* * * * *

“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.