case, Vall. That was when Ibegan to think you'd really make a cop. One renegade First Levelcitizen and four or five ServSec Prole hoodlums, with a stolenfifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitiousoperation." Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Valland Tortha Karf were talking cop talk about method of operation andpossible size of the gang involved, and why the slaves had beenshipped 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, thatouttimers 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, curiositybegan to get the better of her. She had spent a year and a half on theKholghoor Sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the localpriests. There'd been nothing to it--the prophecies weren'tprecognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren'tpsychokinesis, 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 ofbuttons to find out exactly, I'd say they're halfway to the deltacountry by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh theRed. A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits tointroduce firearms in the Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdingsthere."
She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what wasknown as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping--probability ofcivilization having developed late on the Indian subcontinent, withthe rest of the world, including Europe, in Stone Age savagery orearly Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among whom shehad once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical,animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine theroads jammed with fugitives from the barbarian invaders, the conveyerhidden 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 developinto, 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 dueto 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 youand Dalla transpose from here to Police Terminal, and go to NovilanEquivalent, and give this a quick look-over and report to me, and thenrocket to Zarabar Equivalent and go on with your trip to the DwarmaSector. It may delay you eight or ten hours, but--"
"Closer twenty-four," Vall said. "I'd have to transpose to thisplantation, 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 isolatedincident, it can be handled in a routine manner, but I'm afraid it'snot. It has all the marks of a large-scale operation, and if this is amatter of mass kidnapings from one sector and transpositions toanother, you can see what a threat this is to the Paratime Secret."
"Moral considerations entirely aside," Vall said. "We don't need todiscuss them; they're too obvious."
She nodded. For over twelve millennia, the people of her race andVall's and Tortha Karf's had been existing as parasites on all theinnumerable other worlds of alternate probability on the lateraldimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their hosts, and trynever to reveal their existence.
"We could do that, couldn't we, Vall?" she asked, angry at herself nowfor giving in. "And if you want to question these slaves, I speakKharanda, and I know how they think. And I'm a qualified and licensednarco-hypnotic technician."
"Well, that's splendid, Dalla!" Tortha Karf enthused. "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, doyou 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 the hypno-mech machines installed in the rocket; Dalla andI can take our language lessons on the way, and be ready to go to workas soon as we land."
"Good idea," Tortha Karf approved. "I'll order that done, right away.Now--"
Oddly enough, she wasn't feeling so angry, now that she had committedherself and Vall. Come to think of it, she had never been on PoliceTerminal Time Line; very few people, outside the Paratime Police, everhad. And, she had always wanted to learn more about Vall's work, andparticipate in it with him. And if she'd made him refuse, it wouldhave been something ugly between them all the time they would be onthe Dwarma Sector. But this way--
* * * * *
The big circular conveyer room was crowded, as it had been everyminute of every day for the past ten thousand years. At the greatcircular desk in the center, departing or returning police officerswere checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robotclerks, or talking to human attendants. Some were in the regulationgreen uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; morewere in outtime costumes from all over paratime. Fringed robes andcloth-of-gold sashes and conical caps from the Second Level KhiftanSector; Fourth Level Proto-Aryan mail and helmets; the short tunicsand kilts of Fourth Level Alexandrian-Roman Sector; the Zarkanthaloincloth and felt cap and daggers; there were priestly vestmentsstiff with gold, and military uniforms; there were trousers andjackboots and bare legs; blasters, and swords, and pistols, and bowsand 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, thevacation had already begun. He was glad; for a while, he had beenafraid that she would be unhappy about it. He guided her through thecrowd to the desk, spoke for a while to one of the human attendants,and found out which was their conveyer. It was a fixed-destinationshuttler, operative only between Home Time Line and Police Terminal,from which most of the Paratime Police operations were routed. He putDall in through the sliding door, followed, and closed it behind him,locking it. Then, before he closed the starting switch, he drew apistollike weapon and checked it.
In theory, the Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal transposition field wasuninfluenced by material objects outside it. In practice, however,such objects occasionally intruded, and sometimes they were alive andhostile. The last time he had been in this conveyer room, he had seena quartet of returning officers emerge from a conveyer dome dragginga dead lion by the tail. The sigma-ray needler, which he carried, wasthe only weapon which could be used, under the circumstances. It hadno effect whatever on any material structure and could be used insidean activated conveyer without deranging the conductor-mesh, as, say, abullet or the vibration of an ultrasonic paralyzer would do, and itwas instantly fatal to anything having a central nervous system. Itwas a good weapon to use outtime for that reason, also; even on themost civilized time-line, the most elaborate autopsy would reveal nospecific cause of death.
"What's the Esaron Sector like?" Dalla asked, as the conveyer domearound them coruscated with shifting light and vanished.
"Third Level; probability of abortive attempt to colonize this planetfrom Mars about a hundred thousand years ago," he said. "A fewsurvivors--a shipload or so--were left to shift for themselves whilethe parent civilization on Mars died out. They lost all vestiges oftheir original Mart
ian culture, even memory of their extraterrestrialorigin. About fifteen hundred to two thousand years ago, a reasonablyhigh electrochemical civilization developed and they began workingwith nuclear energy and developed reaction-drive spaceships. Butthey'd concentrated so on the inorganic sciences, and so far neglectedthe 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-vomit fever?" Dalla asked.
"About what you could expect. The first--and only--ship to returnbrought it back to Terra. Of course, nobody knew what it was, andbefore the
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