t him. They know I've shaken him up, that he's scared of me.
Okay, fine. With Armstrong there to tell how he was chosen for Retread
back in '87, we'd have had Rinehart running for his life...."

"But you don't," Carl cut in flatly, "and that's that."

"What, are you crazy, son? _I needed Armstrong, bad._ Rinehart knew
it, and had him taken care of. It was fishy--it stunk from here to
Mars, but Rinehart covered it up fast and clean. But with the stuff
you got up in the Colony, we can charge Rinehart with murder, and the
whole Senate knows his motive already. He didn't _dare_ to let
Armstrong testify."

* * * * *

Carl was shaking his head sadly.

"Well, what's wrong?"

"You aren't going to like this, Dan. Rinehart's clean. Armstrong
comitted suicide."

Fowler's mouth fell open, and he sat back hard. "Oh, no."

"Sorry."

"Ken Armstrong? Suicided?" He shook his head helplessly, groping for
words. "I--I--oh, Jesus. I don't believe it. If Ken Armstrong
suicided, I'm the Scarlet Whore of Babylon."

"Well, we'll try to keep _that_ off the teevies."

"There's no chance that you're wrong," said the old man.

Carl shook his head. "There's plenty that's funny about that Mars
Colony, but Armstrong's death was suicide. Period. Even Barness didn't
understand it."

Sharp eyes went to Carl's face. "What's funny about the Colony?"

Carl shrugged, and lit a cigarette. "Hard to say. This was my first
look, I had nothing to compare it with. But there's _something_ wrong.
I always thought the Mars Colony was a frontier, a real challenge--you
know, Man against the Wilderness, and all that. Saloons jammed on
Saturday nights with rough boys out to get some and babes that had it
to give. A place that could take Earthbound softies and toughen them
up in a week, working to tame down the desert--"

His voice trailed off. "They've got a saloon, all right--but everybody
just comes in quietly and gets slobbery drunk. Met a guy named Fisher,
thought the same thing I did when he came up five years ago. A real
go-getter, leader type, lots of ideas and the guts to put them across.
Now he's got a hob-nail liver and he came back here on the ship with
me, hating Mars and everything up there, most of all himself.
Something's wrong up there, Dan. Maybe that's why Armstrong bowed
out."

The Senator took a deep breath. "Not a man like Ken Armstrong. Why, I
used to worship him when I was a kid. I was ten when h