In this small enclosed space there was everything a man needed to keep himself alive. Everything except human company. And if you didn’t need human company, then you had everything. Just on the other side of that dome, there was a million miles of death, in a million possible ways. On this 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 to the sixty-eight degrees inside the suit, finally, and now was very annoyed to find the temperature shooting up to ninety again.
Since Karpin didn’t seem inclined to talk, and I would rather spend my time thinking than talking anyway, I took a hint from him and did some cleaning. I’d noticed a smeared spot about nose-level on the faceplate of my fishbowl, and now was as good a time as any to get rid of it. It had a tendency to make my eyes cross.
My shirt was sodden and wrinkled by this time anyway, having first been used to wipe sweat from my face and later been rolled into a ball and left 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 are silvered, not so the man inside can look out and no one else can look in, but in order to keep some of the more violent rays of the sun from getting through to the face.
I buffed for a while, and then I put the fishbowl on my head and looked through it. The spot was gone, so I went over and reattached it to the rest of the suit, and then settled back in my chair again and lit a cigarette.
Karpin spoke up. “Wish you wouldn’t smoke. Makes it tough on the conditioner.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.” So I just sat, thinking morosely about non-forged cash-return forms, and coincidences, and likely spots to hide a body in the Asteroid Belt.
Where would one dispose of a body in the asteroids? I went back through my thinking on that topic, and I found holes big enough to drive Karpin’s claim through. This idea of leaving the body on some worthless chunk of rock, for instance. If Karpin had killed his partner — and I was dead sure he had — he’d planned it carefully and he wouldn’t be leaving anything to chance. Now, an asteroid isn’t worthless to a prospector until that prospector has landed on it and tested it. Karpin might know that such-and-such an asteroid was nothing but worthless stone, but the 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 pushing it off into space. The distance between asteroids is large, but so’s the travel. McCann’s body, floating around in the blackness, might just be found by somebody.
And that, so far as I could see, eliminated the possibilities. McCann’s body was in the Belt. I’d eliminated both the asteroids themselves and the 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 having noticed the possibility. Now, let’s say Karpin attaches 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 of my money,” he said. “Well, it can’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 you mean?”
“They told me back at Atronics City,” I explained, “that McCann was the money expert and you were the metals expert, and that’s why McCann handled all your buying on credit and stuff like that. Looks as though you’ve got a pretty keen eye for money yourself.”
“I know what’s mine,” he mumbled, and turned away. He went back to scrubbing the stove coils again.
I stared at his back. Something had happened just then, and I wasn’t sure what. He’d just been starting to warm up to a tirade against the dirty insurance company, and all of a sudden he’d folded up and shut up like a clam.
And then I saw it. Or at least I saw part of it. I saw how that cash-return form fit in, and how it made perfect sense.
Now, all I needed was proof of murder. Preferably a body. I had the rest of it. Then I could pack the old geezer back to Atronics City and get proof for the part I’d already figured out.
I’d like that. I’d like getting back to Atronics City, and having this all straightened out, and then taking the very next liner straight back to Earth. More immediately, I’d like getting out of this heat and back into the cool sixty-eight degrees of—
And then it hit me. The whole thing hit me, and I just sat there and stared. They did not carry extras, Karpin and McCann, they did not carry one item of equipment more than they needed.