Thalvan Dras was holding forth, when Vall returned, on one of his favorite preoccupations.

"... Reason I"m taking such an especially active interest in this year"s Arts Exhibitions; I"ve become disturbed at the extent to which so 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. "I yield to no one in my appreciation of outtime art--you all know how devotedly I collect objects of art from all over paratime--but our own artists should endeavor to express their 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 two hours--"

Thalvan Dras had stopped talking and was looking at 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 addressed their host. "I just had a call from Tortha Karf. A few minor details that must be cleared up, 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 forgotten he 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," Vall told him.

"But you simply can"t take a public cab!" The black-bearded n.o.bleman was shocked at such an obscene idea. "I will have a car ready for you in a few minutes."

"Sorry, Dras; we have to hurry. We"ll get a cab on the roof. Good-by, everybody; sorry to have to break away like this. See you all when we get back."

Hadron Dalla watched dejectedly as the green crags and escarpments of the Paratime Building loomed above the city in front of them, and began slipping under the aircab. She felt like a prisoner recaptured at the moment when attempted 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 other factors involved in the disintegration of their previous marriage, most of them of her own contribution. But that had been twenty years ago, she told herself. This time it would be different, if only--

"Really, Vall, he"s never liked me," she went on. "He"s jealous of me, I think. You"re to be his successor, when he retires, and he thinks I"m not a good influence--"

"Oh, rubbish, Dalla! The Chief has always liked you," Vall replied.

"If he didn"t, do you think he"d always be inviting us to that farm of his, on Fifth Level Sicily? It"s just that this job of ours has no end; something"s always turning up, outtime."

The music that the cab had been playing died away. "Paratime Building, just below," it said, in a light feminine voice. "Which landing stage, please?" Vall leaned forward and punched at the b.u.t.tons in front of him. Something in the cab"s electronic brain gave a rapid series of clicks as it shifted from the general Paratime 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 the antigrav shaft, and floated downward; at the end of a hallway, below, Vall opened the door of Tortha Karf"s office and ushered her through ahead of him.

Tortha Karf, inside the semicircle of his desk, was speaking into a recording phone as they approached. He shut off the machine and waved, a cigarette in his hand.

"Come on back and sit down," he invited. "Be with you in a moment."

Then he switched on the phone again and went on talking--something about 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 and including Sector Regional Subchief level," he finished, then hung up the phone and turned to them.

"Sorry about this," he said. "Sit down, if you please. Cigarettes?"

She shook her head and sat down in one of the 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 in an hour and a half," Dalla reminded him.

"Don"t worry about that; if you miss the commercial rocket, our police rockets can give it an hour"s start and pa.s.s it before it gets to Zarabar," 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 Outtime Foodstuffs 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 before Vall did. At first, she was puzzled; then, in spite of herself, she was horrified and angry.

Tortha Karf was explaining to Vall just where and on what paratemporal sector Kharanda was spoken.

"No possibility that this agent, Skordran Kirv, 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 he ordered himself back on duty, had the slaves isolated and the slave dealers arrested, and then transposed to Police Terminal to report. The SecReg Subchief, old Vulthor Tharn, confirmed him in charge at this Esaron Sector plantation, and a.s.signed him a couple of detectives and a psychist."

"When was this?" Vall asked.

"Yesterday. One-Five-Nine Day. About 1500 local time."

"Twenty-three hundred Dhergabar time," Vall commented.

"Yes. And I just found out about it. Came in in the late morning generalized report-digest; very inconspicuous item, no special urgency symbol or anything. Fortunately, one of the report editors spotted it and messaged Police Terminal for a copy of the original report."

"It"s been a long time since we had anything like that," Vall said, studying the glowing tip of his cigarette, his face wearing the curiously withdrawn expression of a conscious memory recall. "Fifty years ago; the time that gang kidnaped some girls from Second Level Triplanetary Empire Sector and sold them 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 Level citizen and four or five ServSec Prole hoodlums, with a stolen fifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitious operation." Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Vall and Tortha Karf were talking cop talk about method of operation and possible size of the gang involved, and why the slaves had been shipped all the way from India to the west coast of North America.

"Always ready sale for slaves on the Esaron Sector," 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 on on the Kholghoor Sector, slaves could be picked up cheaply," Tortha Karf added.

In spite of her determination to boycott the conversation, curiosity began to get the better of her. She had spent a year and a half on the Kholghoor Sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the local priests. There"d been 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 Pa.s.s about three months ago, turned east, and hit the headwaters of the Ganges. Without punching a lot of b.u.t.tons to find out exactly, I"d say they"re halfway to the delta country by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh the Red. A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits to introduce firearms in the Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdings there."

She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what was known as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping--probability of civilization having 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 among whom 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 from the barbarian invaders, the conveyer hidden among the trees, the lurking slavers--

Watch it, Dalla! Don"t let the old scoundrel play on your feelings!

"Well, what do you want me to do, Chief?" Vall was asking.

"Well, I have to know just what this situation"s likely to develop into, and I want to know why Vulthor Tharn"s been sitting on this ever since Skordran Kirv reported it to him--"