Kirv, eight thousand odd miles away, replied. "We're taking in a
couple of ships; we're going to make a survey all up the coast. There
are a lot of other sectors where slaves can be sold in this area."
In the outside viewscreen, tuned to a slowly rotating pickup on the
top of a tower spatially equivalent with a room in a tall building on
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, coming into position. Finally, they
were all placed; he reported the fact to Skordran Kirv and then picked
up a hand-phone.
"Everybody ready for transposition?" he called. "On my count. Thirty
seconds ... Twenty seconds ... Fifteen seconds ... Five seconds ...
Four seconds ... Three seconds ... Two seconds ... One second, _out!_"
All the screens went gray. The inside of the dome passed into another
space-time continuum, even into another kind of space-time. The
transposition would take half an hour; that seemed to be the time
needed to build up and collapse the transposition field, regardless of
the paratemporal distance covered. The dome above and around them
vanished; the bare, tower-forested, building-dotted world of Police
Terminal vanished, too, into the uniform green of the uninhabited
Fifth Level. A planet could take pretty good care of itself, he
thought, if people would only leave it alone. Then he 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 under air attack--there was almost never a paratemporal
transposition which did not run through some scene of battle.
He unbuckled his belt and took off his boots and tunic; all around
him, the others were doing the same. Sleep-gas didn't have to be
breathed; it could enter the nervous system by any orifice or lesion,
even a pore or a scratch. A spacesuit was the only protection. One of
the detectives helped him on with his metal and plastic armor; before
sealing his gauntlets, he reciprocated the assistance, then checked
the needler and blaster and the long batonlike ultrasonic paralyzer on
his belt and made sure that the radio and sound-phones in his helmet
were working. He hoped that the frantic efforts to gather several
thousand spacesuits onto Police Terminal from the Industrial and
Commercial and Interplanetary Sectors hadn't started rumors which had
gotten to the ears of some of the Organization's ubiquitous agents.
* * * * *
The country below was already turning to the parched browns and
yellows of the Abzar Sector. There was not another of the conveyers in
sight, but electronic and mechanical lag in the individual controls
and even the distance-difference between them and the central radio
control would have prevented them from going into transposition at the
same fractional microsecond. The recon-details began piling into their
cars. Then the red light overhead winked to green, and the dome
flickered and solidified into 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 of the
underview screen widened as the mesh under the conveyer irised open
around the pickup.
Below, the Organization base--big rectangles of fenced slave pens,
with metal barracks inside; the huge circle of the Kholghoor Sector
conveyer-head building, and a smaller structure that must house
conveyers to other Abzar Sector time lines; the work-shops and living
quarters and hangars and warehouses and docks--was wreathed in
white-green mist. The ring of conveyers at three thousand feet were
opening and spewing out aircars and airboats, farther away, the
greater ring of heavy conveyers were unloading armored and shielded
combat-craft. An aircar which must have been above the reach of 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, and then it blew apart. The three
police cars turned and came back more slowly. The three-thousand-ton
passenger ship which had been hastily fitted with armament was
circling about; the great dock conveyer which had brought it was gone,
transposed back to Police Terminal to pick up another ship.
He recorded a message announcing the arrival of the task-force, pulled
out the tape and sealed it in a capsule, and put the capsule in a mesh
message ball, attaching it to a couple of wires and flipping a switch.
The ball flashed and vanished, leaving the wires cleanly sheared off.
When it got back to Police Terminal, half an hour later, it would
rematerialize, eject a parachute, and turn on a whistle to call
attention to itself. Then he sealed on his helmet, climbed into an
aircar, and turned on his helmet-radio to speak to the driver. The car
lifted a few inches, floated out an open port, and dived downward.
* * * * *
[Illustration:]
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 Kharanda slaves. A couple of Paratime Police officers were
towing a tank of sleep-gas around on an antigrav-lifter, maintaining
the proper concentration in case any more came in. At the smaller
conveyer building, there were no conveyers, only a number of red-lined
fifty-foot circles around a central two-hundred-foot circle. The
Organization personnel there had been 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 slaves for 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
cleared and 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 stacks
of cases containing muskets. These must have all come from some
low-order handcraft time line. Then there were swords and hatchets
and knives that had been made on Industrial Sector--the Organization
must be getting them through some legitimate trading company--and
mirrors 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 time line; 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 giving
them no idea of the source of the sound. One of the policemen pointed,
and Vall's eyes followed his arm. The ship that had been transposed in
in the big conveyer was falling, blown in 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 bow as a heavy-duty blaster was activated. There was another
explosion, overhead; they all ran for shelter as Vall's
command-conveyer disintegrated into falling scrap-metal. At once, all
the other conveyers which were on antigrav began flashing and
vanishing. That was the right, the only, thing to do, he knew. But it
was leaving him and his men isolated and under attack.
* * * * *
"So that was it," Dalgroth Sorn, the Paratime Commissioner 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," Dalgroth Sorn scolded. He was at
least a century Tortha Karf's senior; he had the face of an elderly
and sore-toothed lion. "You wanted to keep this prisoner under wraps
till you could mind-pump him, 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 turned a
knob to bring the sound volume up.
"Well. I'm raising this point," a member from the Management seats in
the center was saying, "because these earlier charges of illegal
arrest and illegal detention are part and parcel with the charges
growing out of the telecast last evening."
"Well, that telecast was a fake; that's been established," somebody on
the left heckled.
"Councilman Salgath's confession on the evening of One-Six-Two Day
wasn't a fake, the Management supporter, Nanthav Skov, retorted.
"Well, then why was it necessary to fake the second one?"
A light began winking on the big panel in front of the Speaker, Asthar
Varn.
"I recognize Councilman Hasthor Flan," Asthar said.
"I believe I can construct a theory that will explain that," Hasthor
Flan said. "I suggest that when the Paratime Police were questioning
Councilman Salgath under narco-hypnosis, he made statements
incriminating either the Paratime Police as a whole or some member of
the Paratime Police whom Tortha Karf had to protect--say somebody like
Assistant Verkan. So they just killed him, and made up this
impostor--"
Tortha Karf began, alphabetically, to blaspheme every god he had ever
heard of. He had only gotten as far as a Fourth Level deity named
Allah 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 special urgency! It has been
requested that the news telecast screen be activated at once, with
playback to 1107. An important bulletin has just come in from
Nagorabar, Home Time Line, on the Indian subcontinent--"
"You can stop swearing, now, Karf," Dalgroth Sorn 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 full
length, her elbows propped and her chin in her hands. The screen in
front of them showed a fading sunset, although it was only a little
past noon at Dhergabar Equivalent. A dark ship was coming slowly in
against the red sky; in the center of a wire-fenced compound a
hundred-foot conveyer hung on antigrav twenty feet from the ground,
and beyond, a long metal prefab-shed was spilling light from open
doors and windows.
"That crowd that was just taken in won't be finished for a couple of
hours," a voice was saying. "I don't know how much they'll be able to
tell; the psychists say they're all telling about the same stories.
What those stories are, of course, I'm not able to repeat. After the
trouble caused by a certain news commentator who shall be
nameless--he's not connected with this news service, I'm happy to
say--we're all leaning over backward to keep from breaking Paratime
Police security.
"One thing; shortly after the arrival of the second ship from Police
Terminal--and believe me, that ship came in just in the nick of
time!--the dead Abzar city which the criminals were using as their
main base for this time line, and from which they launched the air
attack against us, was located, and now word has come in that it is
entirely in the hands of the Paratime Police. Personally, I doubt if a
great deal of information has been gotten from any prisoners taken
there. The lengths to which this Organization went to keep their own
people in ignorance is simply unbelievable."
A man appeared for a moment in the lighted doorway of the shed, then
stepped outside.
"Look!" Dalla cried. "There's Vall!"
"There's Assistant Verkan, now," the commentator agreed. "Chief's
Assistant, would you mind saying a few words, here? I know you're a
busy man, sir, but you are also the public hero of Home Time Line, and
everybody will be glad if you say something to them--"
* * * * *
Tortha Karf sealed the door of the apartment behind them, then
activated one of the robot servants and sent it gliding out of the
room for drinks. Verkan Vall took off his belt and holster and laid
them aside, then dropped into a deep chair with a sigh of relief.
Dalla advanced to the middle of the room and stood looking 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 knows about
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 apartment in
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 glasses and a refrigerated
decanter on its top. It stopped in front of Tortha Karf and slewed
around on its treads; he filled a glass and sent it to the chair where
Dalla had seated herself; 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 expand
it; continue the present lines of investigation, and be ready to
exploit anything new that comes up. You won't bother with any of this
routine flying-saucer-scare stuff; just handle the Organization
business. That'll keep you busy for a long time, I'm afraid."
"I notice you slammed down on the first Council member 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 be wiped 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 then till 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 thousand
years. And I thought I'd drop dead when they passed that motion to
submit themselves to narco-hypnosis."
"A few Councilmen are going to drop dead before they can be
narco-hypped," Dalla prophesied over the rim of her glass.
"A few have already. I have a list of about a dozen of them who have
had fatal accidents or committed suicide, or just died or vanished
since the news of your raid broke. Four of them I saw, in the screen,
jump up and run out as soon as the news came in, on One-Six-Five Day.
And a lot of other people; our friend Yandar Yadd's dropped out of
sight, for one. You heard what we got out of those servants of Salgath
Trod's?"
"I didn't," Dalla said. "What?"
"Both spies for the Organization. They reported to a woman named
Farilla, who ran a fortune-telling parlor in the Prole district. Her
occult powers didn't warn her before we sent a squad of plain-clothes
men for her. That was an entirely illegal arrest, by the way, but it
netted us a list of about three hundred prominent political, business
and social persons whose servants have been reporting to her. She
thought she 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?" Dalla asked.
Tortha Karf beamed. "She thinks more like a 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 get the day's accumulation. We only got one of
them, a fourteen-year-old girl. We're having some 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 from Abzar Sector? I missed the last report in the rush to
get to this Council session."
"All stalled. We're still boomeranging the sector, but it's about five
billion time-lines deep, and the pattern for the Kholghoor and Esaron
Sectors doesn't seem to apply. I think they have a lot of these Abzar
time lines close together, and they get from one to another via some
terminal on Fifth Level."
Tortha Karf nodded. It was impossible to make a transposition of less
than ten parayears--a hundred thousand time lines. It was impossible
that the field could build and collapse that soon.
"We also think that this Abzar time line was only used for the
Croutha-Wizard Trader operation. Nothing we found there was more than
a couple of months old; nothing since the last rainy season in India,
for instance. Everything was cleaned out on Skordran Kirv's end."
"Tell him to try the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Valleys," Tortha
Karf said. "A lot of those slaves are sure to have been sold to Second
Level Khiftan Sector."
"Well, it looks as though our vacation's out the window for a long
time," Dalla said resignedly.
"Why don't you and Vall go to my farm, on Fifth 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 the Dwarma 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," Vall said. "Kostran Galth can't
marry a Prole."
"She won't be a Prole very long. I'm going to adopt her as my sister."
Tortha Karf looked at her sharply. "You sure you know what you're
doing, Dalla?" he asked.
"Of course I'm sure. I know that girl better than she knows herself. I
narco-hypped her, remember. Zinna's the kind of a sister I've always
wished I'd had."
"Well, that's all right then. But about this marriage. She was in love
with Salgath Trod," Tortha Karf said. "Now, she's identifying Agent
Kostran with him--"
"She was in love with the kind of man Salgath could have been if he
hadn't gotten into this Organization filth," Dalla replied. "Galth is
that kind of a man. They'll get along all right."
"Well, she'll qualify on IQ and general psych rating for Citizenship.
I'll say that. And she's the kind of girl I like to see my boys take
up with. Like you, Dalla. Yes, of course; take them along with you.
Sicily's big enough that two couples won't get in each others' way."
A phone-robot, its slender metal stem topped by a metal globe, slid
into the room on its ball-rollers, moving falteringly, like a blind
man. It could sense Tortha Karf's electro-encephalic wave-patterns,
but it was having trouble locating the source. They all sat
motionless, waiting; finally it came over to Tortha Karf's chair and
stopped. He unhooked the phone and held a lengthy whispered
conversation with somebody before replacing it.
"Now, there," he explained to Dalla. "That's a sample of why we have
to set up this duplicate organization. Revolution just broke out at
Ftanna, 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 business getting them out." He
finished his drink and got to his feet. "Sit still; I just have to
make a few screen-calls. Send the robot for something to eat, Vall.
I'll be right back."
THE END