es a small rocket
to McCann's body, stuffed into its atmosphere suit. He sets the rocket
going, and off goes McCann. Not that he aims it toward the sun, that
wouldn't work well at all. Instead of falling into the sun, the body
would simply take up a long elliptical orbit _around_ the sun, and would
come back to the asteroids every few hundred years. No, he would aim
McCann _back_, in the direction opposite to the direction or rotation of
the asteroids. He would, in essence, slow McCann's body down, make it
practically stop in relation to the motion of the asteroids. And then it
would simply _fall_ into the sun.

None of my ideas, it seemed, were happy ones. If McCann's body were even
at this moment falling toward the sun, it was just as useful to me as if
it were on some other asteroid.

But, wait a second. Karpin and McCann had worked with the minimum of
equipment, I'd already noticed that. They didn't have extras of
anything, and they certainly wouldn't have extra rockets. Except for one
fast trip to Chemisant City--when he had neither the time nor the excuse
to buy a jato rocket--Karpin had spent all of his time since McCann's
death 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 polite
to this sour old buzzard, but at the same time I am naturally the
soft-spoken type. "We aren't sure," I said. "We just think there are
some 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 his
cleaning cloth, and turned to face me. "I suppose your company checked
the handwriting already, and Jafe McCann is the one who wrote that
form."

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 rusty
attempt at sarcasm.

"Well," I said, "there's this business of going to Chemisant City. It
would have made more sense for you to go to Atronics City, where you
were known."

"Chemisant was closer," he said. He shook a finger at me. "That company
of yours thinks it can cheat me out