e-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 attach