They can be impeached, but otherwise they hold office until they are seventy years old, when they can be reappointed if they are again recommended by the association of lawyers.

The session opened with a simple little ritual; everyone rose when the judges entered the courtroom; and after they had taken their places, every one, including the judges said, “For the honour and glory of Unis,” in unison; then, I was conducted to the prisoner’s dock-I guess you would call it-and one of the judges asked me my name.

“I am called Tangor,” I replied.

“From what country do you come?”

“From the United States of America.”

“Where is that?”

“On the planet Earth.”

“Where is that?”

“Now you have me stumped,” I said. “If I were on Mercury, Venus, Mars, or any other of the planets of our solar system, I could tell you; but not knowing where Poloda is, I can only say that I do not know.”

“Why did you appear naked in the limits of Orvis?” demanded one of the judges. Orvis is the name of the city into which I had been ruthlessly catapulted without clothes. “Is it possible that the inhabitants of this place you call America do not wear clothing?”

“They wear clothing, Most Honourable Judge,” I replied (Harkas Yen had coached me in the etiquette of the courtroom and the proper way to address the judges); “but it varies with the mood of the wearer, the temperature, styles, and personal idiosyncrasies. I have seen ancient males wandering around a place called Palm Springs with nothing but a pair of shorts to hide their hairy obesity; I have seen beautiful women clothed up to the curve of the breast in the evening, who had covered only about one per centum of their bodies at the beach in the afternoon; but, Most Honourable Judge, I have never seen any female costume more revealing than those worn by the beautiful girls of Orvis. To answer your first question: I appeared in Orvis naked, because I had no clothes when I arrived here.”

“You are excused for a moment,” said the judge who had questioned me; then he turned to the seven old men, and asked them to take the stand. After they had been sworn and he had asked their names, the chief judge asked them if they could locate any such world as the Earth.

“We have questioned Harkas Yen, who has questioned the defendant,” replied the oldest-of the seven, “and we have come to this conclusion.” After which followed half an hour of astronomical data. “This person,” he finished, “apparently came from a solar system that is beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes, and is probably about twenty-two thousand light-years beyond Canapa.”

That was staggering; but what was more staggering was when Harkas Yen convinced me that Canapa was identical with the Globular Cluster, N. G. C. 7006, which is two hundred and twenty thousand light-years distant from the Earth and not just a measly twenty-two thousand; and then, to cap the climax, he explained that Poloda is two hundred and thirty thousand light-years from Canapa, which would locate me something like four hundred and fifty thousand light-years from Earth. As light travels 186,000 miles per second, I will let you figure how far Poloda is from Earth; but I may say that if a telescope on Poloda were powerful enough to see what was transpiring on Earth, they would see what was transpiring there four hundred and fifty thousand years ago.

After they had quizzed the seven astronomers, and learned nothing, one of the judges called Balzo Maro to the stand; and the girl I had seen that first day in the garden arose from her seat and came forward to the witness-stand.

After they had gone through the preliminaries, they questioned her about me. “He wore no clothes?” asked one of the judges.

“None,” said Balzo Maro.

“Did he attempt to-ah—annoy you in any way?”

“No,” said Balzo Maro.

“You know, don’t you,” asked one of the judges, “that for wilfully annoying a woman, an alien can be sentenced to destruction?”

“Yes,” said Balzo Maro; “but he did not annoy me. I watched him because I thought he might be a dangerous character, perhaps a Kapar spy; but I am convinced that he is what he claims to be.”

I could have hugged Balzo Maro.

Now the judges said to me. “If you are convicted, you may be destroyed or imprisoned for the duration; but as the war has now gone into its one hundred and first year, such a sentence would be equivalent to death. We wish to be fair, and really there is nothing more against you than that you are an alien who spoke no tongue known upon Poloda.”

“Then release me and let me serve Unis against her enemies,” I made answer.

Chapter Three

THE JUDGES DISCUSSED my proposition in whispers for about ten minutes; then they put me on probation until the Janhai could decide the matter, and after that they turned me back to the custody of Harkas Yen, who told me later that a great honour had been done, as the Janhai rules Unis; it was like putting my case in the hands of the President of the United States or the King of England.

The Janhai is a commission composed of seven men who are elected to serve until they are seventy years old, when they may be reelected; the word is a compound of jan (seven) and hai (elect). Elections are held only when it is necessary to fill a vacancy on the Janhai, which appoints all judges and what corresponds to our governors of States, who in turn appoint all other State or provincial officials and the mayors of cities, the mayors appointing municipal officers. There are no ward-heelers in Unis.

Each member of the Janhai heads a department, of which there are seven: War; Foreign, which includes State; Commerce; Interior; Education; Treasury and Justice. These seven men elect one of their own number every six years as Elianhai, or High Commissioner. He is, in effect, the ruler of Unis but he cannot serve two consecutive terms. These men, like all the appointees of the Janhai, the provincial governors, and the mayors, must submit to a very thorough intelligence test, which determines the candidate’s native intelligence as well as his fund of acquired knowledge; and more weight is given the former than the latter.

I could not but compare this system with our own, under which it is not necessary for a Presidential candidate to be able either to read or write; even a congenital idiot could run for the Presidency of the United States of America, and serve if he were elected.

There were two cases following mine, and Harkas Yen wanted to stay and hear them. The first was a murder case; and the defendant had chosen to be tried before one judge, rather than a jury of five men.

“He is either innocent, or the killing was justifiable,” remarked Harkas Yen. “When they are guilty, they usually ask for a jury trial.” In a fit of passion, the man had killed another who had broken up his home. In fifteen minutes he was tried and acquitted.

The next case was that of the mayor of a small city who was accused of accepting a bribe. That case lasted about two hours and was tried before a jury of five men. In America, it would possibly have lasted two months. The judge made the attorneys stick to facts and the evidence. The jury was out not more than fifteen minutes, when it brought in a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced the man to be shot on the morning of the fifth day. This gave him time to appeal the case to a court of five judges; they work fast in Unis.

Harkas Yen told me that the court of appeal would examine the transcript of the evidence and would probably confirm the finding of the lower court, unless the attorney for the defendant made an affidavit that he could bring in new evidence to clear his client.