ct I could feel coming
and one which I wasn't ready to cry hosannah over.

"McCann died," Henderson said ponderously, "at the age of fifty-six. He
had set his retirement age at sixty. He took out the policy at the age
of thirty-four, with monthly payments of fifty credits. Figure it out
for yourself."

I did--in my head--and came up with a figure of thirteen thousand and
two hundred credits. Seventy-five per cent of that would be nine
thousand 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's
death 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 worn
themselves out with that form, comparing it with every other single
scrap of McCann's writing they can find. And their conclusion is that
not only is it genuinely McCann's handwriting, but it is McCann's
handwriting 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're
supposed 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 suspicious
circumstances."

"Yes," I agreed, "you did."

"McCann and Karpin," he said, "have been partners--unincorporated, of
course--for the last fifteen years. They had found small rare-metal
deposits now and again, but they had never found that one big strike all
the Belt prospectors waste their lives looking for. Not until the day
before 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 that
far out."

"So all we've got is this guy Karpin's word for how McCann died, is that
it?"

"That's all we have. So far."

"Sure. And now you want me to go on out there and find out what's
cooking, 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 boarded
the good ship _Demeter_ for Luna City and points Out. I loaded up on
g-sickness pills and they wo