The Risk Profession Page 4

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