he didn't have to turn his head. from the corner of his eye, he could see startlement flash across her face. she'd got her name right; and it was he who had erred in choosing a name.
"putsyn hired a criminal, dorn starret, to get rid of her for him," he said harshly. "that was the way starret made his living. he was an expert at it.
"starret slugged her one night on mars. he didn't retro her at once. he loaded her on a spaceship and brought her to earth. during the passage, he talked to her and got to like her a lot. she wasn't as developed as she is now, kind of mousy maybe, but you know how those things are—he liked her. he made love to her, but didn't get very far.
"he landed in another city on earth and left his spaceship there; he drugged her and brought her to the shelter here and retroed her. that's what he'd been paid to do.
"then he decided to stick around. maybe she'd change her mind after retrogression. he stayed in a shelter just across from the one she was in. and he made a mistake. he hid the retro gun behind the screen.
"putsyn came around to check up. he didn't like starret staying there—a key word or a familiar face sometimes triggers the memory. he retroed starret, who didn't have a gun he could get to in a hurry. maybe putsyn had planned to do it all along. he'd built up an airtight alibi when luise disappeared, so that nobody would connect him with that—and who'd miss a criminal like starret?
"anyway, that was only part of it. he knew that people who've been retroed try to find out who they are, and that some of them succeed. he didn't want that to happen. so he put an advertisement in the paper that she'd see and answer. when she did, he began to use his machine on her, intending to take her from the present to the past and back again so often that her mind would refuse to accept anything, past or present.
"but he'd just started when starret showed up, and he knew he had to get him too. so he pulled what looked like a deliberate slip and got starret interested, intending to take care of both of them in the same way at the same time."
he leaned against the wall. it was over now and he knew what he could expect.
"that's all, but it didn't work out the way putsyn wanted it. starret was a guy who knew how to look after his own interests."
except the biggest and most important one; there he'd failed.
borgenese was tapping on the desk, but it wasn't really tapping—he was pushing buttons. a policeman came in and the counselor motioned to putsyn: "put him in the pre-trial cells."
"you can't prove it," said putsyn. his face was sunken and frightened.
"i think we can," said the counselor indifferently. "you don't know the efficiency of our laboratories. you'll talk."
