Salgath Trod left his aircar at the top landing stage of his apartment building and sent it away to the hangars under robot control; he glanced about him as he went toward the antigrav shaft.  There were a dozen vehicles in the air above; any of them might have followed him from the Paratime Building.  He had no doubt that he had been under constant surveillance from the moment the nameless messenger had delivered the Organization’s ultimatum.  Until he delivered that speech, the next morning, or manifested an intention of refusing to do so, however, he would be safe.  After that—­

Alone in his office, he had reviewed the situation point by point, and then gone back and reviewed it again; the conclusion was inescapable.  The Organization had ordered him to make an accusation which he himself knew to be false; that was the first premise.  The conclusion was that he would be killed as soon as he had made it.  That was the trouble with being mixed up with that kind of people—­you were expendable, and sooner or later, they would decide that they would have to expend you.  And what could you do?

To begin with, an accusation of criminal malfeasance made against a Management or Paratime Commission agency on the floor of Executive Council was tantamount to an accusation made in court; automatically, the accuser became a criminal prosecutor, and would have to repeat his accusation under narco-hypnosis.  Then the whole story would come out, bit by bit, back to its beginning in that first illegal deal in Indo-Turanian opium, diverted from trade with the Khiftan Sector and sold on Second Level Luvarian Empire Sector, and the deals in radioactive poisons, and the slave trade.  He would be able to name few names—­the Organization kept its activities too well compartmented for that—­but he could talk of things that had happened, and when, and where, and on what paratemporal areas.

No.  The Organization wouldn’t let that happen, and the only way it could be prevented would be by the death of Salgath Trod, as soon as he had made his speech.  All the talk of providing him with corroborative evidence was silly; it had been intended to lead him more trustingly to the slaughter.  They’d kill him, of course, in some way that would be calculated to substantiate the story he would no longer be able to repudiate.  The killer, who would be promptly rayed dead by somebody else, would wear a Paratime Police uniform, or something like that.  That was of no importance, however; by then, he’d be beyond caring.

* * * * *

One of his three ServSec Prole servants—­the slim brown girl who was his housekeeper and hostess, and also his mistress—­admitted him to the apartment.  He kissed her perfunctorily and closed the door behind him.

“You’re tired,” she said.  “Let me call Nindrandigro and have him bring you chilled wine; lie down and rest until dinner.”

“No, no; I want brandy.”  He went to a cellaret and got out a decanter and goblet, pouring himself a drink.  “How soon will dinner be ready?”