she said, then caughtthe other girl's hands and rose, pulling her up. "Come on, Zinna; wehave to get to work!"
* * * * *
Vall rose from behind the reading-screen in Ranthar Jard's office,stretching his arms over his head. For almost an hour, he had sat therepushing buttons and twiddling selector and magnification-adjustmentknobs, looking at the pictures the Kholghoor-Nharkan cops had taken withauto-return balls dropped over the spatial equivalent of Sohram. One setof pictures, taken at two thousand feet, showed the central square ofthe city. The effects of the Croutha sack were plainly visible; so werethe captives herded together under guard like cattle. By increasingmagnification, he looked at groups of the barbarian conquerors, big menwith blond or reddish-brown hair, in loose shirts and baggy trousers andrough cowhide buskins. Many of them wore bowl-shaped helmets, some hadshirts of ring-mail, all of them carried long straight swords withcross-hilts, and about half of them had pistols thrust through theirbelts or muskets slung from their shoulders.
The other set of pictures showed the Wizard Trader camps and conveyerheads. In each case, a wide oval had been burned out in the jungle,probably with heavy-duty heat guns. The camps were surrounded withstout wire-mesh fence: in each there were a number of metalprefab-huts, and an inner fenced slave-pen. A trail had been cut fromeach to a similarly cleared circle farther back in the forest, and inthe centers of one or two of these circles he saw the actual conveyerdomes. There was a great deal of activity in all of them, and hescrewed the magnification-adjustment to the limit to scrutinize eachhuman figure in turn. A few of the men, he was sure, were First LevelCitizens; more were either Proles or outtimers. Quite a few of themwere of a dark, heavy-featured, black-bearded type.
"Some of these fellows look like Second Level Khiftans," he said."Rush an individual picture of each one, maximum magnificationconsistent with clarity, to Dhergabar Equivalent to be transposed toHome Time Line. You get all the dope from Zulthran Torv?"
"Yes; Abzar Sector," Ranthar Jard said. "I'd never have thought ofthat. Wonder why they used that series system, though. I'd have triedto spot my operations as completely at random as possible."
"Only thing they could have done," Vall said. "When we get hold of oneof their conveyers, we're going to find the control panel's just amess of arbitrary symbols, and there'll be something like acomputer-machine built into the control cabinet, to select the righttime line whenever a dial's set or a button pushed, and the only waythat could be done would be by establishing some kind of a numericalseries. And we were trustingly expecting to locate their base from oneof their conveyers! Why, if we give all those people in the picturesnarco-hyps, we won't learn the base-line designation; none of themwill know it. They just go where the conveyers take them."
"Well, we're all set now," Ranthar Jard said. "I have a plan of attackworked out; subject to your approval, I'm ready to start implementingit now." He glanced at his watch. "The Salgath telecast is over, onHome Time Line, and in a little while, a transcript will be on thistime line. Want to watch it here, sir?"
* * * * *
The telecast screen in the living room of Tortha Karf's town apartmentwas still on; in it, a girl with bright red hair danced slowly to softmusic against a background of shifting color. The four men who sat ina semicircle facing it sipped their drinks and watched idly.
"Ought to be getting some sort of public reaction soon," Tortha Karfsaid, glancing at his watch.
"Well, I'll have to admit, it was done convincingly," Zostha Olv, theChief Interoffice Cooerdinator, admitted grudgingly. "I'd have believedit, if I hadn't known the real facts."
"Shooting it against the background of those wide windows was smart,"Lovranth Rolk said. "Every schoolchild would recognize that view ofthe rocketport as being on Police Terminal. And including that girlZinganna; that was a real masterpiece!"
"I've met her, a few times," Elbraz Vark, the Political LiaisonAssistant, said. "Isn't she lovely!"
"Good actress, too," Tortha Karf said. "It's not easy to impersonateyourself."
"Well, Kostran Galth did a fine job of acting, too," Lovranth Rolksaid. "That was done to perfection--the distinguished politician,supported by his loyal mistress, bravely facing the disgraceful end ofhis public career."
"You know, I believe I could get that girl a booking with one of thebig theatrical companies. Now that Salgath's dead, she'll needsomebody to look after her."
"What sharp, furry ears you have, Mr. Elbraz!" Zostha Olv grunted.
The music stopped as though cut off with a knife, and the slim girlwith the red hair vanished in a shatter of many colors. When thescreen cleared, one of the announcers was looking out of it.
"We interrupt the program for an important newscast of a sensationaldevelopment in the Salgath affair," he said. "Your next speaker willbe Yandar Yadd--"
"I thought you'd managed to get that blabbermouth transposed toPolTerm," Zostha said.
"He wouldn't go." Tortha Karf replied. "Said it was just a trick toget him off Home Time Line during the Council crisis."
Yandar Yadd had appeared on the screen as the pickup swung about.
"... Recording ostensibly made by Councilman Salgath on PoliceTerminal Time Line, and telecast on Home Time Line an hour ago. Well,I don't know who he was, but I now have positive proof that hedefinitely was not Salgath Trod!"
"We're sunk!" Zostha Olv grunted. "He'd never make a statement likethat unless he could prove it."
"... Something suspicious about the whole thing, from the beginning,"the newsman was saying. "So I checked. If you recall, the actorimpersonating Salgath gestured rather freely with his hands, inimitation of a well-known mannerism of the real Salgath Trod; at onepoint, the ball of his right thumb was presented directly to thepickup. Here's a still of that scene."
He stepped aside, revealing a viewscreen behind him; when he pressed abutton, the screen lighted; on it was a stationary picture of KostranGalth as Salgath Trod, his right hand raised in front of him.
"Now watch this. I'm going to step up the magnification, slowly, sothat you can be sure there's no substitution. Camera a little closer,Trath!"
The screen in the background seemed to advance, until it filled theentire screen. Yandar Yadd was still talking, out of the picture; ametal-tipped pointer came into the picture, touching the right thumb,which grew larger and larger until it was the only thing visible.
"Now here," Yandar Yadd's voice continued. "Any of you who arefamiliar with the ancient science of dactyloscopy will recognize thisthumb as having the ridge-pattern known as a 'twin loop.' Even withthe high degree of magnification possible with the microgrid screen,we can't bring out the individual ridges, but the pattern isunmistakable. I ask you to memorize that image, while I show youanother right thumb print, this time a certified photo-copy of thethumb print of the real Salgath Trod." The magnification was reduced alittle, a card was moved into the picture, and it was stepped upagain. "See, this thumb print is of the type known as a 'tented arch.'Observe the difference."
"That does it!" Zostha Olv cried. "Karf, for the first and last time,let me remind you that I opposed this lunacy from the beginning. Now,what are we going to do next?"
"I suggest that we get to Headquarters as soon as we can," Tortha Karfsaid. "If we wait too long, we may not be able to get in."
Yandar Yadd was back on the screen, denouncing Tortha Karfpassionately. Tortha went over and snapped it off.
"I suggest we transpose to PolTerm," Lovranth Rolk said. "It won't beso easy for them to serve a summons on us there."
"You can go to PolTerm if you want to," Tortha Karf retorted. "I'mgoing to stay here and fight back, and if they try to serve me with asummons, they'd better send a robot for a process server."
"Fight back!" Zostha Olv echoed. "You can't fight the Council and thewhole Management! They'll tear you into inch bits!"
"I can hold them off till Vall's able to raid those Abzar Sectorbases," Tortha Karf said. He thoug
ht for a moment. "Maybe this is allfor the best, after all. If it distracts the Organization'sattention--"
* * * * *
"I wish we could have made a boomerang-ball reconnaissance," RantharJard was saying, watching one of the viewscreens, in which a film,taken from an airboat transposed to an adjoining Abzar sector timeline, was being shown. The boat had circled over the Ganges, a meretrickle between wide, deeply cut banks, and was crossing a
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