* * * * *

Hadron Dalla watched dejectedly as the green crags and escarpments of the Paratime Building loomed above the city in front of them, and began slipping under the aircab.  She felt like a prisoner recaptured at the moment when attempted escape was about to succeed.

“I knew it,” she said.  “I knew he’d find something.  He’s trying to break things up between us, the way he did twenty years ago.’”

Vall crushed out his cigarette and said nothing.  That hadn’t been true, and she knew it as well as he did.  There had been many other factors involved in the disintegration of their previous marriage, most of them of her own contribution.  But that had been twenty years ago, she told herself.  This time it would be different, if only—­

“Really, Vall, he’s never liked me,” she went on.  “He’s jealous of me, I think.  You’re to be his successor, when he retires, and he thinks I’m not a good influence—­”

“Oh, rubbish, Dalla!  The Chief has always liked you,” Vall replied.  “If he didn’t, do you think he’d always be inviting us to that farm of his, on Fifth Level Sicily?  It’s just that this job of ours has no end; something’s always turning up, outtime.”

The music that the cab had been playing died away.  “Paratime Building, just below,” it said, in a light feminine voice.  “Which landing stage, please?” Vall leaned forward and punched at the buttons in front of him.  Something in the cab’s electronic brain gave a rapid series of clicks as it shifted from the general Paratime Building beam to the beam of the Paratime Police landing stage, then it said, “Thank you.”  The building below seemed to rotate upward toward them as it settled down.  Then the antigrav-field snapped off, the cab door popped open, and the cab said:  “Good-by, now.  Ride with me again, sometime.”

They crossed the landing stage, entered the antigrav shaft, and floated downward; at the end of a hallway, below, Vall opened the door of Tortha Karf’s office and ushered her through ahead of him.

Tortha Karf, inside the semicircle of his desk, was speaking into a recording phone as they approached.  He shut off the machine and waved, a cigarette in his hand.

“Come on back and sit down,” he invited.  “Be with you in a moment.”  Then he switched on the phone again and went on talking—­something about prompter evaluation and transmission of reports and less reliance on robot equipment.  “Sign that up, my personal order, and see it’s transmitted to everybody down to and including Sector Regional Subchief level,” he finished, then hung up the phone and turned to them.

“Sorry about this,” he said.  “Sit down, if you please.  Cigarettes?”

She shook her head and sat down in one of the chairs behind the desk; she started to relax and then caught herself and sat erect, her hands on her lap.

“This won’t interfere with your vacation, Vall,” Tortha Karf was saying.  “I just need a little help before you transpose out.”