“The prisoner’s still under the drug,” the Chief said.  “He’ll be out for a couple of hours; the psych-techs want to let him come out of it naturally and sleep naturally for a while before they give him a hypno.  He’s not a ServSec Prole; uncircumcised, never had any syntho-enzyme shots or immunizations, and none of the longevity operations or grafts.  Same thing for the two stiffs.  And no identity records on any of the three.”

“The men at Salgath’s apartment say that his housekeeper and his two servants checked out through the house conveyer for ServSec One-Six-Five, at about 1830,” Vall said.  “There’s a Prole entertainment center on that time line.  I suppose Salgath gave them the evening off before he called you.”

Tortha Karf nodded.  “I suppose you ordered them picked up.  The news services are going wild about this.  I had to make a preliminary statement, to the effect that Salgath Trod was not arrested, came to Headquarters of his own volition, and is under no restraint whatever.”

“Except, of course, a slight case of rigor mortis,” Dalla added.  “Did you mention that, Chief?”

“No, I didn’t.”  Tortha Karf looked as though he had quinine in his mouth.  “Vall, how in blazes are we going to handle this?”

“We ought to keep Salgath’s death hushed up, as long as we can,” Vall said.  “The Organization doesn’t know positively what happened here; that’s why they’re handing out tips to the news services.  Let’s try to make them believe he’s still alive and talking.”

“How can we do it?”

“There ought to be somebody on the Force close enough to Salgath Trod’s anthropometric specifications that our cosmeticians could work him over into a passable impersonation.  Our story is that Salgath is on PolTerm, undergoing narco-hypnosis.  We will produce an audio-visual of him as soon as he is out of narco-hyp.  That will give us time to fix up an impersonator; We’ll need a lot of sound-recordings of Salgath Trod’s voice, of course—­”

“I’ll take care of the Home Time Line end of it; as soon as we get you an impersonator, you go to work with him.  Now, let’s see whom we can depend on to help us with this.  Lovranth Rolk, of course; Home Time Line section of the Paratime Code Enforcement Division.  And—­”

* * * * *

Verkan Vall and Dalla and Tortha Karf and four or five others looked across the desk and to the end of the room as the telecast screen broke into a shifting light-pattern and then cleared.  The face of the announcer appeared; a young woman.

“And now, we bring you the statement which Chief Tortha of the Paratime Police has promised for this time.  This portion of the program was audio-visually recorded at Paratime Police Headquarters earlier this evening.”

Tortha Karf’s face appeared on the screen.  His voice began an announcement of how Executive Councilman Salgath Trod had called him by visiphone, admitting to complicity in the recently-discovered paratemporal slave-trade.