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“And then, when Dr. Dandrik ordered you to drop this experiment, just when it was becoming interesting, you refused?”

“Your Majesty, I couldn’t stop, not then. But Dr. Dandrik ordered the apparatus dismantled and scrapped, and I’m afraid I lost my head. Told him I’d punch his silly old face in, for one thing.”

“You admit that?” Chancellor Khane cried.

“I think you showed admirable self-restraint in not doing it. Did you explain to Chancellor Khane the importance of this experiment?”

“I tried to, Your Majesty, but he simply wouldn’t listen.”

“But, Your Majesty!” Khane expostulated. “Professor Dandrik is head of the department, and one of the foremost physicists of the Empire, and this young man is only one of the junior assistant-professors. Isn’t even a full professor, and he got his degree from some school away off-planet. University of Brannerton on Gimli.”

“Were you a pupil of Professor Vann Evaratt?” Prince Travann asked sharply.

“Why, yes, sir. I—-“

“Ha, no wonder!” Dandrik crowed. “Your Majesty, that man’s an out-and-out charlatan! He was kicked out of the University here ten years ago, and I’m surprised he could even get on the faculty of a school like Brannerton, on a planet like Gimli.”

“Why, you stupid old fool!” Faress yelled at him. “You aren’t enough of a physicist to oil robots in Vann Evaratt’s lab!”

“There, Your Majesty,” Khane said. “You see how much respect for authority this hooligan has!”

On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects authority. Whether it’s respectable or not.

Count Tammsan laughed, and he realized that he must have spoken aloud. Nobody else seemed to have gotten the joke.

“Well, how about the riot, now?” he asked. “Who started that?”

“Colonel Handrosan made an investigation on the spot,” Prince Travann said. “May I suggest that we hear his report?”

“Yes indeed. Colonel?”

Handrosan rose and stood with his hands behind his back, looking fixedly at the wall behind the desk.

“Your Majesty, the students of Professor Faress’ advanced subnuclear physics class, postgraduate students, all of them, were told of Professor Faress’ dismissal by a faculty member who had taken over the class this morning. They all got up and walked out in a body, and gathered outdoors on the campus to discuss the matter. At the next class break, they were joined by other science students, and they went into the stadium, where they were joined, half an hour later, by more students who had learned of the dismissal in the meantime. At no time was the gathering disorderly. The stadium is covered by a viewscreen pickup which is fitted with a recording device; there is a complete audio-visual of the whole thing, including the attack on them by the campus police.

“This attack was ordered by Chancellor Khane, at about 1100; the chief of the campus police was told to clear the stadium, and when he asked if he was to use force, Chancellor Khane told him to use anything he wanted to.”

“I did not! I told him to get the students out of the stadium, but—-“

“The chief of campus police carries a personal wire recorder,” Handrosan said, in his flat monotone. “He has a recording of the order, in Chancellor Khane’s own voice. I heard it myself. The police,” he continued, “first tried to use gas, but the wind was against them. They then tried to use sono-stunners, but the students rushed them and overwhelmed them. If Your Majesty will permit a personal opinion, while I do not sympathize with their subsequent attack on the Administration Center, they were entirely within their rights in defending themselves in the stadium, and it’s hard enough to stop trained and disciplined troops when they are winning. After defeating the police, they simply went on by what might be called the momentum of victory.”

“Then you’d say that it’s positively established that the students were behaving in a peacable and orderly manner in the stadium when they were attacked, and that Chancellor Khane ordered the attack personally?”