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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Mystery/Crime Hugo Award Nominee
eBook Description: A murder mystery with a quantum twist: Reclusive inventor Raymond Sinclair is found with his head smashed in ... apparently by the poker from his fireplace rack, and his mummified body is trapped inside the active temporal field of his new interstellar drive sitting in the middle of his living room.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: First published in Epoch, ed. Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg, 1975
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2001

This eBook is also available in the following bundle(s):

• Larry Niven Bundle

405 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [79 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [121 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [64 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [270 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [69 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [134 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [129 KB] , hiebook (KML) [220 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [152 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [57 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [71 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [138 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [97 KB]
Words: 21051
Reading time: 60-84 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1590621360

ARM has three functions: they hunt organleggers, they monitor world technology, and they enforce the Fertility Laws. With a population of eighteen billion, enforcing the Fertility Laws is important -- but no one wants to join a mother hunt. When the press and authorities start screaming for more action, anyone not involved in a case will be pounding the streets hunting for illegal parents, but when LAPD calls Gil to help with an unfamiliar machine at the scene of a murder, he remains involved in the investigation even after the machine is turned over to one of his comrades -- even though it's no longer his concern -- even though it leaves him open to be assigned to the mother hunts. This mystery tantalizes Gil and entertains the reader as we follow the baffling case of Dr. Sinclair's murder and the machine, his latest invention. And there are the complications of contradictory clues and suspects too appealing to seriously suspect. Larry Niven gives us an effective blend of science fiction and mystery in this futuristic whodunit. If you like either mystery or science fiction, I highly recommend this story. -Marcia Hanson, Fictionwise Recommender

Detective-Inspector Julio Ordaz was a slender, dark-skinned man with straight black hair and soft black eyes. The first time I saw him in a phone screen, he had been telling me of a good friend's murder. Two years later I still flinched when I saw him.

"Hello, Julio. Business or pleasure?"

"Business, Gil. It is to be regretted."

"Yours or mine?"

"Both. There is murder involved, but there is also a machine ... Look, can you see it behind me?" Ordaz stepped out of the field of view, then reached invisibly to turn the phone camera.

I looked into somebody's living room. There was a wide circle of discoloration in the green indoor grass rug. In the center of the circle, a machine and a man's body.

Was Julio putting me on? The body was old, half-mummified. The machine was big and cryptic in shape, and it glowed with a subdued, eerie blue light.

Ordaz sounded serious enough. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"No. That's some machine." Unmistakably an experimental device: no neat plastic case, no compactness, no assembly-line welding. Too complex to examine through a phone camera, I decided. "Yah, that looks like something for us. Can you send it over?"

Ordaz came back on. He was smiling, barely. "I'm afraid we cannot do that. Perhaps you should send someone here to look at it."

"Where are you now?"

"In Raymond Sinclair's apartment on the top floor of the Rodewald Building in Santa Monica."

"I'll come myself," I said. My tongue suddenly felt thick.

"Please land on the roof. We are holding the elevator for examination."

"Sure." I hung up.

Raymond Sinclair!

I'd never met Raymond Sinclair. He was something of a recluse. But the ARM had dealt with him once in connection with one of his inventions, the FyreStop device. And everyone knew that he had lately been working on an interstellar drive. It was only a rumor, of course ... but if someone had killed the brain that held that secret...

I went.