space travel was taboo; so was nuclear and even electric power.  For some reason, steam power and gunpowder weren’t offensive to the gods.  They went back to a low-order steam-power, black-powder, culture, and haven’t gotten beyond that to this day.  The relatively civilized regions are on the east coast of Asia and the west coast of North America; civilized race more or less Caucasian.  Political organization just barely above the tribal level—­thousands of petty kingdoms and republics and principalities and feudal holdings and robbers’ roosts.  The principal industries are brigandage, piracy, slave-raiding, cattle-rustling and intercommunal warfare.  They have a few ramshackle steam railways, and some steamboats on the rivers.  We sell them coal and manufactured goods, mostly in exchange for foodstuffs and tobacco.  Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs has the sector franchise.  That’s one of the companies Thalvan Dras gets his money from.”

They had run down through the civilized Second and Third Levels and were leaving the Fourth behind and entering the Fifth, existing in the probability of a world without human population.  Once in a while, around them, they caught brief flashes of buildings and rocketports and spaceports and landing stages, as the conveyer took them through narrow paratime belts on which their own civilization had established outposts—­Fifth Level Commercial, Fifth Level Passenger, Industrial Sector, Service Sector.

Finally the conveyer dome around them shimmered into visibility and materialized; when they emerged, there were policemen in green uniforms who entered to search the dome with drawn needlers to make sure they had picked up nothing dangerous on the way.  The room outside was similar to the one they had left on Home Time Line, even to the shifting, noisy crowd in incongruously-mixed costumes.

* * * * *

The rocketport was a ten minutes’ trip by aircar from the conveyer head; when they boarded the stubby-winged strato-rocket, Vall saw that two of the passenger-seats had square metal cabinets bolted in place behind them and blue plastic helmets on swinging arms mounted above them.

“Everything’s set up,” the pilot told them.  “Dr. Hadron, you sit on the left; that cabinet’s loaded with language tape for Acalan.  Yours is loaded with a tape of Kharanda; that’s the Fourth Level Kholghoor language you wanted, Chief’s Assistant.  Shall I help you get fixed in your seats?”

“Yes, if you please.  Here, Dalla, I’ll fix that for you.”

Dalla was already asleep when the pilot was adjusting his helmet and giving him his injection.  He never felt the rocket tilt into firing position, and while he slept, the Kharands language, with all its vocabulary and grammar, became part of his subconscious knowledge, needing only the mental pronunciation of a trigger-symbol to bring it into consciousness.  The pilot was already unfastening and raising his helmet when he opened his eyes.  Dalla, beside him, was sipping a cup of spiced wine.