That there wasn't anything wrong with the job the packers at the jump-center did. The reason it didn't open was that sometime between the time that they packed it and checked it and said it was fine was that he'd done something to it himself. Sabotaged it. So he knew it wasn't going to open. He'd made sure of it. All he had to do was just have the will-power to keep his hands together until the ground came up and hit him. Unless he'd sabotoged the reserve too, of. course, but we've got no evidence of that either."

"Suicide," she said, reflectively. "He meant it to happen. Not an accident at all. This whole on-and-off romance he'd been having with sky-diving, for how many years was it now, two or three? My notes're out on the bench."

"I think it was three," Robey said. "Which was another thing that didn't add up. He seems to've been sort of casual about it. The testimony Tuesday, didn't one of the witnesses from the jump-center testify this would've been his eighth or ninth jump? Seven or eight of them uneventful, before the one that killed him. Not that many, really, considering how long he'd been at it. It wasn't an obsession with him, like it usually seems to be with people who come back after the first time they try it."

"Yeah," she said, 'the fellow did say that. The majority never jump twice. They're thrill-seekers, kind of people who dare each other to do things, usually while they're having several beers. Young, most of them. Try it once and say "Oh-kay, that's it; now I've been there and done that." And then never do it again. The real sky-divers're the ones that get hooked and stay with it, like skiers. Jump every chance they get, ten or twenty times a year. Our absent party doesn't fit either profile.

"But still, he's qualified; he's allowed to jump without a buddy close enough to try to save him in mid-air. Which he has to be able to do if he's going to be able to kill himself. The day the chute didn't open just happened to be the day that he picked to do what he had in mind all the time.