He is not quite a baby, Alfred, said Ellen, though he is only a big stupid boy. We have made him miserable enough. Let us leave him alone.

The majority of serious criminal offences require, in addition to the actus reus, a specific state of mind on the part of the accused, usually referred to as the mens rea. Many less serious crimes require no mens rea, but simply proof that the defendant caused the prohibited harm.

Seven years and a few months after leaving Earth, we where about to survey the last of six planets around an amazingly stable star some eight hundred and change light years from Earth.

It was in his application of it that he was too much a mediævalist, and I think perhaps he forced the “quaint” side of Mediæval art too much on the attention.