Chen watched scrawny little Bayliss passing her bony hands over the data desks, scrolling graphics reflected in her augmented eyes. Bayliss had been called out here for this assignment from some university on Mars, where she had tenure. The woman looked as if she was actually enjoying this. As if she was intrigued.

Chen wondered if she envied Bayliss her scientific curiosity.

Maybe, she thought at last. It would be nice to feel detached, unengaged by this. On the other hand, she didn't envy Bayliss's evident lack of humanity.

With gloved hands and her small kit of imaging and diagnostic gear -- trying to ignore the lumpy feel of fatty flesh, the vague, unwashed smell of a man too used to living alone -- Chen worked at the body.

The implant at the top of the skull had some kind of link to the center of the brain: to the corpus callosum, the fleshy bundle of nerve fibers between the hemispheres. She probed at the glowing implant, the crown of her own scalp crawling in sympathy.

After an hour Hassan called them together. Chen pulled her helmet up around her chin and sucked syrup from a nipple; she savored its apple-juice flavor, trying to drown out Marsden's stink. She wished she was back up at the rudimentary colony gathering around the wormhole Interface, encased in a hot shower-bag.

Construction work. Building things. That was why she had come out here -- why she'd fled the teeming cities of the inner System, her endless, shabby, depressing experience of humanity from the point of view of a policeman.

But her cop's skills were too valuable to be ignored.

Hassan rested his back against a data desk and folded his arms; the dull silver of his suit cast curving highlights. "How did he die?"

"Breakdown of the synaptic functions. There was a massive electrical discharge, which flooded most of the higher centers." She pointed to Marsden's implant. "Caused by that thing." She sniffed. "As far as I could tell. I'm not qualified to perform an autopsy. And--"

"I don't intend to ask you to," Hassan said sharply.

"It couldn't be murder." Bayliss's voice was dry. Amused. "He was alone on this moon. A million miles from the nearest soul. It would be a marvelous locked-room mystery."

Hassan's head swiveled towards Chen. "Do you think it was murder, Susan?"

"That's up to the police."

Hassan sighed, theatrically tired. "Tell me what you think."

"No. I don't think it was murder. How could it be? Nobody even knew what he was doing here, it seems."

"Suicide, then?" Bayliss asked. "After all we are here to tell Marsden that a wormhole highway is shortly to bring millions of new colonists here from the teeming inner System -- that his long solitude is over."

"He didn't know we were coming, remember?" Hassan said. "And besides--" He looked around, taking in the unmade bed, the drab dome, the unkempt corpse. "This was not a man who cared much for himself -- or rather, about himself. But, from what we see here, he was--" he hesitated " -- stable. Yes? We see evidence of much work, dedicated, careful. He lived for his work. And Bayliss will tell us that such investigations are never completed. One would not wish to die, too early -- if at all." He looked at Bayliss. "Am I correct?"