Ronny took up his book again. He growled, “I can't figure out his motivation. If I could just put my finger on that.”
For once she agreed with him. “I've got an idea, Ronny, that once you have that, you'll have Tommy Paine.”
They drew blank on Avalon.
Or, at least, it was drawn for them before they ever arrived.
The Section G agent permanently assigned to that planet had already checked and double checked the possibilities. None of the four-man crew of the UP spacecraft had been on New Delos at the time of the assassination of the God-King. They, and their craft, had been light-years away on another job.
Ronny Bronston couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't believe it.
The older agent, his name was Jheru Bulchand, was definite. He went over it with Ronny and Tog in a bar adjoining UP headquarters. He had dossiers on each of the ten men, detailed dossiers. On the face of it, none of them could be Paine.
“But one of them has to be,” Ronny pleaded. He explained their method of eliminating the forty-eight employees of UP on New Delos.
Bulchand shrugged. “You've got holes in that method of elimination. You're assuming Tommy Paine is an individual, and you have no reason to. My own theory is that it's an organization.”