[Illustration: Illustrated by IVIE] _The men who did dangerous work had a special kind of insurance policy. But when somebody wanted to collect on that policy, the claims investigator suddenly became a member of . . . _ The RISK PROFESSION By DONALD E. WESTLAKE Mister Henderson called me into his office my third day back inTangiers. That was a day and a half later than I'd expected. Rovingclaims investigators for Tangiers Mutual Insurance Corporation don'tusually get to spend more than thirty-six consecutive hours at homebase. Henderson was jovial but stern. That meant he was happy with the job I'djust completed, and that he was pretty sure I'd find some crookedshenanigans on this next assignment. That didn't please me. I'mbasically a plain-living type, and I hate complications. I almost wishedfor a second there that I was back on Fire and Theft in Greater NewYork. But I knew better than that. As a roving claim investigator, Iavoided the more stultifying paper work inherent in this line of workand had the additional luxury of an expense account nobody everquestioned. It made working for a living almost worthwhile. When I was settled in the chair beside his desk, Henderson said, "Thatwas good work you did on Luna, Ged. Saved the company a pretty pence. " I smiled modestly and said, "Thank you, sir. " And reflected to myselffor the thousandth time that the company could do worse than split thatsaving with the guy who'd made it possible. Me, in other words. "Got a tricky one this time, Ged, " said my boss. He had done hisback-patting, now we got down to business. He peered keenly at me, or atleast as keenly as a round-faced tiny-eyed fat man _can_ peer. "What doyou know about the Risk Profession Retirement Plan?" he asked me. "I've heard of it, " I said truthfully. "That's about all. " He nodded. "Most of the policies are sold off-planet, of course. It's aform of insurance for non-insurables. Spaceship crews, asteroidprospectors, people like that. " "I see, " I said, unhappily. I knew right away this meant I was going tohave to go off-Earth again. I'm a one-gee boy all the way. Gravitychanges get me in the solar plexus. I get g-sick at the drop of anelevator. * * * "Here's the way it works, " he went on, either not noticing my sad faceor choosing to ignore it. "The client pays a monthly premium. He can beas far ahead or as far behind in his payments as he wants--the policyhas no lapse clause--just so he's all paid up by the Target Date. TheTarget Date is a retirement age, forty-five or above, chosen by theclient himself. After the Target Date, he stops paying premiums, and webegin to pay him a monthly retirement check, the amount determined bythe amount paid into the policy, his age at retiring, and so on. Clear?" I nodded, looking for the gimmick that made this a paying propositionfor good old Tangiers Mutual. "The Double R-P--that's what we call it around the office here--assuresthe client that he won't be reduced to panhandling in his old age, should his other retirement plans fall through. For Belt prospectors, ofcourse, this means the big strike, which maybe one in a hundred find. For the man who never does make that big strike, this is something tofall back on. He can come home to Earth and retire, with a guaranteedincome for the rest of his life. " I nodded again, like a good company man. "Of course, " said Henderson, emphasizing this point with an upraisedchubby finger, "these men are still uninsurables. This is a retirementplan only, not an insurance policy. There is no beneficiary other thanthe client himself. " And there was the gimmick. I knew a little something of the actuarialstatistics concerning uninsurables, particularly Belt prospectors. Notmany of them lived to be forty-five, and the few who would survive theBelt and come home to collect the retirement wouldn't last more than ayear or two. A man who's spent the last twenty or thirty years onlow-gee asteroids just shrivels up after a while when he tries to liveon Earth. It needed a company like Tangiers Mutual to dream up a racket like that. The term "uninsurables" to most insurance companies means those peoplewhose jobs or habitats make them too likely as prospects for obituaries. To Tangiers Mutual, uninsurables are people who have money the companycan't get at. "Now, " said Henderson importantly, "we come to the problem at hand. " Heruffled his up-to-now-neat In basket and finally found the folder hewanted. He studied the blank exterior of this folder for a few seconds, pursing his lips at it, and said, "One of our clients under the DoubleR-P was a man named Jafe McCann. " "Was?" I echoed. He squinted at me, then nodded at my sharpness. "That's right, he'sdead. " He sighed heavily and tapped the folder with all those pudgyfingers. "Normally, " he said, "that would be the end of it. File closed. However, this time there are complications. " Naturally. Otherwise, he wouldn't be telling _me_ about it. ButHenderson couldn't be rushed, and I knew it. I kept the alert look on myface and thought of other things, while waiting for him to get to thepoint. "Two weeks after Jafe McCann's death, " Henderson said, "we received acash-return form on his policy. " "A cash-return form?" I'd never heard of such a thing. It didn't soundlike anything Tangiers Mutual would have anything to do with. We _never_return cash. * * * "It's something special in this case, " he explained. "You see, thisisn't an insurance policy, it's a retirement plan, and the client canwithdraw from the retirement plan at any time, and have seventy-five percent of his paid-up premiums returned to him. It's, uh, the law in planssuch as this. " "Oh, " I said. That explained it. A law that had snuck through the WorldFinance Code Commission while the insurance lobby wasn't looking. "But you see the point, " said Henderson. "This cash-return form arrivedtwo weeks after the client's death. " "You said there weren't any beneficiaries, " I pointed out. "Of course. But the form was sent in by the man's partner, one AbKarpin. McCann left a hand-written will bequeathing all his possessionsto Karpin. Since, according to Karpin, this was done before McCann'sdeath, the premium money cannot be considered part of the policy, but aspart of McCann's cash-on-hand. And Karpin wants it. " "It can't be that much, can it?" I asked. I was trying my best to pointout to him that the company would spend more than it would save if itsent me all the way out to the asteroids, a prospect I could feel comingand one which I wasn't ready to cry hosannah over. "McCann died, " Henderson said ponderously, "at the age of fifty-six. Hehad set his retirement age at sixty. He took out the policy at the ageof thirty-four, with monthly payments of fifty credits. Figure it outfor yourself. " I did--in my head--and came up with a figure of thirteen thousand andtwo hundred credits. Seventy-five per cent of that would be ninethousand and nine hundred credits. Call it ten thousand credits even. I had to admit it. It was worth the trip. "I see, " I said sadly. "Now, " said Henderson, "the conditions--the circumstances--of McCann'sdeath are somewhat suspicious. And so is the cash-return form itself. " "There's a chance it's a forgery?" "One would think so, " he said. "But our handwriting experts have wornthemselves out with that form, comparing it with every other singlescrap of McCann's writing they can find. And their conclusion is thatnot only is it genuinely McCann's handwriting, but it is McCann'shandwriting at age fifty-six. " "So McCann must have written it, " I said. "Under duress, do you think?" "I have no idea, " said Henderson complacently. "That's what you'resupposed to find out. Oh, there's just one more thing. " I did my best to make my ears perk. "I told you that McCann's death occurred under somewhat suspiciouscircumstances. " "Yes, " I agreed, "you did. " "McCann and Karpin, " he said, "have been partners--unincorporated, ofcourse--for the last fifteen years. They had found small rare-metaldeposits now and again, but they had never found that one big strike allthe Belt prospectors waste their lives looking for. Not until the daybefore McCann died. " "Ah hah, " I said. "_Then_ they found the big strike. " "Exactly. " "And McCann's death?" "Accidental. " "Sure, " I said. "What proof have we got?" "None. The body is lost in space. And law is few and far between thatfar out. " "So all we've got is this guy Karpin's word for how McCann died, is thatit?" "That's all we have. So far. " "Sure. And now you want me to go on out there and find out what'scooking, and see if I can maybe save the company ten thousand credits. " "Exactly, " said Henderson. * * * * * The copter took me to the spaceport west of Cairo, and there I boardedthe good ship _Demeter_ for Luna City and points Out. I loaded up ong-sickness pills and they worked fine. I was sick as a dog. By the time we got to Atronics City, my insides had grown resigned totheir fate. As long as I didn't try to eat, my stomach would leave mealone. Atronics City was about as depressing as a Turkish bath with all thelights on. It stood on a chunk of rock a couple of miles thick, and itlooked like nothing more in this world than a welder's practice range. From the outside, Atronics City is just a derby-shaped dome ofnickel-iron, black and kind of dirty-looking. I suppose a transparentdome would have been more fun, but the builders of the company cities inthe asteroids were businessmen, and they weren't concerned with havingfun. There's nothing to look at outside the dome but chunks of rock andthe blackness of space anyway, and you've got all this cheap ironfloating around in the vicinity, and all a dome's supposed to do is keepthe air in. Besides, though the Belt isn't as crowded as a lot of peoplethink, there _is_ quite a lot of debris rushing here and there, bumpinginto things, and a transparent dome would just get all scratched up, notto mention punctured. From the inside, Atronics City is even jollier. There's the top level, directly under the dome, which is mainly parking area for scooters andtuggers of various kinds, plus the office shacks of the Assayer'sOffice, the Entry Authority, the Industry Troopers and so on. The nextthree levels have all been burned into the bowels of the planetoid. Level two is the Atronics plant, and a noisy plant it is. Level three isthe shopping and entertainment area--grocery stores and clothing storesand movie theaters and bars--and level four is housing, two rooms andkitchen for the unmarried, four rooms and kitchen plus one room for eachchild for the married. All of these levels have one thing in common. Square corners, paintedolive drab. The total effect of the place is suffocating. You feel likeyou're stuck in the middle of a stack of packing crates. Most of the people living in Atronics City work, of course, forInternational Atronics, Incorporated. The rest of them work in theservice occupations--running the bars and grocery stores and so on--thatkeep the company employees alive and relatively happy. Wages come high in the places like Atronics City. Why not, the rawmaterials come practically for free. And as for working conditions, well, take a for instance. How do you make a vacuum tube? You fiddlewith the innards and surround it all with glass. And how do you get theair out? No problem, boy, there wasn't any air in there to begin with. At any rate, there I was at Atronics City. That was as far as _Demeter_would take me. Now, while the ship went on to Ludlum City and ChemisantCity and the other asteroid business towns, my two suitcases and Idribbled down the elevator to my hostelry on level four. * * * Have you ever taken an elevator ride when the gravity is practicallynon-existent? Well, don't. You see, the elevator manages to sink fasterthan you do. It isn't being _lowered_ down to level four, it's being_pulled_ down. What this means is that the suitcases have to be lashed down with thestraps provided, and you and the operator have to hold on tight to thehand-grips placed here and there around the wall. Otherwise, you'd clonkyour head on the ceiling. But we got to level four at last, and off I went with my suitcases andthe operator's directions. The suitcases weighed about half an ounceeach out here, and I felt as though I weighed the same. Every time Iraised a foot, I was sure I was about to go sailing into a wall. Localcitizens eased by me, their feet occasionally touching the iron pavementas they soared along, and I gave them all dirty looks. Level four was nothing but walls and windows. The iron floor went amongthese walls and windows in a straight straight line, bisecting other"streets" at perfect right angles, and the iron ceiling sixteen feet upwas lined with a double row of fluorescent tubes. I was beginning tofeel claustrophobic already. The Chalmers Hotel--named for an Atronics vice-president--had receivedmy advance registration, which was nice. I was shown to a second-floorroom--nothing on level four had more than two stories--and was left tounpack my suitcases as best I may. I had decided to spend a day or two at Atronics City before taking ascooter out to Ab Karpin's claim. Atronics City had been Karpin's andMcCann's home base. All of McCann's premium payments had been mailedfrom here, and the normal mailing address for both of them was GPOAtronics City. I wanted to know as much as possible about Ab Karpin before I went outto see him. And Atronics City seemed like the best place to get myinformation. But not today. Today, my stomach was very unhappy, and my head was onsympathy strike. Today, I was going to spend my time exclusively in bed, trying not to float up to the ceiling. * * * * * The Mapping & Registry Office, it seemed to me the next day, was thebest place to start. This was where prospectors filed their claims, butit was a lot more than that. The waiting room of M&R was the unofficialclub of the asteroid prospectors. This is where they met with oneanother, talked together about the things that prospectors discuss, andmade and dissolved their transient partnerships. In this way, Karpin and McCann were unusual. They had maintained theirpartnership for fifteen years. That was about sixty times longer thanmost such arrangements lasted. Searching the asteroid chunks for rare and valuable metals is basicallypretty lonely work, and it's inevitable that the prospectors will everyonce in a while get hungry for human company and decide to try a teamoperation. But, at the same time, work like this attracts people whodon't get along very well with human company. So the partnerships comeand go, and the hatreds flare and are forgotten, and the normalprospecting team lasts an average of three months. At any rate, it was to the Mapping & Registry Office that I went first. And, since that office was up on the first level, I went by elevator. Riding _up_ in that elevator was a heck of a lot more fun than ridingdown. The elevator whipped up like mad, the floor pressed against thesoles of my feet, and it felt almost like good old Earth for a second ortwo there. But then the elevator stopped, and I held on tight to thehand-grips to keep from shooting through the top of the blasted thing. The operator--a phlegmatic sort--gave me directions to the M&R, and offI went, still trying to figure out how to sail along as gracefully asthe locals. The Mapping & Registry Office occupied a good-sized shack over near thedome wall, next to the entry lock. I pushed open the door and went onin. The waiting room was cozy and surprisingly large, large enough tocomfortably hold the six maroon leather sofas scattered here and thereon the pale green carpet, flanked by bronze ashtray stands. There wereonly six prospectors here at the moment, chatting together in two groupsof three, and they all looked alike. Grizzled, ageless, watery-eyed, their clothing clean but baggy. I passed them and went on to the desk atthe far end, behind which sat a young man in official gray, slowlyturning the crank of a microfilm reader. He looked up at my approach. I flashed my company identification andasked to speak to the manager. He went away, came back, and ushered meinto an office which managed to be Spartan and sumptuous at the sametime. The walls had been plastic-painted in textured brown, the ironfloor had been lushly carpeted in gray, and the desk had been coveredwith a simulated wood coating. The manager--a man named Teaking--went well with the office. His faceand hands were spare and lean, but his uniform was immaculate, coveredwith every curlicue the regulations allowed. He welcomed me politely, but curiously, and I said, "I wonder if you know a prospector named AbKarpin?" "Karpin? Of course. He and old Jafe McCann--pity about McCann. I hear hegot killed. " "Yes, he did. " "And that's what you're here for, eh?" He nodded sagely. "I didn't knowthe Belt boys could get insurance, " he said. "It isn't exactly that, " I said. "This concerns a retirement plan, and--well, the details don't matter. " Which, I hoped, would end hiscuriosity in that line. "I was hoping you could give me some backgroundon Karpin. And on McCann, too, for that matter. " He grinned a bit. "You saw the men sitting outside?" I nodded. "Then you've seen Karpin and McCann. Exactly the same. It doesn't matterif a man's thirty or sixty or what. It doesn't matter what he was likebefore he came out here. If he's been here a few years, he looks exactlylike the bunch you saw outside there. " "That's appearance, " I said. "What I was looking for was personality. " "Same thing, " he said. "All of them. Close-mouthed, anti-social, fiercely independent, incurably romantic, always convinced that the bigstrike is just a piece of rock away. McCann, now, he was a bit morerealistic than most. He'd be the one I'd expect to take out a retirementpolicy. A real pence-pincher, that one, though I shouldn't say it ashe's dead. But that's the way he was. Brighter than most Belt boys whenit came to money matters. I've seen him haggle over a new piece ofequipment for their scooter, or some repair work, or some such thing, and he was a wonder to watch. " "And Karpin?" I asked him. "A prospector, " he said, as though that answered my question. "Same aseverybody else. Not as sharp as McCann when it came to money. That's whyall the money stuff in the partnership was handled by McCann. But Karpinwas one of the sharpest boys in the business when it came to mineralogy. He knew rocks you and I never heard of, and most times he knew them bysight. Almost all of the Belt boys are college grads--you've got to knowwhat you're looking for out here and what it looks like when you'vefound it--but Karpin has practically all of them beat. He's _sharp_. " * * * "Sounds like a good team, " I said. "I guess that's why they stayed together so long, " he said. "Theycomplemented each other. " He leaned forward, the inevitable prelude to aconfidential remark. "I'll tell you something off the record, Mister, "he said. "Those two were smarter than they knew. Their partnership wasnever legalized, it was never anything more than a piece of paper. Andthere's a bunch of fellas around here mighty unhappy about that today. Jafe McCann is the one who handled all the money matters, like I said. He's got IOU's all over town. " "And they can't collect from Karpin?" He nodded. "Jafe McCann died just a bit too soon. He was sharp andcheap, but he was honest. If he'd lived, he would have repaid all hisdebts, I'm sure of it. And if this strike they made is as good as Ihear, he would have been able to repay them with no trouble at all. " I nodded, somewhat impatiently. I had the feeling by now that I wastalking to a man who was one of those who had a Jafe McCann IOU in hispocket. "How long has it been since you've seen Karpin?" I asked him, wondering what Karpin's attitude and expression was now that his partnerwas dead. "Oh, Lord, not for a couple of months, " he said. "Not since they wentout together the last time and made that strike. " "Didn't Karpin come in to make his claim?" "Not here. Over to Chemisant City. That was the nearest M&R to thestrike. " "Oh. " That was a pity. I would have liked to have known if there hadbeen a change of any kind in Karpin since his partner's death. "I'lltell you what the situation is, " I said, with a false air oftruthfulness. "We have some misgivings about McCann's death. Notsuspicions, exactly, just misgivings. The timing is what bothers us. " "You mean, because it happened just after the strike?" "That's it, " I answered frankly. He shook his head. "I wouldn't get too excited about that, if I wereyou, " he said. "It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. A man makesthe big strike after all, and he gets so excited he forgets himself fora minute and gets careless. And you only have to be careless once outhere. " "That may be it, " I said. I got to my feet, knowing I'd picked up allthere was from this man. "Thanks a lot for your cooperation, " I said. "Any time, " he said. He stood and shook hands with me. I went back out through the chatting prospectors and crossed the echoingcavern that was level one, aiming to rent myself a scooter. * * * * * I don't like rockets. They're noisy as the dickens, they steer hard anddrive erratically, and you can never carry what _I_ would consider asafe emergency excess of fuel. Nothing like the big steady-ginterplanetary liners. On those I feel almost human. The appearance of the scooter I was shown at the rental agency didn't domuch to raise my opinion of this mode of transportation. The thing was agood ten years old, the paint scraped and scratched all over itsegg-shaped, originally green-colored body, and the windshield--a sillyterm, really, for the front window of a craft that spends most of itstime out where there isn't any wind--was scratched and pockmarked to thepoint of translucency by years of exposure to the asteroidal dust. The rental agent was a sharp-nosed thin-faced type who displayed thisrefugee from a melting vat without a blush, and still didn't blush whenhe told me the charges. Twenty credits a day, plus fuel. I paid without a murmur--it was the company's money, not mine--and paidan additional ten credits for the rental of a suit to go with it. Iworked my way awkwardly into the suit, and clambered into the driver'sseat of the relic. I attached the suit to the ship in all the necessaryplaces, and the agent closed and spun the door. Most of the black paint had worn off the handles of the controls, andinsulation peeked through rips in the plastic siding here and there. Iwondered if the thing had any slow leaks and supposed fatalisticallythat it had. The agent waved at me, stony-faced, the conveyor belttrundled me outside the dome, and I kicked the weary rocket into life. The scooter had a tendency to roll to the right. If I hadn't keptfighting it back, it would have soon worked up a dandy little spin. Iwas spending so much time juggling with the controls that I practicallymissed a couple of my beacon rocks, and that would have been just toobad. If I'd gotten off the course I had carefully outlined for myself, I'd never have found my bearings again, and I would have just floatedaround amid the scenery until some passerby took pity and towed me backhome. But I managed to avoid getting lost, which surprised me, and after fournerve-wracking hours I finally spotted the yellow-painted X of aregistered claim on a half-mile-thick chunk of rock dead ahead. As I gotcloser, I spied a scooter parked near the X, and beside it an inflatedportable dome. The scooter was somewhat larger than mine, but no newerand probably even less safe. The dome was varicolored, from repeatedpatching. This would be the claim, and this is where I would find Karpin, sittingon his property while waiting for the sale to go through. Prospectorslike Karpin are free-lance men, working for no particular company. Theyregister their claims in their own names, and then sell the rights towhichever company shows up first with the most attractive offer. There'sa lot of paperwork to such a sale, and it's all handled by the company. While waiting, the smart prospector sits on his claim and makes surenobody chips off a part of it for himself, a stunt that still happensnow and again. It doesn't take too much concentrated explosive to maketwo rocks out of one rock, and a man's claim is only the rock with his Xon it. I set the scooter down next to the other one, and flicked the toggle forthe air pumps, then put on the fishbowl and went about unattaching thesuit from the ship. When the red light flashed on and off, I spun thedoor, opened it, and stepped out onto the rock, moving very cautiously. It isn't that I don't believe the magnets in the boot soles will work, it's just that I know for a fact that they won't work if I happen toraise both feet at the same time. [Illustration] I clumped across the crude X to Karpin's dome. The dome had no viewportsat all, so I wasn't sure Karpin was aware of my presence. I rapped mymetal glove on the metal outer door of the lock, and then I was sure. But it took him long enough to open up. I had just about decided he'djoined his partner in the long sleep when the door cracked open an inch. I pushed it open and stepped into the lock, ducking my head. The doorwas only five feet high, and just as wide as the lock itself, threefeet. The other dimensions of the lock were: height, six feet six;width, one foot. Not exactly room to dance in. * * * When the red light high on the left-hand wall clicked off, I rapped onthe inner door. It promptly opened, I stepped through and removed thefishbowl. Karpin stood in the middle of the room, a small revolver in his hand. "Shut the door, " he said. I obeyed, moving slowly. I didn't want that gun to go off by mistake. "Who are you?" Karpin demanded. The M&R man had been right. Ab Karpinwas a dead ringer for all those other prospectors I'd seen back atAtronics City. Short and skinny and grizzled and ageless. He could havebeen forty, and he could have been ninety, but he was probably somewherethe other side of fifty. His hair was black and limp and thinning, ruffled in little wisps across his wrinkled pate. His forehead andcheeks were lined like a plowed field, and were much the same color. Hiseyes were wide apart and small, so deep-set beneath shaggy brows thatthey seemed black. His mouth was thin, almost lipless. The hand holdingthe revolver was nothing but bones and blue veins covered with tautskin. He was wearing a dirty undershirt and an old pair of trousers that hadbeen cut off raggedly just above his knobby knees. Faded slippers wereon his feet. He had good reason for dressing that way, the temperatureinside the dome must have been nearly ninety degrees. The dome wasn'treflecting away the sun's heat as well as it had when it was young. I looked at Karpin, and despite the revolver and the tense expression onhis face, he was the least dangerous-looking man I'd ever run across. All at once, the idea that this anti-social old geezer had the drive orthe imagination to murder his partner seemed ridiculous. Apparently, I spent too much time looking him over, because he saidagain, "Who are you?" And this time he motioned impatiently with therevolver. "Stanton, " I told him. "Ged Stanton, Tangiers Mutual Insurance. I haveidentification, but it's in my pants pocket, down inside this suit. " "Get it, " he said. "And move slow. " "Right you are. " I moved slow, as per directions, and peeled out of the suit, thenreached into my trouser pocket and took out my ID clip. I flipped itopen and showed him the card bearing my signature and picture and rightthumb-print and the name of the company I represented, and he nodded, satisfied, and tossed the revolver over onto his bed. "I got to becareful, " he said. "I got a big claim here. " "I know that, " I told him. "Congratulations for it. " "Thanks, " he said, but he still looked peevish. "You're here aboutJafe's insurance, right?" "That I am. " "Don't want to pay up, I suppose. That doesn't surprise me. " Blunt old men irritate me. "Well, " I said, "we do have to investigate. " "Sure, " he said. "You want some coffee?" "Thank you. " "You can sit in that chair there. That was Jafe's. " I settled gingerly in the cloth-and-plastic foldaway chair he'd pointedat, and he went over to the kitchen area of the dome to start coffee. Itook the opportunity to look the dome over. It was the first portabledome I'd ever been inside. * * * It was all one room, roughly circular, with a diameter of about fifteenfeet. The sides went straight up for the first seven feet, then curvedgradually inward to form the roof. At the center of the dome, theceiling was about twelve feet high. The floor of the room was simply the asteroidal rock surface, notcompletely level and smooth. There were two chairs and a table to theright of the entry lock, two foldaway cots around the wall beyond them, the kitchen area next and a cluttered storage area around on the otherside. There was a heater standing alone in the center of the room, butit certainly wasn't needed now. Sweat was already trickling down theback of my neck and down my forehead into my eyebrows. I peeled off myshirt and used it to wipe sweat from my face. "Warm in here, " I said. "You get used to it, " he muttered, which I found hard to believe. He brought over the coffee, and I tasted it. It was rotten, as bitter asthis old hermit's soul, but I said, "Good coffee. Thanks a lot. " "I like it strong, " he said. I looked around at the room again. "All the comforts of home, eh? Prettyingenious arrangement. " "Sure, " he said sourly. "How about getting to the point, Mister?" There's only one way to handle a blunt old man. Be blunt right back. "I'll tell you how it is, " I said. "The company isn't accusing you ofanything, but it has to be sure everything's on the up and up before itpays out any ten thousand credits. And your partner just happening tofill out that cash-return form just before he died--well, you've got toadmit it is a funny kind of coincidence. " "How so?" He slurped coffee, and glowered at me over the cup. "We madethis strike here, " he said. "We knew it was the big one. Jafe had thatinsurance policy of his in case he never did make the big strike. Assoon as we knew this was the big one, he said, 'I guess I don't needthat retirement now, ' and sat right down and wrote out the cash-return. Then we opened a bottle of liquor and celebrated, and he got himselfkilled. " The way Karpin said it, it sounded smooth and natural. _Too_ smooth andnatural. "How did this accident happen anyway?" I asked him. "I'm not one hundred per cent sure of that myself, " he said. "I waspretty well drunk myself by that time. But he put on his suit and saidhe was going out to paint the X. He was falling all over himself, and Itried to tell him it could wait till we'd had some sleep, but hewouldn't pay any attention to me. " "So he went out, " I said. He nodded. "He went out first. After a couple minutes, I got lonesome inhere, so I suited up and went out after him. It happened just as I wasgoing out the lock, and I just barely got a glimpse of what happened. " * * * He attacked the coffee again, noisily, and I prompted him, saying, "Whatdid happen, Mister Karpin?" "Well, he was capering around out there, waving the paint tube and such. There's a lot of sharp rock sticking out around here. Just as I gotoutside, he lost his balance and kicked out, and scraped right into someof that rock, and punctured his suit. " "I thought the body was lost, " I said. He nodded. "It was. The last thing in life Jafe ever did was try toshove himself away from those rocks. That, and the force of air comingout of that puncture for the first second or two, was enough to throwhim up off the surface. It threw him up too high, and he never got backdown. " My doubt must have showed in my face, because he added, "Mister, thereisn't enough gravity on this place to shoot craps with. " He was right. As we talked, I kept finding myself holding unnecessarilytight to the arms of the chair. I kept having the feeling I was going tofloat out of the chair and hover around up at the top of the dome if Iwere to let go. It was silly of course--there was _some_ gravity on thatplanetoid, after all--but I just don't seem to get used to low-gee. Nevertheless, I still had some more questions. "Didn't you try to gethis body back? Couldn't you have reached him?" "I tried to, Mister, " he said. "Old Jafe McCann was my partner forfifteen years. But I was drunk, and that's a fact. And I was afraid togo jumping up in the air, for fear _I'd_ go floating away, too. " "Frankly, " I said, "I'm no expert on low gravity and asteroids. Butwouldn't McCann's body just go into orbit around this rock? I mean, itwouldn't simply go floating off into space, would it?" "It sure would, " he said. "There's a lot of other rocks out here, too, Mister, and a lot of them are bigger than this one and have a lot moregravity pull. I don't suppose there's a navigator in the business whocould have computed Jafe's course in advance. He floated up, and then hefloated back over the dome here and seemed to hover for a coupleminutes, and then he just floated out and away. His isn't the only bodycircling around the sun with all these rocks, you know. " I chewed a lip and thought it all over. I didn't know enough aboutasteroid gravity or the conditions out here to be able to say for surewhether Karpin's story was true or not. Up to this point, I couldn'tattack the problem on a fact basis. I had to depend on _feeling_ now, the hunches and instincts of eight years in this job, hearing somepeople tell lies and other people tell the truth. And my instinct said Ab Karpin was lying in his teeth. That dramaticlittle touch about McCann's body hovering over the dome beforedisappearing into the void, that sounded more like the embellishment offiction than the circumstance of truth. And the string of coincidenceswere just too much. McCann just coincidentally happens to die rightafter he and his partner make their big strike. He happens to write outthe cash-return form just before dying. And his body just happens tofloat away, so nobody can look at it and check Karpin's story. * * * But no matter what my instinct said, the story was smooth. It was smoothas glass, and there was no place for me to get a grip on it. What now? There wasn't any hole in Karpin's story, at least none that Icould see. I had to break his story somehow, and in order to do that Ihad to do some nosing around on this planetoid. I couldn't know inadvance what I was looking for, I could only look. I'd know it when Ifound it. It would be something that conflicted with Karpin's story. And for that, I had to be sure the story was complete. "You said McCannhad gone out to paint the X, " I said. "Did he paint it?" Karpin shook his head. "He never got a chance. He spent all his timedancing, up till he went and killed himself. " "So you painted it yourself. " He nodded. "And then you went on into Atronics City and registered your claim, isthat the story?" "No. Chemisant City was closer than Atronics City right then, so I wentthere. Just after Jafe's death, and everything--I didn't feel like beingalone any more than I had to. " "You said Chemisant City was closer to you _then_, " I said. "Isn't itnow?" "Things move around a lot out here, Mister, " he said. "Right now, Chemisant City's almost twice as far from here as Atronics City. Inabout three days, it'll start swinging in closer again. Things keepshifting around out here. " "So I've noticed, " I said. "When you took off to go to Chemisant City, didn't you make a try for your partner's body then?" He shook his head. "He was long out of sight by then, " he said. "Thatwas ten, eleven hours later, when I took off. " "Why's that? All you had to do was paint the X and take off. " "Mister, I told you. I was drunk. I was falling down drunk, and when Isaw I couldn't get at Jafe, and he was dead anyway, I came back in hereand slept it off. Maybe if I'd been sober I would have taken the scooterand gone after him, but I was _drunk_. " "I see. " And there just weren't any more questions I could think of toask, not right now. So I said, "I've just had a shaky four-hour ridecoming out here. Mind if I stick around a while before going back?" "Help yourself, " he said, in a pretty poor attempt at genialhospitality. "You can sleep over, if you want. " "Fine, " I said. "I think I'd like that. " "You wouldn't happen to play cribbage, would you?" he asked, with thefirst real sign of animation I'd seen in him yet. "I learn fast, " I told him. "Okay, " he said. "I'll teach you. " And he produced a filthy deck ofcards and taught me. * * * * * After losing nine straight games of cribbage, I quit, and got to myfeet. I was at my most casual as I stretched and said, "Okay if I wanderaround outside for a while? I've never been on an asteroid like thisbefore. I mean, a little one like this. I've just been to the companycities up to now. " "Go right ahead, " he said. "I've got some polishing and patching to do, anyway. " He made his voice sound easy and innocent, but I noticed hiseyes were alert and wary, watching me as I struggled back into my suit. I didn't bother to put my shirt back on first, and that was a mistake. The temperature inside an atmosphere suit is a steady sixty-eightdegrees. That had never seemed particularly chilly before, but afterthe heat of that dome, it seemed cold as a blizzard inside the suit. I went on out through the airlock, and moved as briskly as possible inthe cumbersome suit, while the sweat chilled on my back and face, and Iaccepted the glum conviction that one thing I was going to get out ofthis trip for sure was a nasty head cold. I went over to the X first, and stood looking at it. It was just an X, that's all, shakily scrawled in yellow paint, with the initials "J-A"scrawled much smaller beside it. I left the X and clumped away. The horizon was practically at arm'slength, so it didn't take long for the dome to be out of sight. And thenI clumped more slowly, studying the surface of the asteroid. What I was looking for was a grave. I believed that Karpin was lying, that he had murdered his partner. And I didn't believe that JafeMcCann's body had floated off into space. I was convinced that his bodywas still somewhere on this asteroid. Karpin had been forced to concocta story about the body being lost because the appearance of the bodywould prove somehow that it had been murder and not accident. I wasconvinced of that, and now all I had to do was prove it. But that asteroid was a pretty unlikely place for a grave. That wasn'tdirt I was walking on, it was rock, solid metallic rock. You don't dig agrave in solid rock, not with a shovel. You maybe can do it withdynamite, but that won't work too well if your object is to keep anybodyfrom seeing that the hole has been made. Dirt can be patted down. Blown-up rock looks like blown-up rock, and that's all there is to it. I considered crevices and fissures in the surface, some cranny largeenough for Karpin to have stuffed the body into. But I didn't find anyof these either as I plodded along, being sure to keep one magnettedboot always in contact with the ground. Karpin and McCann had set their dome up at just about the only reallylevel spot on that entire planetoid. The rest of it was nothing butjagged rock, and it wasn't easy traveling at all, maneuvering aroundwith magnets on my boots and a bulky atmosphere suit cramping mymovements. * * * And then I stopped and looked out at space and cursed myself for aring-tailed baboon. McCann's body might be anywhere in the Solar System, anywhere at all, but there was one place I could be sure it wasn't, andthat place was this asteroid. No, Karpin had not blown a grave orstuffed the body into a fissure in the ground. Why not? Because thischunk of rock was valuable, that's why not. Because Karpin was in theprocess of selling it to one of the major companies, and that companywould come along and chop this chunk of rock to pieces, getting thevaluable metal out, and McCann's body would turn up in the first week ofoperations if Karpin were stupid enough to bury it here. Ten hours between McCann's death and Karpin's departure for ChemisantCity. He'd admitted that already. And I was willing to bet he'd spent atleast part of that time carrying McCann's body to some other asteroid, one he was sure was nothing but worthless rock. If that were true, itmeant the mortal remains of Jafe McCann were now somewhere--_anywhere_--inthe Asteroid Belt. Even if I assumed that the body had been hidden on anasteroid somewhere between here and Chemisant City--which wasn'tnecessarily so--that wouldn't help at all. The relative positions ofplanetoids in the Belt just keep on shifting. A small chunk of rock thatwas between here and Chemisant City a few weeks ago--it could be almostanywhere in the Belt right now. The body, that was the main item. I'd more or less counted on finding itsomehow. At the moment, I couldn't think of any other angle forattacking Karpin's story. As I clopped morosely back to the dome, I nibbled at Karpin's story inmy mind. For instance, why go to Chemisant City? It was closer, he said, but it couldn't have been closer by more than a couple of hours. The wayI understood it, Karpin was well-known back on Atronics City--it was thenormal base of operations for he and his partner--and he didn't know asoul at Chemisant City. Did it make sense for him to go somewhere hewasn't known after his partner's death, even if it _was_ an hour closer?No, it made a lot more sense for a man in that situation to go wherehe's known, go someplace where he has friends who'll sympathize with himand help him over the shock of losing a partner of fifteen years'standing, even if going there does mean traveling an hour longer. And there was always the cash-return form. That was what I was hereabout in the first place. It just didn't make sense for McCann to haveheld up his celebration while he filled out a form that he wouldn't beable to mail until he got back to Atronics City. And yet the company'shandwriting experts were convinced that it wasn't a forgery, and I couldpretty well take their word for it. Mulling these things over as I tramped back toward the dome, I suddenlyheard a distant bell ringing way back in my head. The glimmering of anidea, not an idea yet but just the hint of one. I wasn't sure where itled, or even if it led anywhere at all, but I was going to find out. * * * * * Karpin opened the doors for me. By the time I'd stripped off the suit hewas back to work. He was cleaning the single unit which was hiscombination stove and refrigerator and sink and garbage disposal. I looked around the dome again, and I had to admit that a lot ofingenuity had gone into the manufacture and design of this dome and itscontents. The dome itself, when deflated, folded down into an oblong boxthree feet by one foot by one foot. The lock itself, of course, foldedseparately, into another box somewhat smaller than that. As for the gear inside the dome, it was functional and collapsible, andthere wasn't a single item there that wasn't needed. There were the twochairs and the two cots and the table, all of them foldaway. There wasthat fantastic combination job Karpin was cleaning right now, and thathad dimensions of four feet by three feet by three feet. The clutter ofgear over to the left wasn't as much of a clutter as it looked. Therewas a Geiger counter, an automatic spectrograph, two atmosphere suits, atorsion densimeter, a core-cutting drill, a few small hammers and picks, two spare air tanks, boxes of food concentrate, a paint tube, a doorlessjimmy-john and two small metal boxes about eight inches cube. These lastwere undoubtedly Karpin's and McCann's pouches, where they kept whateverletters, money, address books or other small bits of possessions theyowned. Back of this mound of gear, against the wall, stood the airreconditioner, humming quietly to itself. In this small enclosed space there was everything a man needed to keephimself alive. Everything except human company. And if you didn't needhuman company, then you had everything. Just on the other side of thatdome, there was a million miles of death, in a million possible ways. Onthis side of the dome, life was cozy, if somewhat Spartan and very hot. I knew for sure I was going to get a head cold. My body had adjusted tothe sixty-eight degrees inside the suit, finally, and now was veryannoyed to find the temperature shooting up to ninety again. Since Karpin didn't seem inclined to talk, and I would rather spend mytime thinking than talking anyway, I took a hint from him and did somecleaning. I'd noticed a smeared spot about nose-level on the faceplateof my fishbowl, and now was as good a time as any to get rid of it. Ithad a tendency to make my eyes cross. My shirt was sodden and wrinkled by this time anyway, having first beenused to wipe sweat from my face and later been rolled into a ball andleft on the chair when I went outside, so I used it for a cleaning rag, buffing like mad the silvered surface of the faceplate. Faceplates aresilvered, not so the man inside can look out and no one else can lookin, but in order to keep some of the more violent rays of the sun fromgetting through to the face. I buffed for a while, and then I put the fishbowl on my head and lookedthrough it. The spot was gone, so I went over and reattached it to therest of the suit, and then settled back in my chair again and lit acigarette. Karpin spoke up. "Wish you wouldn't smoke. Makes it tough on theconditioner. " "Oh, " I said. "Sorry. " So I just sat, thinking morosely about non-forgedcash-return forms, and coincidences, and likely spots to hide a body inthe Asteroid Belt. * * * Where would one dispose of a body in the asteroids? I went back throughmy thinking on that topic, and I found holes big enough to driveKarpin's claim through. This idea of leaving the body on some worthlesschunk of rock, for instance. If Karpin had killed his partner--and I wasdead sure he had--he'd planned it carefully and he wouldn't be leavinganything to chance. Now, an asteroid isn't worthless to a prospectoruntil that prospector has landed on it and tested it. _Karpin_ mightknow that such-and-such an asteroid was nothing but worthless stone, butthe guy who stops there and finds McCann's body might _not_ know it. No, Karpin wouldn't leave that to chance. He would get rid of that body, and he would do it in such a way that nobody would _ever_ find it. How? Not by leaving it on a worthless asteroid, and not by just pushingit off into space. The distance between asteroids is large, but so's thetravel. McCann's body, floating around in the blackness, might just befound by somebody. And that, so far as I could see, eliminated the possibilities. McCann'sbody was in the Belt. I'd eliminated both the asteroids themselves andthe space around the asteroids as hiding places. What was left? The sun, of course. I thought that over for a while, rather surprised at myself for havingnoticed the possibility. Now, let's say Karpin attaches a small rocketto McCann's body, stuffed into its atmosphere suit. He sets the rocketgoing, and off goes McCann. Not that he aims it toward the sun, thatwouldn't work well at all. Instead of falling into the sun, the bodywould simply take up a long elliptical orbit _around_ the sun, and wouldcome back to the asteroids every few hundred years. No, he would aimMcCann _back_, in the direction opposite to the direction or rotation ofthe asteroids. He would, in essence, slow McCann's body down, make itpractically stop in relation to the motion of the asteroids. And then itwould simply _fall_ into the sun. None of my ideas, it seemed, were happy ones. If McCann's body were evenat this moment falling toward the sun, it was just as useful to me as ifit were on some other asteroid. But, wait a second. Karpin and McCann had worked with the minimum ofequipment, I'd already noticed that. They didn't have extras ofanything, and they certainly wouldn't have extra rockets. Except for onefast trip to Chemisant City--when he had neither the time nor the excuseto buy a jato rocket--Karpin had spent all of his time since McCann'sdeath right here on this planetoid. So that killed that idea. While I was hunting around for some other idea, Karpin spoke up again, for the first time in maybe twenty minutes. "You think I killed him, don't you?" he said, not looking around from his cleaning job. I considered my answer. There was no reason at all to be overly politeto this sour old buzzard, but at the same time I am naturally thesoft-spoken type. "We aren't sure, " I said. "We just think there aresome odd items to be explained. " "Such as what?" he demanded. "Such as the timing of McCann's cash-return form. " "I already explained that, " he said. "I know. You've explained everything. " "He wrote it out himself, " the old man insisted. He put down hiscleaning cloth, and turned to face me. "I suppose your company checkedthe handwriting already, and Jafe McCann is the one who wrote thatform. " He was so blasted sure of himself. "It would seem that way, " I said. "What other odd items you worried about?" he asked me, in a rustyattempt at sarcasm. "Well, " I said, "there's this business of going to Chemisant City. Itwould have made more sense for you to go to Atronics City, where youwere known. " "Chemisant was closer, " he said. He shook a finger at me. "That companyof yours thinks it can cheat me out of my money, " he said. "Well, itcan't. I know my rights. That money belongs to me. " "I guess you're doing pretty well without McCann, " I said. His angry expression was replaced by one of bewilderment. "What do youmean?" "They told me back at Atronics City, " I explained, "that McCann was themoney expert and you were the metals expert, and that's why McCannhandled all your buying on credit and stuff like that. Looks as thoughyou've got a pretty keen eye for money yourself. " "I know what's mine, " he mumbled, and turned away. He went back toscrubbing the stove coils again. I stared at his back. Something had happened just then, and I wasn'tsure what. He'd just been starting to warm up to a tirade against thedirty insurance company, and all of a sudden he'd folded up and shut uplike a clam. And then I saw it. Or at least I saw part of it. I saw how thatcash-return form fit in, and how it made perfect sense. Now, all I needed was proof of murder. Preferably a body. I had the restof it. Then I could pack the old geezer back to Atronics City and getproof for the part I'd already figured out. I'd like that. I'd like getting back to Atronics City, and having thisall straightened out, and then taking the very next liner straight backto Earth. More immediately, I'd like getting out of this heat and backinto the cool sixty-eight degrees of-- And then it hit me. The whole thing hit me, and I just sat there andstared. They did not carry extras, Karpin and McCann, they did not carryone item of equipment more than they needed. I sat there and looked at the place where the dead body was hidden, andI said, "Well, I'll be a son of a gun!" He turned and looked at me, and then he followed the direction of mygaze, and he saw what I was staring at, and he made a jump across theroom at the revolver lying on the cot. * * * That's what saved me. He moved too fast, jerked his muscles too hard, and went sailing up and over the cot and ricocheted off the dome wall. And that gave me plenty of time to get up from the chair, moving morecautiously than he had, and get my hands on the revolver before he couldget himself squared away again. I straightened with the gun in my hand and looked into a face white withfrustration and rage. "Okay, Mister McCann, " I said. "It's all over. " He knew I had him, but he tried not to show it. "What are you talkingabout? McCann's dead. " "Sure he is, " I said. "Jafe McCann was the money-minded part of theteam. He was the one who signed for all the loans and all the equipmentbought on credit. With this big strike in, Jafe McCann was the one who'dhave to pay all that money. " "You're babbling, " he snapped, but the words were hollow. "You weren't satisfied with half a loaf, " I said. "You should have been. Half a loaf is better than none. But you wanted every penny you couldget your hands on, and you wanted to pay out just as little money as youpossibly could. So when you killed Ab Karpin, you saw a way to kill yourdebts as well. You'd _become_ Ab Karpin, and it would be Jafe McCann whowas dead, and the debts dead with him. " "That's a lie, " he said, his voice getting shrill. "_I'm_ Ab Karpin, andI've got papers to prove it. " "Sure. Papers you stole from a dead man. And you might have gotten awaywith it, too. But you just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?Not satisfied with having the whole claim to yourself, you switchedidentities with your victim to avoid your debts. And not satisfied with_that_, you filled out a cash-return form and tried to collect yourmoney as your own heir. _That's_ why you had to go to Chemisant City, where nobody would recognize Ab Karpin or Jafe McCann, rather than toAtronics City where you were well-known. " "You don't want to make too many wild accusations, " he shouted, hisvoice shaking. "You don't want to go around accusing people of thingsyou can't prove. " "I can prove it, " I told him. "I can prove everything I've said. As towho you are, there's no problem. All I have to do is bring you back toAtronics City. There'll be plenty of people there to identify you. Andas to proving you murdered Ab Karpin, I think his body will be proofenough, don't you?" McCann watched me as I backed slowly around the room to the mound ofgear. The partners had had no extra equipment, no extra equipment atall. I looked down at the two atmosphere suits lying side by side on themetallic rock floor. _Two_ atmosphere suits. The dead man was supposed to be in one of those, floating out in space somewhere. He was in the suit, right enough, I wassure of that, but he wasn't floating anywhere. A space suit is a perfect place to hide a body, for as long as it has tobe hid. The silvered faceplate keeps you from seeing inside, and thesuit is, naturally, a sealed atmosphere. A body can rot away to ashesinside a space suit, and you'll never notice a thing on the outside. * * * I'd had the right idea after all. McCann had planned to get rid ofKarpin's body by attaching a rocket to it, slowing it down, and lettingit fall into the sun. But he hadn't had an opportunity yet to go buy arocket. He couldn't go to Atronics City, where he could have bought therocket on credit, and he couldn't go to Chemisant City until the claimsale went through and he had some money to spend. And in the meantime, Karpin's body was perfectly safe, sealed away inside his atmospheresuit. And it would have been safe, too, if McCann hadn't been just a littlebit too greedy. He could kill his partner and get away with it;policemen on the Belt are even farther apart than the asteroids. Hecould swindle his creditors and get away with it; they had no way ofchecking up and no reason to suspect a switch in identities. But when hetried to get his own money back from Tangiers Mutual Insurance; _that's_when he made his mistake. I studied the two atmosphere suits, at the same time managing to keep awary eye on Jafe McCann, standing rigid and silent across the room. Which one of those suits contained the body of Ab Karpin? The one with the new patch on the chest, of course. As I'd guessed, McCann had shot him, and that's why he had the problem of disposing ofthe body in the first place. I prodded that suit with my toe. "He's in there, isn't he?" "You're crazy. " "Think I should open it up and check? It's been almost a month, youknow. I imagine he's pretty ripe by now. " I reached down to the neck-fastenings on the fishbowl, and McCannfinally moved. His arms jerked up, and he cried, "Don't! He's in there, he's in there! For God's sake, don't open it up!" I relaxed. Mission accomplished. "Crawl into your suit, little man, " Isaid. "We've got ourselves a trip to make, the three of us. " * * * * * Henderson, as usual, was jovial but stern. "You did a fine job up there, Ged, " he said, with false familiarity. "Really brilliant work. " "Thank you very much, " I said. I was holding the last piece of news fora minute or two, relishing it. "But you brought McCann in over a week ago. I don't see why you had tostay up at Atronics City at all after that, much less ten days. " I sat back in the chair and negligently crossed my legs. "I just thoughtI'd take a little vacation, " I said carelessly, and lit a cigarette. Iflicked ashes in the general direction of the ashtray on Henderson'sdesk. Some of them made it. "A vacation?" he echoed, eyes widening. Henderson was a company man, a_real_ company man. A vacation for him was purgatory, it was separationfrom a loved one. "I don't believe you have a vacation coming, " he saidfrostily, "for at least six months. " "That's what you think, Henny, " I said. All he could do at that was blink. I went on, enjoying myself hugely. "I don't like this company, " I said. "And I don't like this job. And I don't like you. And from now on, I'vedecided, it's going to be vacation all the time. " "Ged, " he said, his voice faint, "what's the matter with you? Don't youfeel well?" "I feel well, " I told him. "I feel fine. Now, I'll tell you why I spentan extra ten days at Atronics City. McCann made and registered the bigstrike, right?" Henderson nodded blankly, apparently not trusting himself to speak. "Wrong, " I said cheerfully. "McCann went to Chemisant City and filledout all the forms required for registering a claim. But every place hewas supposed to sign his name he wrote _Ab Karpin_ instead. Jafe McCann_never did make a legal registration of his claim_. " Henderson just looked fish-eyed. "So, " I went on, "as soon as I turned McCann over to the law at AtronicsCity, I went and registered that claim myself. And then I waited aroundfor ten days until the company finished the paperwork involved in buyingthat claim from me. And then I came straight back here, just to saygoodbye to you. Wasn't that nice?" He didn't move. "Goodbye, " I said. THE END [Illustration] Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ March 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.