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Lawrence Muhammad Ecks, 2117. Had kept her (loosely speaking) maiden name. Separate residences.
    BERNATH PETERFI. Ph.D. in subatomics and related fields, MIT. Diabetic. Height: 5’ 8". Weight: 145. Application for exemption to the Fertility Laws denied, 2119. Married 2118, divorced 2122. Lived alone.
    LAWRENCE MUHAMMAD ECKS. Master's degree in physics. Member of the bar. Height: 6’ 1". Weight: 190. Artificial left arm. Vice president, CET (Committee to End Transplants).
    Valpredo said: “Funny how the human arm keeps cropping up in this case.”
    “Yah.” Including one human ARM who didn't really belong there. “Ecks has a master's. Maybe he could have talked people into thinking the generator was his. Or maybe he thought he could.”
    “He didn't try to snow us .”
    “Suppose he blew it last night? He wouldn't necessarily want the generator lost to humanity, now, would he?”
    “How did he get out?”
    I didn't answer.
* * * *
    Ecks lived in a tapering tower almost a mile high. At one time Lindstetter's Needle must have been the biggest thing ever built, before they started with the arcologies. We landed on a pad a third of the way up, then took a drop shaft ten floors down.
    He was dressed when he answered the door in blazing yellow pants and a net shirt. His skin was very dark, and his hair was a puffy black dandelion with threads of gray in it. On the phone screen I hadn't been able to tell which arm was which, and I couldn't now. He invited us in, sat down, and waited for the questions.
    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