LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      The Dog Star stood beneath the Judgement Seats and raged. The green light of his fury fired the assembled faces viridian. It lit the underside of the roof-trees and turned their moist blue fruit to emerald.

      “None of this is true!” he shouted. “Why can’t you believe me, instead of listening to him?” He blazed on the chief witness, a blue luminary from the Castor complex, firing him turquoise. The witness backed hastily out of range.

      “Sirius,” the First Judge rumbled quietly, “we’ve already found you guilty. Unless you’ve anything reasonable to say, be quiet and let the Court pass sentence.”

      “No I will not be quiet!” Sirius shouted up at the huge ruddy figure. He was not afraid of Antares. He had often sat beside him as Judge on those same Judgement Seats – that was one of the many miserable things about this trial. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, all through. I did not kill the luminary – I only hit him. I was not negligent, and I’ve offered to look for the Zoi. The most you can accuse me of is losing my temper—”

      “Once too often, in the opinion of this Court,” remarked big crimson Betelgeuse, the Second Judge, in his dry way.

      “And I’ve admitted I lost my temper,” said Sirius.

      “No one would have believed you if you hadn’t,” said Betelgeuse.

      A long flicker of amusement ran round the assembled luminaries. Sirius glared at them. The hall of blue trees was packed with people from every sphere and all orders of effulgence. It was not often one of the high effulgents was on trial for his life – and there never had been one so notorious for losing his temper.

      “That’s right – laugh!” Sirius roared. “You’re getting what you came for, aren’t you? But you’re not watching justice done. I tell you I’m not guilty! I don’t know who killed that young fool, but it wasn’t me!”

      “The Court is not proposing to go through all that again,” Antares said. “We have your Companion’s evidence that you often get too angry to know what you’re doing.”

      Sirius saw his Companion look at him warningly. He pretended not to see her. He knew she was trying to warn him not to prove the case against him by raging any more. She had admitted only a little more than anyone knew. She had not really let him down. But he was afraid he would never see her again, and he knew it would make him angrier than ever to look at her. She was so beautiful: small, exquisite and pearly.

      “If I were up there, I wouldn’t call that evidence,” he said.

      “No, but it bears out the chief witness,” said Antares, “when he says he surprised you with the body and you tried to kill him by throwing the Zoi at him.”

      “I didn’t,” said Sirius. He could say nothing more. He could only stand fulminating because his case was so weak. He refused to tell the Court that he had threatened to kill the blue Castor-fellow for hanging round his Companion, or that he had struck out at the young luminary for gossiping about it. None of that proved his innocence anyway.

      “Other witnesses saw the Zoi fall,” said Antares. “Not to speak of the nova sphere—”

      “Oh go to blazes!” said Sirius. “Nobody else saw anything.”

      “Say that again,” Betelgeuse put in, “and we’ll add contempt of court to the other charges. Your entire evidence amounts to contempt anyway.”

      “Have you anything more to say?” asked Antares. “Anything, that is, which isn’t a repetition of the nonsense you’ve given us up to now?”

      Rather disconcerted, Sirius looked up at the three Judges, the two red giants and the smaller white Polaris. He could see they all thought he had not told the full story. Perhaps they were hoping for it now. “No, I’ve nothing else to say,” he said. “Except that it was not nonsense. I—”

      “Then be quiet while our spokesman passes the sentence,” said Antares.

      Polaris rose, quiet, tall and steadfast. Being a Cepheid, he had a slight

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