Departures

The reporter steered by the inertial compass in his helmet. To his surprise, he saw people with lights moving about in the area he had decided to search. One of them saw him, too, and came bounding his way. A challenge rang in his earphones: “Who the devil are you, and what are you doing snooping around here?”

“Bill Be

“Be

The security chief greeted Be

Be

“I don’t have to tell you a damn thing,” Katayama said. Be

“Basically, we used a more sophisticated version of what you did,” he said. “Once we had autopsy data, we could plot the trajectories of the beams that killed the three jumpers. This is where the lines came together. All the same, we still have a couple of square kilometers to go over.”

Be

“We’re still busy.”

No, Be

After a brief hesitation, the Security chief shook his head. “Suit yourself. You might be lucky; who knows?”

Katayama’s people were working in pairs. One would leap twenty or thirty meters off the surface, shining a spotlight down onto the ice to light a large area for the other team member to examine. The spots were brighter than the feeble sun, and illuminated inky shadows that might otherwise have made perfect hiding places. The security perso

Without any such special gear, Be

There were enough minerals in the ice to give the terrain some color beyond pure, cold blue-white. Some chunks-was that the word, Be

Be

But if it was a crystal, it was very large and regular. Excitement shot through Be

He scrambled into the cave and reached down for it. The cold bit at his gauntlets, which were not as well insulated as his boots. He did not mind, though, not when he was holding an expended heavy-duty charge cube in his hands.

Then he keyed his suit radio, and Security perso

Katayama held out his hand for that one. Reluctantly, Be

“Made in Praha,” the security chief said. He seemed more willing to be informative now that Be

“An Eastern European brand, then.”

“Yes.” Katayama fairly purred. “We have some interesting new questions to ask, wouldn’t you say?”

“You certainly do. Shepilov must have seen the light leakage here when the killer fired at al-Kuwady. Pity the cave roof kept the observation satellite from picking it up.”

“Yes. Still, we make progress.” Katayama put his people back on the search to see if there was anything else to be found. Be

One disadvantage of spacesuits was the difficulty of getting out of earshot. Katayama’s voice rang in his helmet as if the security chief were still standing beside him: “Don’t use this until you get clearance from me. Do you understand?” When Be

“Acknowledged,” the broadcaster said sulkily, but most of his pique had evaporated by the time he returned to the Olympic village. Katayama had not said anything about poking around on his own.

When he got back to the studio, he checked a list he already knew pretty well. It confirmed what his memory told him. Most of the Eastern European jumpers had had their turns toward the middle or end of the first day’s run. They would not have had a lot of time to make any murderous preparations, and there would have been enough people about so that they could hardly have counted on not being noticed when they went to use an air lock.

He frowned. The conspicuous exception was Jozef Jablonski. Ra

As it happened, he got a chance to broach the subject when Ra

“Someone trying to put the blame on one.” Be

He said, “Security men won’t look at it like that; they shave with Occam’s razor. Do you know what your, ah, friend did after he jumped? Does it leave him in the clear?”

“No,” she said, her voice low now, and troubled. “He told me he went back to his room and fell asleep. He was laughing at me; he said I’d kept him awake too long the night before.”

“Not good.”

“No,” Ra

“They denied it,” he reminded her. “That’s not like them; usually they’re only too happy to take credit for their outrages.”

“But why would Jozef want to kill any of the men who were shot?” she demanded. “What’s the point? What would it gain him?”