recovered the page hewanted. Verkan Vall read of a Fourth Level aviator, in his littleairscrew-drive craft, sighting nine high-flying saucerlike objects.
"That was how it began," Tortha Karf told him. "Before long, as otherincidents of the same sort occurred, our people on that line begansending back to know what was going on. Naturally, from the differentdescriptions of these 'saucers', they recognized the objects as antigravlanding-disks from a spaceship. So I went to the Commission and raisedatomic blazes about it, and the _Ardrath_ was ordered to confineoperations to the lower areas of the Fifth Level. Then our peopleon that time-line went to work with corrective action. Here."
He wiped the screen and then began punching combinations. Page afterpage appeared, bearing accounts of people who had claimed to have seenthe mysterious disks, and each report was more fantastic than the last.
"The standard smother-out technique," Verkan Vall grinned. "I onlyheard a little talk about the 'Flying Saucers', and all of that was injoke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true storyby setting up ten others, palpably false, parallel to it--Wasn't thatthe time-line the Tharmax Trading Corporation almost lost theirparatime license on?"
"That's right; it was! They bought up all the cigarettes, and caused aconspicuous shortage, after Fourth Level cigarettes had been introducedon this line and had become popular. They should have spread theirpurchases over a number of lines, and kept them within the localsupply-demand frame. And they also got into trouble with the localgovernment for selling unrationed petrol and automobile tires. We hadto send in a special-operations group, and they came closer to havingto engage in out-time local politics than I care to think of." TorthaKarf quoted a line from a currently popular song about the sorrows ofa policeman's life. "We're jugglers, Vall; trying to keep our tradersand sociological observers and tourists and plain idiots like the lateGavran Sarn out of trouble; trying to prevent panics and disturbancesand dislocations of local economy as a result of our operations; tryingto keep out of out-time politics--and, at all times, at all costs andhazards, by all means, guarding the secret of paratime transposition.Sometimes I wish Ghaldron Karf and Hesthor Ghrom had strangled intheir cradles!"
Verkan Vall shook his head. "No, chief," he said. "You don't mean that;not really," he said. "We've been paratiming for the past ten thousandyears. When the Ghaldron-Hesthor trans-temporal field was discovered,our ancestors had pretty well exhausted the resources of this planet.We had a world population of half a billion, and it was all they coulddo to keep alive. After we began paratime transposition, our populationclimbed to ten billion, and there it stayed for the last eight thousandyears. Just enough of us to enjoy our planet and the other planets ofthe system to the fullest; enough of everything for everybody thatnobody needs fight anybody for anything. We've tapped the resources ofthose other worlds on other time-lines, a little here, a little there,and not enough to really hurt anybody. We've left our mark in a fewplaces--the Dakota Badlands, and the Gobi, on the Fourth Level, forinstance--but we've done no great damage to any of them."
"Except the time they blew up half the Southern Island Continent, overabout five hundred parayears on the Third Level," Tortha Karf mentioned.
"Regrettable accident, to be sure," Verkan Vall conceded. "And lookhow much we've learned from the experiences of those other time-lines.During the Crisis, after the Fourth Interplanetary War, we might haveadopted Palnar Sarn's 'Dictatorship of the Chosen' scheme, if wehadn't seen what an exactly similar scheme had done to the Jak-HakkaCivilization, on the Second Level. When Palnar Sarn was told aboutthat, he went into paratime to see for himself, and when he returned,he renounced his proposal in horror."
Tortha Karf nodded. He wouldn't be making any mistake in turning hispost over to the Mavrad of Nerros on his retirement.
"Yes, Vall; I know," he said. "But when you've been at this desk as longas I have, you'll have a sour moment or two, now and then, too."
* * * * *
A blue light flashed over one of the booths across the room. Verkan Vallgot to his feet, removing his coat and hanging it on the back of hischair, and crossed the room, rolling up his left shirt sleeve. Therewas a relaxer-chair in the booth, with a blue plastic helmet above it.He glanced at the indicator-screen to make sure he was getting theindoctrination he called for, and then sat down in the chair and loweredthe helmet over his head, inserting the ear plugs and fastening the chinstrap. Then he touched his left arm with an injector which was lying onthe arm of the chair, and at the same time flipped the starter switch.
Soft, slow music began to chant out of the earphones. The insidiousfingers of the drug blocked off his senses, one by one. The musicdiminished, and the words of the hypnotic formula lulled him to sleep.
He woke, hearing the lively strains of dance music. For a while, he layrelaxed. Then he snapped off the switch, took out the ear plugs, removedthe helmet and rose to his feet. Deep in his subconscious mind was theentire body of knowledge about the Venusian nighthound. He mentallypronounced the word, and at once it began flooding into his consciousmind. He knew the animal's evolutionary history, its anatomy, itscharacteristics, its dietary and reproductive habits, how it hunted,how it fought its enemies, how it eluded pursuit, and how best it couldbe tracked down and killed. He nodded. Already, a plan for dealing withGavran Sarn's renegade pet was taking shape in his mind.
He picked a plastic cup from the dispenser, filled it from a cooler-tapwith amber-colored spiced wine, and drank, tossing the cup into thedisposal-bin. He placed a fresh injector on the arm of the chair, readyfor the next user of the booth. Then he emerged, glancing at his FourthLevel wrist watch and mentally translating to the First Leveltime-scale. Three hours had passed; there had been more to learn abouthis quarry than he had expected.
Tortha Karf was sitting behind his desk, smoking a cigarette. It seemedas though he had not moved since Verkan Vall had left him, though thespecial agent knew that he had dined, attended several conferences,and done many other things.
"I checked up on your hitchhiker, Vall," the chief said. "We won'tbother about him. He's a member of something called the ChristianAvengers--one of those typical Europo-American race-and-religious hategroups. He belongs in a belt that is the outcome of the Hitler victoryof 1940, whatever that was. Something unpleasant, I daresay. We don'towe him anything; people of that sort should be stepped on, likecockroaches. And he won't make any more trouble on the line where youdropped him than they have there already. It's in a belt of completesocial and political anarchy; somebody probably shot him as soon ashe emerged, because he wasn't wearing the right sort of a uniform.Nineteen-forty what, by the way?"
"Elapsed years since the birth of some religious leader," Verkan Vallexplained. "And did you find out about my rifle?"
"Oh, yes. It's reproduction of something that's called a Sharp's Model'37 .235 Ultraspeed-Express. Made on an adjoining paratime belt by acompany that went out of business sixty-seven years ago, elapsed time,on your line of operation. What made the difference was the Second WarBetween The States. I don't know what that was, either--I'm not too wellup on Fourth Level history--but whatever, your line of operation didn'thave it. Probably just as well for them, though they very likely hadsomething else, as bad or worse. I put in a complaint to Supplies aboutit, and got you some more ammunition and reloading tools. Now, tell mewhat you're going to do about this nighthound business."
Tortha Karf was silent for a while, after Verkan Vall had finished.
"You're taking some awful chances, Vall," he said, at length. "The wayyou plan doing it, the advantages will all be with the nighthound. Thosethings can see as well at night as you can in daylight. I suppose youknow that, though; you're the nighthound specialist, now."
"Yes. But they're accustomed to the Venus hotland marshes; it's been dryweather for the last two weeks, all over the northeastern section of theNorthern Continent. I'll be able to hear it, long before it gets closeto me. And I'll be wearing an electric headlamp. When I sn
ap that on,it'll be dazzled, for a moment."
"Well, as I said, you're the nighthound specialist. There's thecommunicator; order anything you need." He lit a fresh cigarette fromthe end of the old one before crushing it out. "But be careful, Vall.It took me close to forty years to make a paratimer out of you; Idon't want to have to repeat the process with somebody else beforeI can retire."
* * * * *
The grass was wet as Verkan Vall--who reminded himself that here hewas called Richard Lee--crossed the yard from the farmhouse to theramshackle barn, in the early autumn darkness.
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