"I"d suggest one change. Instead of relying on visual signals by the hypno-conditioned Coru-hin-IriG.o.d, send a couple of our men to Careba with midget radios."

Skordran Kirv nodded. "Sure. We can condition Coru-hin-IriG.o.d to accept them as friends and vouch for them at Careba. Our boys can be traders and slave buyers. Careba"s a market town; traders are always welcome. They can have firearms to sell--revolvers and repeating rifles. Any Calera"ll buy any firearm that"s better than the one he"s carrying; they"ll always buy revolvers and repeaters. We can get what we want from Commercial Four-Oh-Seven; we can get riding and pack horses here."

Vall nodded. "And the post overlooking or in radio range of Careba on this time line, and another on PolTerm. For the ambush of Nebu-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 using only equipment appropriate to local culture-levels, forget them entirely. But take that conveyer intact. 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 finished with 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 been listening to things like that for the last eight hours. Some of the stories were even worse than that one."

"Well, I"d like to use a heat-gun on the whole lot of them, turned down to where it"d just fry them medium-rare," Dalla said. "And for whoever"s back of this, take him to Second Level Khiftan and sell him to the priests of Fasif."

"Too bad you"re not coming back from your vacation, instead of starting out. Chief"s a.s.sistant Verkan," Skordran Kirv said. "This is too big for me to handle alone, and I"d sooner work under you than anybody else Chief Tortha sends in."

"Vall!" Dalla cried in indignation. "You"re not going to just report on this and then walk away from it, are you?"

"But, darling," Vall replied, in what he hoped was 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 Inst.i.tute that you won"t want to drop--"

"Vall, you know perfectly well that I wouldn"t be 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, but we"ll be together."

"Yes, of course. I want to do something to smash 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, as soon as I"m reasonably well filled in on this, and report to Tortha Karf and tell him I"ve taken charge. You can stay here and help with these interrogations; I"ll be back in about ten hours. Then, we can go to Kholghoor East India SecReg HQ to talk to Ranthar Jard. We may be able to get something that"ll help us on that end--"

"You may be able to have your vacation before too 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"ll have them."

"There"s an Indo-Turanian Sector parable about a snake charmer who thought he was picking up his snake and found that he had hold of an elephant"s tail," Vall said. "That might be a good thing to bear in mind, till we find out just what we have picked up."

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

Coming down a hallway on the hundred and seventh floor of the Management wing of the Paratime Building, Yandar Yadd paused to admire, in the green mirror of the gla.s.soid 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 not instantly recognizable as a weapon; it looked more like a portable radio, which indeed it was. It was, none the less, a potent weapon. One flick of his finger could connect that radio with one at Tri-Planet News Service, and within the hour anything he said into it would be heard by all Terra, Mars and Venus. In consequence, there existed around the Paratime Building a marked and understandable reluctance to antagonize Yandar Yadd.

He glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes short 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 Claims Bureau, and he strolled in, walking through the waiting room and into the claims-presentation office. At once, he stiffened like a bird dog at point.

Sphabron Larv, one of his young legmen, was in altercation across the counter-desk with Varkar Klav, the Deputy Claims Agent on duty at the time. Varkar was trying to be icily dignified; Sphabron Larv"s black hair was in disarray and his face was suffused with anger. He was pounding with his fist on the plastic counter-top.

"You have to!" he was yelling in the older man"s face. "That"s a public doc.u.ment, and I have a right to see it. You want me to go into Tribunes" Court and get an order? If I do, there"ll be a Question in Council about why I had to, before the day"s out!"

"What"s the matter, Larv?" Yandar Yadd asked lazily. "He trying to hold something out on you?"

Sphabron Larv turned; his eyes lit happily when he saw his boss, and then his anger returned.

"I want to see a copy of an indemnity claim that was filed this morning," he said. "Varkar, here, won"t show it to me. What does he think this is, a Fourth Level dictatorship?"

"What kind of a claim, now?" Yandar Yadd addressed Larv, ignoring Varkar Klav.

"Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs--one of the Thalvan Interests companies--just claimed forty thousand P.E.U. for a hundred slaves bought 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 transposed the lot of them to Police Terminal."

Yandar Yadd still held his affectation of sleepy indolence.

"Now why would the Paracops do that, I wonder? Slavery"s an established local practice on Esaron Sector; our people have to buy slaves if they want to run a plantation."

"I know that." Sphabron Larv replied. "That"s what I want to find out.

There must be something wrong, either with the slaves, or the treatment our people were giving them, or the Paratime Police, and I want to find out which."

"To tell the truth, Larv, so do I." Yandar Yadd said. He turned to the man behind the counter. "Varkar, do we see that claim, or do I make a story out of your refusal to show it?" he asked.

"The Paratime Police asked me to keep this confidential," Varkar Klav said. "Publicity would seriously hamper an important police investigation."

Yandar Yadd made an impolite noise. "How do I 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 Line Management are all hired employees of the Home Time Line public. The public has a right to 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-record gag worked on me when I was about Larv"s age, fifty years ago. Anything I get, I put on the air or not at my own discretion."

"All right," Varkar Klav surrendered, pointing to a reading screen and twiddling a k.n.o.b. "But when you read it, I hope you have enough discretion to keep quiet about it."

The screen lit, and Yandar Yadd automatically pressed a b.u.t.ton for a photo-copy. The two newsmen stared for a moment, and then even Yandar Yadd"s sh.e.l.l of drowsy negligence cracked and fell from him. His hand brushed the switch as he s.n.a.t.c.hed the hand-phone from his belt.

"Marva!" he barked, before the girl at the news 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 afternoon of One-Five-Nine Day, on a time line of the Third Level Esaron Sector, when Field Agent Skordran Kirv, Paratime Police, discovered, at an orange plantation of Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs--"

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 teleview screen across the room, tuned to a pickup behind the Speaker"s chair in the Executive Council Chamber ten stories below. The two thousand seats had been almost all empty at 1000, 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-plated robot pages gliding back and forth, receiving and delivering messages. One had just slid up to the seat of Councilman Hasthor Flan, and Hasthor was speaking urgently into the recorder mouthpiece. Another message for him, he supposed; he"d gotten at least a score such 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 Opposition he 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 that fellow"s arguments to shreds in a hundred words--but he didn"t dare. The Management was taking exactly the line Salgath Trod wanted the whole Council to take: treat this affair as an isolated and extraordinary occurrence, find a couple of convenient scapegoats, cobble up some explanation acceptable to the public, and forget it. He wondered what had happened to 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 thought it would be the message he had seen Hasthor Fan recording. Then he realized that it was the buzzer for the private door, which could only be operated by someone with a special ident.i.ty sign. He pressed a b.u.t.ton and unlocked the door.

The young man in the loose wrap-around tunic who entered was a stranger. At least, his face and his voice were strange, but voices could 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 like that. Of course, his tunic bulged slightly under the left armpit, but even the most respectable tunics showed occasional weapon-bulges.

"Good afternoon, councilman," the newcomer said, sitting down across the desk from Salgath Trod. "I was just talking to ... somebody we both know."

Salgath Trod offered cigarettes, lighted his visitor"s and then his own.

"What does Our Mutual Friend think about all this?" he asked, gesturing toward the screen.

"Our Mutual Friend isn"t at all happy about it."

"You think, perhaps, that I"m bursting into wild huzzas?" Salgath Trod asked. "If I were to act as everybody expects me to, I"d be down there on the floor, now, clawing into the Management tooth and nail. All my adherents are wondering why I"m not. So are all my opponents, and before long one of them is going to guess the reason."