Stein's lawyer remained unmoved. The law said nothing about measuring the extent of a culprit's fear and anguish. It simply set a time limit.
The D.A. said that Stein had not lived through the limit.
Defense stated that Stein was seven years older now than at the time of the crime and had therefore lived through the limit.
The D.A. challenged the statement and the defense produced Stein's birth certificate. He was born in 2973. At the time of the crime, 3004, he was thirty-one. Now, in 3011, he was thirty-eight. The D.A. shouted that Stein was not physiologically thirty-eight, but thirty-one.
Defense pointed out freezingly that the law, once the individual was granted to be mentally competent, recognized solely chronological age, which could be obtained only by subtracting the date of birth from the date of now.
The D.A., growing impassioned, swore that if Stein were allowed to go free, half the laws on the books would be useless.
Then change the laws, said Defense, to take time travel into account; but until the laws are changed, let them be enforced as written.
Judge Neville Preston took a week to consider and then handed down his decision. It was a turning point in the history of law. It is almost a pity, then, that some people suspect Judge Preston to have been swayed in his way of thinking by the irresistible impulse to phrase his decision as he did.
For that decision, in full, was:
'A niche in time saves Stein.'
***
If you expect me to apologize for this, you little know your man. I consider a play on words the noblest form of wit, so there!
This is a James Bond type of story, written before I had ever heard of James Bond. Actually, those who know my writing know that I never introduce naughty motifs into my stories. You can tell that from the other stories in this volume. However, an editor - I won't mention his name-once told me he suspected that I never had love scenes in my stories because I was incapable of writing them. Naturally I repudiated that suggestion with the scorn and contumely it deserved and said with heat that it was merely my natural purity and wholesomeness that kept me from doing so. Since the expression on his lace was one of obvious disbelief, I said, 'I'll show you. I'll write a science-fiction love story, but not for publication.' But it turned out also to be a mystery, and I was so pleased with it I let it be published. Anyway, it shows I can do it if I want to. It's just that I don't want to, ordinarily.
I'm in Marsport without Hilda
It worked itself out, to begin with, like a dream. I didn't have to make any arrangements. I didn't have to touch it. I just watched things work out. Maybe right then's when I should have smelled catastrophe.
It began with my usual month's layoff between assignments. A month on and a month off is the right and proper routine for the Galactic Service. I reached Marsport for the usual three-day layover before the short hop to Earth.
Ordinarily, Hilda, God bless her, as sweet a wife as any man ever had, would be there waiting for me and we'd have a nice sedate time of it-a nice little interlude for the two of us. The only trouble with that is that Marsport is the rowdiest hellhole in the system, and a nice little interlude isn't exactly what fits in. Only, how do I explain that to Hilda, hey?
Well, this time my mother-in-law-God bless her, for a change-got sick just two days before I reached Marsport; and the night before landing, I got a spacegram from Hilda saying she would stay on Earth with her mother and wouldn't meet me this one time.
I grammed back my loving regrets and my feverish anxiety concerning her mother; and when I landed, there I was:
I was in Marsport without Hilda! That was still nothing, you understand. It was the frame of the picture, the bones of the woman. Now there was the matter of the lines and coloring inside the frame; the skin and flesh outside the bones.
So I called up Flora-Flora of certain rare episodes in the past-and for the purpose I used a video booth. Damn the expense, full speed ahead.
I was giving myself ten to one odds she'd be out, she'd be busy with her videophone disconnected, she'd be dead, even.