Flatlander - Larry Niven [67]
Where was he last night? Could he produce an alibi? It would help us considerably.
“Sorry, nope. I spent the night going through a rather tricky case. You wouldn’t appreciate the details.”
I told him I would. He said, “Actually, it involves Edward Sinclair—Ray’s great-nephew. He’s a Belt immigrant, and he’s done an industrial design that could be adapted to Earth. Swivel for a chemical rocket motor. The trouble is, it’s not that different from existing designs, it’s just better. His Belt patent is good, but the UN laws are different. You wouldn’t believe the legal tangles.”
“Is he likely to lose out?”
“No, it just might get sticky if a firm called FireStorm decides to fight the case. I want to be ready for that. In a pinch I might even have to call the kid back to Earth. I’d hate to do that, though. He’s got a heart condition.”
Had he made any phone calls, say, to a computer, during his night of research?
Ecks brightened instantly. “Oh, sure. Constantly, all night. Okay, I’ve got an alibi.”
No point in telling him that such calls could have been made from anywhere. Valpredo asked, “Do you have any idea where your wife was last night?”
“No, we don’t live together. She lives three hundred stories over my head. We’ve got an open marriage … maybe too open,” he added wistfully.
There seemed a good chance that Raymond Sinclair was expecting a visitor last night. Did Ecks have any idea—?
“He knew a couple of women,” Ecks said. “You might ask them. Bertha Hall is about eighty, about Ray’s age. She’s not too bright, not by Ray’s standards, but she’s as much of a physical fitness nut as he is. They go backpacking, play tennis, maybe sleep together, maybe not. I can give you her address. Then there’s Muriel something. He had a crush on her a few years ago. She’d be thirty now. I don’t know if they still see each other or not.”
Did Sinclair know other women?
Ecks shrugged.
Who did he know professionally?
“Oh, lord, that’s an endless list. Do you know anything about the way Ray worked?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “He used computer setups mostly. Any experiment in his field was likely to cost millions or more. What he was good at was setting up a computer analogue of an experiment that would tell him what he wanted to know. Take, oh … I’m sure you’ve heard of the Sinclair molecule chain.”
Hell, yes. We used it for towing in the Belt; nothing else was light enough and strong enough. A loop of it was nearly invisibly fine, but it would cut steel.
“He didn’t start working with chemicals until he was practically finished. He told me he spent four years doing molecular designs by computer analogue. The tough part was the ends of the molecule chain. Until he got that, the chain would start disintegrating from the end points the minute you finished making it. When he finally had what he wanted, he hired an industrial chemical lab to make it for him.
“That’s what I’m getting at,” Ecks continued. “He hired other people to do the concrete stuff once he knew what he had. And the people he hired had to know what they were doing. He knew the top physicists and chemists and field theorists everywhere on Earth and in the Belt.”
Like Pauline? Like Bernath Peterfi?
“Yah, Pauline did some work for him once. I don’t think she’d do it again. She didn’t like having to give him all the credit She’d rather work for herself. I don’t blame her.”
Could he think of anyone who might want to murder Raymond Sinclair?
Ecks shrugged. “I’d say that was your job. Ray never liked splitting the credit with anyone. Maybe someone he worked with nursed a grudge. Or maybe someone was trying to steal this latest project of his. Mind you, I don’t know much about what he was trying to do, but if it worked, it would have been fantastically valuable, and not just in money.”
Valpredo was making noises like he was about finished. I said, “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Your arm. How’d you lose it?”
“Born without it. Nothing in my genes, just a bad prenatal situation. I came out with an arm and a turkey wishbone. By the time I was