n man did show up at the hearing--a slick-looking operator named
Berwin. His claim was that Hawkes had been affiliated with Bryson a
number of years ago, and that Hawkes' money should revert to Bryson by
virtue of an obscure law of the last century involving the estates of
professional gamblers killed in criminal actions.

The robocomputer who was in charge of the hearing pondered the request a
few moments; then relays clicked and the left-hand panel on the computer
face lit up with a bright red APPLICATION DENIED signal.

Berwin spoke for three minutes, ending up with a request that the
robocomputer disqualify itself from the hearing and allow itself to be
replaced by a human judge.

The computer's decision was even quicker this time. APPLICATION DENIED.

Berwin tossed Alan's side of the courtroom a black look and yielded
ground. Alan had engaged a lawyer recommended once by Hawkes, a man
named Jesperson. Briefly and concisely Jesperson cited Alan's claim to
the money, read the terms of the will, and stepped back.

The computer considered Jesperson's plea a few moments, reviewing the
brief which the lawyer had taped and fed to the computer earlier. Time
passed. Then the green panel lit, and the words, APPLICATION GRANTED.

Alan smiled. Bryson had been defeated; Max's money was his. Money that
could be turned toward intensified research on the hyperdrive.

"Well, son?" Jesperson asked. "How does it feel to be a millionaire?"

_Chapter Sixteen_

At the time, he had been much too excited and flustered to answer
anything. But, as the next twelve months went by, he learned that being
a millionaire was quite pleasant indeed.

There were headaches, of course. There was the initial headache of
signing his name several hundred times in the course of the transfer of
Hawkes' wealth to him. There were also the frequent visits from the
tax-collectors, and the payment to them of a sum that staggered Alan to
think about, in the name of Rotation Tax.

But even after taxes, legal fees, and other expenses, Alan found he
owned better than nine hundred thousand credits, and the estate grew by
investment every day. The court appointed a legal guardian for him, the
lawyer Jesperson, who was to administer Alan's money until Alan reached
the biological age of twenty-one. The decision was an involved one,
since Alan had undeniably been born three hundred years earlier, in
3576--but the robojudge that presided over that parti