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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 old enough for a transplant, I knew I didn't want one. You want the standard speech?”
    “No, thanks, but I'm wondering how good your artificial arm is. I'm carrying a transplant myself.”
    Ecks looked me over carefully for signs of moral degeneration. “I suppose you're also one of those people who keep voting the death penalty for more and more trivial offenses?”
    “No, I—”
    “After all, if the organ banks ran out of criminals, you'd be in trouble. You might have to live with your mistakes.”
    “No, I'm one of those people who blocked the second corpsicle law, kept that group from going into the organ banks. And I hunt organleggers for a living. But I don't have an artificial arm, and I suppose the reason is that I'm squeamish.”
    “Squeamish about being part mechanical? I've heard of that,” Ecks said. “But you can be squeamish the other way, too. What there is of me is all me, not part of a dead man. I'll admit the sense of touch isn't quite the same, but it's just as good. And—look.”
    He put a hand on my upper forearm and squeezed. It felt like the bones were about to give. I didn't scream, but it took an effort. “That isn't all my strength,” he said. “And I could keep it up all day. This arm doesn't get tired.”
    He let go.
    I asked if he would mind my examining his arms. He didn't. But then, Ecks didn't know about my imaginary hand.
    I probed the advanced plastics of Ecks's false arm, the bone and muscle structure of the other. It was the real arm I was interested in.
    When we were back in the car, Valpredo said, “Well?”
    “Nothing wrong with his real arm,” I said. “No scars.”
    Valpredo nodded.
    But the bubble of accelerated time wouldn't hurt plastic and batteries, I thought. And if he'd been planning to lower fifty pounds of generator two stories down on a nylon line, his artificial arm had the strength for it.
* * * *
    We called Peterfi from the car. He was in. He was a small man, dark-complected, mild of face, his hair straight and shiny black around a receding hairline. His eyes blinked and squinted as if the light were too bright, and he had the scruffy look of a man who has slept in his clothes. I wondered if we had interrupted an afternoon nap.
    Yes, he would be glad to help the police in