Ice Station Zebra

"Aren't you rather overlooking the fact that if the killer did us in, he'd also be doing himself in?"

"I don't necessarily share your belief in his sanity. All killers are a little crazy. No matter how excellent their reasons for killing, the very fact that they do kill makes them abnormal. You can't judge them by normal standards."

He was only half right, but unfortunately that half might apply in this case. Most murderers kill in a state of extreme emotional once-in-a-lifetime stress and never kill again. But our friend in this case had every appearance of being a stranger to emotional stress of any kind — and, besides, he'd killed a great deal more than once.

"Well," I said doubtfully, "perhaps. Yes, I think I do agree with you." I refrained from specifying our common ground for agreement. "Who's your candidate for the high jump, Commander?"

"I'm damned if I know. I listened to every word that was said this morning. I watched the face of each man who spoke — and the faces of the ones who weren't speaking. I haven't stopped thinking about it since and I'm still damned if I have a clue. How about Ki

"He's the obvious suspect, isn't he? But only because he's a skilled radio operator. I could train a man in a couple of days to send and receive in Morse. Slow, clumsy, he wouldn't know a thing about the instrument he was using, but he could still do it. Any of them may easily have been competent enough to operate a radio. The fact that Ki

"Nife cells were removed from the radio cabin and taken to the laboratory," Swanson pointed out. "Ki

"So that would point a finger at Ki

"Well, wouldn't it?"

"Certainly. Especially if you will agree that the presence of those ti

"That's right, confuse things," Swanson said irritably. "As if they weren't confused enough already."

"I'm not confusing things. All I'm saying is that if you admit a certain possibility for a certain reason, then you must admit similar possibilities for similar reasons. Besides, there are points in Ki

"Again, would Ki

"If you rule Ki

"I'm not ruling Ki

"You're putting up a very good defense case for both Jolly and Ki

"No. I'm only saying what a defense lawyer would say."

"Hewson," Swanson said slowly. "Or Naseby, the cook. Or Hewson «and» Naseby. Don't you think it damned fu

"You'd make a pretty good prosecuting counsel yourself, Commander. But wouldn't you think there's just too much superficially against Hewson? That a clever man wouldn't have allowed so much superficial evidence to accumulate against him? You would have thought that at least he would have indulged in a little fire-fighting heroics to call attention to himself."

"No. You're overlooking the fact that he would never have had reason to expect that there would be any investigation into the causes of the fire. That the situation would never arise where he — or anyone else, for that matter-would have to justify his actions and behavior if accusations were to be leveled against him."

"I've said it before and I say it again. People like that «never» take a chance. They always act on the assumption that they «may» be found out."