“Fine,” Ronny said, increasingly excited. “That will eliminate all persons less than, say, forty years of age. We can assume he was at least twenty when he began.”
Hassan said, “Can we eliminate all women employees?”
Ronny said, “I'd think so. The few times he's been seen, all reports are of a man. And that case on the planet Mother where he put himself over as [pg 044] a Holy Man. He could hardly have been a woman in disguise in a Stone Age culture such as that.”
Hassan said, “And this Tommy Paine has been flitting around this part of the galaxy for years, so anyone who has been here steadily for a period of even a couple of years or so, can't be suspect.”
Mouley Hassan thrust his hand into a delivery drawer and brought forth a handful of punched cards, possibly fifty in all.
“Surely there's more people than that working in this building,” Ronny protested.
Mouley Hassan said, “No. I've eliminated already everyone who is a citizen of New Delos. Obviously, Tommy Paine is an alien. We have only forty-eight Earthlings and other United Planets citizens working here.”
He carried the cards to a small collator and worked for a moment on its controls, as Tog and Ronny watched him with mounting tension. “Let's see,” he muttered. “We eliminate all women, all those less than forty, all who haven't done a great deal of travel, those who have been here for several years.”
The end of it was that they eliminated everyone employed in the UP building.
The cards were stacked back on Mouley Hassan's desk again, and the three of them sat around and looked glumly at them.