"That's ridiculous!" Alard flashed. "I may be a fool, but not that much of a fool!"
"Why are you on my ship with forged papers then?" Mattern demanded.
"I wanted—I wanted to bring you to justice."
"By committing a crime yourself? Surely a roundabout way. And why have you taken it upon yourself to help rid humanity of me?"
"Why shouldn't I?" Alard asked. "I'm a human being; isn't that enough? But, as a matter of fact, that wasn't the reason I came to your ship. I only found out later what you were doing."
Mattern waited patiently.
"You killed my father!" the boy burst out. And then tension seemed to ebb from him, as if the worst had happened. "So now you know who I am!"
Mattern picked his words delicately. "If you have proof that I murdered your father, why don't you prosecute? There's no statute of limitation on murder on any of the planets. Or don't you have proof?"
Alard's voice broke slightly. "Everybody on Fairhurst knows you killed him, but they won't do anything about it. They say he deserved what he got."