"Certainly, sir," Verkan Vall replied. "In a primitive culture, things like this would be a.s.signed supernatural explanations, and imbedded in the locally accepted religion. But this culture, while nominally religious, is highly rationalistic in practice. Typical lag-effect, characteristic of all expanding cultures. And this Europo-American Sector really has an expanding culture. A hundred and fifty years ago, the inhabitants of this particular time-line didn"t even know how to apply steam power; now they"ve begun to release nuclear energy, in a few crude forms."

Tortha Karf whistled, softly. "That"s quite a jump. There"s a sector that"ll be in for trouble, in the next few centuries."

"That is realized, locally, sir." Verkan Vall concentrated on relighting his pipe, for a moment, then continued: "I would predict s.p.a.ce-travel on that sector within the next century. Maybe the next half-century, at least to the Moon. And the art of taxidermy is very highly developed. Now, suppose some farmer shoots that thing; what would he do with it, sir?"

Tortha Karf grunted. "Nice logic, Vall. On a most uncomfortable possibility. He"d have it mounted, and it"d be put in a museum, somewhere. And as soon as the first s.p.a.ceship reaches Venus, and they find those things in a wild state, they"ll have the mounted specimen identified."

"Exactly. And then, instead of beating their brains about _where_ their specimen came from, they"ll begin asking _when_ it came from.

They"re quite capable of such reasoning, even now."

"A hundred years isn"t a particularly long time," Tortha Karf considered. "I"ll be retired, then, but you"ll have my job, and it"ll be your headache. You"d better get this cleaned up, now, while it can be handled. What are you going to do?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"I"m not sure, now, sir. I want a hypno-mech indoctrination, first."

Verkan Vall gestured toward the communicator on the desk. "May I?"

he asked.

"Certainly." Tortha Karf slid the instrument across the desk.

"Anything you want."

"Thank you, sir." Verkan Vall snapped on the code-index, found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. "Special Chief"s a.s.sistant Verkan Vall," he identified himself. "Speaking from office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police. I want a complete hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds, emphasis on wild state, special emphasis domesticated nighthounds reverted to wild state in terrestrial surroundings, extra-special emphasis hunting techniques applicable to same. The word "nighthound" will do for trigger-symbol." He turned to Tortha Karf. "Can I take it here?"

Tortha Karf nodded, pointing to a row of booths along the far wall of the office.

"Make set-up for wired transmission; I"ll take it here."

"Very well, sir; in fifteen minutes," a voice replied out of the communicator.

Verkan Vall slid the communicator back. "By the way, sir; I had a hitchhiker, on the way back. Carried him about a hundred or so parayears; picked him up about three hundred parayears after leaving my other-line terminal. Nasty-looking fellow, in a black uniform; looked like one of these private-army storm troopers you find all through that sector. Armed, and hostile. I thought I"d have to ray him, but he blundered outside the field almost at once. I have a record, if you"d care to see it."

"Yes, put it on," Tortha Karf gestured toward the solidograph-projector.

"It"s set for miniature reproduction here on the desk; that be all right?"

Verkan Vall nodded, getting out the film and loading it into the projector. When he pressed a b.u.t.ton, a dome of radiance appeared on the desk top; two feet in width and a foot in height. In the middle of this appeared a small solidograph image of the interior of the conveyor, showing the desk, and the control board, and the figure of Verkan Vall seated at it. The little figure of the storm trooper appeared, pistol in hand. The little Verkan Vall s.n.a.t.c.hed up his tiny needler; the storm trooper moved into one side of the dome and vanished.

Verkan Vall flipped a switch and cut out the image.

"Yes. I don"t know what causes that, but it happens, now and then,"

Tortha Karf said. "Usually at the beginning of a transposition. I remember, when I was just a kid, about a hundred and fifty years ago--a hundred and thirty-nine, to be exact--I picked up a fellow on the Fourth Level, just about where you"re operating, and dragged him a couple of hundred parayears. I went back to find him and return him to his own time-line, but before I could locate him, he"d been arrested by the local authorities as a suspicious character, and got himself shot trying to escape. I felt badly about that, but--" Tortha Karf shrugged.

"Anything else happen on the trip?"

"I ran through a belt of intermittent nucleonic bombing on the Second Level." Verkan Vall mentioned an approximate paratime location.

"Aaagh! That Khiftan civilization--by courtesy so called!" Tortha Karf pulled a wry face. "I suppose the intra-family enmities of the Hvadka Dynasty have reached critical ma.s.s again. They"ll fool around till they blast themselves back to the stone age."

"Intellectually, they"re about there, now. I had to operate in that sector, once--Oh, yes, another thing, sir. This rifle." Verkan Vall picked it up, emptied the magazine, and handed it to his superior.

"The supplies office slipped up on this; it"s not appropriate to my line of operation. It"s a lovely rifle, but it"s about two hundred percent in advance of existing arms design on my line. It excited the curiosity of a couple of police officers and a game-protector, who should be familiar with the weapons of their own time-line. I evaded by disclaiming ownership or intimate knowledge, and they seemed satisfied, but it worried me."

"Yes. That was made in our duplicating shops, here in Dhergabar." Tortha Karf carried it to a photographic bench, behind his desk. "I"ll have it checked, while you"re taking your hypno-mech. Want to exchange it for something authentic?"

"Why, no, sir. It"s been identified to me, and I"d excite less suspicion with it than I would if I abandoned it and mysteriously acquired another rifle. I just wanted a check, and Supplies warned to be more careful in future."

Tortha Karf nodded approvingly. The young Mavrad of Nerros was thinking as a paratimer should.

"What"s the designation of your line, again?"

Verkan Vall told him. It was a short numerical term of six places, but it expressed a number of the order of ten to the fortieth power, exact to the last digit. Tortha Karf repeated it into his stenomemograph, with explanatory comment.

"There seems to be quite a few things going wrong, in that area,"

he said. "Let"s see, now."

He punched the designation on a keyboard; instantly, it appeared on a translucent screen in front of him. He punched another combination, and, at the top of the screen, under the number, there appeared:

EVENTS, PAST ELAPSED FIVE YEARS.

He punched again; below this line appeared the sub-heading:

EVENTS INVOLVING PARATIME TRANSPOSITION.

Another code-combination added a third line:

(ATTRACTING PUBLIC NOTICE AMONG INHABITANTS.)

He pressed the "start"-b.u.t.ton; the headings vanished, to be replaced by page after page of print, succeeding one another on the screen as the two men read. They told strange and apparently disconnected stories--of unexplained fires and explosions; of people vanishing without trace; of unaccountable disasters to aircraft. There were many stories of an epidemic of mysterious disk-shaped objects seen in the sky, singly or in numbers. To each account was appended one or more reference-numbers.

Sometimes Tortha Karf or Verkan Vall would punch one of these, and read, on an adjoining screen, the explanatory matter referred to.

Finally Tortha Karf leaned back and lit a fresh cigarette.

"Yes, indeed, Vall; very definitely we will have to take action in the matter of the runaway nighthound of the late Gavran Sarn," he said.

"I"d forgotten that that was the time-line onto which the _Ardrath_ expedition launched those antigrav disks. If this extraterrestrial monstrosity turns up, on the heels of that "Flying Saucer" business, everybody above the order of intelligence of a cretin will suspect some connection."

"What really happened, in the _Ardrath_ matter?" Verkan Vall inquired.

"I was on the Third Level, on that Luvarian Empire operation, at the time."

"That"s right; you missed that. Well, it was one of these joint-operation things. The Paratime Commission and the s.p.a.ce Patrol were experimenting with a new technique for throwing a s.p.a.ceship into paratime. They used the cruiser _Ardrath_, Kalzarn Jann commanding. Went into s.p.a.ce about halfway to the Moon and took up orbit, keeping on the sunlit side of the planet to avoid being observed. That was all right.

But then, Captain Kalzarn ordered away a flight of antigrav disks, fully manned, to take pictures, and finally authorized a landing in the western mountain range, Northern Continent, Minor Land-Ma.s.s. That"s when the trouble started."

He flipped the run-back switch, till he had recovered the page he wanted. Verkan Vall read of a Fourth Level aviator, in his little airscrew-drive craft, sighting nine high-flying saucerlike objects.

"That was how it began," Tortha Karf told him. "Before long, as other incidents of the same sort occurred, our people on that line began sending back to know what was going on. Naturally, from the different descriptions of these "saucers", they recognized the objects as antigrav landing-disks from a s.p.a.ceship. So I went to the Commission and raised atomic blazes about it, and the _Ardrath_ was ordered to confine operations to the lower areas of the Fifth Level. Then our people on that time-line went to work with corrective action. Here."

He wiped the screen and then began punching combinations. Page after page appeared, bearing accounts of people who had claimed to have seen the mysterious disks, and each report was more fantastic than the last.

"The standard smother-out technique," Verkan Vall grinned. "I only heard a little talk about the "Flying Saucers", and all of that was in joke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ten others, palpably false, parallel to it--Wasn"t that the time-line the Tharmax Trading Corporation almost lost their paratime license on?"

"That"s right; it was! They bought up all the cigarettes, and caused a conspicuous shortage, after Fourth Level cigarettes had been introduced on this line and had become popular. They should have spread their purchases over a number of lines, and kept them within the local supply-demand frame. And they also got into trouble with the local government for selling unrationed petrol and automobile tires. We had to send in a special-operations group, and they came closer to having to engage in out-time local politics than I care to think of." Tortha Karf quoted a line from a currently popular song about the sorrows of a policeman"s life. "We"re jugglers, Vall; trying to keep our traders and sociological observers and tourists and plain idiots like the late Gavran Sarn out of trouble; trying to prevent panics and disturbances and dislocations of local economy as a result of our operations; trying to keep out of out-time politics--and, at all times, at all costs and hazards, by all means, guarding the secret of paratime transposition.

Sometimes I wish Ghaldron Karf and Hesthor Ghrom had strangled in their cradles!"