rl. He had thought so, but hadn't been sure. She swung
the heavy stone door shut after her, glanced both left and right, and
started down the frosty road toward the lights of the colony.

Carl Golden waited until she was gone. He glanced at his
wrist-chrono, and waited ten minutes more. He didn't realize that he
was trembling until he ducked swiftly across the road. Through the
window of the low, one-story building he could see the lobby
call-board, with the little colored studs all dark. He smiled in
unpleasant satisfaction--no one was left in the building. It was
routine, just like everything else in this god-forsaken hole. Utter,
abysmal, trancelike routine. The girl was a little later than usual,
probably because of the ship coming in tomorrow. Reports to get ready,
supply requisitions, personnel recommendations--

--and the final reports on Armstrong's death. Mustn't forget that. The
_real_ story, the absolute, factual truth, without any nonsense. The
reports that would go, ultimately, to Rinehart and only Rinehart, as
all other important reports from the Mars Colony had been doing for so
many years.

Carl skirted the long, low building, falling into the black shadows of
the side wall. Halfway around he came to the supply chute, covered
with a heavy moulded-stone cover.

Now?

It had taken four months here to know that he would have to do it this
way. Four months of ridiculous masquerade--made idiotic by the
incredible fact that everyone took him for exactly what he pretended
to be, and never challenged him--not even Terry Fisher, who drunk or
sober always challenged everything and everybody! But the four months
had told on his nerves, in his reactions, in the hollows under his
quick brown eyes. There was always the spectre of a slip-up, an
aroused suspicion. And until he had the reports before his eyes, he
couldn't fall back on Dan Fowler's name to save him. He had shook
Dan's hand the night he had left, and Dan had said, "Remember, son--I
don't know you. Hate to do it this way, but we can't risk it now--"
And they couldn't, of course. Not until they knew, for certain, who
had murdered Kenneth Armstrong.

They already knew why.

* * * * *

The utter stillness of the place reassured him; he hoisted up the
chute cover, threw it high, and shinned his long body into the chute.
It was a steep slide; he held on for an instant, then let go.
Blackness gulped him down as the cover