For the moment Schwartz was resting uneasily on a hard bench in one of the small sub-basement rooms of the Chica "Hall of Correction."
The Hall, as it was commonly termed, was the great token of the local power of the High Minister and those surrounding him. It lifted its gloominess in a rocky, angular height that overshadowed the Imperial barracks beyond it, just as its shadow clutched at the Terrestrial malefactor far more than did the unexerted authority of the Empire.
Within its walls many an Earthman in past centuries had waited for the judgment that came to one who falsified or evaded the quotas of production, who lived past his time, or connived at another's such crime, or who was guilty of attempting subversion of the local government. Occasionally, when the petty prejudices of Terrestrial justice made particularly little sense to the sophisticated and usually blas
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