EICHNER reached 8th Sessions antechamber, he was more than ten minutes late, and the Hearing had already begun. He was admitted at once by a shabbily uniformed attendant who gave him a strange look as he quietly opened the courtroom door. Here was a small amphitheater of the kind in use in most European universities, arranged in circular rows of seats, rising tier upon tier, and falling back in ascension like the walls of a wooden bowl. The dominant impression was the room’s structure and the wooden-eye emptiness of the seats, the Jury taking a mere four rows of six seats each, besides which there were only present the Judge, Court Clerk, one or two minor attendants and a smattering of spectators, since these Hearings were, by and large, closed sessions. Above the top row of seats was a rim of sky-lights under the flat ceiling and, through the use of murals in concentrically graduated perspective, this had nearly the illusion of being vaulted. The room was in silence when the Doctor entered with the attendant, the process having apparently reached a stage where nothing more could be done without the presence of the principal party.
