prefab kitchen cabinets

time crime by h. beam piper part 1 kiro soran, the guard captain, stood in theshadow of the veranda roof, his white cloak thrown back to display the scarlet lining.he rubbed his palm reflectively on the checkered butt of his revolver and watched the fourmen at the table. "and ten tens are a hundred," one of the clerksin blue jackets said, adding another stack to the pile of gold coins. "nineteen hundreds," one of the pair in dirtystriped robes agreed, taking a stone from the box in front of him and throwing it away.only one stone remained. "one more hundred

to pay." one of the blue-jacketed plantation clerksmade a tally mark; his companion counted out coins, ten and ten and ten. dosu golan, the plantation manager, tappedimpatiently on his polished boot leg with a thin riding whip. "i don't like this," he said, in another andentirely different language. "i know, chattel slavery's an established custom on this sector,and we have to conform to local usages, but it sickens me to have to haggle with theseswine over the price of human beings. on the zarkantha sector, we used nothing but freewage-labor."

"migratory workers," the guard captain said."humanitarian considerations aside, i can think of a lot better ways of meeting thelabor problem on a fruit plantation than by buying slaves you need for three months ayear and have to feed and quarter and clothe and doctor the whole twelve." "twenty hundreds of obus," the clerk who hadbeen counting the money said. "that is the payment, is it not, coru-hin-irigod?" "that is the payment," the slave dealer replied. the clerk swept up the remaining coins, andhis companion took them over and put them in an iron-bound chest, snapping the padlock.the two guards who had been loitering at one

side slung their rifles and picked up thechest, carrying it into the plantation house. the slave dealer and his companion arose,putting their money into a leather bag; coru-hin-irigod turned and bowed to the two men in white cloaks. "the slaves are yours, noble lords," he said. across the plantation yard, six more men instriped robes, with carbines slung across their backs, approached; with them came anotherman in a hooded white cloak, and two guards in blue jackets and red caps, with bayonetedrifles. the man in white and his armed attendants came toward the house; the six calera slaverscontinued across the yard to where their horses were picketed.

"if i do not offend the noble lords, then,"coru-hin-irigod said, "i beg their sufferance to depart. i and my men have far to ride ifwe would reach careba by nightfall. the lord, the great lord, the lord god safar watch betweenus until we meet again." urado alatana, the labor foreman, came uponto the porch as the two slavers went down. "have a good look at them, radd?" the guardcaptain asked. "you think i'm crazy enough to let those banditsout of here with two thousand obus-forty thousand paratemporal exchange units-ofthe company's money without knowing what we're getting?" the other parried. "they're allright-nice, clean, healthy-looking lot. i did everything but take them apart and inspectthe pieces while they were being unshackled

at the stockade. i'd like to know where thiscoru-hin-whatshisname got them, though. they're not local stuff. lot darker, and they're jabberingamong themselves in some lingo i never heard before. a few are wearing some rags of clothing,and they have odd-looking sandals. i noticed that most of them showed marks of recent whipping.that may mean they're troublesome, or it may just mean that these caleras are a lot ofsadistic brutes." "poor devils!" the man called dosu golan wasevidently hoping that he'd never catch himself talking about fellow humans like that. theguard captain turned to him. "coming to have a look at them, doth?" heasked. "you go, kirv; i'll see them later."

"still not able to look the company's propertyin the face?" the captain asked gently. "you'll not get used to it any sooner than now." "i suppose you're right." for a moment dosugolan watched coru-hin-irigod and his followers canter out of the yard and break into a gallopon the road beyond. then he tucked his whip under his arm. "all right, then. let's gosee them." the labor foreman went into the house; themanager and the guard captain went down the steps and set out across the yard. a big slat-sidedwagon, drawn by four horses, driven by an old slave in a blue smock and a thing likea sunbonnet, rumbled past, loaded with newly-picked oranges. blue woodsmoke was beginning to risefrom the stoves at the open kitchen and a

couple of slaves were noisily chopping wood.then they came to the stockade of close-set pointed poles. a guard sergeant in a red-trimmedblue jacket, armed with a revolver, met them with a salute which kiro soran returned: heunfastened the gate and motioned four or five riflemen into positions from which they couldfire in between the poles in case the slaves turned on their new owners. there seemed little danger of that, thoughkiro soran kept his hand close to the butt of his revolver. the slaves, an even hundredof them, squatted under awnings out of the sun, or stood in line to drink at the water-butt.they furtively watched the two men who had entered among them, as though expecting blowsor kicks; when none were forthcoming, they

relaxed slightly. as the labor foreman hadsaid, they were clean and looked healthy. they were all nearly naked; there were aboutas many women as men, but no children or old people. "radd's right," the captain told the new manager."they're not local. much darker skins, and different face-structure; faces wedge-shapedinstead of oval, and differently shaped noses, and brown eyes instead of black. i've seenpeople like that, somewhere, but-" he fell silent. a suspicion, utterly fantastic,had begun to form in his mind, and he stepped closer to a group of a dozen-odd, the managerfollowing him. one or two had been unmercifully lashed, not long ago, and all bore a few lash-marks.odd sort of marks, more like burn-blisters

than welts. he'd have to have the companydoctor look at them. then he caught their speech, and the suspicion was converted tocertainty. "these are not like the others: they wearfine garments, and walk proudly. they look stern, but not cruel. they are the real mastershere; the others are but servants." he grasped the manager's arm and drew himaside. "you know that language?" he asked. when theman called dosu golan shook his head, he continued: "that's kharanda; it's a dialect spoken bya people in the ganges valley, in india, on the kholghoor sector of the fourth level." dosu golan blinked, and his face went blankfor a moment.

"you mean they're from outtime?" he demanded."are you sure?" "i did two years on fourth level kholghoorwith the paratime police, before i took this job," the man called kiro soran replied. "andanother thing. those lash-marks were made with some kind of an electric whip. not theserawhide quirts the caleras use." it took the plantation manager all of fiveseconds to add that up. the answer frightened him. "kirv, this is going to make a simply hideousuproar, all the way up to home time line main office," he said. "i don't know what i'm goingto do-" "well, i know what i have to do." the captainraised his voice, using the local language:

"sergeant! run to the guardhouse, and tellsergeant adarada to mount up twenty of his men and take off after those caleras who soldus these slaves. they're headed down the road toward the river. tell him to bring them allback, and especially their chief, coru-hin-irigod, and him i want alive and able to answer questions.and then get the white-cloak lord urado alatena, and come back here." "yes, captain." the guards were all yaranapeople; they disliked caleras intensely. the sergeant threw a salute, turned, and ran. "next, we'll have to isolate these slaves,"kiro soran said. "you'd better make a full report to the company as soon as possible.i'm going to transpose to police terminal

time line and make my report to the sector-regionalsubchief. then-" "now wait a moment, kirv," dosu golan protested."after all, i'm the manager, even if i am new here. it's up to me to make the decisions-" kiro soran shook his head. "sorry, doth. notthis one," he said. "you know the terms under which i was hired by the company. i'm stilla field agent of the paratime police, and i'm reporting back on duty as soon as i cantranspose to police terminal. look; here are a hundred men and women who have been shiftedfrom one time-line, on one paratemporal sector of probability, to another. why, the worldfrom which these people came doesn't even exist in this space-time continuum. there'sonly one way they could have gotten here,

and that's the way we did-in a ghaldron-hesthorparatemporal transposition field. you can carry it on from there as far as you like,but the only thing it adds up to is a case for the paratime police. you had better includein your report mention that i've reverted to police status; my company pay ought tobe stopped as of now. and until somebody who outranks me is sent here, i'm in completecharge. paratime transposition code, section xvii, article 238." the plantation manager nodded. kiro soranknew how he must feel; he laid a hand gently on the younger man's shoulder. "you understand how it is, doth; this is theonly thing i can do."

"i understand, kirv. count on me for absolutelyanything." he looked at the brown-skinned slaves, and lines of horror and loathing appearedaround his mouth. "to think that some of our own people would do a thing like this! i hopeyou can catch the devils! are you transposing out, now?" "in a few minutes. while i'm gone, have thedoctor look at those whip-injuries. those things could get infected. fortunately, he'sone of our own people." "yes, of course. and i'll have these slavesisolated, and if adarada brings back coru-hin-irigod and his gang before you get back, i'll havethem locked up and waiting for you. i suppose you want to narco-hypnotize and question thewhole lot, slaves and slavers?"

the labor foreman, known locally as uradoalatena, entered the stockade. "what's wrong, kirv?" he asked. the paratime police agent told him, briefly.the labor foreman whistled, threw a quick glance at the nearest slaves, and nodded. "i knew there was something funny about them,"he said. "doth, what a simply beastly thing to happen, two days after you take chargehere!" "not his fault," the paratime police agentsaid. "i'm the one the company'll be sore at, but i'd rather have them down on me ratherthan old tortha karf. well, sit on the lid till i get back," he told both of them. "we'llneed some kind of a story for the locals.

let's see-explain to the guards, in thehearing of some of the more talkative slaves, that these slaves are from the asian mainland,that they are of a people friendly to our people, and that they were kidnaped by pirates,our enemies. that ought to explain everything satisfactorily." on his way back to the plantation house, hesaw a clump of local slaves staring curiously at the stockade, and noticed that the guardshad unslung their rifles and fixed their bayonets. none of them had any idea, of course, of whathad happened, but they all seemed to know, by some sort of esp, that something was seriouslywrong. it was going to get worse, too, when strangers began arriving, apparently fromnowhere, at the plantation.

verkan vall waited until the small, dark-eyedwoman across the circular table had helped herself from one of the bowls on the revolvingdisk in the middle, then rotated it to bring the platter of cold boar-ham around to himself. "want some of this, dalla?" he asked, transferringa slice of ham and a spoonful of wine sauce to his plate. "no, i'll have some of the venison," the black-hairedgirl beside him said. "and some of the pickled beans. we'll be getting our fill of pork,for the next month." "i thought the dwarma sector people were vegetarians,"jandar jard, the theatrical designer, said. "most nonviolent peoples are, aren't they?"

"well, the dwarma people haven't any specifictaboo against taking life," bronnath zara, the dark-eyed woman in the brightly coloredgown, told him. "they're just utterly noncombative, nonaggressive. when i was on the dwarma sector,there was a horrible scandal at the village where i was staying. it seems that a farmerand a meat butcher fought over the price of a pig. they actually raised their voices andshouted contradictions at each other. that happened two years before, and people werestill talking about it." "i didn't think they had any money, either,"verkan vall's wife, hadron dalla, said. "they don't," zara said. "it's all barterand trade. what are you and vall going to use for a visible means of support, whileyou're there?"

"oh, i have my mandolin, and i've learnedall the traditional dwarma songs by hypno-mech," dalla said. "and transtime tours is fittingvall out with a bag of tools; he's going to do repair work and carpentry." "oh, good; you'll be welcome anywhere," zara,the sculptress, said. "they're always glad to entertain a singer, and for people whodo the fine decorative work they do, they're the most incompetent practical mechanics i'veever seen or heard of. you're going to travel from village to village?" "yes. the cover-story is that we're loverswho have left our village in order not to make vall's former wife unhappy by our presence,"dalla said.

"oh, good! that's entirely in the dwarma romantictradition," bronnath zara approved. "ordinarily, you know, they don't like to travel. theyhave a saying: 'happy are the trees, they abide in their own place; sad are the winds,forever they wander.' but that'll be a fine explanation." thalvan dras, the big man with the black beardand the long red coat and cloth-of-gold sash who lounged in the host's seat, laughed. "i can just see vall mending pots, and dallaplaying that mandolin and singing," he said. "at least, you'll be getting away from policework. i don't suppose they have anything like police on the dwarma sector?"

"oh, no; they don't even have any such concept,"bronnath zara said. "when somebody does something wrong, his neighbors all come and talk tohim about it till he gets ashamed, then they all forgive him and have a feast. they'relovely people, so kind and gentle. but you'll get awfully tired of them in about a month.they have absolutely no respect for anybody's privacy. in fact, it seems slightly indecentto them for anybody to want privacy." one of thalvan dras' human servants came intothe room, coughed apologetically, and said: "a visiphone-call for his valor, the mavradof nerros." vall went on nibbling ham and wine sauce;the servant repeated the announcement a trifle more loudly.

"vall, you're being paged!" thalvan dras toldhim, with a touch of impatience. verkan vall looked blank for an instant, thengrinned. it had been so long since he had even bothered to think about that antiquatedtitle of nobility- "vall's probably forgotten that he has a title,"a girl across the table, wearing an almost transparent gown and nothing else, laughed. "that's something the mavrad of mnirna andthalvabar never forgets," jandar jard drawled, with what, in a woman, would have been cattishness. thalvan dras gave him a hastily repressedlook of venomous anger, then said something, more to verkan vall than to jandar jard, abouttitles of nobility being the marks of social

position and responsibility which their bearersshould never forget. that jab, vall thought, following the servant out of the room, hadbeen a mistake on jard's part. a music-drama, for which he had designed the settings, wasdue to open here in dhergabar in another ten days. thalvan dras would cherish spite, anda word from the mavrad of mnirna and thalvabar would set a dozen critics to disparaging jandar'swork. on the other hand, maybe it had been smart of jandar jard to antagonize thalvandras; for every critic who bowed slavishly to the wealthy nobleman, there were at leasttwo more who detested him unutterably, and they would rush to jandar jard's defense,and in the ensuing uproar, the settings would get more publicity than the drama itself.

in the visiphone booth, vall found a girlin a green blouse, with the paratime police insigne on her shoulder, looking out of thescreen. the wall behind her was pale green striped in gold and black. "hello, eldra," he greeted her. "hello, chief's assistant: i'm sorry to botheryou, but the chief wants to talk to you. just a moment, please." the screen exploded into a kaleidoscopic flashof lights and colors, then cleared again. this time, a man looked out of it. he waswell into middle age; close to his three hundredth year. his hair, a uniform iron-gray, was beginningto thin in front, and he was acquiring the

beginnings of a double chin. his name wastortha karf, and he was chief of paratime police, and verkan vall's superior. "hello, vall. glad i was able to locate you.when are you and dalla leaving?" "as soon as we can get away from this luncheon,here. oh, say an hour. we're taking a rocket to zarabar, and transposing from there topassenger terminal sixteen, and from there to the dwarma sector." "well, vall, i hate to bother you like this,"tortha karf said, "but i wish you'd stop by headquarters on your way to the rocketport.something's come up-it may be a very nasty business-and i'd like to talk to you aboutit."

"well, chief, let me remind you that thisvacation, which i've had to postpone four times already, has been overdue for four years,"vall said. "yes, vall, i know. you've been working veryhard, and you and dalla are entitled to a little time together. i just want you to lookinto something, before you leave." "it'll have to take some fast looking. ourrocket blasts off in two hours." "it may take a little longer; if it does,you and dalla can transpose to police terminal and take a rocket for zarabar equivalent,and transpose from there to passenger sixteen. it would save time if you brought dalla withyou to headquarters." "dalla won't like this," vall understated.

"no. i'm afraid not." tortha karf looked aroundapprehensively, as though estimating the damage an enraged hadron dalla could do to his officefurnishings. "well, try to get here as soon as you can." thalvan dras was holding forth, when vallreturned, on one of his favorite preoccupations. "... reason i'm taking such an especiallyactive interest in this year's arts exhibitions; i've become disturbed at the extent to whichso many of our artists have been content to derive their motifs, even their techniques,from outtime art." he was using his vocowriter, rather than his conversational, voice. "iyield to no one in my appreciation of outtime art-you all know how devotedly i collectobjects of art from all over paratime-but

our own artists should endeavor to expresstheir artistic values in our own artistic idioms." vall bent over his wife's shoulder. "we have to leave, right away," he whispered. "but our rocket doesn't blast off for twohours-" thalvan dras had stopped talking and was lookingat them in annoyance. "i have to go to headquarters before we leave.it'll save time if you come along." "oh, no, vall!" she looked at him in consternation."was that tortha karf, calling?" she replaced her plate on the table and got to her feet.

"i'm dreadfully sorry, dras," he addressedtheir host. "i just had a call from tortha karf. a few minor details that must be clearedup, before i leave home time line. if you'll accept our thanks for a wonderful luncheon-" "why, certainly, vall. brogoth, will you call-"he gave a slight chuckle. "i'm so used to having brogoth zaln at my elbow that i'd forgottenhe wasn't here. wait. i'll call one of the servants to have a car for you." "don't bother; we'll take an aircab," valltold him. "but you simply can't take a public cab!"the black-bearded nobleman was shocked at such an obscene idea. "i will have a car readyfor you in a few minutes."

"sorry, dras; we have to hurry. we'll geta cab on the roof. good-by, everybody; sorry to have to break away like this. see you allwhen we get back." part 2 hadron dalla watched dejectedly as the greencrags and escarpments of the paratime building loomed above the city in front of them, andbegan slipping under the aircab. she felt like a prisoner recaptured at the moment whenattempted escape was about to succeed. "i knew it," she said. "i knew he'd find something.he's trying to break things up between us, the way he did twenty years ago.'" vall crushed out his cigarette and said nothing.that hadn't been true, and she knew it as

well as he did. there had been many otherfactors involved in the disintegration of their previous marriage, most of them of herown contribution. but that had been twenty years ago, she told herself. this time itwould be different, if only- "really, vall, he's never liked me," she wenton. "he's jealous of me, i think. you're to be his successor, when he retires, and hethinks i'm not a good influence-" "oh, rubbish, dalla! the chief has alwaysliked you," vall replied. "if he didn't, do you think he'd always be inviting us to thatfarm of his, on fifth level sicily? it's just that this job of ours has no end; something'salways turning up, outtime." the music that the cab had been playing diedaway. "paratime building, just below," it

said, in a light feminine voice. "which landingstage, please?" vall leaned forward and punched at the buttons in front of him. somethingin the cab's electronic brain gave a rapid series of clicks as it shifted from the generalparatime building beam to the beam of the paratime police landing stage, then it said,"thank you." the building below seemed to rotate upward toward them as it settled down.then the antigrav-field snapped off, the cab door popped open, and the cab said: "good-by,now. ride with me again, sometime." they crossed the landing stage, entered theantigrav shaft, and floated downward; at the end of a hallway, below, vall opened the doorof tortha karf's office and ushered her through ahead of him.

tortha karf, inside the semicircle of hisdesk, was speaking into a recording phone as they approached. he shut off the machineand waved, a cigarette in his hand. "come on back and sit down," he invited. "bewith you in a moment." then he switched on the phone again and went on talking-somethingabout prompter evaluation and transmission of reports and less reliance on robot equipment."sign that up, my personal order, and see it's transmitted to everybody down to andincluding sector regional subchief level," he finished, then hung up the phone and turnedto them. "sorry about this," he said. "sit down, ifyou please. cigarettes?" she shook her head and sat down in one ofthe chairs behind the desk; she started to

relax and then caught herself and sat erect,her hands on her lap. "this won't interfere with your vacation,vall," tortha karf was saying. "i just need a little help before you transpose out." "we have to catch the rocket for zarabar inan hour and a half," dalla reminded him. "don't worry about that; if you miss the commercialrocket, our police rockets can give it an hour's start and pass it before it gets tozarabar," tortha karf said. then he turned to vall. "here's what's happened," he said."one of our field agents on detached duty as guard captain for consolidated outtimefoodstuffs on a fruit plantation in western north america, third level esaron sector,was looking over a lot of slaves who had been

sold to the plantation by a local slave dealer.he heard them talking among themselves-in kharanda." dalla caught the significance of that beforevall did. at first, she was puzzled; then, in spite of herself, she was horrified andangry. tortha karf was explaining to vall just where and on what paratemporal sectorkharanda was spoken. "no possibility that this agent, skordrankirv, could have been mistaken. he worked for a while on kholghoor sector, himself;knew the language by hypno-mech and by two years' use," tortha karf was saying. "so heordered himself back on duty, had the slaves isolated and the slave dealers arrested, andthen transposed to police terminal to report.

the secreg subchief, old vulthor tharn, confirmedhim in charge at this esaron sector plantation, and assigned him a couple of detectives anda psychist." "when was this?" vall asked. "yesterday. one-five-nine day. about 1500local time." "twenty-three hundred dhergabar time," vallcommented. "yes. and i just found out about it. camein in the late morning generalized report-digest; very inconspicuous item, no special urgencysymbol or anything. fortunately, one of the report editors spotted it and messaged policeterminal for a copy of the original report." "it's been a long time since we had anythinglike that," vall said, studying the glowing

tip of his cigarette, his face wearing thecuriously withdrawn expression of a conscious memory recall. "fifty years ago; the timethat gang kidnaped some girls from second level triplanetary empire sector and soldthem into the harem of some fourth level indo-turanian sultan." "yes. that was your first independent case,vall. that was when i began to think you'd really make a cop. one renegade first levelcitizen and four or five servsec prole hoodlums, with a stolen fifty-foot conveyer. this lookslike a rather more ambitious operation." dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and litit. vall and tortha karf were talking cop talk about method of operation and possiblesize of the gang involved, and why the slaves

had been shipped all the way from india tothe west coast of north america. "always ready sale for slaves on the esaronsector," vall was saying. "and so many small independent states, and different languages,that outtimers wouldn't be particularly conspicuous." "and with this barbarian invasion going onon the kholghoor sector, slaves could be picked up cheaply," tortha karf added. in spite of her determination to boycott theconversation, curiosity began to get the better of her. she had spent a year and a half onthe kholghoor sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the local priests. there'dbeen nothing to it-the prophecies weren't precognition, they were shrewd inferences,and the miracles weren't psychokinesis, they

were sleight-of-hand. she found herself asking: "what barbarian invasion's this?" "oh, central asian nomadic people, the croutha,"tortha karf told her. "they came down through khyber pass about three months ago, turnedeast, and hit the headwaters of the ganges. without punching a lot of buttons to findout exactly, i'd say they're halfway to the delta country by now. leader seems to be achieftain called llamh droogh the red. a lot of paratime trading companies are yellingfor permits to introduce firearms in the kholghoor sector to protect their holdings there." she nodded. the fourth level kholghoor sectorbelonged to what was known as indus-ganges-irriwady

basic sector-grouping-probability of civilizationhaving developed late on the indian subcontinent, with the rest of the world, including europe,in stone age savagery or early bronze age barbarism. the kharandas, the people amongwhom she had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical, animal-power,handcraft, edge-weapon culture. she could imagine the roads jammed with fugitives fromthe barbarian invaders, the conveyer hidden among the trees, the lurking slavers- watch it, dalla! don't let the old scoundrelplay on your feelings! "well, what do you want me to do, chief?"vall was asking. "well, i have to know just what this situation'slikely to develop into, and i want to know

why vulthor tharn's been sitting on this eversince skordran kirv reported it to him-" "i can answer the second one now," vall replied."vulthor tharn is due to retire in a few years. he has a negatively good, undistinguishedrecord. he's trying to play it safe." tortha karf nodded. "that's what i thought.look, vall; suppose you and dalla transpose from here to police terminal, and go to novilanequivalent, and give this a quick look-over and report to me, and then rocket to zarabarequivalent and go on with your trip to the dwarma sector. it may delay you eight or tenhours, but-" "closer twenty-four," vall said. "i'd haveto transpose to this plantation, on the esaron sector. how about it, dalla? would you wantto do that?"

she hesitated for a moment, angry with him.he didn't want to refuse, and he was trying to make her do it for him. "i know, it's a confounded imposition, dalla,"tortha karf told her. "but it's important that i get a prompt and full estimate of thesituation. this may be something very serious. if it's an isolated incident, it can be handledin a routine manner, but i'm afraid it's not. it has all the marks of a large-scale operation,and if this is a matter of mass kidnapings from one sector and transpositions to another,you can see what a threat this is to the paratime secret." "moral considerations entirely aside," vallsaid. "we don't need to discuss them; they're

too obvious." she nodded. for over twelve millennia, thepeople of her race and vall's and tortha karf's had been existing as parasites on all theinnumerable other worlds of alternate probability on the lateral dimension of time. smart parasitesnever injure their hosts, and try never to reveal their existence. "we could do that, couldn't we, vall?" sheasked, angry at herself now for giving in. "and if you want to question these slaves,i speak kharanda, and i know how they think. and i'm a qualified and licensed narco-hypnotictechnician." "well, that's splendid, dalla!" tortha karfenthused. "wait a moment; i'll message police

terminal to have a rocket ready for you." "i'll need a hypno-mech for kharanda, myself,"vall said. "dalla, do you know acalan?" when she shook her head, he turned back to torthakarf. "look; it's about a four-hour rocket hop to novilan equivalent. say we have thehypno-mech machines installed in the rocket; dalla and i can take our language lessonson the way, and be ready to go to work as soon as we land." "good idea," tortha karf approved. "i'll orderthat done, right away. now-" oddly enough, she wasn't feeling so angry,now that she had committed herself and vall. come to think of it, she had never been onpolice terminal time line; very few people,

outside the paratime police, ever had. and,she had always wanted to learn more about vall's work, and participate in it with him.and if she'd made him refuse, it would have been something ugly between them all the timethey would be on the dwarma sector. but this way- the big circular conveyer room was crowded,as it had been every minute of every day for the past ten thousand years. at the greatcircular desk in the center, departing or returning police officers were checking inor out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot clerks, or talking to human attendants. somewere in the regulation green uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; morewere in outtime costumes from all over paratime.

fringed robes and cloth-of-gold sashes andconical caps from the second level khiftan sector; fourth level proto-aryan mail andhelmets; the short tunics and kilts of fourth level alexandrian-roman sector; the zarkanthaloincloth and felt cap and daggers; there were priestly vestments stiff with gold, andmilitary uniforms; there were trousers and jackboots and bare legs; blasters, and swords,and pistols, and bows and quivers, and spears. and the place was loud with a babel of voicesand the clatter of teleprinters. dalla was looking about her in surprised delight;for her, the vacation had already begun. he was glad; for a while, he had been afraidthat she would be unhappy about it. he guided her through the crowd to the desk, spoke fora while to one of the human attendants, and

found out which was their conveyer. it wasa fixed-destination shuttler, operative only between home time line and police terminal,from which most of the paratime police operations were routed. he put dall in through the slidingdoor, followed, and closed it behind him, locking it. then, before he closed the startingswitch, he drew a pistollike weapon and checked it. in theory, the ghaldron-hesthor paratemporaltransposition field was uninfluenced by material objects outside it. in practice, however,such objects occasionally intruded, and sometimes they were alive and hostile. the last timehe had been in this conveyer room, he had seen a quartet of returning officers emergefrom a conveyer dome dragging a dead lion

by the tail. the sigma-ray needler, whichhe carried, was the only weapon which could be used, under the circumstances. it had noeffect whatever on any material structure and could be used inside an activated conveyerwithout deranging the conductor-mesh, as, say, a bullet or the vibration of an ultrasonicparalyzer would do, and it was instantly fatal to anything having a central nervous system.it was a good weapon to use outtime for that reason, also; even on the most civilized time-line,the most elaborate autopsy would reveal no specific cause of death. "what's the esaron sector like?" dalla asked,as the conveyer dome around them coruscated with shifting light and vanished.

"third level; probability of abortive attemptto colonize this planet from mars about a hundred thousand years ago," he said. "a fewsurvivors-a shipload or so-were left to shift for themselves while the parent civilizationon mars died out. they lost all vestiges of their original martian culture, even memoryof their extraterrestrial origin. about fifteen hundred to two thousand years ago, a reasonablyhigh electrochemical civilization developed and they began working with nuclear energyand developed reaction-drive spaceships. but they'd concentrated so on the inorganic sciences,and so far neglected the bio-sciences, that when they launched their first ship for venusthey hadn't yet developed a germ theory of disease."

"what happened when they ran into the green-vomitfever?" dalla asked. "about what you could expect. the first-andonly-ship to return brought it back to terra. of course, nobody knew what it was, and beforethe epidemic ended, it had almost depopulated this planet. since the survivors knew nothingabout germs, they blamed it on the anger of the gods-the old story of recourse to supernaturalismin the absence of a known explanation-and a fanatically anti-scientific cult got control.of course, space travel was taboo; so was nuclear and even electric power. for somereason, steam power and gunpowder weren't offensive to the gods. they went back to alow-order steam-power, black-powder, culture, and haven't gotten beyond that to this day.the relatively civilized regions are on the

east coast of asia and the west coast of northamerica; civilized race more or less caucasian. political organization just barely above thetribal level-thousands of petty kingdoms and republics and principalities and feudalholdings and robbers' roosts. the principal industries are brigandage, piracy, slave-raiding,cattle-rustling and intercommunal warfare. they have a few ramshackle steam railways,and some steamboats on the rivers. we sell them coal and manufactured goods, mostly inexchange for foodstuffs and tobacco. consolidated outtime foodstuffs has the sector franchise.that's one of the companies thalvan dras gets his money from." they had run down through the civilized secondand third levels and were leaving the fourth

behind and entering the fifth, existing inthe probability of a world without human population. once in a while, around them, they caughtbrief flashes of buildings and rocketports and spaceports and landing stages, as theconveyer took them through narrow paratime belts on which their own civilization hadestablished outposts-fifth level commercial, fifth level passenger, industrial sector,service sector. finally the conveyer dome around them shimmeredinto visibility and materialized; when they emerged, there were policemen in green uniformswho entered to search the dome with drawn needlers to make sure they had picked up nothingdangerous on the way. the room outside was similar to the one they had left on home timeline, even to the shifting, noisy crowd in

incongruously-mixed costumes. the rocketport was a ten minutes' trip byaircar from the conveyer head; when they boarded the stubby-winged strato-rocket, vall sawthat two of the passenger-seats had square metal cabinets bolted in place behind themand blue plastic helmets on swinging arms mounted above them. "everything's set up," the pilot told them."dr. hadron, you sit on the left; that cabinet's loaded with language tape for acalan. yoursis loaded with a tape of kharanda; that's the fourth level kholghoor language you wanted,chief's assistant. shall i help you get fixed in your seats?"

"yes, if you please. here, dalla, i'll fixthat for you." dalla was already asleep when the pilot wasadjusting his helmet and giving him his injection. he never felt the rocket tilt into firingposition, and while he slept, the kharands language, with all its vocabulary and grammar,became part of his subconscious knowledge, needing only the mental pronunciation of atrigger-symbol to bring it into consciousness. the pilot was already unfastening and raisinghis helmet when he opened his eyes. dalla, beside him, was sipping a cup of spiced wine. on the landing stage of the sector-regionalheadquarters at novilan equivalent, four or five people were waiting for them. vall recognizedthe subchief, vulthor tharn, who introduced

another man, in riding boots and a white cloak,as skordran kirv. vall clasped hands with him warmly. "good work, agent skordran. you got onto thispromptly." "i tried to, sir. do you want the dope now?we have half an hour's flight to our spatial equivalent, and another half hour in transposition." "give it to me on the way," he said, and turnedto vulthor tharn. "our esaron costumes ready?" "yes. over there in the control tower. wehave a temporary conveyer head set up about two hundred miles south of here, which willtake you straight through to the plantation." "suppose you change now, dalla," he said."subchief, i'd like a word with you privately."

he and vulthor tharn excused themselves andwalked over to the edge of the landing stage. the secreg subchief was outwardly composed,but vall sensed that he was worried and embarrassed. "now, what's been done since you got agentskordran's report?" vall asked. "well, sir, it seems that this is more seriousthan we had anticipated. field agent skordran, who will give you the particulars, says thatthere is every indication that a large and well-organized gang of paratemporal criminals,our own people, are at work. he says that he's found evidence of activities on fourthlevel kholghoor that don't agree with any information we have about conditions on thatsector." "beside transmitting agent skordran's reportto dhergabar through the robot report-system,

what have you done about it?" "i confirmed agent skordran in charge of thelocal investigation, and gave him two detectives and a psychist, sir. as soon as we could furnishhypno-mech indoctrination in kharanda to other psychists, i sent them along. he now has fourof them, and eight detectives. by that time, we had a conveyer head right at this consolidatedouttime foodstuffs plantation." "why didn't you just borrow psychists fromsecreg for kholghoor, eastern india?" vall asked. "subchief ranthar would have loanedyou a few." "oh, i couldn't call on another secreg formen without higher-echelon authorization. especially not from another sector organization,even another level authority," vulthor tharn

said. "beside, it would have taken longerto bring them here than hypno-mech our own personnel." he was right about the second point. vallagreed mentally; however, his real reason was procedural. "did you alert ranthar jard to what was goingon in his secreg?" he asked. "gracious, no!" vulthor tharn was scandalized."i have no authority to tell people of equal echelon in other sector and level organizationswhat to do. i put my report through regular channels; it wasn't my place to go outsidemy own jurisdiction." and his report had crawled through channelsfor fourteen hours, vall thought.

"well, on my authority, and in the name ofchief tortha, you message ranthar jard at once; send him every scrap of informationyou have on the subject, and forward additional information as it comes in to you. i doubthe'll find anything on any time-line that's being exploited by any legitimate paratimers.this gang probably work exclusively on unpenetrated time-lines; this business skordran kirv cameacross was a bad blunder on some underling's part." he saw dalla emerge from the controltower in breeches and boots and a white cloak, buckling on a heavy revolver. "i'll go change,now; you get busy calling ranthar jard. i'll see you when i get back." "are you taking over, chief's assistant?"skordran kirv asked, as the aircar lifted

from the landing stage. "not at all. my wife and i are starting onour vacation, as soon as i find out what's been happening here, and report to chief tortha.did your native troopers catch those slavers?" "yes, they got them yesterday afternoon; we'vehad them ever since. do you want the whole thing just as it happened, assistant verkan,or just a condensation?" "give me what you think it indicates, rememberingthat you're probably trying to analyze a large situation from a very small sample." "it's big, all right," skordran kirv said."this gang can't number less than a hundred men, maybe several hundred. they must haveat least two two-hundred-foot conveyers and

several small ones, and bases on what soundslike some fifth level time line, and at least one air freighter of around five thousandtons. they are operating on a number of kholghoor and esaron time lines." verkan vall nodded. "i didn't think it wasany petty larceny," he said. "wait till you hear the rest of it. on thekholghoor sector, this gang is known as the wizard traders; we've been using that as aconvenience label. they pose as sorcerers-black robes and hood-masks covered with luminoussymbols, voice-amplifiers, cold-light auras, energy-weapons, mechanical magic tricks, thatsort of thing. they have all the croutha scared witless. their procedure is to establish campsin the forest near recently conquered kharanda

cities; then they appear to the croutha, impressthem with their magical powers, and trade manufactured goods for kharanda captives.they mainly trade firearms, apparently some kind of flintlocks, and powder." then they were confining their operationsto unpenetrated time lines; there had been no reports of firearms in the hands of thecroutha invaders. "after they buy a batch of slaves," skordrankirv continued, "they transpose them to this presumably fifth level base, where they haveconcentration camps. the slaves we questioned had been airlifted to north america, wherethere's another concentration camp, and from there transposed to this esaron sector timeline where i found them. they say that there

were at least two to three thousand slavesin this north american concentration camp and that they are being transposed out insmall batches and replaced by others airlifted in from india. this lot was sold to a caleranamed nebu-hin-abenoz, the chieftain of a hill town, careba, about fifty miles south-westof the plantation. there were two hundred and fifty in this batch; this coru-hin-irigodonly bought the batch he sold at the plantation." the aircar lost speed and altitude; below,the countryside was dotted with conveyer heads, each spatially coexistent with some outtimepolice post or operation. there were a great many of them; the western coast of north americawas a center of civilization on many paratemporal sectors, and while the conveyer heads of thecommercial and passenger companies were scattered

over hundreds of fifth level time lines, thoseof the paratime police were concentrated upon one. the anti-grav-car circled around a three-hundred-footsteel tower that supported a conveyer head spatially coexistent with one on a top floorof some outtime tall building, and let down in front of a low prefabricated steel shed.a man in police uniform came out to meet them. there was a fifty-foot conveyer dome inside,and a fifty-foot red-lined circle that marked the transposition point of an outtime conveyer.they all entered the dome, and the operator put on the transposition field. "you haven't heard the worst of it yet." skordrankirv was saying. "on this time line, we have reason to think that the native, nebu-hin-abenoz,who bought the slaves, actually saw the slavers'

conveyer. maybe even saw it activated." "if he did, we'll either have to capture himand give him a memory-obliteration, or kill him," vall said. "what do you know about him?" "well, this careba, the town he bosses, isa little walled town up in the hills. everybody there is related to everybody else; this manwe have, coru-hin-irigod, is the son of a sister of nebu-hin-abenoz's wife. they'reall bandits and slavers and cattle rustlers and what have you. for the last ten years,nebu-hin-abenoz has been buying slaves from some secret source. before the kholghoor sectorpeople began coming in, they were mostly white, with a few brown people who might have beenpolynesians. no negroes-there's no black

race on this sector, and i suppose the paratimeslavers didn't want too many questions asked. coru-hin-irigod, under narco-hypnosis, saidthat they were all outlanders, speaking strange languages." "ten years! and this is the first hint we'vehad of it," vall said. "that's not a bright mark for any of us. i'll bet the slave populationon some of these esaron time lines is an anthropologist's nightmare." "why, if this has been going on for ten years,there must have been millions upon millions of people dragged from their own time linesinto slavery!" dalla said in a shocked voice. "ten years may not be all of it," vall said."this nebu-hin-abenoz looks like the only

tangible lead we have, at present. how doeshe operate?" "about once every ten days, he'll take tenor fifteen men and go a day's ride-that may be as much as fifty miles; these calerashave good horses and they're hard riders-into the hills. he'll take a big bag of money,all gold. after dark, when he has made camp, a couple of strangers in calera dress willcome in. he'll go off with them, and after about an hour, he'll come back with eightor ten of these strangers and a couple of hundred slaves, always chained in batchesof ten. nebu-hin-abenoz pays for them, makes arrangements for the next meeting, and thenext morning he and his party start marching the slaves to careba. i might add that, untilnow, these slaves have been sold to the mines

east of careba; these are the first that havegotten into the coastal country." "that's why this hasn't come to light before,then. the conveyer comes in every ten days, at about the same place?" "yes. i've been thinking of a way we mighttrap them," skordran kirv said. "i'll need more men, and equipment." "order them from regional or general reserve."vall told him. "this thing's going to have overtop priority till it's cleared up." he was mentally cursing vulthor tharn's procedure-boundtimidity as the conveyer flickered and solidified around them and the overhead red light turnedgreen.

part 3 they emerged into the interior of a long shed,adobe-walled and thatch-roofed, with small barred windows set high above the earth floor.it was cool and shadowy, and the air was heavy with the fragrance of citrus fruits. therewere bins along the walls, some partly full of oranges, and piles of wicker baskets. anotherconveyer dome stood beside the one in which they had arrived; two men in white cloaksand riding boots sat on the edge of one of the bins, smoking and talking. skordran kirv introduced them-gathon dardand krador arv, special detectives-and asked if anything new had come up. krador arv shookhis head.

"we still have about forty to go," he said."nothing new in their stories; still the same two time lines." "these people," skordran kirv explained, "wereall peons on the estate of a kharanda noble just above the big bend of the ganges. thecroutha hit their master's estate about a ten-days ago, elapsed time. in telling abouttheir capture, most of them say that their master's wife killed herself with a daggerafter the croutha killed her husband, but about one out of ten say that she was kidnapedby the croutha. two different time lines, of course. the ones who tell the suicide storysaw no firearms among the croutha; the ones who tell the kidnap story say that they allhad some kind of muskets and pistols. we're

making synthetic summaries of the two stories." "we're having trouble with the locals aboutall these strangers coming in," gathon dard added. "they're getting curious." "we'll have to take a chance on that," vallsaid. "are the interrogations still going on? then let's have a look-in at them." the big double doors at the end of the shedwere barred on the inside. krador arv unlocked a small side door, letting vall, dalla andgathon dard out. in the yard outside, a gang of slaves were unloading a big wagon of orangesand packing them into hampers; they were guarded by a couple of native riflemen who seemedmostly concerned with keeping them away from

the shed, and a man in a white cloak was watchingthe guards for the same purpose. he walked over and introduced himself to vall. "golzan doth, local alias dosu golan. i'mconsolidated outtime foodstuffs' manager here." "nasty business for you people," vall sympathized."if it's any consolation, it's a bigger headache for us." "have you any idea what's going to be doneabout these slaves?" golzan doth asked. "i have to remember that the company has fortythousand paratemporal exchange units invested in them. the top office was very specificin requesting information about that." vall shook his head. "that's over my echelon,"he said. "have to be decided by the paratime

commission. i doubt if your company'll suffer.you bought them innocently, in conformity with local custom. ever buy slaves from thiscoru-hin-irigod before?" "i'm new, here. the man i'm replacing brokehis neck when his horse put a foot in a gopher hole about two ten-days ago." beside him, vall could see dalla nod as thoughmaking a mental note. when she got back to home time line, she'd put a crew of mediumsto work trying to contact the discarnate former plantation manager; at rhogom institute, shehad been working on the problem of return of a discarnate personality from outtime. "a few times," skordran kirv said. "nothingsuspicious; all local stuff. we questioned

coru-hin-irigod pretty closely on that point,and he says that this is the first time he ever brought a batch of nebu-hin-abenoz'soutlanders this far west." the interrogations were being conducted insidethe plantation house, in the secret central rooms where the paratimers lived. skordrankirv used a door-activator to slide open a hidden door. "i suppose i don't have to warn either ofyou that any positive statement made in the hearing of a narco-hypnotized subject-"he began. "... has the effect of hypnotic suggestion-"vall picked up after him. "... and should be avoided unless such suggestionis intended," dalla finished.

skordran kirv laughed, opening another, innerdoor, and stood aside. in what had been the paratimers' recreation room, most of the furniturehad been shoved into the corners. four small tables had been set up, widely spaced andwith screens between; across each of them, with an electric recorder between, an almostnaked kharanda slave faced a paratime police psychist. at a long table at the far sideof the room, four men and two girls were working over stacks of cards and two big charts. "phrakor vuln," the man who was working onthe charts introduced himself. "synthesist." he introduced the others. vall made a point of the fact that dalla washis wife, in case any of the cops began to

get ideas, and mentioned that she spoke kharanda,had spent some time on the fourth level kholghoor, and was a qualified psychist. "what have you got, so far?" he asked. "two different time lines, and two differentgangs of wizard traders," phrakor vuln said. "we've established the latter from physicaldescriptions and because both batches were sold by the croutha at equivalent periodsof elapsed time." vall picked up one of the kidnap-story cardsand glanced at it. "i notice there's a fair verbal descriptionof these firearms, and mention of electric whips," he said. "i'm curious about wherethey came from."

"well, this is how we reconstructed them,chief's assistant," one of the girls said, handing him a couple of sheets of white drawingpaper. the sketches had been done with soft pencil;they bore repeated erasures and corrections. that of the whip showed a cylindrical handle,indicated as twelve inches in length and one in diameter, fitted with a thumb-switch. "that's definitely second level khiftan,"vall said, handing it back. "made of braided copper or silver wire and powered with a littlenuclear-conversion battery in the grip. they heat up to about two hundred centigrade; producereally painful burns." "why, that's beastly!" dalla exclaimed.

"anything on the khiftan sector is." skordrankirv looked at the four slaves at the tables. "we don't have a really bad case here, now.a few of these people were lash-burned horribly, though." vall was looking at the other sketches. onewas a musket, with a wide butt and a band-fastened stock; the lock-mechanism, vaguely flintlock,had been dotted in tentatively. the other was a long pistol, similarly definite in outlineand vague in mechanical detail; it was merely a knob-butted miniature of the musket. "i've seen firearms like these; have a lotof them in my collection," he said, handing back the sketches. "low-order mechanical orhigh-order pre-mechanical cultures. fact is,

things like those could have been made onthe kholghoor sector, if the kharandas had learned to combine sulfur, carbon and nitratesto make powder." the interrogator at one of the tables hadevidently heard all his subject could tell him. he rose, motioning the slave to stand. "now, go with that man," he said in kharanda,motioning to one of the detectives in native guard uniform. "you will trust him; he isyour friend and will not harm you. when you have left this room, you will forget everythingthat has happened here, except that you were kindly treated and that you were given wineto drink and your hurts were anointed. you will tell the others that we are their friendsand that they have nothing to fear from us.

and you will not try to remove the mark fromthe back of your left hand." as the detective led the slave out a doorat the other side of the room, the psychist came over to the long table, handing overa card and lighting a cigarette. "suicide story," he said to one of the girls,who took the card. "anything new?" "some minor details about the sale to thecaleras on this time line. i think we've about scraped bottom." "you can't say that," phrakor vuln objected."the very last one may give us something nobody else had noticed."

another subject was sent out. the interrogatorcame over to the table. "one of the kidnap-story crowd," he said."this one was right beside that croutha who took the shot at the wild pig or whateverit was on the way to the wizard traders' camp. best description of the guns we've gottenso far. no question that they're flintlocks." he saw verkan vall. "oh, hello, assistantverkan. what do you make of them? you're an authority on outtime weapons, i understand." "i'd have to see them. these people simplydon't think mechanically enough to give a good description. a lot of peoples make flintlockfirearms." he started running over, in his mind, theparatemporal areas in which gunpowder but

not the percussion-cap was known. expandingcultures, which had progressed as far as the former but not the latter. static cultures,in which an accidental discovery of gunpowder had never been followed up by further research.post-debacle cultures, in which a few stray bits of ancient knowledge had survived. another interrogator came over, and then thefourth. for a while they sat and talked and drank coffee, and then the next quartet ofslaves, two men and two women, were brought in. one of the women had been badly blisteredby the electric whips of the wizard traders; in spite of reassurances, all were visiblyapprehensive. "we will not harm you," one of the psychiststold them. "here; here is medicine for your

hurts. at first, it will sting, as good medicineswill, but soon it will take away all pain. and here is wine for you to drink." a couple of detectives approached, makinga great show of pouring wine and applying ointment; under cover of the medication, theyjabbed each slave with a hypodermic needle, and then guided them to seats at the fourtables. vall and dalla went over and stood behind one of the psychists, who had a smallflashlight in his hand. "now, rest for a while," the psychist wassaying. "rest and let the good medicine do its work. you are tired and sleepy. look atthis magic light, which brings comfort to the troubled. look at the light. look ... at... the ... light."

they moved to the next table. "did you have hand in the fighting?" "no, lord. we were peasant folk, not fightingpeople. we had no weapons, nor weapon-skill. those who fought were all killed; we heldup empty hands, and were spared to be captives of the croutha." "what happened to your master, the lord ghromdour,and to his lady?" "one of the croutha threw a hatchet and killedour master, and then his lady drew a dagger and killed herself." the psychist made a red mark on the card infront of him, and circled the number on the

back of the slave's hand with red indeliblecrayon. vall and dalla went to the third table. "they had the common weapons of the croutha,lord, and they also had the weapons of the wizard traders. of these, they carried thelong weapons slung across their backs, and the short weapons thrust through their belts." a blue mark on the card; a blue circle onthe back of the slave's hand. they listened to both versions of what hadhappened at the sack of the lord ghromdour's estate, and the march into the captured cityof jhirda, and the second march into the forest to the camp of the wizard traders. "the servants of the wizard traders did notappear until after the croutha had gone away;

they wore different garb. they wore shortjackets, and trousers, and short boots, and they carried small weapons on their belts-" "they had whips of great cruelty that burnedlike fire; we were all lashed with these whips, as you may see, lord-" "the croutha had bound us two and two, withneck-yokes; these the servants of the wizard traders took off from us, and they chainedus together by tens, with the chains we still wore when we came to this place-" "they killed my child, my little zhouzha!"the woman with the horribly blistered back was wailing. "they tore her out of my arms,and one of the servants of the wizard traders-may

khokhaat devour his soul forever!-dashedout her brains. and when i struggled to save her. i was thrown on the ground, and beatenwith the fire-whips until i fainted. then i was dragged into the forest, along withthe others who were chained with me." she buried her head in her arms, sobbing bitterly. dalla stepped forward, taking the flashlightfrom the interrogator with one hand and lifting the woman's head with the other. she flashedthe light quickly in the woman's eyes. "you will grieve no more for your child,"she said. "already, you are forgetting what happened at the wizard traders' camp, andremembering only that your child is safe from harm. soon you will remember her only as adream of the child you hope to have, some

day." she flashed the light again, then handedit back to the psychist. "now, tell us what happened when you were taken into the forest;what did you see there?" the psychist nodded approvingly, made a noteon the card, and listened while the woman spoke. she had stopped sobbing, now, and hervoice was clear and cheerful. vall went over to the long table. "those slaves were still chained with thewizard traders' chains when they were delivered here. where are the chains?" he asked skordrankirv. "in the permanent conveyer room," skordrankirv said. "you can look at them there; we didn't want to bring them in here, for fearthese poor devils would think we were going

to chain them again. they're very light, verystrong; some kind of alloy steel. files and power saws only polish them; it takes fifteenseconds to cut a link with an atomic torch. one long chain, and short lengths, fifteeninches long, staggered, every three feet, with a single hinge-shackle for the ankle.the shackles were riveted with soft wrought-iron rivets, evidently made with some sort of apower riveting-machine. we cut them easily with a cold chisel." "they ought to be sent to dhergabar equivalent,police terminal, for study of material and workmanship. now, you mentioned some schemeyou had for capturing this conveyer that brings in the slaves for nebu-hin-abenoz. what haveyou in mind?"

"we still have coru-hin-irigod and all hisgang, under hypno. i'd thought of giving them hypnotic conditioning, and sending them backto careba with orders to put out some kind of signal the next time nebu-hin-abenoz startsout on a buying trip. we could have a couple of men posted in the hills overlooking careba,and they could send a message-ball through to police terminal. then, a party could besent with a mobile conveyer to ambush nebu-hin-abenoz on the way, and wipe out his party. our peoplecould take their horses and clothing and go on to take the conveyer by surprise." "i'd suggest one change. instead of relyingon visual signals by the hypno-conditioned coru-hin-irigod, send a couple of our mento careba with midget radios."

skordran kirv nodded. "sure. we can conditioncoru-hin-irigod to accept them as friends and vouch for them at careba. our boys canbe traders and slave buyers. careba's a market town; traders are always welcome. they canhave firearms to sell-revolvers and repeating rifles. any calera'll buy any firearm that'sbetter than the one he's carrying; they'll always buy revolvers and repeaters. we canget what we want from commercial four-oh-seven; we can get riding and pack horses here." vall nodded. "and the post overlooking orin radio range of careba on this time line, and another on polterm. for the ambush ofnebu-hin-abenoz's gang and the capture of the conveyer, use anything you want to-sleep-gas,paralyzers, energy-weapons, antigrav-equipment,

anything. as far as regulations about usingonly equipment appropriate to local culture-levels, forget them entirely. but take that conveyerintact. you can locate the base time line from the settings of the instrument panel,and that's what we want most of all." dalla and the police psychist, having finishedwith and dismissed their subject, came over to the long table. "... that poor creature," dalla was saying."what sort of fiends are they?" "if that made you sick, remember we've beenlistening to things like that for the last eight hours. some of the stories were evenworse than that one." "well, i'd like to use a heat-gun on the wholelot of them, turned down to where it'd just

fry them medium-rare," dalla said. "and forwhoever's back of this, take him to second level khiftan and sell him to the priestsof fasif." "too bad you're not coming back from yourvacation, instead of starting out. chief's assistant verkan," skordran kirv said. "thisis too big for me to handle alone, and i'd sooner work under you than anybody else chieftortha sends in." "vall!" dalla cried in indignation. "you'renot going to just report on this and then walk away from it, are you?" "but, darling," vall replied, in what he hopedwas a convincing show of surprise. "you don't want our vacation postponed again, do you?if i get mixed up in this, there's no telling

when i can get away, and by the time i'm free,something may come up at rhogom institute that you won't want to drop-" "vall, you know perfectly well that i wouldn'tbe happy for an instant on the dwarma sector, thinking about this-" "all right, then; let's forget about the vacation.you want to stay on for a while and help me with this? it'll be a lot of hard work, butwe'll be together." "yes, of course. i want to do something tosmash those devils. vall, if you'd heard some of the things they did to those poor people-" "well, i'll have to go back to polterm, assoon as i'm reasonably well filled in on this,

and report to tortha karf and tell him i'vetaken charge. you can stay here and help with these interrogations; i'll be back in aboutten hours. then, we can go to kholghoor east india secreg hq to talk to ranthar jard. wemay be able to get something that'll help us on that end-" "you may be able to have your vacation beforetoo long, dr. hadron," skordran kirv told her. "once we capture one of their conveyers,the instrument panel'll tell us what time line they're working from, and then we'llhave them." "there's an indo-turanian sector parable abouta snake charmer who thought he was picking up his snake and found that he had hold ofan elephant's tail," vall said. "that might

be a good thing to bear in mind, till we findout just what we have picked up." coming down a hallway on the hundred and seventhfloor of the management wing of the paratime building, yandar yadd paused to admire, inthe green mirror of the glassoid wall, the jaunty angle of his silver-feathered cap,the fit of his short jacket, and the way his weapon hung at his side. this last was notinstantly recognizable as a weapon; it looked more like a portable radio, which indeed itwas. it was, none the less, a potent weapon. one flick of his finger could connect thatradio with one at tri-planet news service, and within the hour anything he said intoit would be heard by all terra, mars and venus. in consequence, there existed around the paratimebuilding a marked and understandable reluctance

to antagonize yandar yadd. he glanced at his watch. it was twenty minutesshort of 1000, when he had an appointment with baltan vrath, the comptroller general.glancing about, he saw that he was directly in front of the doorway of the outtime claimsbureau, and he strolled in, walking through the waiting room and into the claims-presentationoffice. at once, he stiffened like a bird dog at point. sphabron larv, one of his young legmen, wasin altercation across the counter-desk with varkar klav, the deputy claims agent on dutyat the time. varkar was trying to be icily dignified; sphabron larv's black hair wasin disarray and his face was suffused with

anger. he was pounding with his fist on theplastic counter-top. "you have to!" he was yelling in the olderman's face. "that's a public document, and i have a right to see it. you want me to gointo tribunes' court and get an order? if i do, there'll be a question in council aboutwhy i had to, before the day's out!" "what's the matter, larv?" yandar yadd askedlazily. "he trying to hold something out on you?" sphabron larv turned; his eyes lit happilywhen he saw his boss, and then his anger returned. "i want to see a copy of an indemnity claimthat was filed this morning," he said. "varkar, here, won't show it to me. what does he thinkthis is, a fourth level dictatorship?"

"what kind of a claim, now?" yandar yadd addressedlarv, ignoring varkar klav. "consolidated outtime foodstuffs-one ofthe thalvan interests companies-just claimed forty thousand p.e.u. for a hundred slavesbought by one of their plantation managers on third level esaron from a local slave dealer.the paratime police impounded the slaves for narco-hypnotic interrogation, and then transposedthe lot of them to police terminal." yandar yadd still held his affectation ofsleepy indolence. "now why would the paracops do that, i wonder?slavery's an established local practice on esaron sector; our people have to buy slavesif they want to run a plantation." "i know that." sphabron larv replied. "that'swhat i want to find out. there must be something

wrong, either with the slaves, or the treatmentour people were giving them, or the paratime police, and i want to find out which." "to tell the truth, larv, so do i." yandaryadd said. he turned to the man behind the counter. "varkar, do we see that claim, ordo i make a story out of your refusal to show it?" he asked. "the paratime police asked me to keep thisconfidential," varkar klav said. "publicity would seriously hamper an important policeinvestigation." yandar yadd made an impolite noise. "how doi know that all it would do would be to reveal police incompetence?" he retorted. "look,varkar; you and the paratime police and the

paratime commission and the home time linemanagement are all hired employees of the home time line public. the public has a rightto know what its employees are doing, and it's my business to see that they're informed.now, for the last time-will you show us a copy of that claim?" "well, let me explain, off the record-"the official begged. "huh-uh! huh-uh! i had that off-the-recordgag worked on me when i was about larv's age, fifty years ago. anything i get, i put onthe air or not at my own discretion." "all right," varkar klav surrendered, pointingto a reading screen and twiddling a knob. "but when you read it, i hope you have enoughdiscretion to keep quiet about it."

the screen lit, and yandar yadd automaticallypressed a button for a photo-copy. the two newsmen stared for a moment, and then evenyandar yadd's shell of drowsy negligence cracked and fell from him. his hand brushed the switchas he snatched the hand-phone from his belt. "marva!" he barked, before the girl at thenews office could more than acknowledge. "get this recorded for immediate telecast!... ready?beginning: the existence of a huge paratemporal slave trade came to light on the afternoonof one-five-nine day, on a time line of the third level esaron sector, when field agentskordran kirv, paratime police, discovered, at an orange plantation of consolidated outtimefoodstuffs-" part 4

salgath trod sat alone in his private office,his half-finished lunch growing cold on the desk in front of him as he watched the televiewscreen across the room, tuned to a pickup behind the speaker's chair in the executivecouncil chamber ten stories below. the two thousand seats had been almost all empty at1000, when council had convened. fifteen minutes later, the news had broken; now, at 1430,a good three quarters of the seats were occupied. he could see, in the aisles, the gold-platedrobot pages gliding back and forth, receiving and delivering messages. one had just slidup to the seat of councilman hasthor flan, and hasthor was speaking urgently into therecorder mouthpiece. another message for him, he supposed; he'd gotten at least a scoresuch calls since the crisis had developed.

people were going to start wondering, he thought.this situation should have been perfect for his purposes; as leader of the oppositionhe could easily make himself the next general manager, if he exploited this scandal properly.he listened for a while to the centrist-management member who was speaking; he could rip thatfellow's arguments to shreds in a hundred words-but he didn't dare. the managementwas taking exactly the line salgath trod wanted the whole council to take: treat this affairas an isolated and extraordinary occurrence, find a couple of convenient scapegoats, cobbleup some explanation acceptable to the public, and forget it. he wondered what had happenedto the imbecile who had transposed those kholghoor sector slaves onto an exploited time line.ought to be shanghaied to the khiftan sector

and sold to the priests of fasif! a buzzer sounded, and for an instant he thoughtit would be the message he had seen hasthor fan recording. then he realized that it wasthe buzzer for the private door, which could only be operated by someone with a specialidentity sign. he pressed a button and unlocked the door. the young man in the loose wrap-around tunicwho entered was a stranger. at least, his face and his voice were strange, but voicescould be mechanically altered, and a skilled cosmetician could render any face unrecognizable.he looked like a student, or a minor commercial executive, or an engineer, or something likethat. of course, his tunic bulged slightly

under the left armpit, but even the most respectabletunics showed occasional weapon-bulges. "good afternoon, councilman," the newcomersaid, sitting down across the desk from salgath trod. "i was just talking to ... somebodywe both know." salgath trod offered cigarettes, lighted hisvisitor's and then his own. "what does our mutual friend think about allthis?" he asked, gesturing toward the screen. "our mutual friend isn't at all happy aboutit." "you think, perhaps, that i'm bursting intowild huzzas?" salgath trod asked. "if i were to act as everybody expects me to, i'd bedown there on the floor, now, clawing into the management tooth and nail. all my adherentsare wondering why i'm not. so are all my opponents,

and before long one of them is going to guessthe reason." "well, why not go down?" the stranger asked."our mutual friend thinks it would be an excellent idea. the leak couldn't be stopped, and it'sgone so far already that the management will never be able to play it down. so the nextbest thing is to try to exploit it." salgath trod smiled mirthlessly. "so i amto get in front of it, and lead it in the right direction? fine ... as long as i don'tstumble over something. if i do, it'll go over me like a fifth level bison-herd." "don't worry about that," the stranger laughedreassuringly. "there are others on the floor who are also friends of our mutual friend.here: what you'd better do is attack the paratime

police, especially tortha karf and verkanvall. accuse them of negligence and incompetence, and, by implication, of collusion, and demanda special committee to investigate. and try to get a motion for a confidence vote passed.a motion to censure the management, say-" salgath trod nodded. "it would delay things,at least. and if our mutual friend can keep properly covered, i might be able to overturnthe management." he looked at the screen again. "that old fool of a nanthav is just gettingstarted; it'll be an hour before i could get recognized. plenty of time to get a speechtogether. something short and vicious-" "you'll have to be careful. it won't do, withyour political record, to try to play down these stories of a gigantic criminal conspiracy.that's too close to the management line. and

at the same time, you want to avoid sayinganything that would get verkan vall and tortha karf started off on any new lines of investigation." salgath trod nodded. "just depend on me; i'llhandle it." after the stranger had gone, he shut off thesound reception, relying on visual dumb-show to keep him informed of what was going onon the council floor. he didn't like the situation. it was too easy to say the wrong thing. ifonly he knew more about the shadowy figures whose messengers used his private door- coru-hin-irigod held his aching head in bothhands, as though he were afraid it would fall apart, and blinked in the sunlight from thewindow. lord safar, how much of that sweet

brandy had he drunk, last night? he sat onthe edge of the bed for a moment, trying to think. then, suddenly apprehensive, he thrusthis hand under his pillow. the heavy four-barreled pistols were there, all right, but-the money! he rummaged frantically among the bedding,and among his clothes, piled on the floor, but the leather bag was nowhere to be found.two thousand gold obus, the price of a hundred slaves. he snatched up one of the pistols,his headache forgotten. then he laughed and tossed the pistol down again. of course! he'dgiven the bag to the plantation manager, what was his outlandish name, dosu golan, to keepfor him before the drinking bout had begun. it was safely waiting for him in the plantationstrong box. well, nothing like a good scare

to make a man forget a brandy head, anyhow.and there was something else, something very nice- oh, yes, there it was, beside the bed. hepicked up the beautiful gleaming repeater, pulled down the lever far enough to draw thecartridge halfway out of the chamber, and closed it again, lowering the hammer. thosetwo jeseru traders from the north, what were their names? ganadara and atarazola. thatwas a stroke of luck, meeting them here. they'd given him this lovely rifle, and they weregoing to accompany him and his men back to careba; they had a hundred such rifles, andtwo hundred six-shot revolvers, and they wanted to trade for slaves. the lord safar blessthem both, wouldn't they be welcome at careba!

he looked at the sunlight falling throughthe window on the still recumbent form of his companion, faru-hin-obaran. outside, hecould hear the sounds of the plantation coming to life-an ax thudding on wood, the clatterof pans from the kitchens. crossing to faru-hin-obaran's bed, he grasped the sleeper by the ankle,tugging. "waken, faru!" he shouted. "get up and clearthe fumes from your head! we start back to careba today!" faru swore groggily and pushed himself intoa sitting position, fumbling on the floor for his trousers. "what day's this?" he asked.

"the day after we went to bed, ninny!" thencoru-hin-irigod wrinkled his brow. he could remember, clearly enough, the sale of theslaves, but after that-oh, well, he'd been drinking; it would all come back to him, aftera while. verkan vall rubbed his hand over his facewearily, started to light another cigarette, and threw it across the room in disgust. whathe needed was a drink-a long drink of cool, tart white wine, laced with brandy-and thenhe needed to sleep. "we're absolutely nowhere!" ranthar jard said."of course they're operating on time lines we've never penetrated. the fact that they'resupplying the croutha with guns proves that; there isn't a firearm on any of the time linesour people are legitimately exploiting. and

there are only about three billion time lineson this belt of the croutha invasion-" "if we could think of a way to reduce it tosome specific area of paratime-" one of ranthar jard's deputies began. "that's precisely what we've been trying todo, klav," vall said. "we haven't done it." dalla, who had withdrawn from the discussionand was on a couch at the side of the room, surrounded by reports and abstracts and summaries,looked up. "i took hours and hours of hypno-mech on kholghoorsector religions, before i went out on that wild-goose chase for psychokinesis and precognitiondata," she said. "about six or eight hundred years ago, there were religious wars and heresiesand religious schisms all over the kharanda

country. no matter how uniform the kholghoorsector may be otherwise, there are dozens and dozens of small belts and sub-sectorsof different religions or sects or god-cults." "that's right," ranthar jard agreed, brightening."we have hagiologists who know all that stuff; we'll have a couple of them interrogate thoseslaves. i don't know how much they can get out of them-lot of peasants, won't be upon the theological niceties-but a synthesis of what we get from the lot of them-" "that's an idea," vall agreed. "about thefirst idea we've had, here-oh, how about politics, too? check on who's the king, whatthe stories about the royal family are, that sort of thing."

ranthar jard looked at the map on the wall."the croutha have only gotten halfway to nharkan, here. say we transpose detectives in at nighton some of these time lines we think are promising, and check up at the tax-collection officeson a big landowner north of jhirda named ghromdour? that might get us something." "well, i don't want you to think we're tryingto get out of work, chief's assistant," one of the deputies said, "but is there any realnecessity for our trying to locate the wizard trader time lines? if you can get them fromthe esaron sector, it'll be the same, won't it?" "marv, in this business you never depend onjust one lead," ranthar jard told him. "and

beside, when skordran kirv's gang hits thebase of operations in north america, there's no guarantee that they may not have time tosend off a radio warning to the crowd at the base here in india. we have to hit both placesat once." "well, that, too," vall said. "but the mainthing is to get these wizard trader camps on the kholghoor sector cleaned out. how areyou fixed for men and equipment, for a big raid, jard?" ranthar jard shrugged. "i can get about fivehundred men with conveyers, including a couple of two-hundred-footers to carry airboats,"he said. "not enough. skordran kirv has one completearmored brigade, one airborne infantry brigade,

and an air cavalry regiment, with ghaldron-hesthorequipment for a simultaneous transposition," vall said. "where in blazes did he get them all?" rantharjard demanded. "they're guard troops, from service sectorand industrial sector. we'll get you the same sort of a force. i only hope we don't haveanother prole insurrection while they're away-" "well, don't think i'm trying to argue policywith you," ranthar jard said, "but that could raise a dreadful stink on home time line.especially on top of this news-break about the slave trade." "we'll have to take a chance on that," vallsaid. "if you're worried about what the book

says, forget it. we're throwing the book away,on this operation. do you realize that this thing is a threat to the whole paratime civilization?" "of course i do," ranthar jard said. "i knowthe doctrine of paratime security as well as you or anybody else. the question is, doesthe public realize it?" a buzzer sounded. ranthar jard pressed a switchon the intercom-box in front of him and said: "ranthar here. well?" "visiphone call, top urgency, just came infor chief's assistant verkan, from novilan equivalent. where can i put it through, sir?" "here; booth seven." ranthar jard pointedacross the room, nodding to vall. "in just

a moment." part 5 gathon dard and antrath alv-temporary localaliases, ganadara and atarazola-sat relaxed in their saddles, swaying to the motion oftheir horses. they wore the rust-brown hooded cloaks of the northern jeseru people, in sobercontrast to the red and yellow and blue striped robes and sun-bonnets of the caleras in whosecompany they rode. they carried short repeating carbines in saddle scabbards, and heavy revolversand long knives on their belts, and each led six heavily-laden pack-horses. coru-hin-irigod, riding beside ganadara, pointedup the trail ahead.

"from up there," he said, speaking in acalan,the lingua franca of the north american west coast on that sector, "we can see across thevalley to careba. it will be an hour, as we ride, with the pack-horses. then we will rest,and drink wine, and feast." ganadara nodded. "it was the guidance of ourgods-and yours, coru-hin-irigod-that we met. such slaves as you sold at the outlanders'plantation would bring a fine price in the north. the men are strong, and have the lookof good field-workers; the women are comely and well-formed. though i fear that my wifewould little relish it did i bring home such handmaidens." coru-hin-irigod laughed. "for your wife, iwill give you one of our riding whips." he

leaned to the side, slashing at a cactus withhis quirt. "we in careba have no trouble with our wives, about handmaidens or anything else." "by safar, if you doubt your welcome at careba,wait till you show your wares," another calera said. "rifles and revolvers like those cometo our country seldom, and then old and battered, sold or stolen many times before we see them.rifles that fire seven times without taking butt from shoulder!" he invoked the name ofthe great lord safar again. the trail widened and leveled; they all cameup abreast, with the pack-horses strung out behind, and sat looking across the valleyto the adobe walls of the town that perched on the opposite ridge. after a while, ridersbegan dismounting and checking and tightening

saddle-girths; a couple of caleras helpedganadara and atarazola inspect their pack-horses. when they remounted, atarazola bowed his head,lifting his left sleeve to cover his mouth, and muttered into it at some length. the caleraslooked at him curiously, and coru-hin-irigod inquired of ganadara what he did. "he prays," ganadara said. "he thanks ourgods that we have lived to see your town, and asks that we be spared to bring many moretrains of rifles and ammunition up this trail." the slaver nodded understandingly. the caleraswere a pious people, too, who believed in keeping on friendly terms with the gods. "may safar's hand work with the hands of yourgods for it," he said, making what, to a non-calera,

would have been an extremely ribald sign. "the gods watch over us," atarazola said,lifting his head. "they are near us even now; they have spoken words of comfort in my ear."' ganadara nodded. the gods to whom his partnerprayed were a couple of paratime policemen, crouching over a radio a mile or so down theridge. "my brother," he told coru-hin-irigod, "ismuch favored by our gods. many people come to him to pray for them." "yes. so you told me, now that i think onit." that detail had been included in the pseudo-memories he had been given under hypnosis."i serve safar, as do all caleras, but i have

heard that the jeserus' gods are good gods,dealing honestly with their servants." an hour later, under the walls of the town,coru-hin-irigod drew one of his pistols and fired all four barrels in rapid successioninto the air, shouting, "open! open for coru-hin-irigod, and for the jeseru traders, ganadara and atarazola,who are with him!" a head, black-bearded and sun-bonneted, appearedbetween the brick merlons of the wall above the gate, shouted down a welcome, and thenturned away to bawl orders. the gate slid aside, and, after the caravan had passed through,naked slaves pushed the massive thing shut again. although they were familiar with theinterior of the town, from photographs taken with boomerang-balls-automatic-return transpositionspheres like message-balls-they looked around

curiously. the central square was thronged-calerasin striped robes, people from the south and east in baggy trousers and embroidered shirts,mountaineers in deerskins. a slave market was in progress, and some hundred-odd itemsof human merchandise were assembled in little groups, guarded by their owners and inspectedby prospective buyers. they seemed to be all natives of that geographic and paratemporalarea. "don't even look at those," coru-hin-irigodadvised. "they are but culls; the market is almost over. we'll go to the house of nebu-hin-abenoz,where all the considerable men gather, and you will find those who will be able to tradeslaves worthy of the goods you have with you. meanwhile, let my people take your horsesand packs to my house; you shall be my guests

while you stay in careba." it was perfectly safe to trust coru-hin-irigod.he was a murderer and a brigand and a slaver, but he would never incur the scorn of menand the curse of the gods by dealing foully with a guest. the horses and packs were ledaway by his retainers; ganadara and atarazola pushed their horses after his and faru-hin-obaran'sthrough the crowd. the house of nebu-hin-abenoz, like every otherbuilding in careba, was flat-roofed, adobe-walled and window-less except for narrow rifle-slits.the wide double-gate stood open, and five or six heavily armed caleras lounged justinside. they greeted coru and faru by name, and the strangers by their assumed nationality.the four rode through, into what appeared

to be the stables, turning their horses overto slaves, who took them away. there were between fifty and sixty other horses in theplace. divesting themselves of their weapons in ananteroom at the head of a flight of steps, they passed under an arch and into a wide,shady patio, where thirty or forty men stood about or squatted on piles of cushions, smokingcheroots, drinking from silver cups, talking in a continuous babel. most of them were incalera dress, though there were men of other communities and nations, in other garb. asthey moved across the patio, gathon dard caught snatches of conversations about deals in slaves,and horse trades, about bandit raids and blood feuds, about women and horses and weapons.

an old man with a white beard and an unusuallyclean robe came over to intercept them. "ha, lord of my daughter, you're back at last.we had begun to fear for you," he said. "nothing to fear, father of my wife," coru-hin-irigodreplied. "we sold the slaves for a good price, and tarried the night feasting in good company.such good company that we brought some of it with us-atarazola and ganadara, men ofthe jeseru; cavu-hin-avoran, whose daughter mothered my sons." he took his father-in-lawby the sleeve and pulled him aside, motioning gathon dard and antrath alv to follow. "they brought weapons; they want outland slaves,of the sort i took to sell in the big valley country," he whispered. "the weapons are repeatingrifles from across the ocean, and six-shot

revolvers. they also have much ammunition." "oh, safar bless you!" the white-beard cried,his eyes brightening. "name your own price; satisfy yourselves that we have dealt fairlywith you; go, and return often again! come, lord of my daughter; let us make them knownto nebu-hin-abenoz. but not a word about the kind of weapons you have, strangers, untilwe can speak privately. say only that you have rifles to trade." gathon dard nodded. evidently there was somesort of power-struggle going on in careba; coru-hin-irigod and his wife's father wereof the party of nebu-hin-abenoz, and wanted the repeaters and six-shooters for themselves.

nebu-hin-abenoz, swarthy, hook-nosed, witha square-cut graying beard, lounged in a low chair across the patio; near him four or fiveother caleras sat or squatted or reclined, all smoking the rank black tobacco of thecountry and drinking wine or brandy. their conversation ceased as cavu-hin-avoran andthe others approached. the chief of careba listened to the introduction, then heavedhimself to his feet and clapped the newcomers on the shoulders. "good, good!" he said. "we know you jeserupeople; you're honest traders. you come this far into our mountains too seldom. we cantrade with you. we need weapons. as for the sort of slaves you want, we have none toomany now, but in eight days we will have plenty.

if you stay with us that long-" "careba is a pleasant place to be," ganadarasaid. "we can wait." "what sort of weapons have you?" the chiefasked. "pistols and rifles, lord of my father's sister,"coru-hin-irigod answered for them. "the packs have been taken to my house, where our friendswill stay. we can bring a few to show you, the hour after evening prayers." nebu-hin-abenoz shot a keen glance at hisbrother-in-law's son and nodded. "or, better, i will come to your house then; thus i cansee the whole load. how will that be?" "better; i will be there, too," cavu-hin-avoransaid, then turned to gathon dard and antrath

alv. "you have been long on the road; come,let us drink cool wine, and then we will eat," he said. "until this evening, nebu-hin-abenoz." he led his son-in-law and the traders to oneside, where several kegs stood on trestles with cups and flagons beside them. they filleda flagon, took a cup apiece, and went over to a pile of cushions at one side. as they did, three men came pushing throughthe crowd toward nebu-hin-abenoz's seat. they wore a costume unfamiliar to gathon dard-littleround caps with red and green streamers behind, and long, wide-sleeved white gowns-and oneof them had gold rings in his ears. "nebu-hin-abenoz?" one of them said, bowing."we are three men of the usasu cities. we

have gold obus to spend; we seek a beautifulgirl, to be first concubine to our king's son, who is now come to the estate of manhood." nebu-hin-abenoz picked up the silver-mountedpipe he had laid aside, and re-lighted it, frowning. "men of the usasu, you have a heavy responsibility,"he said. "you have the responsibility for the future of your kingdom, for a boy's characteris more shaped by his first concubine than by his teachers. how old is the boy?" "sixteen, nebu-hin-abenoz; the age of manhoodamong us." "then you want a girl older, but not mucholder. she should be versed in the arts of

love, but innocent of heart. she should bewise, but teachable; gentle and loving, but with a will of her own-" the three men in white gowns were fidgeting.then, suddenly, like three marionettes on a single string, they put their right handsto their mouths and then plunged them into the left sleeves of their gowns, whippingout knives and then sprang as one upon nebu-hin-abenoz, slashing and stabbing. gathon dard was on his feet at once; he hurledthe wine flagon at the three murderers and leaped across the room. antrath alv went boundingafter him, and by this time three or four of the group around nebu-hin-abenoz's chairhad recovered their wits and jumped to their

feet. one of the three assailants turned andslashed with his knife, almost disemboweling a calera who had tried to grapple with him.before he could free the blade, another calera brought a brandy bottle down on his head.gathon dard sprang upon the back of a second assassin, hooking his left elbow under thefellow's chin and grabbing the wrist of his knife-hand with his right; the man struggledfor an instant, then went limp and fell forward. the third of the trio of murderers was stillslashing at the fallen chieftain when antrath alv chopped him along the side of the neckwith the edge of his hand; he simply dropped and lay still. nebu-hin-abenoz was dead. he had been slashedand cut and stabbed in twenty places; his

throat had been cut at least three times,and he had almost been decapitated. the wounded calera wasn't dead yet; however, even if hehad been at the moment on the operating table of a first level home time line hospital,it was doubtful if he could have been saved, and under the circumstances, his life-expectancycould be measured in seconds. some cushions were placed under his head, and women calledto attend him, but he died before they arrived. the three assassins were also dead. exceptfor a few cuts on the scalp of the one who had been felled with the bottle, there wasnot a mark on any of them. cavu-hin-avoran kicked one of them in the face and cursed. "we killed the skunks too quickly!" he cried."we should have overcome them alive, and then

taken our time about dealing with them asthey deserved." he went on to specify the nature of their deserts. "such infamy!" "well, i'll swear i didn't think a littletap like i gave that one would kill him," the bottle-wielder excused himself. "of course,i was thinking only of nebu-hin-abenoz, safar receive him-" antrath alv bent over the one he had hand-chopped. "i didn't kill this one," he said. "the wayi hit him, if i had, his neck would be broken, and it's not. see?" he twisted at the deadman's neck. "i think they took poison before they drew their knives."

"i saw all of them put their hands to theirmouths!" a calera exclaimed. "and look; see how their jaws are clenched." he picked upone of the knives and used it to pry the dead man's jaws apart, sniffing at his lips andlooking into his mouth. "look, his teeth and his tongue are discolored; there is a strangesmell, too." antrath alv sniffed, then turned to his partner."halatane," he whispered. gathon dard nodded. that was a first level poison; paratimersoften carried halatane capsules on the more barbaric time-lines, as a last insurance againsttorture. "but, holy name of safar, what manner of menwere these?" coru-hin-irigod demanded. "there are those i would risk my life to kill, buti would not throw it away thus."

"they came knowing that we would kill them,and took the poison that they might die quickly and without pain," a calera said. "or that your tortures would not wring fromthem the names and nation of those who sent them," an elderly man in the dress of a rancherfrom the southeast added. "if i were you, i would try to find out who these enemiesare, and the sooner the better." gathon dard was examining one of the knives-afolding knife with a broad single-edged blade, locked open with a spring; the handle wasof tortoise shell, bolstered with brass. "in all my travels," he said, "i never sawa knife of this workmanship before. tell me, coru-hin-irigod, do you know from what countrythese outland slaves of nebu-hin-abenoz's

come?" "you think that might have something to dowith it?" the calera asked. "it could. i think that these people mightnot have been born slaves, but people taken captive. suppose, at some time, there hadbeen sold to nebu-hin-abenoz, and sold elsewhere by him, one who was a person of consequence-theson of a king, or the priest of some god," gathon dard suggested. "by safar, yes! and now that nation, whereverit is, is at blood-feud with us," cavu-hin-avoran said. "this must be thought about; it is anill thing to have unknown enemies." "look!" a calera who had begun to strip thethree dead men cried. "these are not of the

usasu cities, or any other people of thisland. see, they are uncircumcised!" "many of the slaves whom nebu-hin-abenoz broughtto careba from the hills have been uncircumcised," coru-hin-irigod said. "jeseru, i think youhave your sights on the heart of it." he frowned. "now, think you, will those who had this donebe satisfied, or will they carry on their hatred against all of us?" "a hard question," antrath alv said. "youcaleras do not serve our gods, but you are our friends. suffer me to go apart and pray;i would take counsel with the gods, that they may aid us all in this." part 6

it was full daylight, but the sun was hidden;a thin rain fell on the landing around at police terminal dhergabar equivalent whenvall and dalla left the rocket. across the black lavalike pavement, they could see thebulky form of tortha karf, hunched under a long cloak, with his flat cap pulled downover his brow. he shook hands with vall and kissed cheeks with dalla when they joinedhim. "car's over here," he said, nodding towardthe waiting vehicle. "yesterday wasn't one of our better days, was it?" "no. it wasn't." vall agreed. they climbedinto the car, and the driver lifted straight up to two thousand feet and turned, soaringdown to land on the chief's headquarters building,

a mile away. "we're not completely stopped,sir. ranthar jard is working on a few ideas that may lead him to the kholghoor time lineswhere the wizard traders are operating. if we can't get them through their output, wemay nail them at the intake." "unless they've gotten the wind up and closeddown all their operations," tortha karf said. "i doubt if they've done that, chief," vallreplied. "we don't know who these people are, of course, and it's hard to judge their reactions,but they're willing to take chances for big gains. i believe they think they're safe,now that they've closed out the compromised time line and killed the only witness againstthem." "well, what's ranthar jard doing?"

"trying to locate the sub-sector and probabilitybelt from what the slaves can tell him about their religious beliefs, about the local king,and the prince of jhirda, and the noble families of the neighborhood," vall said. "when hehas it localized as closely as he can, he's going to start pelting the whole paratemporalarea with photographic auto-return balls dropped from aircars on police terminal over the spatialequivalents of a couple of croutha-conquered cities. as soon as he gets a photo that showscroutha with firearms, he'll have a wizard trader time line." "sounds simple," the chief said. the car landed,and he helped dalla out. "i suppose both you and he know how many chances against one hehas of finding anything." they went over to

an antigrav-shaft and floated down to thefloor on which tortha karf had a duplicate of the office in the paratime building onhome time line. "it's the only chance we have, "there's one thing that bothers me," dallasaid, as they entered the office and went back behind the horseshoe-shaped desk. "iunderstand that the news about this didn't break on home time line till the late morningof one-six-one day. nebu-hin-abenoz was murdered at about 1700 local time, which would be 0100this morning dhergabar time. that would give this gang fourteen hours to hear the news,transmit it to their base, and get these three men hypno-conditioned, disguised, transposedto this esaron sector time line, and into careba." she shook her head. "that's prettyfast work."

tortha karf looked sidewise at verkan vall."your girl has the makings of a cop, vall," he commented. "she's been a big help, on esaron and kholghoorsectors," vall said. "she wants to stay with it and help me; i'll be very glad to haveher with me." tortha karf nodded. he knew, too, that dallawouldn't want to have to go back to home time line and wait the long investigation out. "of course; we can use all the help we canget. i think we can get a lot from dalla. fix her up with some kind of a title and policestatus-technical-expert, assistant, or something like that." he clasped hands, man-fashion,with her. "glad to have you on the cops with

us, dalla," he said. then he turned to vall."there was almost twenty-four hours between the time i heard about this and when thisblasted yandar yadd got hold of the story. of all the infernal, irresponsible-" healmost choked with indignation. "and it was another fourteen hours between the time skordransent in his report and i heard about it." "golzan doth sent in a report to his companyabout the same time skordran kirv made his first report to his sector-regional subchief."vall mentioned. "that might be it," tortha karf considered."i wish there were another explanation, because that implies a very extensive intelligencenetwork, which means a big organization. but i'm afraid that's it. i wish i could pullin everybody in consolidated outtime foodstuffs

who handled that report, and narco-hypnotizethem. of course, we can't do things like that on home time line, and with the politicalsituation what it is now-" "why, what's been happening, chief?" tortha karf swore with weary bitterness. "salgathtrod's what's been happening. at first, after yandar yadd broke the story on the air, therewas just a lot of unorganized opposition sniping in council; salgath waited till the middleof the afternoon, when the management members were beginning to rally, and took the floor.the centrists and right moderates were trying the appeal-to-reason approach; that did asmuch good as trying to put out a fifth level forest fire with a hand-extinguisher. finally.salgath got a motion of censure against the

management recognized. that means a confidencevote in ten days. salgath has a rabble of leftists and dissident centrists with him;i doubt if he can muster enough votes to overturn the management, but it's going to make thingsrough for us." "which may be just the reason salgath startedthis uproar," vall suggested. "that," tortha karf said, "is being considered;there is a discreet inquiry being made into salgath trod's associates, his sources ofincome, and so on. nothing has turned up as yet, but we have hopes." "i believe," vall said, "that we have a betterchance right on home time line than outtime." tortha karf looked up sharply. "so?" he asked.

vall was stuffing tobacco into a pipe. "yes.chief. we have a big criminal organization-let's call it the slave trust, for a convenience-label.the people who run it aren't stupid. the fact that they've been shipping slaves to the esaronsector for ten years before we found out about it proves that. so does the speed with whichthey got rid of this nebu-hin-abenoz, right in front of a pair of our detectives. forthat matter, so does the speed with which they moved in to exploit this croutha invasionof kholghoor sector india. "well, i've studied illegal and subversiveorganizations all over paratime, and among the really successful ones, there are a fewuniform principles. one is cellular organization-small groups, acting in isolation from one another,coã¶perating with other cells but ignorant

of their composition. another is the principleof no upward contact-leaders contacting their subordinates through contact-blocksand ignorant intermediaries. and another is a willingness to kill off anybody who lookslike a potential betrayer or forced witness. the late nebu-hin-abenoz, for instance. "i'll be willing to bet that if we pick upsome of these wizard traders, say, or a gang that's selling slaves to some nebu-hin-abenozpersonality on some other time line, and narco-hypnotize them, all they'll be able to do will be namea few immediate associates, and the group leader will know that he's contacted fromtime to time by some stranger with orders, and that he can make emergency contacts onlythrough some blind accommodation-address.

the men who are running this are right onhome time line, many of them in positions of prominence, and if we can catch one ofthem and narco-hyp him, we can start a chain-reaction of disclosures all through this slave trust." "how are we going to get at these top men?"tortha karf wanted to know. "advertise for them on telecast?" "they'll leave traces; they won't be ableto avoid it. i think, right now, that salgath trod is one of them. i think there are otherprominent politicians, and business people. look for irregularities and peculiaritiesin outtime currency-exchange transactions. for instance, to sections in esaron sectorobus. or big gold bullion transactions."

"yes. and if they have any really elaborateouttime bases, they'll need equipment that can only be gotten on home time line," torthakarf added. "paratemporal conveyer parts, and field-conductor mesh. you can't just walkinto a hardware store and buy that sort of thing." dalla leaned forward to drop her cigaretteash into a tray. "try looking into the bureau of psychologicalhygiene," she suggested. "that's where you'll really strike it rich." vall and tortha karf both turned abruptlyand looked at her for an instant. "go on," tortha karf encouraged. "this soundsinteresting."

"the people back of this," dalla said, "aredefinitely classifiable as criminals. they may never perform a criminal act themselves,but they give orders for and profit from such acts, and they must possess the motivationand psychology of criminals. we define people as criminals when they suffer from psychologicalaberrations of an antisocial character, usually paranoid-excessive egoism, disregard forthe rights of others, inability to recognize the social necessity for mutual coã¶perationand confidence. on home time line, we have universal psychological testing, for the purposeof detecting and eliminating such characteristics." "it seems to have failed in this case," torthakarf began, then snapped his fingers. "of course! how blasted silly can i get, wheni'm not trying?"

"yes, of course," verkan vall agreed. "findout how these people missed being spotted by psychotesting; that'll lead us to who missedbeing tested adequately, and also who got into the bureau of psychological hygiene whodidn't belong there." "i think you ought to give an investigationof the whole bupsychhyg setup very high priority," dalla said. "a psychotest is only as goodas the people who give it, and if we have criminals administering these tests-" "we have our friends on executive council,"tortha karf said. "i'll see that that point is raised when council re-convenes." he lookedat the clock. "that'll be in three hours, by the way. if it doesn't accomplish anotherthing, it'll put salgath trod in the middle.

he can't demand an investigation of the paratimepolice out of one side of his mouth and oppose an investigation of psychological hygieneout of the other. now what else have we to talk about?" "those hundred slaves we got off the esaronsector," vall said. "what are we going to do with them? and if we locate the time linethe slavers have their bases on, we'll have hundreds, probably thousands, more." "we can't sort them out and send them backto their own time lines, even if that would be desirable," tortha karf decided. "why,settle them somewhere on the service sector. i know, the paratime transposition code limitsthe service sector to natives of time lines

below second-order barbarism, but the paratimetransposition code has been so badly battered by this business that a few more minor literalinfractions here and there won't make any difference. where are they now?" "police terminal, nharkan equivalent." "better hold them there, for the time being.we may have to open a new servsec time line to take care of all the slaves we find, ifwe can locate the outtime base line these people are using-vall, this thing's toobig to handle as a routine operation, along with our other work. you take charge of it.set up your headquarters here, and help yourself to anything in the way of personnel and equipmentyou need. and bear in mind that this confidence

vote is coming up in ten days-on the morningof one-seven-two day. i'm not asking for any miracles, but if we don't get this thing clearedup by then, we're in for trouble." "i realize that, sir. dalla, you'd bettergo back to home time line, with the chief," he said. "there's nothing you can do to helpme, here, at present. get some rest, and then try to wangle an invitation for the two ofus to dinner at thalvan dras' apartments this evening." he turned back to tortha karf. "evenif he never pays any attention to business, dras still owns consolidated outtime foodstuffs,"he said. "he might be able to find out, or help us find out, how the story about thoseslaves leaked out of his company." "well, that won't take much doing," dallasaid. "if there's as much excitement on home

time line as i think, dras would turn somersaultsand jump through hoops to get us to one of his dinners, right now." salgath trod pushed the litter of papers andrecord-tape spools to one side impatiently. "well, what else did you expect?" he demanded."this was the logical next move. bupsychhyg is supposed to detect anybody who believesin looking out for his own interests first, and condition him into a pious law-abidingsucker. well, the sacred bureau of sucker-makers slipped up on a lot of us. it's a naturalalibi for tortha karf." "it's also a lot of grief for all of us,"the young man in the wrap-around tunic added. "i don't want my psychotests reviewed by someduty-struck bigot who can't be reasoned with,

and neither do you." "i'm getting something organized to counterthat," salgath trod said. "i'm going to attack the whole scientific basis of psychotesting.there's dr. frasthor klav; he's always contended that what are called criminal tendencies arethe result of the individual's total environment, and that psychotesting and personality-analysisare valueless, because the total environment changes from day to day, even from hour tohour-" "that won't do," the nameless young man whowas the messenger of somebody equally nameless retorted. "frasthor's a crackpot; no reputablepsychologist or psychist gives his opinions a moment's consideration. and besides, wedon't want to attack psychological hygiene.

the people in it with whom we can do businessare our safeguard; they've given all of us a clean bill of mental health, and we havepapers to prove it. what we have to do is to make it appear that that incident on theesaron sector is all there is to this, and also involve the paratime police themselves.the slavers are all paracops. it isn't the fault of bupsychhyg, because the paratimepolice have their own psychotesting staff. that's where the trouble is; the paracopshaven't been adequately testing their own "now how are you going to do that?" salgathtrod asked disdainfully. "you'll take the floor, the first thing tomorrow,and utilize these new revelations about the wizard traders. you'll accuse the paratimepolice of being the wizard traders themselves.

why not? they have their own paratemporaltransposition equipment shops on police terminal, they have facilities for manufacturing duplicatesof any kind of outtime items, like the firearms, for instance, and they know which time lineson which sectors are being exploited by legitimate paratime traders and which aren't. what'sto prevent a gang of unscrupulous paracops from moving in on a few unexploited kholghoortime lines, buying captives from the croutha, and shipping them to the esaron sector?" "then why would they let a thing like thisget out?" salgath trod inquired. "somebody slipped up and moved a lot of slavesonto an exploited esaron time line. or, rather, consolidated outtime foodstuffs establisheda plantation on a time line they were shipping

slaves to. parenthetically, that's what reallydid happen; the mistake our people made was in not closing out that time line as soonas consolidated foodstuffs moved in," the young man said. "so, this skordran kirv, who is a dumb boywho doesn't know what the score is, found these slaves and blatted about it to thisgolzan doth, and golzan reported it to his company, and it couldn't be hushed up, sonow tortha karf is trying to scare the public with ghost stories about a gigantic paratemporalconspiracy, to get more appropriations and more power." "how long do you think i'd get away with that?"salgath trod demanded. "i can only stretch

parliamentary immunity so far. sooner or later,i'd have to make formal charges to a special judicial committee, and that would mean narco-hypnosis,and then it would all come out." "you'll have proof," the young man said. "we'llproduce a couple of these kharandas whom verkan vall didn't get hold of. under narco-hypnosis,they'll testify that they saw a couple of wizard traders take their robes off. underthe robes were paratime police uniforms. do you follow me?" salgath trod made a noise of angry disgust. "that's ridiculous! i suppose these kharandaswill be given what is deludedly known as memory obliteration, and a set of pseudo-memories;how long do you think that would last? about

three ten-days. there is no such thing asmemory obliteration; there's memory-suppression, and pseudo-memory overlay. you can't get behindthat with any quickie narco-hypnosis in the back room of any police post, i'll admit that,"he said. "but a skilled psychist can discover, inside of five minutes, when a narco-hypnotizedsubject is carrying a load of false memories, and in time, and not too much time, all thattop layer of false memories and blockages can be peeled off. and then where would webe?" "now wait a minute, councilman. this isn'tjust something i dreamed up," the visitor said. "this was decided upon at the top. atthe very top." "i don't care whose idea it was," salgathtrod snapped. "the whole thing is idiotic,

and i won't have anything to do with it." the visitor's face froze. all the respectvanished from his manner and tone; his voice was like ice cakes grating together in a winterriver. "look, salgath; this is an organization order,"he said. "you don't refuse to obey organization orders, and you don't quit the organization.now get smart, big boy; do what you're told to." he took a spool of record tape from hispocket and laid it on the desk. "outline for your speech; put it in your own words, butfollow it exactly." he stood watching salgath trod for a moment. "i won't bother tellingyou what'll happen to you if you don't," he added. "you can figure that out for yourself."

with that, he turned and went out the privatedoor. for a while, salgath trod sat staring after him. once he put his hand out towardthe spool, then jerked it back as though the thing were radioactive. once he looked atthe clock; it was just 1600. part 7 the green aircar settled onto the landingstage; verkan vall, on the front seat beside the driver, opened the door. "want me to call for you later, assistantverkan?" the driver asked. "no thank you, drenth. my wife and i are goingto a dinner-party, and we'll probably go night-clubbing afterward. tomorrow morning, all the anti-managementcommentators will be yakking about my carousing

around when i ought to be battling the slavetrust. no use advertising myself with an official car, and giving them a chance to add, 'atpublic expense.'" "well, have some fun while you can," the driveradvised, reaching for the car-radio phone. "want me to check you in here, sir?" "yes, if you will. thank you. drenth." kandagro, his human servant, admitted himto the apartment six floors down. "mistress dalla is dressing," he said. "sheasked me to tell you that you are invited to dinner, this evening, with thalvan drasat his apartment." vall nodded. "ill talk to her about it now,"he said. "lay out my dress uniform: short

jacket, boots and breeches, and needler." "yes, master: i'll go lay out your thingsand get your bath ready." the servant turned and went into the alcovewhich gave access to the dressing rooms, turning right into vall's. vall followed him, turningleft into his wife's. "oh, dalla!" he called. "in here!" her voice came out of her bathroom. he passed through the dressing room, to findher stretched on a plastic-sheeted couch, while her maid, rendarra, was rubbing herbody vigorously with some pungent-smelling stuff about the consistency of machine-grease.her face was masked in the stuff, and her

hair was covered with an elastic cap. he hadalways suspected that beauty was the real feminine religion, from the willingness ofits devotees to submit to martyrdom for it. she wiggled a hand at him in greeting. "how did it go?" she asked. "so-so. i organized myself a sort of miniaturepolice force within a police force and i have liaison officers in every organization downto sector regional so that i can be informed promptly in case anything new turns up anywhere.what's been happening on home time line? i picked up a news-summary at paratime policeheadquarters; it seems that a lot more stuff has leaked out. kholghoor sector, wizard tradersand all. how'd it happen?"

dalla rolled over to allow rendarra to rubthe blue-green grease on her back. "consolidated outtime foodstuffs let a gangof reporters in, today. i think they're afraid somebody will accuse them of complicity, andthey want to get their side of it before the public. all our crowd are off that time lineexcept a couple of detectives at the plantation." "i know." he smiled; dalla was thinking ofthe paratime police as "our crowd" now. "how about this dinner at dras' place?" "oh, that was easy." she shifted positionagain. "i just called dras up and told him that our vacation was off, and he invitedus before i could begin hinting. what are you going to wear?"

"short-jacket greens; i can carry a needlerwith that uniform, even wear it at the table. i don't think it's smart for me to run aroundunarmed, even on home time line. especially on home time line," he amended. "when's thisaffair going to start, and how long will rendarra take to get that goo off you?" salgath trod left his aircar at the top landingstage of his apartment building and sent it away to the hangars under robot control; heglanced about him as he went toward the antigrav shaft. there were a dozen vehicles in theair above; any of them might have followed him from the paratime building. he had nodoubt that he had been under constant surveillance from the moment the nameless messenger haddelivered the organization's ultimatum. until

he delivered that speech, the next morning,or manifested an intention of refusing to do so, however, he would be safe. after that- alone in his office, he had reviewed the situationpoint by point, and then gone back and reviewed it again; the conclusion was inescapable.the organization had ordered him to make an accusation which he himself knew to be false;that was the first premise. the conclusion was that he would be killed as soon as hehad made it. that was the trouble with being mixed up with that kind of people-you wereexpendable, and sooner or later, they would decide that they would have to expend you.and what could you do? to begin with, an accusation of criminal malfeasancemade against a management or paratime commission

agency on the floor of executive council wastantamount to an accusation made in court; automatically, the accuser became a criminalprosecutor, and would have to repeat his accusation under narco-hypnosis. then the whole storywould come out, bit by bit, back to its beginning in that first illegal deal in indo-turanianopium, diverted from trade with the khiftan sector and sold on second level luvarian empiresector, and the deals in radioactive poisons, and the slave trade. he would be able to namefew names-the organization kept its activities too well compartmented for that-but he couldtalk of things that had happened, and when, and where, and on what paratemporal areas. no. the organization wouldn't let that happen,and the only way it could be prevented would

be by the death of salgath trod, as soon ashe had made his speech. all the talk of providing him with corroborative evidence was silly;it had been intended to lead him more trustingly to the slaughter. they'd kill him, of course,in some way that would be calculated to substantiate the story he would no longer be able to repudiate.the killer, who would be promptly rayed dead by somebody else, would wear a paratime policeuniform, or something like that. that was of no importance, however; by then, he'd bebeyond caring. one of his three servsec prole servants-theslim brown girl who was his housekeeper and hostess, and also his mistress-admittedhim to the apartment. he kissed her perfunctorily and closed the door behind him.

"you're tired," she said. "let me call nindrandigroand have him bring you chilled wine; lie down and rest until dinner." "no, no; i want brandy." he went to a cellaretand got out a decanter and goblet, pouring himself a drink. "how soon will dinner beready?" the brown girl squeezed a little golden globethat hung on a chain around her neck; a tiny voice, inside it, repeated: "eighteen twenty-threeten, eighteen twenty-three eleven, eighteen twenty-three twelve-" "in half an hour. it's still in the robo-chef,"she told him. he downed half the goblet-full, set it down,and went to a painting, a brutal scarlet and

apple-green abstraction, that hung on thewall. swinging it aside and revealing the safe behind it, he used his identity-sigil,took out a wad of paratemporal exchange bank notes and gave them to the girl. "here, zinganna; take these, and take nindrandigroand calilla out for the evening. go where you can all have a good time, and don't comeback till after midnight. there will be some business transacted here, and i want themout of this. get them out of here as soon as you can; i'll see to the dinner myself.spend all of that you want to." the girl riffled through the wad of banknotes."why, thank you, trod!" she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically."i'll go tell them at once."

"and have a good time, zinganna; have thebest time you possibly can," he told her, embracing and kissing her. "now, get out ofhere; i have to keep my mind on business." when she had gone, he finished his drink andpoured another. he drew and checked his needler. then, after checking the window-shieldingand activating the outside viewscreens, he lit a cheroot and sat down at the desk, hisgoblet and his needler in front of him, to wait until the servants were gone. there was only one way out alive. he knewthat, and yet he needed brandy, and a great deal of mental effort, to steel himself forit. psycho-rehabilitation was a dreadful thing to face. there would be almost a year of unremittingagony, physical and mental, worse than a khiftan

torture rack. there would be the shame ofhaving his innermost secrets poured out of him by the psychotherapists, and, at the end,there would emerge someone who would not be salgath trod, or anybody like salgath trod,and he would have to learn to know this stranger, and build a new life for him. in one of the viewscreens, he saw the doorto the service hallway open. zinganna, in a black evening gown and a black velvet cloak,and calilla, the housemaid, in what she believed to be a reasonable facsimile of fashionablefirst level dress, and nindrandigro, in one of his master's evening suits, emerged. salgathtrod waited until they had gone down the hall to the antigrav shaft, and then he turnedon the visiphone, checked the security, set

it for sealed beam communication, and punchedout a combination. a girl in a green tunic looked out of thescreen. "paratime police," she said. "office of chieftortha." "i am executive councilman salgath trod,"he told her. "i am, and for the past fifteen years have been, criminally involved withthe organization responsible for the slave trade which recently came to light on thirdlevel esaron. i give myself up unconditionally; i am willing to make full confession undernarco-hypnosis, and will accept whatever disposition of my case is lawfully judged fit. you'llhave to send an escort for me; i might start from my apartment alone, but i'd be killedbefore i got to your headquarters-"

the girl, who had begun to listen in the boredmanner of public servants phone girls, was staring wide-eyed. "just a moment, councilman salgath; i'll putyou through to chief tortha." the dinner lacked a half hour of being served;thalvan dras' guests loitered about the drawing room, sampling appetizers and chilled drinksand chatting in groups. it wasn't the artistic crowd usual at thalvan dras' dinners; mostof the guests seemed to be business or political people. thalvan dras had gotten vall and dallainto the small group around him, along with pudgy, infantile-faced brogoth zaln, his confidentialsecretary, and javrath brend, his financial attorney.

"i don't see why they're making such a fussabout it," one of the banking cartel people was saying. "causing a lot of public excitementall out of proportion to the importance of the affair. after all, those people were slaveson their own time line, and if anything, they're much better off on the esaron sector thanthey would be as captives of the croutha. as far as that goes, what's the differencebetween that and the way we drag these fourth level primitive sector-complex people offto fifth level service sector to work for us?" "oh, there's a big difference, farn," javrathbrend said. "we recruit those fourth level primitives out of probability worlds of stoneage savagery, and transpose them to our own

fifth level time lines, practically outtimeextensions of the home time line. there's absolutely no question of the paratime secretbeing compromised." "beside, we need a certain amount of humanlabor, for tasks requiring original thought and decision that are beyond the ability ofrobots, and most of it is work our citizens simply wouldn't perform," thalvan dras added. "well, from a moral standpoint, wouldn't theseesaron sector people who buy the slaves justify slavery in the same terms?" a woman whom vallhad identified as a left moderate council member asked. "there's still a big difference," dalla toldher. "the servsec proles aren't beaten or

tortured or chained; we don't break up familiesor separate friends. when we recruit fourth level primitives, we take whole tribes, andthey come willingly. and-" one of thalvan dras' black-liveried humanservants, of the class under discussion, approached vall. "a visiphone call for your lordship," he whispered."chief tortha karf calling. if your lordship will come this way-" in a screen-booth outside, vall found torthakarf looking out of the screen; he was seated at his desk, fiddling with a gold multicolorpen. "oh, vall; something interesting has justcome up." he spoke in a voice of forced calmness.

"i can't go into it now, but you'll want tohear about it. i'm sending a car for you. better bring dalla along; she'll want in onit, too." "right; we'll be on the top south-west landingstage in a few minutes." dalla was still heatedly repudiating any resemblancebetween the normal first level methods of labor-recruitment and the activities of thewizard traders; she had just finished the story of the woman whose child had been brainedwhen vall rejoined the group. "dras, i'm awfully sorry," he said. "thisis the second time in succession that dalla and i have had to bolt away from here, butpolicemen are like doctors-always on call, and consequently unreliable guests. whileyou're feasting, think commiseratingly of

dalla and me; we'll probably be having a sandwichand a cup of coffee somewhere." "i'm terribly sorry." thalvan dras replied."we had all been looking forward-well! brogoth, have a car called for vall and dalla." "police car coming for us; it's probably onthe landing stage now," vall said. "well, good-by, everybody. coming, dalla?" they had a few minutes to wait, under themarquee, before the green police aircar landed and came rolling across the rain-wet surfaceof the landing stage. crossing to it and opening the rear door, he put dalla in and climbedin after her, slamming the door. it was only then that he saw tortha karf hunched downin the rear seat. he motioned them to silence,

and did not speak until the car was risingabove the building. "i wanted to fill you in on this, as soonas possible," he said. "your hunch about salgath trod was good; just a few minutes before icalled you, he called me. he says this slave trade is the work of something he calls theorganization; says he's been taking orders from them for years. his attack on the managementand motion for a censure-vote were dictated from organization top echelon. now he's convincedthat they're going to force him to make false accusations against the paratime police andthen kill him before he's compelled to repeat his charges under narco-hypnosis. so he'soffered to surrender and trade information for protection."

"how much does he know?" vall asked. tortha karf shook his head. "not as much ashe claims to, i suppose; he wouldn't want to reduce his own trade-in value. but he'sbeen involved in this thing for the last fifteen years, and with his political prominence,he'd know quite a lot." "we can protect him from his own gang; canwe protect him from psycho-rehabilitation?" "no, and he knows it. he's willing to acceptthat. he seems to think that death at the hands of his own associates is the only otheralternative. probably right, too." the floodlighted green towers of the paratimebuilding were wheeling under them as they circled down.

"why would they sacrifice a valuable accomplicelike salgath trod, in order to make a transparently false accusation against us?" vall wondered. "ha, that's our new rookie cop's idea!" torthakarf chuckled, nodding toward dalla. "we got zortan harn to introduce an urgent-businessmotion to appoint a committee to investigate bupsychhyg, this morning. the motion passed,and this is the reaction to it. the organization's scared. just as dalla predicted, they don'twant us finding out how people with potentially criminal characteristics missed being spottedby psychotesting. salgath trod is being sacrificed to block or delay that." vall nodded as the wheels bumped on the landingstage and the antigrav field went off. that

was the sort of thing that happened when youstarted on a really fruitful line of investigation. they got out and hurried over under the marquee,the car lifting and moving off toward the hangars. this was the real break; no matterhow this organization might be compartmented, a man like salgath trod would know a greatdeal. he would name names, and the bearers of those names, arrested and narco-hypnotized,would name other names, in a perfect chain reaction of confessions and betrayals. another police car had landed just ahead ofthem, and three men were climbing out; two were in paratime police green, and the third,hand-cuffed, was in service sector proletarian garb. at first, vall though that salgath trodhad been brought in disguised as a prole prisoner,

and then he saw that the prisoner was shortand stocky, not at all like the slender and elegant politician. the two officers who hadbrought him in were talking to a lieutenant, sothran barth, outside the antigrav shaftkiosk. as vall and tortha karf and dalla walked over, the car which had brought them liftedout. "something that just came in from industrialtwenty-four, chief," lieutenant sothran said in answer to tortha karf's question. "maybe for assistant verkan's desk." "he's a prole named yandragno, sir," one ofthe policemen said. "industrial sector constabulary grabbed him peddling martian hellweed cigarettesto the girls in a textile mill at kangabar equivalent. captain jamzar thinks he may havegotten them from somebody in the organization."

a little warning bell began ringing in theback of verkan vall's mind, but at first he could not consciously identify the cause ofhis suspicions. he looked the two policemen and their prisoner over carefully, but couldsee nothing visibly wrong with them. then another car came in for a landing and rolledover under the marquee; the door opened, and a police officer got out, followed by an elegantlydressed civilian whom he recognized at once as salgath trod. a second policeman was emergingfrom the car when vall suddenly realized what it was that had disturbed him. it had been salgath trod, himself, less thanhalf an hour ago, who had introduced the term, "the organization," to the paratime police.at that time, if these people were what they

claimed to be, they would have been in transpositionfrom industrial twenty-four, on the fifth level. immediately, he reached for his needler.he was clearing it of the holster when things began happening. the handcuffs fell from the "prisoner's" wrists;he jerked a neutron-disruption blaster from under his jacket. vall, his needler alreadydrawn, rayed the fellow dead before he could aim it, then saw that the two pseudo-policemenhad drawn their needlers and were aiming in the direction of salgath trod. there wereno flashes or reports; only the spot of light that had winked on and off under vall's rearsight had told him that his weapon had been activated. he saw it appear again as the sightscentered on one of the "policemen." then he

saw the other imposter's needler aimed athimself. that was the last thing he expected ever to see, in that life; he tried to shifthis own weapon, and time seemed frozen, with his arm barely moving. then there was a whiteblur as dalla's cloak moved in front of him, and the needler dropped from the fingers ofthe disguised murderer. time went back to normal for him; he safetied his own weaponand dropped it, jumping forward. he grabbed the fellow in the green uniformby the nose with his left hand, and punched him hard in the pit of the stomach with hisright fist. the man's mouth flew open, and a green capsule, the size and shape of a smallbean, flew out. pushing dalla aside before she would step on it, he kicked the murdererin the stomach, doubling him over, and chopped

him on the base of the skull with the edgeof his hand. the pseudo-policeman dropped senseless. with a handful of handkerchief-tissue fromhis pocket, he picked up the disgorged capsule, wrapping it carefully after making sure thatit was unbroken. then he looked around. the other two assassins were dead. tortha karf,who had been looking at the man in proletarian dress whom vall had killed first, turned,looked in another direction, and then cursed. vall followed his eyes, and cursed also. oneof the two policemen who had gotten out of the aircar was dead, too, and so was the all-importantwitness, salgath trod-as dead as nebu-hin-abenoz, a hundred thousand parayears away.

part 8 the whole thing had ended within thirty seconds;for about half as long, everybody waited, poised in a sort of action-vacuum, for somethingelse to happen. dalla had dropped the shoulder-bag with which she had clubbed the prisoner'sneedler out of his hand, and caught up the fallen weapon. when she saw that the man wasdown and motionless, she laid it aside and began picking up the glittering or silkentrifles that had spilled from the burst bag. vall retrieved his own weapon, glanced overit, and holstered it. sothran barth, the lieutenant in charge of the landing stage, was bawlingorders, and men were coming out of the ready-room and piling into vehicles to pursue the aircarwhich had brought the assassins.

"barth!" vall called. "have you a hypodermicand a sleep-drug ampoule? well, give this boy a shot; he's only impact-stunned. be carefulof him; he's important." he glanced around the landing-stage. "fact is, he's all we haveto show for this business." then he stooped to help dalla gather her things,picking up a few of them-a lighter, a tiny crystal perfume flask, miraculously unbroken,a face-powder box which had sprung open and spilled half its contents. he handed themto her, while sothran barth bent over the prisoner and gave him an injection, then wentto the body of the other pseudo-policeman, forcing open his mouth. in his cheek, stillunbroken, was a second capsule, which he added to the first. tortha karf was watching him.

"same gang that killed that carera slaveron esaron sector?" he asked. "of course, exactly the same general procedure. let's have a lookat the other one." the man in proletarian dress must have hadhis capsule between his molars when he had been killed; it was broken, and there wasa brownish discoloration and chemical odor in his mouth. "second time we've had a witness killed offunder our noses," tortha karf said. "we're going to have to smarten up in a hurry." "here's one of us who doesn't have to, much,"vall said, nodding toward dalla. "she knocked a needler out of one man's hand, and we tookhim alive. the force owes her a new shoulder-bag:

she spoiled that one using it for a club." "best shoulder-bag we can find you, dalla,"tortha karf promised. "you're promoted, herewith, to special chief's assistant's special assistant-youknow, this organization murder-section is good; they could kill anybody. it won't belong before they assign a squad to us. blast it, i don't want to have to go around bodyguardedlike a fourth level dictator, but-" a detective came out of the control room andapproached. "screen call for you, sir," he told torthakarf. "one of the news services wants a comment on a story they've just picked up that we'veillegally arrested councilman salgath and are holding him incommunicado and searchinghis apartment."

"that's the organization," vall said. "theydon't know how their boys made out; they're hoping we'll tell them." "no comment," tortha karf said. "call thegirl on my switchboard and tell her to answer any other news-service calls. we have nothingto say at this time, but there will be a public statement at ... at 2330," he decided aftera glance at his watch. "that'll give us time to agree on a publicity line to adopt. lieutenantsothran! take charge up here. get all these bodies out of sight somewhere, including thoseof councilman salgath and detective malthor. don't let anybody talk about this; put a blackouton the whole story. vall, you and dalla and ... oh, you, over there; take the prisonerdown to my office. sothran, any reports from

any of the cars that were chasing that fakepolice car?" verkan vall and dalla were sitting behindtortha karf's desk; vall was issuing orders over the intercom and talking to the detectiveswho had remained at salgath trod's apartment by visiscreen; dalla was sorting over thethings she had spilled when her bag had burst. they both looked up as tortha karf came inand joined them. "the prisoner's still under the drug," thechief said. "he'll be out for a couple of hours; the psych-techs want to let him comeout of it naturally and sleep naturally for a while before they give him a hypno. he'snot a servsec prole; uncircumcised, never had any syntho-enzyme shots or immunizations,and none of the longevity operations or grafts.

same thing for the two stiffs. and no identityrecords on any of the three." "the men at salgath's apartment say that hishousekeeper and his two servants checked out through the house conveyer for servsec one-six-five,at about 1830," vall said. "there's a prole entertainment center on that time line. isuppose salgath gave them the evening off before he called you." tortha karf nodded. "i suppose you orderedthem picked up. the news services are going wild about this. i had to make a preliminarystatement, to the effect that salgath trod was not arrested, came to headquarters ofhis own volition, and is under no restraint whatever."

"except, of course, a slight case of rigormortis," dalla added. "did you mention that, chief?" "no, i didn't." tortha karf looked as thoughhe had quinine in his mouth. "vall, how in blazes are we going to handle this?" "we ought to keep salgath's death hushed up,as long as we can," vall said. "the organization doesn't know positively what happened here;that's why they're handing out tips to the news services. let's try to make them believehe's still alive and talking." "how can we do it?" "there ought to be somebody on the force closeenough to salgath trod's anthropometric specifications

that our cosmeticians could work him overinto a passable impersonation. our story is that salgath is on polterm, undergoing narco-hypnosis.we will produce an audio-visual of him as soon as he is out of narco-hyp. that willgive us time to fix up an impersonator; we'll need a lot of sound-recordings of salgathtrod's voice, of course-" "i'll take care of the home time line endof it; as soon as we get you an impersonator, you go to work with him. now, let's see whomwe can depend on to help us with this. lovranth rolk, of course; home time line section ofthe paratime code enforcement division. and-" verkan vall and dalla and tortha karf andfour or five others looked across the desk and to the end of the room as the telecastscreen broke into a shifting light-pattern

and then cleared. the face of the announcerappeared; a young woman. "and now, we bring you the statement whichchief tortha of the paratime police has promised for this time. this portion of the programwas audio-visually recorded at paratime police headquarters earlier this evening." tortha karf's face appeared on the screen.his voice began an announcement of how executive councilman salgath trod had called him byvisiphone, admitting to complicity in the recently-discovered paratemporal slave-trade. "here is a recording of councilman salgath'scall to me from his apartment to my office at 1945 this evening."

the screen-image shattered into light-shardsand rebuilt itself: salgath trod, at his desk in the library of his apartment, the brandy-gobletand the needler within reach, appeared. he began to speak: from time to time the voiceof tortha karf interrupted, questioning or prompting him. "you understand that this confession rendersyou liable to psycho-rehabilitation?" tortha karf asked. yes, councilman salgath understood that. "and you agree to come voluntarily to paratimepolice headquarters, and you will voluntarily undergo narco-hypnotic interrogation?"

yes, salgath trod agreed to that. "i am now terminating the playback of councilmansalgath's call to me," tortha karf said, re-appearing on the screen. "at this point councilman salgathbegan making a statement about his criminal activities, which we have on record. becausehe named a number of his criminal associates, whom we have no intention of warning, thisportion of councilman salgath's call cannot at this time be made public. we have no intentionof having any of these suspects escape, or of giving their associates an opportunityto murder them to prevent their furnishing us with additional information. incidentally,there was an attempt, made on the landing stage of paratime police headquarters, tomurder councilman salgath, when he was brought

here guarded by paratime police officers-" he went on to give a colorful and, as faras possible, truthful, account of the attack by the two pseudo-policemen and their pseudo-prisoner.as he told it, however, all three had been killed before they could accomplish theirpurpose, one of them by salgath trod himself. the image of tortha karf was replaced by aview of the three assassins lying on the landing stage. they all looked dead, even the onewho wasn't; there was nothing to indicate that he was merely drugged. then, one afteranother, their faces were shown in closeup, while tortha karf asked for close attentionand memorization. "we believe that these men were fifth levelproles; we think that they were under hypnotic

influence or obeying posthypnotic commandswhen they made their suicidal attack. if any of you have ever seen any of these men before,it is your duty to inform the paratime police." that ended it. tortha karf pressed a buttonin front of him and the screen went dark. the spectators relaxed. "well! nothing like being sincere with thepublic, is there?" della commented. "i'll remember this the next time i tune in a managementpublic statement." "in about five minutes," one of the bureau-chiefs,said, "all hell is going to break loose. i think the whole thing is crazy!" "i hope you have somebody who can give a convincingimpersonation," lovranth rolk said.

"yes. a field agent named kostran galth,"tortha karf said. "we ran the personal description cards for the whole force through the machine;kostran checked to within one-twentieth of one per cent; he's on police terminal, now,coming by rocket from ravvanan equivalent. we ought to have the whole thing ready fortelecast by 1730 tomorrow." "he can't learn to imitate salgath's voiceconvincingly in that time, with all the work the cosmeticians'll have to be doing on him,"dalla said. "make up a tape of salgath's own voice, outof that pile of recordings we got at his apartment, and what we can get out of the news file."vall said. "we have phoneticists who can split syllables and splice them together. kostranwill deliver his speech in dumb-show, and

we'll dub the sound in and telecast them asone. i've messaged polterm to get to work on that; they can start as soon as we havethe speech written." "the more it succeeds now, the worse the blow-upwill be when we finally have to admit that salgath was killed here tonight," the chiefinter-officer coã¶rdinator, zostha olv said. "we'd better have something to show the publicto justify that." "yes, we had," tortha karf agreed. "vall,how about the kholghoor sector operation. how far's ranthar jard gotten toward locatingone of those wizard trader time lines?" "not very far," vall admitted. "he has itpinned down to the sub-sector, but the belt seems to be one we haven't any informationat all for. never been any legitimate penetration

by paratimers. he has his own hagiologists,and a couple borrowed from outtime religious institute; they've gotten everything the slavescan give them on that. about the only thing to do is start random observation with boomerang-balls." "over about a hundred thousand time lines,"zostha olv scoffed. he was an old man, even for his long-lived race; he had a thin noseand a narrow, bitter, mouth. "and what will he look for?" "croutha with guns." tortha karf told him,then turned to vall. "can't he narrow it more than that? what have his experts been gettingout of those slaves?" "that i don't know, to date." vall lookedat the clock. "i'll find out, though; i'll

transpose to police terminal and call himup. and skordran kirv. no. vulthor tharn; it'd hurt the old fellow's feelings if i by-passedhim and went to one of his subordinates. half an hour each way, and at most another hourtalking to ranthar and vulthor; there won't be anything doing here for two hours." herose. "see you when i get back." dalla had turned on the telescreen again;after tuning out a dance orchestra and a comedy show, she got the image of an angry-facedman in evening clothes. "... and i'm going to demand a full investigation,as soon as council convenes tomorrow morning!" he was shouting. "this whole story is a preposterousinsult to the integrity of the entire executive council, your elected representatives, andit shows the criminal lengths to which this

would-be dictator, tortha karf, and his jackalverkan vall will go-" "so long, jackal." dalla called to him ashe went out. part 9 he spent the half-hour transposition to policeterminal sleeping. paratime-transpositions and rocket-flights seemed to be his only chanceto get any sleep. he was still sleepy when he sat down in front of the radio telescreenbehind his duplicate of tortha karf's desk and put through a call to nharkan equivalent.it was 0600 in india; the sector regional deputy subchief who was holding down rantharjard's desk looked equally sleepy; he had a mug of coffee in front of him, and a brown-papercigarette in his mouth.

"oh, hello, assistant verkan. want me to callsubchief ranthar?" "is he sleeping? then for mercy's sake don't.what's the present status of the investigation?" "well, we were dropping boomerang balls yesterday,while we had sun to mask the return-flashes. nothing. the croutha have taken the city ofsohram, just below the big bend of the river. tomorrow, when we have sunlight, we're goingto start boomerang-balling the central square. we may get something." "the wizard traders'll be moving in near there,about now," vall said. "the croutha ought to have plenty of merchandise for them. haveyou gotten anything more done on narrowing down the possible area?"

the deputy bit back a yawn and reached forhis coffee mug. "the experts have just about pumped theseslaves empty," he said. "the local religion is a mess. seems to have started out as agreat mother cult; then it picked up a lot of gods borrowed from other peoples; thenit turned into a dualistic monotheism; then it picked up a lot of minor gods and devils-newdevils usually gods of the older pantheon. and we got a lot of gossip about the feudalwars and faction-fights among the nobility, and so on, all garbled, because these peopleare peasants who only knew what went on on the estate of their own lord." "what did go on there?" vall asked. "ask themabout recent improvements, new buildings,

new fields cleared, new paddies flooded, thatsort of thing. and pick out a few of the highest iq's from both time lines, and have them locatethis estate on a large-scale map, and draw plans showing the location of buildings, fieldsand other visible features. if you have to, teach them mapping and sketching by hypno-mech.and then drop about five hundred to a thousand boomerang balls, at regular intervals, overthe whole paratemporal area. when you locate a time line that gives you a picture to correspondto their description, boomerang the main square in sohram over the whole belt around it, tofind croutha with firearms." the deputy looked at him for a moment thengulped more coffee. "can do, assistant verkan. i think i'll sendsomebody to wake up subchief ranthar, right

now. want to talk to him." "won't be necessary. you're recording thiscall, of course? then play it back to him. and get cracking with the slaves; you wantenough information out of them to enable you to start boomerang balling as soon as thesun's high enough." he broke off the connection and sent out forcoffee for himself. then he put through a call to novilan equivalent, in western northamerica. it was 1530, there, when he got vulthor tharnon the screen. "good afternoon. assistant verkan. i supposeyou're calling about the slave business. i've turned the entire matter over to field agentskordran; gave him a temporary rank of deputy

subchief. that's subject to your approvaland chief tortha's, of course-" "make the appointment permanent," vall said."i'll have a confirmation along from chief tortha directly. and let me talk to him now,if you please. subchief vulthor." "yes, sir. switching you over now." the screenwent into a beautiful burst of abstract art, and cleared, after a while, with skordrankirv looking out of it. "hello, deputy skordran, and congratulations.what's come up since we had nebu-hin-abenoz cut out from under us?" "we went in on that time line, that same night,with an airboat and made a recon in the hills back of careba. scared the fear of safar intoa party of caleras while we were working at

low altitude, by the way. we found the conveyer-headsite: hundred-foot circle with all the grass and loose dirt transposed off it and a polepen, very unsanitary where about two-three hundred slaves would be kept at a time. noindications of use in the last ten days. we did some pretty thorough boomeranging on thatspatial equivalent over a couple of thousand time lines and found thirty more of them.i believe the slavers have closed out the whole esaron sector operation, at least temporarily." that was what he'd been afraid of; he hopedthey wouldn't do the same thing on the kholghoor sector. "let me have the designations of the timelines on which you found conveyer heads,"

he said. "just a moment, chief's assistant; i'll photoprintthem to you. set for reception?" vall opened a slide under the screen and sawthat the photoprint film was in place, then closed it again, nodding. skordran kirv feda sheet of paper into his screen cabinet and his arm moved forward out of the picture. "on, sir," he said. he and vall counted tenseconds together, and then skordran kirv said: "through to you." vall pressed a lever underhis screen, and a rectangle of microcopy print popped out. "that's about all i have, sir. want me tokeep my troops ready here, or shall i send

them somewhere else?" "keep them ready, kirv," vall told him. "youmay need them before long. call you later." he put the microcopy in an enlarger, and carriedthe enlarged print with him to the conveyer room. there was something odd about the listof time line designations. they were expressed numerically, in first level notation; extremelyshort groups of symbols capable of exact expression of almost inconceivably enormous numbers.vall had only a general-education smattering of mathematics-enough to qualify him forthe chair of higher mathematics at any university on, say, the fourth level europo-americansector-and he could not identify the peculiarity, but he could recognize that there existedsome sort of pattern. shoving in the starting

lever, he relaxed in one of the chairs, waitingfor the transposition field to build up around him, and fell asleep before the mesh domeof the conveyer had vanished. he woke, the list of time line designations in his hand,when the conveyor rematerialized on home time line. putting it in his pocket, he hurriedto an antigrav shaft and floated up to the floor on which tortha karf's office was. tortha karf was asleep in his chair; dallawas eating a dinner that had been brought in to her-something better than the sandwichand mug of coffee vall had mentioned to thalvan dras. several of the bureau chiefs who hadbeen there when he had gone out had left, and the psychist who had taken charge of theprisoner was there.

"i think he's coming out of the drug, now,"he reported. "still asleep, though. we want him to waken naturally before we start onhim. they'll call me as soon as he shows signs of stirring." "the opposition's claiming, now, that we druggedand hypnotized salgath into making that visiscreen confession," dalla said. "can you think ofany way you could do that without making the subject incapable of lying?" "pseudo-memories," the psychist said. "itwould take about three times as long as the time between salgath trod's departure fromhis apartment and the time of the telecast, though-"

"you know much higher math?" vall asked thepsychist. "well, enough to handle my job. neuron-synapseinter-relations, memory-and-association patterns, that kind of thing, all have to be expressedmathematically." vall nodded and handed him the time-line designationlist. "see any kind of a pattern there?" he asked. the psychist looked at the paper and blankedhis face as he drew on hypnotically-acquired information. "yes. i'd say that all the numbers are relatedin some kind of a series to some other number. simplified down to kindergarten level, saythe difference between a and b is, maybe,

one-decillionth of the difference betweenx and a, and the difference between b and c is one-decillionth of the difference betweenx and b, and so on-" a voice came out of one of the communicationboxes: "dr. nentrov; the patient's out of the drug,and he's beginning to stir about." "that's it," the psychist said. "i have torun." he handed the sheet back to vall, took a last drink from his coffee cup, and boltedout of the room. dalla picked up the sheet of paper and lookedat it. vall told her what it was. "if those time lines are in regular series,they relate to the base line of operations," she said. "maybe you can have that workedout. i can see how it would be; a stated interval

between the esaron sector lines, to simplifytransposition control settings." "that was what i was thinking. it's not quiteas simple as dr. nentrov expressed it, but that could be the general idea. we might beable to work out the location of the base line from that. there seems to be a breakin the number sequence in here; that would be the time line skordran kirv found thoseslaves on." he reached for the pipe he had left on the desk when he had gone to policeterminal and began filling it. a little later, a buzzer sounded and a lightcame on on one of the communication boxes. he flipped the switch and said, "verkan vallhere." sothran barth's voice came cut of the box.

"they've just brought in salgath trod's servants.picked them up as they came out of the house conveyer at the apartment building. i don'tbelieve they know what's happened." vall flipped a switch and twiddled a dial;a viewscreen lit up, showing the landing stage. the police car had just landed: one detectivehad gotten out, and was helping the girl, zinganna, who had been salgath trod's housekeeperand mistress, to descend. she was really beautiful. vall thought: rather tall, slender, with darkeyes and a creamy light-brown skin. she wore a black cloak, and, under it, a black andsilver evening gown. a single jewel twinkled in her black hair. she could have very easilypassed for a woman of his own race. the housemaid and the butler were a coupleof entirely different articles. both were

about four or five generations from fourthlevel primitive savagery. the maid, in garishly cheap finery, was big-boned and heavy-bodied,with red-brown hair; she looked like a member of one of the northern european reindeer-herdingpeoples who had barely managed to progress as far as the bow and arrow. the butler wasprobably a mixture of half a dozen primitive races; he was wearing one of his late master'sevening suits, a bright mellow-pink, which was distinctly unflattering to his complexion. the sound-pickup was too far away to givehim what they were saying, but the butler and maid were waving their arms and protestingvehemently. one of the detectives took the woman by the arm; she jerked it loose andaimed a backhand slap at him. he blocked it

on his forearm. immediately, the girl in blackturned and said something to her, and she subsided. vall said, into the box: "barth, have the girl in the black cloak broughtdown to number four interview room. put the other two in separate detention cubicles;we'll talk to them later." he broke the connection and got to his feet. "come on, dalla. i wantyou to help me with the girl." "just try and stop me," dalla told him. "anyinterviews you have with that little item, i want to sit in on." the proletarian girl, still guarded by a detective,had already been placed in the interview room. the detective nodded to vall, tried to suppressa grin when he saw dalla behind him, and went

out. vall saw his wife and the prisoner seated,and produced his cigarette case, handing it around. "you're zinganna; you're of the householdof councilman salgath trod, aren't you?" he asked. "housekeeper and hostess," the girl replied."i am also his mistress." vall nodded, smiling. "which confirms my long-standingrespect for councilman salgath's exquisite taste." "why, thank you," she said. "but i doubt ifi was brought here to receive compliments. or was i?"

"no, i'm afraid not. have you heard the newscastsof the past few hours concerning councilman salgath?" she straightened in her seat, looking at himseriously. "no. i and nindrandigro and calilla spentthe evening on servsec one-six-five. councilman salgath told me that he had some businessand wanted them out of the apartment, and wanted me to keep an eye on them. we didn'thear any news at all." she hesitated. "has anything ... serious ... happened?" vall studied her for a moment, then glancedat dalla. there existed between himself and his wife a sort of vague, semitelepathic,rapport; they had never been able to transmit

definite and exact thoughts, but they couldclearly prehend one another's feelings and emotions. he was conscious, now, of dalla'ssympathy for the proletarian girl. "zinganna, i'm going to tell you somethingthat is being kept from the public," he said. "by doing so, i will make it necessary forus to detain you, at least for a few days. i hope you will forgive me, but i think youwould forgive me less if i didn't tell you." "something's happened to him," she said, hereyes widening and her body tensing. "yes, zinganna. at about 2010, this evening,"he said, "councilman salgath was murdered." "oh!" she leaned back in the chair, closingher eyes. "he's dead?" then, again, statement instead of question: "he's dead!"

for a long moment, she lay back in the chair,as though trying to reorient her mind to the fact of salgath trod's death, while vall anddalla sat watching her. then she stirred, opened her eyes, looked at the cigarette inher fingers as though she had never seen it before, and leaned forward to stuff it intoan ash receiver. "who did it?" she asked, the stone age savagewho had been her ancestor not ten generations ago peeping out of her eyes. "the men who actually used the needlers aredead," vall told her. "i killed a couple of them myself. we still have to find the menwho planned it. i'd hoped you'd want to help us do that, zinganna."

he side-glanced to dalla again; she nodded.the relationship between zinganna and salgath trod hadn't been purely business with her;there had been some real affection. he told her what had happened, and when he reachedthe point at which salgath trod had called tortha karf to confess complicity in the slavetrade, her lips tightened and she nodded. "i was afraid it was something like that,"she said. "for the last few days, well, ever since the news about the slave trade got out,he's been worried about something. i've always thought somebody had some kind of a hold overhim. different times in the past, he's done things so far against his own political bestinterests that i've had to believe he was being forced into them. well, this time theytried to force him too far. what then?"

vall continued the story. "so we're keepingthis hushed up, for a while. the way we're letting it out, salgath trod is still alive,on police terminal, talking under narco-hypnosis." she smiled savagely. "and they'll get frightened,and frightened men do foolish things," she finished. she hadn't been a politician's mistressfor nothing. "what can i do to help?" "tell us everything you can," he said. "maybewe can be able to take such actions as we would have taken if salgath trod had livedto talk to us." "yes, of course." she got another cigarettefrom the case vall had laid on the table. "i think, though, that you'd better give mea narco-hypnosis. you want to be able to depend on what i'm going to tell you, and i wantto be able to remember things exactly."

vall nodded approvingly and turned to dalla. "can you handle this, yourself?" he asked."there's an audio-visual recorder on now; here's everything you need." he opened thedrawers in the table to show her the narco-hypnotic equipment. "and the phone has a whisper mouthpiece;you can call out without worrying about your message getting into zinganna's subconscious.well, i'll see you when you're through; you bring zinganna to police terminal; i'll probablybe there." he went out, closing the door behind him,and went down the hall, meeting the officer who had taken charge of the butler and housemaid. "we're having trouble with them, sir," hesaid. "hostile. yelling about their rights,

and demanding to see a representative of proletarianprotective league." vall mentioned the proletarian protectiveleague with unflattering vulgarity. "if they don't coã¶perate, drag them out andinject them and question them anyhow," he said. the detective-lieutenant looked worried. "we'vebeen taking a pretty high hand with them as it is," he protested. "it's safer to killa citizen than bloody a prole's nose; they have all sorts of laws to protect them." "there are all sorts of laws to protect theparatime secret," vall replied. "and i think there are one or two laws against murderingmembers of the executive council. in case

p.p.l. makes any trouble, they aren't here;they have faithfully joined their beloved master in his refuge on polterm. but one orboth of them work for the organization." "you're sure of that?" "the organization is too thorough not to havehad a spy in salgath's household. it wasn't zinganna, because she's volunteered to talkto us under narco-hyp. so who does that leave?" "well, that's different; that makes them suspects."the lieutenant seemed relieved. "we'll pump that pair out right away." when he got back to tortha karf's office,the chief was awake, and doodling on his notepad with his multicolor pen. vall looked at thepad and winced; the chief was doodling bugs

again-red ants with black legs, and blue-and-greenbeetles. then he saw that the psychist, nentrov dard, was drinking straight 150-proof palm-rum. "well, tell me the worst," he said. "our boy's memory-obliterated," nentrov dardsaid, draining his glass and filling it again. "and he's plastered with pseudo-memories afoot thick. it'll be five or six ten-days before we can get all that stuff peeled offand get him unblocked. i put him to sleep and had him transposed to police terminal.i'm going there, myself, tomorrow morning, after i've had some sleep, and get to workon him. if you're hoping to get anything useful out of him in time to head off this councilcrisis that's building up, just forget it."

"and that leaves us right back with our oldfriends, the wizard traders," tortha karf added. "and if they've decided to suspendactivities on the kholghoor sector, too-" he began drawing a big blue and black spiderin the middle of the pad. nentrov dard crushed out his cigar, drankhis rum, and got to his feet. "well, good night, chief; vall. if you decideto wake me up before 1000, send somebody you want to get rid of in a hurry." he walkedaround the deck and out the side door. "i hope they don't," vall said to tortha karf."really, though, i doubt if they do. this is their chance to pick up a lot of slavescheaply; the croutha are too busy to bother haggling. i'm going through to polterm, now;when dalla and zinganna get through, tell

them to join me there." part 10 on police terminal, he found kostran galth,the agent who had been selected to impersonate salgath trod. after calling zulthran torv,the mathematician in charge of the computer office and giving him the esaron time-linedesignations and nentrov dard's ideas about them, he spent about an hour briefing kostrangalth on the role he was to play. finally, he undressed and went to bed on a couch inthe rest room behind the office. it was noon when he woke. after showering,shaving and dressing hastily, he went out to the desk for breakfast, which arrived whilehe was putting a call through to ranthar jard,

at nharkan equivalent. "your idea paid off, chief's assistant," thekholghoor secreg subchief told him. "the slaves gave us a lot of physical description dataon the estate, and told us about new fields that had been cleared, and a dam this lordghromdour was building to flood some new rice-paddies. we located a belt of about five parayearswhere these improvements had been made: we started boomeranging the whole belt, timeline by time line. so far, we have ten or fifteen pictures of the main square at sohramshowing croutha with firearms, and pictures of wizard trader camps and conveyer headson the same time lines. here, let me show you; this is from an airboat over the forestoutside the equivalent of sohram."

there was no jungle visible when the viewchanged; nothing but clusters of steel towers and platforms and buildings that marked conveyerheads, and a large rectangle of red-and-white antigrav-buoys moored to warn air trafficout of the area being boomeranged. the pickup seemed to be pointed downward from the bowof an airboat circling at about ten thousand feet. "balls ready to go," a voice called, and thenrepeated a string of time-line designations. "estimated return, 1820, give or take fourminutes." "varth," ranthar jard said, evidently outof the boat's radio. "your telecast is being beamed on dhergabar equivalent; chief's assistantverkan is watching. when do you estimate your

next return?" "any moment, now, sir; we're holding thisdrop till they rematerialize." vall watched unblinkingly, his fork poisedhalfway to his mouth. suddenly, about a thousand feet below the eye of the pickup, there wasa series of blue flashes, and, an instant later, a blossoming of red-and-white parachutes,ejected from the photo-reconnaissance balls that had returned from the kholghoor sector. "all right; drop away," the boat captain called.there was a gush, from underneath, of eight-inch spheres, their conductor-mesh twinkling golden-brightin the sunlight. they dropped in a tight cluster for a thousand or so feet and then flashedand vanished. from the ground, six or eight

aircars rose to meet the descending parachutesand catch them. the screen went cubist for a moment, and thenranthar jard's swarthy, wide-jawed face looked out of it again. he took his pipe from hismouth. "we'll probably get a positive out of thebatch you just saw coming in," he said. "we get one out of about every two drops." "message a list of the time-line designationsyou've gotten so far to zulthran torv, at computer office here," vall said. "he's workingon the esaron sector dope; we think a pattern can be established. i'll be seeing you inabout five hours; i'm rocketing out of here as soon as i get a few more things clearedup here."

zulthran torv, normally cautious to the degreeof pessimism, was jubilant when vall called "we have something, vall," he said. "it is,roughly, what dr. nentrov suggested-each of the intervals between the designationsis a very minute but very exact fraction of the difference between lesser designationand the base-line designation." "you have the base-line designation?" valldemanded. "oh, yes. that's what i was telling you. weworked that out from the designations you gave me." he recited it. "all the designationsyou gave me are-" vall wasn't listening to him. he frowned inpuzzlement. "that's not a fifth level designation," hesaid. "that's first level!"

"that's correct. first level abzar sector." "now why in blazes didn't anybody think ofthat before?" he marveled, and as he did, he knew the answer. nobody ever thought ofthe abzar sector. twelve millennia ago, the world of the firstlevel had been exhausted; having used up the resources of their home planet, mars, a hundredthousand years before, the descendants of the population that had migrated across spacehad repeated on the third planet the devastation of the fourth. the ancestors of verkan vall'speople had discovered the principle of paratime transposition and had begun to exploit aninfinity of worlds on other lines of probability. the people of the first level dwarma sector,reduced by sheer starvation to a tiny handful,

had abandoned their cities and renounced theirtechnologies and created for themselves a farm-and-village culture without progressor change or curiosity or struggle or ambition, and a way of life in which every day was likeevery other day that had been or that would come. the abzar people had done neither. they hadwasted their resources to the last, fighting bitterly over the ultimate crumbs, with fissionbombs, and with muskets, and with swords, and with spears and clubs, and finally theyhad died out, leaving a planet of almost uniform desert dotted with vast empty cities whicheven twelve thousand years had hardly begun to obliterate.

so nobody on the paratime sector went to theabzar sector. there was nothing there-except a hiding-place. "well, message that to subchief ranthar jard,kholghoor sector at nharkan equivalent, and to subchief vulthor, esaron sector, novilanequivalent," vall said. "and be sure to mark what you send vulthor, 'immediate attentiondeputy subchief skordran.'" that reminded him of something; as soon ashe was through with zulthran, he got out an order in the name of tortha karf authorizingskordran kirv's promotion on a permanent basis and messaged it out. something was going tohave to be done with vulthor tharn, too. a promotion of course-say deputy bureau chief.hypno-mech tape library at dhergabar home

time line; there vulthor's passion for procedureand his caution would be assets instead of liabilities. he called vlasthor arph, thechief's deputy assigned to him as adjutant. "i want more troops from servsec and indsec,"he said. "go over the to's and see what can be spared from where; don't strip any timeline, but get a force of the order of about three divisions. and locate all the big antigrav-equippedship transposition docks on commercial and passenger sectors, and a list of freightersand passenger ships that can be commandeered in a hurry. we think we've spotted the timeline the organization's using as a base. as soon as we raid a couple of places near nharkanand novilan equivalents, we're going to move in for a planet-wide cleanup."

"i get it, chief's assistant. i do everythingi can to get ready for a big move, without letting anything leak out. after you strikethe first blow, there won't be any security problem, and the lid will be off. in the meantime,i make up a general plan, and alert all our own people. right?" "right. and for your information, the baseisn't fifth level; it's first level abzar." he gave the designation. vlasthor arph chuckled. "well, think of that!i'd even forgotten there was an abzar sector. shall i tell the reporters that?" "fangs of fasif, no!" vall fairly howled.then, curiously: "what reporters? how'd they

get onto polterm?" "about fifty or sixty news-service peoplechief tortha sent down here, this morning, with orders to prevent them from filing anystories from here but to let them cover the raids, when they come off. we were instructedto furnish them weapons and audio-visual equipment and vocowriters and anything else they needed,and-" vall grinned. "that was one i'd never thoughtof," he admitted. "the old fox is still the old fox. no, tell them nothing; we'll justtake them along and show them. oh, and where are dr. hadron dalla and that girl of salgathtrod's?" "they're sleeping, now. rest room eighteen."

dalla and zinganna were asleep on a big moundof silk cushions in one corner, their glossy black heads close together and zinganna'sbrown arm around dalla's white shoulder. their faces were calmly beautiful in repose, andthey smiled slightly, as though they were wandering through a happy dream. for a littlewhile, vall stood looking at them, then he began whistling softly. on the third or fourthbar, dalla woke and sat up, waking zinganna, and blinked at him perplexedly. "what time is it?" she asked. "about 1245," he told her. "ohhh! we just got to sleep," she said. "we'reboth bushed!"

"you had a hard time. feel all right afteryour narco-hyp, zinganna?" "it wasn't so bad, and i had a nice sleep.and dalla ... dr. hadron, i mean-" "dalla," vall's wife corrected. "rememberwhat i told you?" "dalla, then," zinganna smiled. "dalla gaveme some hypno-treatment, too. i don't feel so badly about trod, any more." "well, look, zinganna. we're going to havea man impersonate councilman salgath on a telecast. the cosmeticians are making himover now. would you find it too painful to meet him, and talk to him?" "no, i wouldn't mind. i can criticize theimpersonation; remember, i knew trod very

well. you know, i was his hostess, too. imet many of the people with whom he was associated, and they know me. would things look more convincingif i appeared on the telecast with your man?" "it certainly would; it would be a great help!"he told her enthusiastically. "maybe you girls ought to get up, now. the telecast isn't till1930, but there's a lot to be done getting ready." dalla yawned. "what i get, trying to be acop," she said, then caught the other girl's hands and rose, pulling her up. "come on,zinna; we have to get to work!" vall rose from behind the reading-screen inranthar jard's office, stretching his arms over his head. for almost an hour, he hadsat there pushing buttons and twiddling selector

and magnification-adjustment knobs, lookingat the pictures the kholghoor-nharkan cops had taken with auto-return balls dropped overthe spatial equivalent of sohram. one set of pictures, taken at two thousand feet, showedthe central square of the city. the effects of the croutha sack were plainly visible;so were the captives herded together under guard like cattle. by increasing magnification,he looked at groups of the barbarian conquerors, big men with blond or reddish-brown hair,in loose shirts and baggy trousers and rough cowhide buskins. many of them wore bowl-shapedhelmets, some had shirts of ring-mail, all of them carried long straight swords withcross-hilts, and about half of them had pistols thrust through their belts or muskets slungfrom their shoulders.

the other set of pictures showed the wizardtrader camps and conveyer heads. in each case, a wide oval had been burned out in the jungle,probably with heavy-duty heat guns. the camps were surrounded with stout wire-mesh fence:in each there were a number of metal prefab-huts, and an inner fenced slave-pen. a trail hadbeen cut from each to a similarly cleared circle farther back in the forest, and inthe centers of one or two of these circles he saw the actual conveyer domes. there wasa great deal of activity in all of them, and he screwed the magnification-adjustment tothe limit to scrutinize each human figure in turn. a few of the men, he was sure, werefirst level citizens; more were either proles or outtimers. quite a few of them were ofa dark, heavy-featured, black-bearded type.

"some of these fellows look like second levelkhiftans," he said. "rush an individual picture of each one, maximum magnification consistentwith clarity, to dhergabar equivalent to be transposed to home time line. you get allthe dope from zulthran torv?" "yes; abzar sector," ranthar jard said. "i'dnever have thought of that. wonder why they used that series system, though. i'd havetried to spot my operations as completely at random as possible." "only thing they could have done," vall said."when we get hold of one of their conveyers, we're going to find the control panel's justa mess of arbitrary symbols, and there'll be something like a computer-machine builtinto the control cabinet, to select the right

time line whenever a dial's set or a buttonpushed, and the only way that could be done would be by establishing some kind of a numericalseries. and we were trustingly expecting to locate their base from one of their conveyers!why, if we give all those people in the pictures narco-hyps, we won't learn the base-line designation;none of them will know it. they just go where the conveyers take them." "well, we're all set now," ranthar jard said."i have a plan of attack worked out; subject to your approval, i'm ready to start implementingit now." he glanced at his watch. "the salgath telecast is over, on home time line, and ina little while, a transcript will be on this time line. want to watch it here, sir?"

the telecast screen in the living room oftortha karf's town apartment was still on; in it, a girl with bright red hair dancedslowly to soft music against a background of shifting color. the four men who sat ina semicircle facing it sipped their drinks and watched idly. "ought to be getting some sort of public reactionsoon," tortha karf said, glancing at his watch. "well, i'll have to admit, it was done convincingly,"zostha olv, the chief interoffice coã¶rdinator, admitted grudgingly. "i'd have believed it,if i hadn't known the real facts." "shooting it against the background of thosewide windows was smart," lovranth rolk said. "every schoolchild would recognize that viewof the rocketport as being on police terminal.

and including that girl zinganna; that wasa real masterpiece!" "i've met her, a few times," elbraz vark,the political liaison assistant, said. "isn't she lovely!" "good actress, too," tortha karf said. "it'snot easy to impersonate yourself." "well, kostran galth did a fine job of acting,too," lovranth rolk said. "that was done to perfection-the distinguished politician,supported by his loyal mistress, bravely facing the disgraceful end of his public career." "you know, i believe i could get that girla booking with one of the big theatrical companies. now that salgath's dead, she'll need somebodyto look after her."

"what sharp, furry ears you have, mr. elbraz!"zostha olv grunted. the music stopped as though cut off with aknife, and the slim girl with the red hair vanished in a shatter of many colors. whenthe screen cleared, one of the announcers was looking out of it. "we interrupt the program for an importantnewscast of a sensational development in the salgath affair," he said. "your next speakerwill be yandar yadd-" "i thought you'd managed to get that blabbermouthtransposed to polterm," zostha said. "he wouldn't go." tortha karf replied. "saidit was just a trick to get him off home time line during the council crisis."

yandar yadd had appeared on the screen asthe pickup swung about. "... recording ostensibly made by councilmansalgath on police terminal time line, and telecast on home time line an hour ago. well,i don't know who he was, but i now have positive proof that he definitely was not salgath trod!" "we're sunk!" zostha olv grunted. "he'd nevermake a statement like that unless he could prove it." "... something suspicious about the wholething, from the beginning," the newsman was saying. "so i checked. if you recall, theactor impersonating salgath gestured rather freely with his hands, in imitation of a well-knownmannerism of the real salgath trod; at one

point, the ball of his right thumb was presenteddirectly to the pickup. here's a still of that scene." he stepped aside, revealing a viewscreen behindhim; when he pressed a button, the screen lighted; on it was a stationary picture ofkostran galth as salgath trod, his right hand raised in front of him. "now watch this. i'm going to step up themagnification, slowly, so that you can be sure there's no substitution. camera a littlecloser, trath!" the screen in the background seemed to advance,until it filled the entire screen. yandar yadd was still talking, out of the picture;a metal-tipped pointer came into the picture,

touching the right thumb, which grew largerand larger until it was the only thing visible. "now here," yandar yadd's voice continued."any of you who are familiar with the ancient science of dactyloscopy will recognize thisthumb as having the ridge-pattern known as a 'twin loop.' even with the high degree ofmagnification possible with the microgrid screen, we can't bring out the individualridges, but the pattern is unmistakable. i ask you to memorize that image, while i showyou another right thumb print, this time a certified photo-copy of the thumb print ofthe real salgath trod." the magnification was reduced a little, a card was moved intothe picture, and it was stepped up again. "see, this thumb print is of the type knownas a 'tented arch.' observe the difference."

"that does it!" zostha olv cried. "karf, forthe first and last time, let me remind you that i opposed this lunacy from the beginning.now, what are we going to do next?" "i suggest that we get to headquarters assoon as we can," tortha karf said. "if we wait too long, we may not be able to get in." yandar yadd was back on the screen, denouncingtortha karf passionately. tortha went over and snapped it off. "i suggest we transpose to polterm," lovranthrolk said. "it won't be so easy for them to serve a summons on us there." "you can go to polterm if you want to," torthakarf retorted. "i'm going to stay here and

fight back, and if they try to serve me witha summons, they'd better send a robot for a process server." "fight back!" zostha olv echoed. "you can'tfight the council and the whole management! they'll tear you into inch bits!" "i can hold them off till vall's able to raidthose abzar sector bases," tortha karf said. he thought for a moment. "maybe this is allfor the best, after all. if it distracts the organization's attention-" "i wish we could have made a boomerang-ballreconnaissance," ranthar jard was saying, watching one of the viewscreens, in whicha film, taken from an airboat transposed to

an adjoining abzar sector time line, was beingshown. the boat had circled over the ganges, a mere trickle between wide, deeply cut banks,and was crossing a gullied plain, sparsely grown with thornbush. "the base ought to beabout there, but we have no idea what sort of changes this gang has made." "well, we couldn't: we didn't dare take thechance of it being spotted. this has to be a complete surprise. it'll be about like theother place, the one the slaves described. there won't be any permanent buildings. thisoperation only started a few months ago, with the croutha invasion; it may go on for fouror five months, till the croutha have all their surplus captives sold off. that country,"he added, gesturing at the screen, "will be

flooded out when the rains come. see how it'ssuffered from flood-erosion. there won't be a thing there that can't be knocked down andtransposed out in a day or so." "i wish you'd let me go along," ranthar jardworried. "we can't do that, either," vall said. "somebody'sgot to be in charge here, and you know your own people better than i do. beside, thiswon't be the last operation like this. next time, i'll have to stay on police terminaland command from a desk; i want first-hand experience with the outtime end of the job,and this is the only way i can get it." he watched the four police-girls who wereworking at the big terrain board showing the area of the police terminal time line aroundthem. they had covered the miniature buildings

and platforms and towers with a fine mesh,at a scale-equivalent of fifty feet; each intersection marked the location of a three-footconveyer ball, loaded with a sleep-gas bomb and rigged with an automatic detonator whichwould explode it and release the gas as soon as it rematerialized on the abzar sector.higher, on stiff wires that raised them to what represented three thousand feet, werethe disks that stood for ten hundred-foot conveyers; they would carry squads of paratimepolice in aircars and thirty-foot air boats. there was a ring of big two-hundred-foot conveyersa mile out; they would carry the armor and the airborne infantry and the little two-manscooters of the air-cavalry, from the service and industrial sectors. directly over thespatial equivalent of the kholghoor sector

wizard traders' conveyers was the single diskof verkan vall's command conveyer, at a represented five thousand feet, and in a half-mile circlearound it were the five news service conveyers. "where's the ship-conveyer?" he asked. "actually it's on antigrav about five milesnorth of here," one of the girls said. "representationally, about where subchief ranthar's standing." another girl added a few more bits to thenetwork that represented the sleep-gas bombs and stepped back, taking off her earphones. "everything's in place, now, assistant verkan,"she told him. "good. i'm going aboard, now," he said. "youcan have it, jard."

he shook hands with ranthar jard, who movedto the switch which would activate all the conveyers simultaneously, and accepted thegood wishes of the girls at the terrain board. then he walked to the mesh-covered dome ofthe hundred-foot conveyer, with the five news service conveyers surrounding it in as regulara circle as the buildings and towers of the regular conveyer heads would permit. the membersof his own detail, smoking and chatting outside, saw him and started moving inside; so didthe news people. a public-address speaker began yelping, in a hundred voices all overthe area, warning those who were going with the conveyers to get aboard. he went in througha door, between two aircars, and on to the central control-desks, going up to a visiscreenover which somebody had crayoned "novilan

eq." it gave him a view, over the shoulderof a man in the uniform of a field agent third class, of the interior of a conveyer likehis own. part 11 "hello, assistant verkan," a voice came outof the speaker under the screen, as the man moved his lips. "deputy skordran! here's chief'sassistant verkan, now!" skordran kirv moved in front of the screenas the operator got up from his stool. "hello, vall; we're all set to move out assoon as you give the word," he said. "we're all in position on antigrav." "that's smart work. we've just finished ourgas-bomb net," vall said. "going on antigrav

now," he added, as he felt the dome lift."i hope you won't be too disappointed if you draw a blank on your end." "we realize that they've closed out the wholeesaron sector," skordran kirv, eight thousand odd miles away, replied. "we're taking ina couple of ships; we're going to make a survey all up the coast. there are a lot of othersectors where slaves can be sold in this area." in the outside viewscreen, tuned to a slowlyrotating pickup on the top of a tower spatially equivalent with a room in a tall buildingon second level triplanetary empire sector, he could see his own conveyer rising vertically,with the news conveyers following, and the troop conveyers, several miles away, cominginto position. finally, they were all placed;

he reported the fact to skordran kirv andthen picked up a hand-phone. "everybody ready for transposition?" he called."on my count. thirty seconds ... twenty seconds ... fifteen seconds ... five seconds ... fourseconds ... three seconds ... two seconds ... one second, out!" all the screens went gray. the inside of thedome passed into another space-time continuum, even into another kind of space-time. thetransposition would take half an hour; that seemed to be the time needed to build up andcollapse the transposition field, regardless of the paratemporal distance covered. thedome above and around them vanished; the bare, tower-forested, building-dotted world of policeterminal vanished, too, into the uniform green

of the uninhabited fifth level. a planet couldtake pretty good care of itself, he thought, if people would only leave it alone. thenhe began to see the fields and villages of fourth level. cities appeared and vanished,growing higher and vaster as they went across the more civilized third level. one was underair attack-there was almost never a paratemporal transposition which did not run through somescene of battle. he unbuckled his belt and took off his bootsand tunic; all around him, the others were doing the same. sleep-gas didn't have to bebreathed; it could enter the nervous system by any orifice or lesion, even a pore or ascratch. a spacesuit was the only protection. one of the detectives helped him on with hismetal and plastic armor; before sealing his

gauntlets, he reciprocated the assistance,then checked the needler and blaster and the long batonlike ultrasonic paralyzer on hisbelt and made sure that the radio and sound-phones in his helmet were working. he hoped thatthe frantic efforts to gather several thousand spacesuits onto police terminal from the industrialand commercial and interplanetary sectors hadn't started rumors which had gotten tothe ears of some of the organization's ubiquitous agents. the country below was already turning to theparched browns and yellows of the abzar sector. there was not another of the conveyers insight, but electronic and mechanical lag in the individual controls and even the distance-differencebetween them and the central radio control

would have prevented them from going intotransposition at the same fractional microsecond. the recon-details began piling into theircars. then the red light overhead winked to green, and the dome flickered and solidifiedinto cold, inert metal. the screens lighted up again, and vall could see skordran kirv,across asia and the pacific, getting into his helmet. a dot of light in the center ofthe underview screen widened as the mesh under the conveyer irised open around the pickup. below, the organization base-big rectanglesof fenced slave pens, with metal barracks inside; the huge circle of the kholghoor sectorconveyer-head building, and a smaller structure that must house conveyers to other abzar sectortime lines; the work-shops and living quarters

and hangars and warehouses and docks-waswreathed in white-green mist. the ring of conveyers at three thousand feet were openingand spewing out aircars and airboats, farther away, the greater ring of heavy conveyerswere unloading armored and shielded combat-craft. an aircar which must have been above the reachof the gas was streaking away toward the west, with three police cars after it. as he watched,the air around it fairly sizzled blue with the rays of neutron disruption blasters, andthen it blew apart. the three police cars turned and came back more slowly. the three-thousand-tonpassenger ship which had been hastily fitted with armament was circling about; the greatdock conveyer which had brought it was gone, transposed back to police terminal to pickup another ship.

he recorded a message announcing the arrivalof the task-force, pulled out the tape and sealed it in a capsule, and put the capsulein a mesh message ball, attaching it to a couple of wires and flipping a switch. theball flashed and vanished, leaving the wires cleanly sheared off. when it got back to policeterminal, half an hour later, it would rematerialize, eject a parachute, and turn on a whistle tocall attention to itself. then he sealed on his helmet, climbed into an aircar, and turnedon his helmet-radio to speak to the driver. the car lifted a few inches, floated out anopen port, and dived downward. he landed at the big conveyer-head building.there were spaces for fifty conveyers around it, and all but eight of them were in place.one must have arrived since the gas bombs

burst; it was crammed with senseless kharandaslaves. a couple of paratime police officers were towing a tank of sleep-gas around onan antigrav-lifter, maintaining the proper concentration in case any more came in. atthe smaller conveyer building, there were no conveyers, only a number of red-lined fifty-footcircles around a central two-hundred-foot circle. the organization personnel there hadbeen dragged outside, and a group of paracops were sealing it up, installing robot watchmen,and preparing to flood it with gas. at the slave pens, a string of two-hundred-foot conveyers,having unloaded soldiers and fighting-gear, were coming in to take on unconscious slavesfor transposition to police terminal. aircars and airboats were bringing in gassed slavers;they were being shackled and dumped into the

slave barracks; as soon as the gas clearedand they could be brought back to consciousness, they would be narco-hypnotized and questioned. he had finished a tour of the warehouses,looking at the kegs of gunpowder and the casks of brandy, the piles of pig lead, the stacksof cases containing muskets. these must have all come from some low-order handcraft timeline. then there were swords and hatchets and knives that had been made on industrialsector-the organization must be getting them through some legitimate trading company-andmirrors and perfumes and synthetic fiber textiles and cheap jewelry, of similar provenance.it looked as though this stuff had been brought in by ship from somewhere else on this timeline; the warehouses were too far from the

conveyers and right beside the ship dock- there was a tremendous explosion somewhere.vall and the men with him ran outside, looking about, the sound-phones of their helmets givingthem no idea of the source of the sound. one of the policemen pointed, and vall's eyesfollowed his arm. the ship that had been transposed in in the big conveyer was falling, blownin half; as he looked, both sections hit the ground several miles away. a strange ship,a freighter, was coming in fast, and as he watched, a blue spark winked from her bowas a heavy-duty blaster was activated. there was another explosion, overhead; they allran for shelter as vall's command-conveyer disintegrated into falling scrap-metal. atonce, all the other conveyers which were on

antigrav began flashing and vanishing. thatwas the right, the only, thing to do, he knew. but it was leaving him and his men isolatedand under attack. "so that was it," dalgroth sorn, the paratimecommissioner for security said, relieved when tortha karf had finished. "yes, and i'll repeat it under narco-hyp,too," tortha karf added. "oh, don't talk that way, karf," dalgrothsorn scolded. he was at least a century tortha karf's senior; he had the face of an elderlyand sore-toothed lion. "you wanted to keep this prisoner under wraps till you could mind-pumphim, and you wanted the organization to think salgath was alive and talking. i approve both.but-"

he gestured to the viewscreen across the room,tuned to a pickup back of the speaker's chair in the council chamber. tortha karf turneda knob to bring the sound volume up. "well. i'm raising this point," a member fromthe management seats in the center was saying, "because these earlier charges of illegalarrest and illegal detention are part and parcel with the charges growing out of thetelecast last evening." "well, that telecast was a fake; that's beenestablished," somebody on the left heckled. "councilman salgath's confession on the eveningof one-six-two day wasn't a fake, the management supporter, nanthav skov, retorted. "well, then why was it necessary to fake thesecond one?"

a light began winking on the big panel infront of the speaker, asthar varn. "i recognize councilman hasthor flan," astharsaid. "i believe i can construct a theory that willexplain that," hasthor flan said. "i suggest that when the paratime police were questioningcouncilman salgath under narco-hypnosis, he made statements incriminating either the paratimepolice as a whole or some member of the paratime police whom tortha karf had to protect-saysomebody like assistant verkan. so they just killed him, and made up this impostor-" tortha karf began, alphabetically, to blasphemeevery god he had ever heard of. he had only gotten as far as a fourth level deity namedallah when a red light began flashing in front

of asthar varn, and the voice of a page-robot,amplified, roared: "point of special urgency! point of specialurgency! it has been requested that the news telecast screen be activated at once, withplayback to 1107. an important bulletin has just come in from nagorabar, home time line,on the indian subcontinent-" "you can stop swearing, now, karf," dalgrothsorn grinned. "i think this is it." kostran galth sat on the edge of the couch,with one arm around zinganna's waist; on the other side of him, hadron dalla lay at fulllength, her elbows propped and her chin in her hands. the screen in front of them showeda fading sunset, although it was only a little past noon at dhergabar equivalent. a darkship was coming slowly in against the red

sky; in the center of a wire-fenced compounda hundred-foot conveyer hung on antigrav twenty feet from the ground, and beyond, a long metalprefab-shed was spilling light from open doors and windows. "that crowd that was just taken in won't befinished for a couple of hours," a voice was saying. "i don't know how much they'll beable to tell; the psychists say they're all telling about the same stories. what thosestories are, of course, i'm not able to repeat. after the trouble caused by a certain newscommentator who shall be nameless-he's not connected with this news service, i'm happyto say-we're all leaning over backward to keep from breaking paratime police security.

"one thing; shortly after the arrival of thesecond ship from police terminal-and believe me, that ship came in just in the nick oftime!-the dead abzar city which the criminals were using as their main base for this timeline, and from which they launched the air attack against us, was located, and now wordhas come in that it is entirely in the hands of the paratime police. personally, i doubtif a great deal of information has been gotten from any prisoners taken there. the lengthsto which this organization went to keep their own people in ignorance is simply unbelievable." a man appeared for a moment in the lighteddoorway of the shed, then stepped outside. "look!" dalla cried. "there's vall!"

"there's assistant verkan, now," the commentatoragreed. "chief's assistant, would you mind saying a few words, here? i know you're abusy man, sir, but you are also the public hero of home time line, and everybody willbe glad if you say something to them-" tortha karf sealed the door of the apartmentbehind them, then activated one of the robot servants and sent it gliding out of the roomfor drinks. verkan vall took off his belt and holster and laid them aside, then droppedinto a deep chair with a sigh of relief. dalla advanced to the middle of the room and stoodlooking about in surprised delight. "didn't expect this, from the mess outside?"vall asked. "you know, you really are on the paracops, now. nobody off the force knowsabout this hideout of the chief's."

"you'd better find a place like this, too,"tortha karf advised. "from now on, you'll have about as much privacy at that apartmentin turquoise towers as you'd enjoy on the stage of dhergabar opera house." "just what is my new position?" vall asked,hunting his cigarette case out of his tunic. "duplicate chief of paratime police?" the robot came back with three tall glassesand a refrigerated decanter on its top. it stopped in front of tortha karf and slewedaround on its treads; he filled a glass and sent it to the chair where dalla had seatedherself; when she got a drink, she sent it to vall. vall sent if back to tortha karf,who turned it off.

"no; you have the modifier in the wrong place.you're chief of duplicate paratime police. you take the setup you have now, and expandit; continue the present lines of investigation, and be ready to exploit anything new thatcomes up. you won't bother with any of this routine flying-saucer-scare stuff; just handlethe organization business. that'll keep you busy for a long time, i'm afraid." "i notice you slammed down on the first councilmember who began shouting about how you'd wiped out the great paratemporal crime-ring,"vall said. "yes. it isn't wiped out, and it won't bewiped out for a long time. i shall be unspeakably delighted if, when i turn my job over to you,you have it wiped out. and even then, there'll

be a loose end to pick up every now and thentill you retire." "we have council and the management with us,now," vall said. "this was the first secret session of executive council in over two thousandyears. and i thought i'd drop dead when they passed that motion to submit themselves tonarco-hypnosis." "a few councilmen are going to drop dead beforethey can be narco-hypped," dalla prophesied over the rim of her glass. "a few have already. i have a list of abouta dozen of them who have had fatal accidents or committed suicide, or just died or vanishedsince the news of your raid broke. four of them i saw, in the screen, jump up and runout as soon as the news came in, on one-six-five

day. and a lot of other people; our friendyandar yadd's dropped out of sight, for one. you heard what we got out of those servantsof salgath trod's?" "i didn't," dalla said. "what?" "both spies for the organization. they reportedto a woman named farilla, who ran a fortune-telling parlor in the prole district. her occult powersdidn't warn her before we sent a squad of plain-clothes men for her. that was an entirelyillegal arrest, by the way, but it netted us a list of about three hundred prominentpolitical, business and social persons whose servants have been reporting to her. she thoughtshe was working for a telecast gossipist." "that's why we have a new butler, darling,"vall interrupted. "kandagro was reporting

on us." "who did she pass the reports on to?" dallaasked. tortha karf beamed. "she thinks more likea cop every time i talk to her," he told vall. "you better appoint her your special assistant.why, about 1800 every day, some prole would come in, give the recognition sign, and getthe day's accumulation. we only got one of them, a fourteen-year-old girl. we're havingsome trouble getting her deconditioned to a point where she can be hypnotized into talking;by the time we do, they'll have everything closed out, i suppose. what's the latest fromabzar sector? i missed the last report in the rush to get to this council session."

"all stalled. we're still boomeranging thesector, but it's about five billion time-lines deep, and the pattern for the kholghoor andesaron sectors doesn't seem to apply. i think they have a lot of these abzar time linesclose together, and they get from one to another via some terminal on fifth level." tortha karf nodded. it was impossible to makea transposition of less than ten parayears-a hundred thousand time lines. it was impossiblethat the field could build and collapse that soon. "we also think that this abzar time line wasonly used for the croutha-wizard trader operation. nothing we found there was more than a coupleof months old; nothing since the last rainy

season in india, for instance. everythingwas cleaned out on skordran kirv's end." "tell him to try the mississippi, missouriand ohio valleys," tortha karf said. "a lot of those slaves are sure to have been soldto second level khiftan sector." "well, it looks as though our vacation's outthe window for a long time," dalla said resignedly. "why don't you and vall go to my farm, onfifth level sicily," tortha karf suggested. "i own the whole island, on that time line,and you can always be reached in a hurry if anything comes up." "we could have as much fun there as on thedwarma sector," dalla said. "chief, could we take a couple of friends along?"

"well, who?" "zinganna and kostran galth," she replied."they've gotten interested in one another; they're talking about a tentative marriage." "it'll have to be mighty tentative," vallsaid. "kostran galth can't marry a prole." "she won't be a prole very long. i'm goingto adopt her as my sister." tortha karf looked at her sharply. "you sureyou know what you're doing, dalla?" he asked. "of course i'm sure. i know that girl betterthan she knows herself. i narco-hypped her, remember. zinna's the kind of a sister i'vealways wished i'd had." "well, that's all right then. but about thismarriage. she was in love with salgath trod,"

tortha karf said. "now, she's identifyingagent kostran with him-" "she was in love with the kind of man salgathcould have been if he hadn't gotten into this organization filth," dalla replied. "galthis that kind of a man. they'll get along all right." "well, she'll qualify on iq and general psychrating for citizenship. i'll say that. and she's the kind of girl i like to see my boystake up with. like you, dalla. yes, of course; take them along with you. sicily's big enoughthat two couples won't get in each others' way." a phone-robot, its slender metal stem toppedby a metal globe, slid into the room on its

ball-rollers, moving falteringly, like a blindman. it could sense tortha karf's electro-encephalic wave-patterns, but it was having trouble locatingthe source. they all sat motionless, waiting; finally it came over to tortha karf's chairand stopped. he unhooked the phone and held a lengthy whispered conversation with somebodybefore replacing it. "now, there," he explained to dalla. "that'sa sample of why we have to set up this duplicate organization. revolution just broke out atftanna, on third level tsorshay sector; a lot of our people, mostly tourists and students,are cut off from their conveyers by street fighting. going to be a pretty bloody businessgetting them out." he finished his drink and got to his feet. "sit still; i just have tomake a few screen-calls. send the robot for

something to eat, vall. i'll be right back."

Author : indra

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