"Bissell wants me to tell this lawyer and his client that the US Attorney's office never fibs?" she said, widening her eyes. "I do that and God'll surely strike me dead."

Robey laughed. "Bissell says it shouldn't take long ten minutes at the most."

"Ten minutes7." she said. "Why should it take any minutes? Just do it like always. Have him send up a written order and I'll sign the thing on the spot. Then have him threaten the guy. If he stays coy, then we'll have a hearing. What you and I want to do here this afternoon is get back to the late Mister Nick Hardigrew's Really Lousy Last Weekend."

"Mind telling me what you thought of what got put in this morning?"

Robey said. "When the girl said he had his hands folded in front of him, and his head down, like he's saying grace? And he stayed that way, all the way down?"

"I don't know," the judge said. "Either he was saying his prayers or else he'd gone into some kind of trance. Blissed-out completely. Or maybe he was paralyzed; panicked and froze when he realized what was happening. He had to've known it when his chute didn't open. And to've known what he had to do next. This wasn't his first jump. Why didn't he pop the back-up? I suppose at that velocity it's pretty hard to hear what somebody else's yelling at you, "Pull the reserve chute, for God's sake." So maybe he couldn't hear the others. But she said that she could hear them yelling -that's why she didn't yell herself.

Makes it seem as though he should've heard them too."

"Unless he didn't want to," Robey said. "Maybe what happened was what he intended to have happen. Nobody we've heard yet seems to really want to come right out and say it, but isn't that where they're leading us? That the reason why the main chute didn't open when it should've, when he was clear of the plane, was that he'd made sure it wouldn't.