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scientific community as well as for mankind.”
    “Did you happen to know Professor Jarva, Mr. Benedict?”
    “I must say that I knew him quite well. For a brief season in the past, he had access to Credence. He was allowed to collect data about anything he wanted, including our believers. Mostly, it was a professional relationship. Without a doubt, a very inspiring and profitable experience, I should add. He was an exquisite man to know. At least he was to me. I regret that he’s dead ...”
    Trumaine, intrigued by the answer, wondered if he could be on a hot trail already.
    “When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.
    “Not recently, I’m afraid,” said Benedict.
    “What’s it been, months? Weeks?” prodded Trumaine.
    “I believe Professor Jarva left Credence more than five years ago. It mustn’t be any later than that.”
    “Five years is an awful lot of time,” grumbled Trumaine, then he went on. “As you might have also heard, the circumstances in which both Jarva and his wife were killed are, to put it mildly, odd. They were killed in a closed environment to which nobody seemingly had access—Jarva’s own bunker. As queer as this may sound, the murderer found a way to enter the sealed bunker, kill Jarva’s wife, let Jarva bleed to death, then vanish into thin air ...”
    “I don’t see how I can be of any help, Detective,” pouted Benedict.
    “I’d say it again, for clarity: when the Jarvas were being killed, the plate door to the bunker’s keep was shut,” repeated Trumaine.
    Again, Benedict didn’t seem to get it.
    “Isn’t this exactly what you do in here?” asked Trumaine. “I mean—flush things and people around different places, despite the void or any other objects that might be in the way?”
    “Are you suggesting that the murderer had himself flushed in and out of the crime scene? Like a big spaceship?” Benedict didn’t laugh in Trumaine’s face, he just exhaled in a polite scoff of disbelief.
    Trumaine studied Benedict’s eyes for a moment, then stepped to the window from where the fluctuating believers could be seen.
    “Tell me, Mr. Benedict. Is there any way to change the feed before it is administered?”
    “Clearly, you have no idea about what the feed is,” said Benedict. “What we call ‘the feed’ is an endless list of extremely detailed information. The feed includes the list of spaceships which are going to travel on a given day. Their destinations. The timetables for their arrival and for their departures. The names of the civilians bound to travel—in case of passenger transportation. The detailed list of the number, type and quality of the goods traveling—for cargo transports. The feed is compiled on a daily basis in the offices of the Transport Security Administration. The massive amount of information is then assembled in one large file. Five copies are published, each of them encrypted according to the highest standards of security. The copies are then locked into five different security cases, each one with its own access code. All the cases are then securely transported to the Federal Agency where they are once again verified and then released. One copy goes back to the Transport Security Administration for archiving. One copy is kept by the Federal Authority for archiving. One copy is sent to the mainframe for archiving. The last two copies are finally delivered to Credence and loaded into our computers. The computers work on their own. No one has access to them.”
    Benedict made a long pause, waiting for his words to sink in. Trumaine might as well as be the smartest cop in town, but the proceedings were just as complicated.
    “As you can see for yourself,” he went on, “there are simply too many redundant checks in all the various stages of the process to even remotely consider a change in the feed possible. No. I don’t think that’s what happened.”
    Trumaine set his jaw. “All right,” he said. “Is there any other way the