the biggest and most important one; there he'd failed.

Borgenese was tapping on the desk, but it wasn't really tapping--he
was pushing buttons. A policeman came in and the counselor motioned to
Putsyn: "Put him in the pre-trial cells."

"You can't prove it," said Putsyn. His face was sunken and frightened.

"I think we can," said the counselor indifferently. "You don't know
the efficiency of our laboratories. You'll talk."

* * * * *

When Putsyn had been removed, Borgenese turned. "Very good work, Luis.
I'm pleased with you. I think in time you'd make an excellent
policeman. Retro detail, of course."

Luis stared at him.

"Didn't you listen?" he said. "I'm Dorn Starret, a cheap crook."

In that mental picture of Starret he'd had, he should have seen it at
once. Left-handed? Not at all--that was the way a man normally saw
himself in a mirror. And in mirror images, the right hand becomes the
left.

The counselor sat up straight, not gentle and easygoing any longer.
"I'm afraid you can't prove that," he said. "Fingerprints? Will any of
Starret's past associates identify you? There's Putsyn, but he won't
be around to testify." He smiled. "As final evidence let me ask you
this: when he offered you a share in his crooked scheme, did you
accept? You did not. Instead, you brought him in, though you thought
you were heading into certain retrogression."

Luis blinked dazedly. "But--"

"There are no exceptions, Luis. For certain crimes there is a
prescribed penalty, retrogression. The law makes no distinction as to
how the penalty is applied, and for a good reason. If there was such a
person, Dorn Starret ceased to exist when Putsyn retroed him--and not
only legally."

Counselor Borgenese stood up. "You see, retroing a person wipes him
clean of almost everything he ever knew--_right and wrong_. It leaves
him with an adult body, and we fill his mind with adult facts. Given
half a chance, he acts like an adult."

Borgenese walked slowly to stand in front of his desk. "We protect
life. Everybody's life. _Including those who are not yet victims._ We
don't have the death penalty and don't want it. The most we can do to
anyone is give him a new chance, via retrogression. We have the same
penalty for those who deprive another of his memory as we do for those
who kill--with this difference: the man who retrogresses another knows
he has a good chance to get away with it. The murderer is cer