The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.

But she didn\'t intend to buy it.

She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn\'t be back for five minutes.

Time enough, at any rate.

The dress was lying loose, so she didn\'t have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.

She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.

"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.

"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."

She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She\'d get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she\'d be out again.

They couldn\'t do anything to her that mattered.

She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.

In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.

"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn\'t look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.

"I don\'t have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."

She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.

And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn\'t just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.

"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.

She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."

The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.

The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.

A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:

"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."

"In view of some complicating factors, we\'re going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."

She thought for a minute that she hadn\'t heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.

"I wouldn\'t call that a choice," she said sourly. "I\'ll ship out."