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grave and turn up evidence that will find him blameless. But what if there actually is and was some sort of criminal conspiracy on Everon to plunder the planet?"
    "If there was, when he was alive, he'd have found out about it and reported it."
    Martin looked steadily into Jef's eyes.
    "Unless he was part of it," Martin said.
    Jef stared at the other man.
    "He wouldn't be," Jef answered. "You didn't know him."
    "Do you?" asked Martin. "Your accent is pure Earth. If you'd spent as much as six months of your life on some other world, I could catch the influence of it in your speech. But I don't. That means all your life's been spent on the home world; and almost certainly your brother was gone from Earth for more than the eight years since his death. Possibly as much as half a dozen or more years before that? Since he'd not have gotten the post here without that much seniority as an ecologist in the Corps. You'll have seen him only now and then, when he was home on leave—if he ever did come home on leave. How well did you know him? How do you know what wild notion might have taken him under conditions you've never known and could never guess at?"
    Jef was silent. It was true. Some furious impulse could have taken Will and caused him to do something that otherwise would have been unthinkable. Unwanted from the back of his mind came a memory of the circumstances under which Will had been rejected by the Ecolog Corps for training as a John Smith. He had always refused to talk in any detail about the events leading to his rejection. But from what little he said, they had gotten the picture of a Will who had passed the preliminary courses with honors and who had been just about to graduate and ship out as a field trainee when something had happened.
    All the family knew was that an incident had triggered off that temper of his. He had been discharged "... with prejudice." Afterwards he had returned home, but stayed around only two months before shipping out on a labor contract to one of the new worlds still in the process of being terraformed. Once there, he had worked out his contract, found local employment, and what with the shortage of trained people off-Earth, had finally managed to have the "prejudice" set aside so that he could gain a job with the E. Corps after all, as an ordinary ecologist. In the seven years following he had worked his way up to the position of Planetary Ecologist.
    "I knew him," said Jef finally, to Martin. "He'd have been dead before he'd have been a party to the sort of thing you're suggesting."
    "Perhaps," said Martin. "I know nothing of him, of course. But it's a fact that anyone can find himself doing things under strange circumstances, things that other people would never have suspected he or she might be capable of. You'd probably not do badly to keep that in mind."
    Jef got to his feet and went to the door. At it, however, the strong habit of courtesy ingrained in him by his Earth training made him stop and turn.
    "Thank you for your help—and your good intentions—anyway," he said, and hesitated. "No offense, but you're not what most people would expect a John Smith to be like."
    Martin's face grew leaner and his smile was a little wry.
    "There's a great deal more to being a John Smith than most people know," he said. "Well, so much until dinner this evening, then."
    "Until dinner," said Jef, and went out.
    He was two steps from the door of his own room when he realized that his mind was a stew pot of emotions. If he went back in, in this state, Mikey would sense the fact at once and react; and the maolot should not be excited if Jef was to leave him alone for several hours during the dinner that was upcoming. Best that Jef calm himself first before he rejoined Mikey.
    He turned away, took the escalator ramp down to the front door, and went out, to pace up and down on the narrow porch that fronted the building. The tall, unnecessary pillars threw bars of shadow across his way as he walked back