest. "No, don't close the case yet!" "This is highly irregular," said Judge Harkness. "Do you have additional testimony, Mrs. Mannion?" "Not--testimony, your honor. But can't you see that Dan's obviously insane? He's allowing himself to be sentenced without even a protest! Can't he enter a plea of insanity?" "The plea of insanity would not alter the judgment in any way, Mrs. Mannion. Rest assured that your husband's--ah--disturbed mental state has been taken into account in the decision. Whether he was insane or criminally possessed at the time of the mutiny makes no difference; the crime has been committed, obviously, and the guilty person is of no further value to society. Mnemonic erasure is not merely a punishment, Mrs. Mannion. It's the gateway to rehabilitation for a sick person." "I--see. May I say goodbye to my husband before you--erase him?" * * * * * Going down in the lift tube from the courtroom on the 60th floor of Patrol headquarters to the lab on Level Fourteen, Mannion felt strangely numb inside. Two Patrol members stood behind him, ready to go for blasters if he made the slightest move toward escaping. But Mannion had no idea of escaping. He was on his way to be erased. He wondered what erasure was like. Did it hurt? Did you feel the pain as they stripped away layer after layer of your memory like peelings from an onion? First 2367 would go, but the new year was only two weeks old and he'd spent those two weeks in prison. Then 2366 would vanish--but 2366 was partly gone, at least for the few hours of the Mutiny. Next would go 2365, the year they first landed on Iapetus. And so, ever backward, they would tear away more and more of the accumulation of memories and experiences that was Dan Mannion. 2364, 2363. 2362. That was the year he met Virginia. They would take away his courtship, his wedding, those wonderful early days of marriage--