Chapters 12-16 Summary

Chapter 12 is a short chapter that describes the judicial hearing to decide what to do with the people of Krikkit following their obsessive 2,000-year campaign to destroy the universe. It took this long for the rest of the galaxy to defeat Krikkit, which managed somehow to develop increasingly destructive and advanced weapons. Their defense was that their belief system is based on "peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms." (p. 99) The laid-back and relaxed judge says he has worse creeds, but he decides that the planet Krikkit should be contained by placing it in a "Slo-Time" envelope that would slow life down on the planet almost infinitely. The Slo-Time field would be created by a device placed on an asteroid orbiting the planet, and the key to this device would be created in...