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a murder investigation.
    Peterfi's condominium was a slab of glass and concrete set on a Santa Monica cliff face. His apartment faced the sea. “Expensive, but worth it for the view,” he said, showing us to chairs in the living room. The drapes were closed against the afternoon sun. Peterfi had changed clothes. I noticed the bulge in his upper left sleeve where an insulin capsule and automatic feeder had been anchored to the bone of the arm.
    “Well, what can I do for you? I don't believe you mentioned who had been murdered.”
    Valpredo told him
    He was shocked. “Oh, my. Ray Sinclair. But there's no telling how this will affect—” and he stopped suddenly.
    “Please go on,” said Valpredo.
    “We were working on something together. Something revolutionary.”
    “An interstellar drive?”
    He was startled. He debated with himself, then said, “Yes. It was supposed to be secret.”
    We admitted to having seen the machine in action. How did a time compression field serve as an interstellar drive?
    “That's not exactly what it is,” Peterfi said. Again he debated with himself. Then, “There have always been a few optimists around who thought that just because mass and inertia have always been associated in human experience, it need not be a universal law. What Ray and I have done is to create a condition of low inertia You see—”
    “An inertialess drive!”
    Peterfi nodded vigorously at me. “Essentially yes. Is the machine intact? If not—”
    I reassured him on that point.
    “That's good. I was about to say that if it had been destroyed, I could recreate it. I did most of the work of building it. Ray preferred to work with his mind, not with his hands.”
    Had Peterfi visited Sinclair last night?
    “No. I had dinner at a restaurant down the coast, then came home and watched the holo wall. What times do I need alibis for?” he asked jokingly.
    Valpredo told him. The joking look turned into a nervous grimace. No, he'd left the Mail Shirt just after nine; he couldn't prove his whereabouts after that time.
    Had he any idea who might have wanted to murder Raymond Sinclair?
    Peterfi was reluctant to make outright accusations. Surely we understood. It might be someone he had worked with in the past or someone he'd insulted. Ray thought most of humanity were fools. Or we might look into the matter of Ray's brother's exemption.
    Valpredo said, “Edward Sinclair's exemption? What about it?”
    “I'd really prefer that you get the story from someone else. You may know that Edward Sinclair was refused the right to have children because of an inherited heart condition. His grandson has it, too. There is some question as to whether he really did the work that earned him the exemption.”
    “But that must have been forty to fifty years ago. How could it figure in a murder now?”
    Peterfi explained patiently. “Edward had a child by virtue of an exemption to the Fertility Laws. Now there are two grandchildren. Suppose the matter came up for review? His grandchildren would lose the right to have children. They'd be illegitimate. They might even lose the right to inherit.”
    Valpredo was nodding. “Yah. We'll look into that, all right.”
    I said, “You applied for an exemption yourself not long ago. I suppose your, uh—”
    “Yes, my diabetes. It doesn't interfere with my life at all. Do you know how long we've been using insulin to handle diabetes? Almost two hundred years! What does it matter if I'm a diabetic? If my children are?”
    He glared at us, demanding an answer. He got none.
    “But the Fertility Laws refuse me children. Do you know that I lost my wife because the board refused me an exemption? I deserved it. My work on plasma flow in the solar photosphere— Well, I'd hardly lecture you on the subject, would I? But my work can be used to predict the patterns of proton storms near any G-type star. Every colony world owes something to my work!”
    That was an exaggeration, I thought. Proton storms