"I am your court-appointed lawyer, Pederasis Narcoses."

"What good will you do me-if the trial will be after my execution?"

"None. But that is the law. I will have to interview you now to enable me to conduct your defense at the trial."

"This is madness-I'll be dead?"

"That is correct. But it is the law." He turned to the Colonel. "I must be alone with my client. That is also the law."

"You have ten minutes, no longer."

"That will suffice. Admit my assistant in five minutes. He has the court papers and the will."

The door thunked shut and Narcoses opened his briefcase and took out a plastic bottle filled with a greenish liquid. He removed the top and handed it to me.

"Drink this, all of it. I'll hold the gun."

I handed him the weapon, took the bottle, smelled it and coughed. "Horrible. Why should I drink it?"

"Because I told you to. It is of vital importance and you have no choice."

Which was true-and what difference would it make anyway?

I gulped it down. The champagne had tasted a lot better.

"I will now explain," he said, recapping the bottle and putting it back into his briefcase. "You have just drunk a thirty-day poison. This is a computer-generated complex of toxins that are neutral now-but which will kill you horribly in exactly thirty days if you are not given the antidote. Which is also computer-generated and impossible to duplicate."

He jumped back quite smartly when I leaped at him. But the chain on my ankle would not quite reach. My fingers snapped ineffectually just in front of his throat.

"If you will cease clawing at the air I will explain," Narcoses said with an air of weary sophistication. Had he done this kind of thing before I wondered? I folded my arms and stepped back.

"Much better. Although I am a lawyer licensed to practice on this planet, I am also a representative of the Galactic League."