“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 Assistant 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 Institute 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.”

[Illustration:]

* * * * *

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 glassoid 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.