"Murray Leinster - The Pirates of Zan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

place apart looking for something? Who'd I kill, anyhow?"
"Don't bring that up!" pleaded the citizen's representative. "Please don't bring that up! You will be much, much
better off if that is not mentioned!"
"But I didn't kill anybody!" insisted Hoddan.
"Nobody's said a word about it," said the citizen's repre-sentative, jittering. "Let's not have it in the record! The
record has to be published!" He turned to the justice. "Sir, the facts are conceded as stated."
"Then," said the justice to Hoddan, "do you choose to answer these charges at this time?"
"Why not?" asked Hoddan. "Of course!"
"Proceed," said the justice.
Hoddan drew a deep breath. He didn't understand why the man's death, charged to him, was not mentioned. He
didn't like the scared way everybody looked at him.
"About the burglary business," he said confidently. "What did I do in the power station before I smashed the
receptor?"
The justice looked at Nedda's father's attorney.
"Why," said that gentleman amiably," speaking for the Power Board as complainant, before you smashed the
stand-ard receptor you connected a device of your own design across the power leads. It was a receptor unit of an
ap-parently original pattern. It appears to have been a very in-teresting device."
"I'd offered it to the Power Board," said Hoddan, with satisfaction, "and I was thrown out. You had me thrown out!
What did it do?"
"It substituted for the receptor you smashed," said the attorney. "It continued to supply some two hundred million
kilowatts for the Mid-Continent industrial area. In fact, your crime was only discovered because the original receptor
had to be regularly serviced. Being set to draw peak power at all times, the unused power is wasted by burning carbon.
Your device adjusted to the load and did not burn carbon. -So when the attendants went to replace the supposedly
burned carbon and found it unused, they discovered what you had done."
"My receptor saved carbon, then," said Hoddan triumph-antly. "That means it saved money. I saved the Power
Board
plenty while it was connected! They wouldn't believe I could. Now they know. I did!" The justice said:
"Irrelevant. You have the charges. In legal terms, you are charged with burglary, trespassing, breaking and entering,
unlawful entry, malicious mischief, breach of the peace, sabotage, and endangering the employment of citizens.
Dis-cuss the charges, please!"
"I'm telling you!" protested Hoddan. "I offered the thing to the Power Board. They said they were satisfied with
what they had and wouldn't listen. So I proved what they wouldn't listen to! That receptor saved them ten thousand
credits' worth of carbon a week! It'll save half a million credits a year in every power station that uses it! If I know the
Power Board, they're going right on using it while they arrest me for putting it to work!"
The courtroom, in its entirety, visibly shivered. "Aren't they?" demanded Hoddan belligerently. "They are not," said
the justice, tight-lipped. "It has been smashed and melted down."
"Then they'll look at my patents!" insisted Hoddan. "It's stupidтАФ"
"The patent records," said the justice with unnecessary vehemence," have been destroyed. Your possessions have
been searched for copies. Nobody will ever look at your drawings againтАФnot if they are wise!"
"Wha-a-at?" demanded Hoddan incredulously. "Wha-a-at?" "I will amend the record of this hearing before it is
pub-lished," said the justice shakily. "I should not have made that comment. I ask permission of the citizen's
representative to amend."
"Granted," said the representative before he had finished. The justice said quickly:
"The charges have been admitted by the defendant. Since the complainant does not wish punitive action taken
against himтАФ"
"He'd be silly if he did," grunted Hoddan. "тАФand merely wishes security against repetition of the offense, I rule that
the defendant may be released upon post-
ing suitable bond for good behavior in the future. That is, he will be required to post bond which will be forfeited if he
ever again enters a power station enclosure, passes no-trespassing signs, ignores no-admittance signs, and-or
smashes apparatus belonging to the complainant."