Dundon cocked an eyebrow. The lieutenant, unhearing, sat without looking at them.
"His mother claims to have married a man named Bruce Hilton in Chicago in 1930. There's no record of the marriage. Also, none of her friends ever met him. She went away from her home town—Evanston—and stayed for a year and came back with a baby, a wedding ring, and a very sad tale of a husband who died. There's no record of the death of any Bruce Hilton. She made up the name obviously. Her maiden name Finnerty."
Dundon stared. "So what the hell—" he began, but the colonel cut him off.
"So nobody knows. Just the boy's mother and Security. But Security has a special tab for cases like this. They figure like this: suppose the kid gets into a sensitive job, or gets to rank pretty high, and someone finds out about his, well, lack of parentage. You can't figure it. It could mean blackmail, it could mean security risk, or it could mean rumors among officers' wives, and a lot of nonsense like that. I know it doesn't sound like a thing you should hang a guy on, but, well, you know Security. They never take a chance. This kid will get to be a captain, maybe a major, maybe even an L.C. But he has no future in the army."
Dundon was looking down studiously at his shoes.
"So that's what you wanted," the colonel pursued, "somebody competent, but expendable. Right?"
Dundon looked up, his gray eyes filled with disgust. And then he realized that the colonel could not help it, did not like this either, and he patted him on the arm.
"Hell of a reason to kill a kid," he said softly, and turned back to the lieutenant, the man to be killed, who was sitting calmly in his chair and wondering when the brass was going to get to the point.
Dundon came back and sat down, and now with great kindness, told the lieutenant the story.
And so it was that Web Hilton went out into space, and saw the uncovered stars, and met the naked man, and became the first man in history to die more than once.