The two years as a Patrol Apprentice would go. The four years at the Academy. Adolescence. Boyhood. Childhood. Soon there would be nothing left of Dan Mannion but a few vague memories of babyhood, and then even those would be gone. He would emerge from the lab wiped blank, a fresh unmarked slate ready to be given its new identity. Suddenly, he found himself quivering. _I'm not guilty! I didn't do it! I couldn't have done it!_ _Too late_, a voice said. He saw again the faces of Virginia, of Commander Harkness, of stern-faced Dubrow giving the testimony that damned him. _Too late. Too late to defend yourself._ "Fourteen," the robobrain of the elevator announced. The door slid back. Mannion felt light pressure behind each of his arms as his two guards shoved him gently forward. A frosted glass door loomed up ahead of him. The sign on the door read _Mnemonics Laboratory_. Cold sweat drenched his body. Now that he was but feet away from the room where the erasure would take place, he wanted out desperately, wanted some chance to prove that he hadn't conspired with the androids, hadn't aided in the revolt, hadn't helped to murder 12 fellow Patrolmen and wreck the Iapetus project. "You go in here," someone said to him. The door marked _Mnemonics Laboratory_ was swinging open to receive him. There was no way out. * * * * * Four gray-smocked technicians waited inside for him. One of the guards with him said, "This is Mannion. He was just sentenced upstairs." "I know. The order came down the pneumotubes a minute ago. Total erasure." "That's right," the guard said. "He gets wiped clean." "Will you lead him to the machines, please?" Dan went forward and faced a complex angle of probes and dials, "Is this the machine that does it?" he asked uneasily. "That's right. It'll be over in a minute, Lieutenant Mannion. We clamp the electrodes to your scalp and run preliminary tests with an electoencephalograph--and then we use the Eraser." "Will it be painful?" "It'll be quick. There won't be anything more than a faint tickling sensation, and then--" "Then Dan Mannion ceases to exist." He stared appealingly at the technician in charge and said, "Listen--does the sentence have to be carried out at once?" "The order says immediately. We have the machine all ready for you." Dan felt perspiration trickling down his body. "Can you wait a few minutes? There's something I'd like you to do for me?" "What's that?" "Probe my mind. I'm suffering from amnesia--a short-range blockage of the critical era around the time the android mutiny took place. Couldn't you--?" "Impossible. Not without a court order, at any rate. And the trial's over." Dan scowled. "But my life depends on it! My identity is going to be taken away. The least you could have done was look!"