ll credence, and soon they were amplifying it to a
lurid and rabble-rousing saga of bestiality.

Soth households kept their prized servants safely inside. But on the
afternoon of the case's dismissal, when the freed Soth started down the
courthouse steps, someone caved his head in with a brick.

Ollie Johnson and I were on either side of him, and his purple blood
splashed all over my light topcoat. When the mob saw it, they closed in
on us screaming for more.

An officer helped us drag the stricken Soth back into the courthouse,
and while the riot squad disbursed the mob, we slipped him out the back
way in an ambulance, which returned him to the Willow Run plant for
repairs.

It hit the evening newscasts and editions:

ACQUITTED SOTH
MURDERED
ON COURTHOUSE STEPS!

* * * * *

I was halfway home when the airwaves started buzzing. The mobs were
going wild. Further developments were described as Jack and I landed on
the wind-blown lake. The State Guard was protecting the Ollies' Willow
Run Plant against a large mob that was trying to storm it, and
reinforcements had been asked by the state police.

Vicki met me on the pier. Her face was white and terribly troubled. I
guess mine was, too, because she burst into tears in my arms. "The poor
Soth," she sobbed. "Now what will they do?"

"God knows," I said. I told Jack to tie up the boat and stay
overnight--I feared I might be called back any minute. He mumbled
something about overtime, but I think his main concern was in staying so
near to a Soth during the trouble that was brewing.

We went up to the house, leaving him to bed himself down in the
temporary quarters in the boathouse that the union required I maintain
for him.

Soth was standing motionless before the video, staring at a streaky
picture of the riot scene at Willow Run. His face was inscrutable as
usual, but I thought I sensed a tension. His black serving-jacket was
wrinkled at the shoulders as he flexed the muscles of his powerful arms.

Yet when Vicki asked for some martinis, he mixed and served them without
comment. We drank and then ate dinner in silence. We were both reluctant
to discuss this thing in front of Soth.

We were still eating when an aircab thundered overhead. A minute later,
I watched it land a tiny passenger at our pier and tie up to wait for
him.

It was Ollie Johnson, stumbling hatless up the flagstone path.

I held the door for hi