And my instinct said Ab Karpin was lying in his teeth. That dramatic little touch about McCann's body hovering over the dome before disappearing into the void, that sounded more like the embellishment of fiction than the circumstance of truth. And the string of coincidences were just too much. McCann just coincidentally happens to die right after he and his partner make their big strike. He happens to write out the cash-return form just before dying. And his body just happens to float away, so nobody can look at it and check Karpin's story. * * * But no matter what my instinct said, the story was smooth. It was smooth as glass, and there was no place for me to get a grip on it. What now? There wasn't any hole in Karpin's story, at least none that I could see. I had to break his story somehow, and in order to do that I had to do some nosing around on this planetoid. I couldn't know in advance what I was looking for, I could only look. I'd know it when I found 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 McCann had 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 time dancing, 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, is that the story?" "No. Chemisant City was closer than Atronics City right then, so I went there. Just after Jafe's death, and everything--I didn't feel like being alone any more than I had to." "You said Chemisant City was closer to you _then_," I said. "Isn't it now?" "Things move around a lot out here, Mister," he said. "Right now, Chemisant City's almost twice as far from here as Atronics City. In about three days, it'll start swinging in closer again. Things keep shifting 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. "That was 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 I saw I couldn't get at Jafe, and he was dead anyway, I came back in here and slept it off. Maybe if I'd been sober I would have taken the scooter and gone after him, but I was _drunk_." "I see." And there just weren't any more questions I could think of to ask, not right now. So I said, "I've just had a shaky four-hour ride coming out here. Mind if I stick around a while before going back?" "Help yourself," he said, in a pretty poor attempt at genial hospitality. "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 the first real sign of animation I'd seen in him yet. "I learn fast," I told him.