<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>POLICE OPERATION</h1>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h2>BY H. BEAM PIPER</h2>
<div class="blurb"><p><i>Hunting down the beast,
under the best of circumstances,<br/>
was dangerous. But in this little police operation,
the <br/>conditions required the use of inadequate means!</i></p>
</div>
<p class="center"><b>Illustrated by Cartier</b></p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<div class="blockquot"><p>"... <i>there may be something in
the nature of an occult police force,
which operates to divert human suspicions,
and to supply explanations
that are good enough for whatever,
somewhat in the nature of
minds, human beings have—or that,
if there be occult mischief makers
and occult ravagers, they may be of
a world also of other beings that
are acting to check them, and to
explain them, not benevolently, but
to divert suspicion from themselves,
because they, too, may be exploiting
life upon this earth, but in ways
more subtle, and in orderly, or organised,
fashion.</i>"</p>
<p class="sig"><i>Charles Fort:</i> "LO!"</p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>John Strawmyer stood, an irate
figure in faded overalls and sweat-whitened
black shirt, apart from
the others, his back to the weathered
farm-buildings and the line of yellowing
woods and the cirrus-streaked
blue October sky. He
thrust out a work-gnarled hand
accusingly.</p>
<p>"That there heifer was worth
two hund'rd, two hund'rd an' fifty
dollars!" he clamored. "An' that
there dog was just like one uh the
fam'ly; An' now look at'm! I
don't like t' use profane language,
but you'ns gotta <i>do</i> some'n about
this!"</p>
<p>Steve Parker, the district game
protector, aimed his Leica at the
carcass of the dog and snapped
the shutter. "We're doing something
about it," he said shortly.
Then he stepped ten feet to the left
and edged around the mangled
heifer, choosing an angle for his
camera shot.</p>
<p>The two men in the gray whipcords
of the State police, seeing
that Parker was through with the
dog, moved in and squatted to examine it.
The one with the triple
chevrons on his sleeves took it by
both forefeet and flipped it over on
its back. It had been a big brute,
of nondescript breed, with a rough
black-and-brown coat. Something
had clawed it deeply about the head,
its throat was slashed transversely
several times, and it had been disemboweled
by a single slash that
had opened its belly from breastbone
to tail. They looked at it
carefully, and then went to stand
beside Parker while he photographed
the dead heifer. Like the
dog, it had been talon-raked on
either side of the head, and its
throat had been slashed deeply
several times. In addition, flesh
had been torn from one flank in
great strips.</p>
<p>"I can't kill a bear outa season,
no!" Strawmyer continued his
plaint. "But a bear comes an' kills
my stock an' my dog; that there's
all right! That's the kinda deal a
farmer always gits, in this state!
I don't like t' use profane language—"</p>
<p>"Then don't!" Parker barked at
him, impatiently. "Don't use any
kind of language. Just put in your
claim and shut up!" He turned to
the men in whipcords and gray
Stetsons. "You boys seen everything?"
he asked. "Then let's go."</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>They walked briskly back to the
barnyard, Strawmyer following
them, still vociferating about the
wrongs of the farmer at the hands
of a cynical and corrupt State government.
They climbed into the
State police car, the sergeant and
the private in front and Parker
into the rear, laying his camera on
the seat beside a Winchester carbine.</p>
<p>"Weren't you pretty short with
that fellow, back there, Steve?" the
sergeant asked as the private started
the car.</p>
<p>"Not too short. 'I don't like t'
use profane language'," Parker
mimicked the bereaved heifer
owner, and then he went on to
specify: "I'm morally certain that
he's shot at least four illegal
deer<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></SPAN></span>
in the last year. When and if I ever get anything on him, he's going to be
sorrier for himself then he is now."</p>
<p>"They're the characters that always
beef their heads off," the sergeant
agreed. "You think that
whatever did this was the same as
the others?"</p>
<p>"Yes. The dog must have jumped
it while it was eating at the heifer.
Same superficial scratches about the
head, and deep cuts on the throat
or belly. The bigger the animal,
the farther front the big slashes
occur. Evidently something grabs
them by the head with front claws,
and slashes with hind claws; that's
why I think it's a bobcat."</p>
<p>"You know," the private said,
"I saw a lot of wounds like that
during the war. My outfit landed
on Mindanao, where the guerrillas
had been active. And this looks
like bolo-work to me."</p>
<p>"The surplus-stores are full of
machetes and jungle knives," the
sergeant considered. "I think I'll
call up Doc Winters, at the County
Hospital, and see if all his squirrel-fodder
is present and accounted
for."</p>
<p>"But most of the livestock was
eaten at, like the heifer," Parker
objected.</p>
<p>"By definition, nuts have abnormal
tastes," the sergeant replied.
"Or the eating might have been
done later, by foxes."</p>
<p>"I hope so; that'd let me out,"
Parker said.</p>
<p>"Ha, listen to the man!" the
private howled, stopping the car at
the end of the lane. "He thinks a
nut with a machete and a Tarzan
complex is just good clean fun.
Which way, now?"</p>
<p>"Well, let's see." The sergeant
had unfolded a quadrangle sheet;
the game protector leaned forward
to look at it over his shoulder. The
sergeant ran a finger from one to
another of a series of variously
colored crosses which had been
marked on the map.</p>
<p>"Monday night, over here on
Copperhead Mountain, that cow was
killed," he said. "The next night,
about ten o'clock, that sheepflock
was hit, on this side of Copperhead,
right about here. Early Wednesday
night, that mule got slashed
up in the woods back of the Weston
farm. It was only slightly injured;
must have kicked the whatzit and
got away, but the whatzit wasn't
too badly hurt, because a few hours
later, it hit that turkey-flock on the
Rhymer farm. And last night, it
did that." He jerked a thumb over
his shoulder at the Strawmyer farm.
"See, following the ridges, working
toward the southeast, avoiding open
ground, killing only at night.
Could be a bobcat, at that."</p>
<p>"Or Jink's maniac with the
machete," Parker agreed. "Let's
go up by Hindman's gap and see
if we can see anything."</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>They turned, after a while, into
a rutted dirt road, which deteriorated
steadily into a grass-grown
track through the woods. Finally,
they stopped, and the private backed
off the road. The three men got
out; Parker with his Winchester,
the sergeant checking the drum of
a Thompson, and the private
pumping<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></SPAN></span>
a buckshot shell into the chamber
of a riot gun. For half an hour, they followed the brush-grown
trail beside the little stream; once,
they passed a dark gray commercial-model
jeep, backed to one side.
Then they came to the head of the
gap.</p>
<p>A man, wearing a tweed coat,
tan field boots, and khaki breeches,
was sitting on a log, smoking a
pipe; he had a bolt-action rifle
across his knees, and a pair of
binoculars hung from his neck. He
seemed about thirty years old, and
any bobby-soxer's idol of the screen
would have envied him the handsome
regularity of his strangely
immobile features. As Parker and
the two State policemen approached,
he rose, slinging his rifle, and
greeted them.</p>
<p>"Sergeant Haines, isn't it?" he
asked pleasantly. "Are you gentlemen
out hunting the critter, too?"</p>
<p>"Good afternoon, Mr. Lee. I
thought that was your jeep I saw,
down the road a little." The sergeant
turned to the others. "Mr.
Richard Lee; staying at the old
Kinchwalter place, the other side of
Rutter's Fort. This is Mr. Parker,
the district game protector. And
Private Zinkowski." He glanced at
the rifle. "Are you out hunting
for it, too?"</p>
<p>"Yes, I thought I might find
something, up here. What do you
think it is?"</p>
<p>"I don't know," the sergeant admitted.
"It could be a bobcat.
Canada lynx. Jink, here, has a
theory that it's some escapee from
the paper-doll factory, with a machete.
Me, I hope not, but I'm not
ignoring the possibility."</p>
<p>The man with the matinee-idol's
face nodded. "It could be a lynx.
I understand they're not unknown,
in this section."</p>
<p>"We paid bounties on two in this
county, in the last year," Parker
said. "Odd rifle you have, there;
mind if I look at it?"</p>
<p>"Not at all." The man who had
been introduced as Richard Lee
unslung and handed it over. "The
chamber's loaded," he cautioned.</p>
<p>"I never saw one like this,"
Parker said. "Foreign?"</p>
<p>"I think so. I don't know anything
about it; it belongs to a friend
of mine, who loaned it to me. I
think the action's German, or
Czech; the rest of it's a custom
job, by some West Coast gunmaker.
It's chambered for some ultra-velocity
wildcat load."</p>
<p>The rifle passed from hand to
hand; the three men examined it in
turn, commenting admiringly.</p>
<p>"You find anything, Mr. Lee?"
the sergeant asked, handing it back.</p>
<p>"Not a trace." The man called
Lee slung the rifle and began to
dump the ashes from his pipe. "I
was along the top of this ridge for
about a mile on either side of the
gap, and down the other side as far
as Hindman's Run; I didn't find
any tracks, or any indication of
where it had made a kill."</p>
<p>The game protector nodded, turning
to Sergeant Haines.</p>
<p>"There's no use us going any
farther," he said. "Ten to one, it
followed that line of woods back
of Strawmyer's, and crossed
over<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></SPAN></span>
to the other ridge. I think our best bet would be the hollow at the
head of Lowrie's Run. What do you think?"</p>
<p>The sergeant agreed. The man
called Richard Lee began to refill
his pipe methodically.</p>
<p>"I think I shall stay here for a
while, but I believe you're right.
Lowrie's Run, or across Lowrie's
Gap into Coon Valley," he said.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>After Parker and the State policemen
had gone, the man whom
they had addressed as Richard Lee
returned to his log and sat smoking,
his rifle across his knees. From
time to time, he glanced at his wrist
watch and raised his head to listen.
At length, faint in the distance, he
heard the sound of a motor starting.</p>
<p>Instantly, he was on his feet.
From the end of the hollow log
on which he had been sitting, he
produced a canvas musette-bag.
Walking briskly to a patch of damp
ground beside the little stream, he
leaned the rifle against a tree and
opened the bag. First, he took out
a pair of gloves of some greenish,
rubberlike substance, and put them
on, drawing the long gauntlets up
over his coat sleeves. Then he produced
a bottle and unscrewed the
cap. Being careful to avoid splashing
his clothes, he went about, pouring
a clear liquid upon the ground
in several places. Where he poured,
white vapors rose, and twigs and
grass grumbled<!-- Presumably a typo for "crumpled". -->
into brownish dust.
After he had replaced the cap and
returned the bottle to the bag, he
waited for a few minutes, then
took a spatula from the musette
and dug where he had poured the
fluid, prying loose four black, irregular-shaped
lumps of matter,
which he carried to the running
water and washed carefully, before
wrapping them and putting them in
the bag, along with the gloves. Then
he slung bag and rifle and started
down the trail to where he had
parked the jeep.</p>
<p>Half an hour later, after driving
through the little farming village of
Rutter's Fort, he pulled into the
barnyard of a rundown farm and
backed through the open doors of
the barn. He closed the double
doors behind him, and barred them
from within. Then he went to the
rear wall of the barn, which was
much closer the front than the outside
dimensions of the barn would
have indicated.</p>
<p>He took from his pocket a black
object like an automatic pencil.
Hunting over the rough plank wall,
he found a small hole and inserted
the pointed end of the pseudo-pencil,
pressing on the other end. For
an instant, nothing happened. Then
a ten-foot-square section of the wall
receded two feet and slid noiselessly
to one side. The section
which had slid inward had been
built of three-inch steel, masked by
a thin covering of boards; the wall
around it was two-foot concrete,
similarly camouflaged. He stepped
quickly inside.</p>
<p>Fumbling at the right side of the
opening, he found a switch and
flicked it. Instantly, the massive
steel plate slid back into place with
a soft, oily click. As it did, lights came on within the hidden
room,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></SPAN></span>
disclosing a great semiglobe of some
fine metallic mesh, thirty feet in
diameter and fifteen in height.
There was a sliding door at one
side of this; the man called Richard
Lee opened and entered through it,
closing it behind him. Then he
turned to the center of the hollow
dome, where an armchair was
placed in front of a small desk below
a large instrument panel. The
gauges and dials on the panel, and
the levers and switches and buttons
on the desk control board, were all
lettered and numbered with characters
not of the Roman alphabet
or the Arabic notation, and, within
instant reach of the occupant of the
chair, a pistollike weapon lay on
the desk. It had a conventional index-finger
trigger and a hand-fit
grip, but, instead of a tubular barrel,
two slender parallel metal rods
extended about four inches forward
of the receiver, joined together at
what would correspond to the muzzle
by a streamlined knob of some
light blue ceramic or plastic substance.</p>
<p>The man with the handsome immobile
face deposited his rifle and
musette on the floor beside the chair
and sat down. First, he picked up
the pistollike weapon and checked
it, and then he examined the many
instruments on the panel in front
of him. Finally, he flicked a switch
on the control board.</p>
<p>At once, a small humming began,
from some point overhead. It wavered
and shrilled and mounted in intensity,
and then fell to a steady
monotone. The dome about him
flickered with a queer, cold iridescence,
and slowly vanished. The
hidden room vanished, and he was
looking into the shadowy interior
of a deserted barn. The barn vanished;
blue sky appeared above,
streaked with wisps of high cirrus
cloud. The autumn landscape flickered
unreally. Buildings appeared
and vanished, and other buildings
came and went in a twinkling. All
around him, half-seen shapes moved
briefly and disappeared.</p>
<p>Once, the figure of a man appeared,
inside the circle of the
dome. He had an angry, brutal
face, and he wore a black tunic
piped with silver, and black
breeches, and polished black boots,
and there was an insignia, composed
of a cross and thunderbolt, on his
cap. He held an automatic pistol in
his hand.</p>
<p>Instantly, the man at the desk
snatched up his own weapon and
thumbed off the safety, but before
he could lift and aim it, the intruder
stumbled and passed outside
the force-field which surrounded
the chair and instruments.</p>
<p>For a while, there were fires raging
outside, and for a while, the
man at the desk was surrounded by
a great hall, with a high, vaulted
ceiling, through which figures flitted
and vanished. For a while, there
were vistas of deep forests, always
set in the same background of
mountains and always under the
same blue cirrus-laced sky. There
was an interval of flickering blue-white light,
of unbearable intensity.
Then the man at the desk
was<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></SPAN></span>
surrounded by the interior of vast
industrial works. The moving figures
around him slowed, and became
more distinct. For an instant,
the man in the chair grinned as he
found himself looking into a big
washroom, where a tall blond girl
was taking a shower bath, and a
pert little redhead was vigorously
drying herself with a towel. The
dome grew visible, coruscating with
many-colored lights and then the
humming died and the dome became
a cold and inert mesh of fine white
metal. A green light above flashed
on and off slowly.</p>
<p>He stabbed a button and flipped
a switch, then got to his feet, picking
up his rifle and musette and
fumbling under his shirt for a small
mesh bag, from which he took an
inch-wide disk of blue plastic. Unlocking
a container on the instrument panel,
he removed a small roll
of solidograph-film, which he
stowed in his bag. Then he slid
open the door and emerged into his
own dimension of space-time.</p>
<p>Outside was a wide hallway, with
a pale green floor, paler green walls,
and a ceiling of greenish off-white.
A big hole had been cut to accommodate
the dome, and across the
hallway a desk had been set up,
and at it sat a clerk in a pale blue
tunic, who was just taking the
audio-plugs of a music-box out of
his ears. A couple of policemen in
green uniforms, with ultrasonic
paralyzers dangling by thongs from
their left wrists and bolstered sigma-ray
needlers like the one on the
desk inside the dome, were kidding
with some girls in vivid orange and
scarlet and green smocks. One of
these, in bright green, was a duplicate
of the one he had seen rubbing
herself down with a towel.</p>
<p>"Here comes your boss-man,"
one of the girls told the cops, as he
approached. They both turned and
saluted casually. The man who had
lately been using the name of Richard
Lee responded to their greeting
and went to the desk. The policemen
grasped their paralyzers,
drew their needlers, and hurried
into the dome.</p>
<p>Taking the disk of blue plastic
from his packet, he handed it to
the clerk at the desk, who dropped
it into a slot in the voder in front
of him. Instantly, a mechanical
voice responded:</p>
<p>"Verkan Vall, blue-seal noble,
hereditary Mavrad of Nerros. Special
Chief's Assistant, Paratime Police,
special assignment. Subject to
no orders below those of Tortha
Karf, Chief of Paratime Police. To
be given all courtesies and co-operation
within the Paratime Transposition
Code and the Police Powers
Code. Further particulars?"</p>
<p>The clerk pressed the "no"-button.
The blue sigil fell out the release-slot
and was handed back to
its bearer, who was drawing up his
left sleeve.</p>
<p>"You'll want to be sure I'm <i>your</i>
Verkan Vall, I suppose?" he said,
extending his arm.</p>
<p>"Yes, quite, sir."</p>
<p>The clerk touched his arm with
a small instrument which swabbed
it with antiseptic, drew a minute
blood-sample, and medicated the
needle prick, all in one almost
painless<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></SPAN></span>
operation. He put the blood-drop
on a slide and inserted it at
one side of a comparison microscope,
nodding. It showed the same
distinctive permanent colloid pattern
as the sample he had ready for
comparison; the colloid pattern given
in infancy by injection to the
man in front of him, to set him
apart from all the myriad other
Verkan Valls on every other probability-line
of paratime.</p>
<p>"Right, sir," the clerk nodded.</p>
<p>The two policemen came out of
the dome, their needlers holstered
and their vigilance relaxed. They
were lighting cigarettes as they
emerged.</p>
<p>"It's all right, sir," one of them
said. "You didn't bring anything
in with you, this trip."</p>
<p>The other cop chuckled. "Remember
that Fifth Level wild-man
who came in on the freight conveyor
at Jandar, last month?" he asked.</p>
<p>If he was hoping that some of
the girls would want to know, what
wild-man, it was a vain hope. With
a blue-seal mavrad around, what
chance did a couple of ordinary coppers
have? The girls were already
converging on Verkan Vall.</p>
<p>"When are you going to get that
monstrosity out of our restroom,"
the little redhead in green coveralls
was demanding. "If it wasn't for
that thing, I'd be taking a shower,
right now."</p>
<p>"You were just finishing one,
about fifty paraseconds off, when I
came through," Verkan Vall told
her.</p>
<p>The girl looked at him in obviously
feigned indignation.</p>
<p>"Why, you—You <i>parapeeper</i>!"</p>
<p>Verkan Vall chuckled and turned
to the clerk. "I want a strato-rocket
and pilot, for Dhergabar, right
away. Call Dhergabar Paratime
Police Field and give them my
ETA; have an air-taxi meet me,
and have the chief notified that I'm
coming in. Extraordinary report.
Keep a guard over the conveyor; I
think I'm going to need it, again,
soon." He turned to the little redhead.
"Want to show me the way
out of here, to the rocket field?" he
asked.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image02.png" width-obs="600" height-obs="219" alt="Rocket to Dhergabar" title="Rocket to Dhergabar" /></div>
<!-- Image replaces thought-break. -->
<p>Outside, on the open landing
field, Verkan Vall glanced up at
the sky, then looked at his watch.
It had been twenty minutes since he
had backed the jeep into the barn,
on that distant other time-line;
the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></SPAN></span>
same delicate lines of white cirrus
were etched across the blue above.
The constancy of the weather, even
across two hundred thousand parayears
of perpendicular time, never
failed to impress him. The long
curve of the mountains was the
same, and they were mottled with
the same autumn colors, but where
the little village of Rutter's Fort
stood on that other line of probability,
the white towers of an apartment-city
rose—the living quarters
of the plant personnel.</p>
<p>The rocket that was to take him
to headquarters was being hoisted
with a crane and lowered into the
firing-stand, and he walked briskly
toward it, his rifle and musette
slung. A boyish-looking pilot was
on the platform, opening the door
of the rocket; he stood aside for
Verkan Vall to enter, then followed
and closed it, dogging it shut while
his passenger stowed his bag and
rifle and strapped himself into a
seat.</p>
<p>"Dhergabar Commercial Terminal,
sir?" the pilot asked, taking
the adjoining seat at the controls.</p>
<p>"Paratime Police Field, back of
the Paratime Administration Building."</p>
<p>"Right, sir. Twenty seconds to
blast, when you're ready."</p>
<p>"Ready now." Verkan Vall relaxed,
counting seconds subconsciously.</p>
<p>The rocket trembled, and Verkan
Vall felt himself being pushed gently
back against the upholstery. The
seats, and the pilot's instrument
panel in front of them, swung on
gimbals, and the finger of the indicator
swept slowly over a ninety-degree
arc as the rocket rose and
leveled. By then, the high cirrus
clouds Verkan Vall had watched
from the field were far below; they
were well into the stratosphere.</p>
<p>There would be nothing to do,
now, for the three hours in which
the rocket sped northward across
the pole and southward to Dhergabar;
the navigation was entirely in
the electronic hands of the robot
controls. Verkan Vall got out his
pipe and lit it; the pilot lit a cigarette.</p>
<p>"That's an odd pipe, sir," the
pilot said. "Out-time item?"</p>
<p>"Yes, Fourth Probability Level;
typical of the whole paratime belt
I was working in." Verkan Vall
handed it over for inspection. "The
bowl's natural brier-root; the stem's
a sort of plastic made from the
sap of certain tropical trees. The
little white dot is the maker's trademark;
it's made of elephant tusk."</p>
<p>"Sounds pretty crude to me, sir."
The pilot handed it back. "Nice
workmanship, though. Looks like
good machine production."</p>
<p>"Yes. The sector I was on is
really quite advanced, for an electro-chemical
civilization. That weapon
I brought back with me—that solid-missile
projector—is typical of most
Fourth Level culture. Moving parts
machined to the closest tolerances,
and interchangeable with similar
parts of all similar weapons. The
missile is a small bolt of cupro-alloy
coated lead, propelled by expanding
gases from the ignition of
some nitro-cellulose compound.
Most of their scientific advance
occurred<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></SPAN></span>
within the past century, and
most of that in the past forty years.
Of course, the life-expectancy on
that level is only about seventy
years."</p>
<p>"Humph! I'm seventy-eight, last
birthday," the boyish-looking pilot
snorted. "Their medical science
must be mostly witchcraft!"</p>
<p>"Until quite recently, it was,"
Verkan Vall agreed. "Same story
there as in everything else—rapid
advancement in the past few decades,
after thousands of years of
cultural inertia."</p>
<p>"You know, sir, I don't really understand
this paratime stuff," the
pilot confessed. "I know that all
time is totally present, and that
every moment has its own past-future
line of event-sequence, and
that all events in space-time occur
according to maximum probability,
but I just don't get this alternate
probability stuff, at all. If something
exists, it's because it's the
maximum-probability effect of prior
causes; why does anything else exist
on any other time-line?"</p>
<p>Verkan Vall blew smoke at the
air-renovator. A lecture on paratime
theory would nicely fill in the
three-hour interval until the landing
at Dhergabar. At least, this kid
was asking intelligent questions.</p>
<p>"Well, you know the principal of
time-passage, I suppose?" he began.</p>
<p>"Yes, of course; Rhogom's Doctrine.
The basis of most of our
psychical science. We exist perpetually
at all moments within our
life-span; our extraphysical ego
component passes from the ego existing
at one moment to the ego existing
at the next. During unconsciousness,
the EPC is 'time-free';
it may detach, and connect at some
other moment, with the ego existing
at that time-point. That's how
we precog. We take an autohypno
and recover memories brought back
from the future moment and buried
in the subconscious mind."</p>
<p>"That's right," Verkan Vall told
him. "And even without the autohypno,
a lot of precognitive matter
leaks out of the subconscious and
into the conscious mind, usually in
distorted forms, or else inspires
'instinctive' acts, the motivation for
which is not brought to the level of
consciousness. For instance, suppose,
you're walking along North
Promenade, in Dhergabar, and you
come to the Martian Palace Café,
and you go in for a drink, and meet
same girl, and strike up an acquaintance
with her. This chance acquaintance
develops into a love affair,
and a year later, out of jealousy,
she rays you half a dozen
times with a needler."</p>
<p>"Just about that happened to a
friend of mine, not long ago," the
pilot said. "Go on, sir."</p>
<p>"Well, in the microsecond or so
before you die—or afterward, for
that matter, because we know that
the extraphysical component survives
physical destruction—your
EPC slips back a couple of years,
and re-connects at some point pastward
of your first meeting with this
girl, and carries with it memories
of everything up to the moment of
detachment, all of which are indelibly
recorded in your
subconscious<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></SPAN></span>
mind. So, when you re-experience
the event of standing outside the
Martian Palace with a thirst, you
go on to the Starway, or Nhergal's,
or some other bar. In both cases,
on both time-lines, you follow the
line of maximum probability; in
the second case, your subconscious
future memories are an added causal
factor."</p>
<p>"And when I back-slip, after I've
been needled, I generate a new
time-line? Is that it?"</p>
<p>Verkan Vall made a small sound
of impatience. "No such thing!"
he exclaimed. "It's semantically
inadmissible to talk about the total
presence of time with one breath
and about generating new time-lines
with the next. <i>All</i> time-lines are
totally present, in perpetual co-existence.
The theory is that the
EPC passes from one moment, on
one time-line, to the next moment
on the next line, so that the true
passage of the EPC from moment
to moment is a two-dimensional
diagonal. So, in the case we're using,
the event of your going into
the Martian Palace exists on one
time-line, and the event of your
passing along to the Starway exists
on another, but both are events in
real existence.</p>
<p>"Now, what we do, in paratime
transposition, is to build up a hypertemporal
field to include the time-line
we want to reach, and then
shift over to it. Same point in the
plenum; same point in primary
time—plus primary time elapsed
during mechanical and electronic
lag in the relays—but a different
line of secondary time."</p>
<p>"Then why don't we have past-future
time travel on our own time-line?"
the pilot wanted to know.</p>
<p>That was a question every paratimer
has to answer, every time he
talks paratime to the laity. Verkan
Vall had been expecting it; he answered
patiently.</p>
<p>"The Ghaldron-Hesthor field-generator
is like every other mechanism;
it can operate only in the
area of primary time in which it
exists. It can transpose to any
other time-line, and carry with it
anything inside its field, but it can't
go outside its own temporal area of
existence, any more than a bullet
from that rifle can hit the target a
week before it's fired," Verkan Vall
pointed out. "Anything inside the
field is supposed to be unaffected by
anything outside. <i>Supposed to be</i>
is the way to put it; it doesn't always
work. Once in a while, something
pretty nasty gets picked up
in transit." He thought, briefly,
of the man in the black tunic.
"That's why we have armed guards
at terminals."</p>
<p>"Suppose you pick up a blast
from a nucleonic bomb," the pilot
asked, "or something red-hot, or
radioactive?"</p>
<p>"We have a monument, at Paratime
Police Headquarters, in Dhergabar,
bearing the names of our
own personnel who didn't make it
back. It's a large monument; over
the past ten thousand years, it's
been inscribed with quite a few
names."</p>
<p>"You can have it; I'll stick to
rockets!" the pilot replied.
"Tell<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></SPAN></span>
me another thing, though: What's
all this about levels, and sectors,
and belts? What's the difference?"</p>
<p>"Purely arbitrary terms. There
are five main probability levels, derived
from the five possible outcomes
of the attempt to colonize
this planet, seventy-five thousand
years ago. We're on the First Level—complete
success, and colony
fully established. The Fifth Level
is the probability of complete failure—no
human population established
on this planet, and indigenous
quasi-human life evolved indigenously.
On the Fourth Level, the
colonists evidently met with some
disaster and lost all memory of their
extraterrestrial origin, as well as all
extraterrestrial culture. As far as
they know, they are an indigenous
race; they have a long pre-history
of stone-age savagery.</p>
<p>"Sectors are areas of paratime
on any level in which the prevalent
culture has a common origin and
common characteristics. They are
divided more or less arbitrarily into
sub-sectors. Belts are areas within
sub-sectors where conditions are
the result of recent alternate probabilities.
For instance, I've just
come from the Europo-American
Sector of the Fourth Level, an area
of about ten thousand parayears in
depth, in which the dominant civilization
developed on the North-West
Continent of the Major Land
Mass, and spread from there to the
Minor Land Mass. The line on
which I was operating is also part
of a sub-sector of about three thousand
parayears' depth, and a belt
developing from one of several
probable outcomes of a war concluded
about three elapsed years
ago. On that time-line, the field
at the Hagraban Synthetics Works,
where we took off, is part of an
abandoned farm; on the site of
Hagraban City is a little farming
village. Those things are there,
right now, both in primary time and
in the plenum. They are about two
hundred and fifty thousand parayears
perpendicular to each other,
and each is of the same general order of reality."</p>
<p>The red light overhead flashed
on. The pilot looked into his visor
and put his hands to the manual
controls, in case of failure of the
robot controls. The rocket landed
smoothly, however; there was a
slight jar as it was grappled by the
crane and hoisted upright, the seats
turning in their gimbals. Pilot and
passenger unstrapped themselves
and hurried through the refrigerated
outlet and away from the glowing-hot
rocket.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>An air-taxi, emblazoned with the
device of the Paratime Police, was
waiting. Verkan Vall said good-by
to the rocket-pilot and took his
seat beside the pilot of the aircab;
the latter lifted his vehicle above
the building level and then set it
down on the landing-stage of the
Paratime Police Building in a long,
side-swooping glide. An express
elevator took Verkan Vall down to
one of the middle stages, where he
showed his sigil to the guard outside
the door of Tortha Karf's office
and was admitted at once.</p>
<p>The Paratime Police chief
rose<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></SPAN></span>
from behind his semicircular desk,
with its array of keyboards and
viewing-screens and communicators.
He was a big man, well past
his two hundredth year; his hair
was iron-gray and thinning in front,
he had begun to grow thick at the
waist, and his calm features bore
the lines of middle age. He wore
the dark-green uniform of the Paratime
Police.</p>
<p>"Well, Vall," he greeted. "Everything
secure?"</p>
<p>"Not exactly, sir." Verkan Vall
came around the desk, deposited his
rifle and bag on the floor, and sat
down in one of the spare chairs.
"I'll have to go back again."</p>
<p>"So?" His chief lit a cigarette
and waited.</p>
<p>"I traced Gavran Sarn." Verkan
Vall got out his pipe and began to
fill it. "But that's only the beginning.
I have to trace something
else. Gavran Sarn exceeded his
Paratime permit, and took one of
his pets along. A Venusian nighthound."</p>
<p>Tortha Karf's expression did not
alter; it merely grew more intense.
He used one of the short, semantically
ugly terms which serve, in
place of profanity, as the emotional
release of a race that has forgotten
all the taboos and terminologies of
supernaturalistic religion and sex-inhibition.</p>
<p>"You're sure of this, of course."
It was less a question than a statement.</p>
<p>Verkan Vall bent and took cloth-wrapped
objects from his bag, unwrapping
them and laying them on
the desk. They were casts, in hard
black plastic, of the footprints of
some large three-toed animal.</p>
<p>"What do these look like, sir?"
he asked.</p>
<p>Tortha Karf fingered them and
nodded. Then he became as visibly
angry as a man of his civilization
and culture-level ever permitted
himself.</p>
<p>"What does that fool think we
have a Paratime Code for?" he
demanded. "It's entirely illegal to
transpose any extraterrestrial animal
or object to any time-line on
which space-travel is unknown. I
don't care if he is a green-seal
thavrad; he'll face charges, when
he gets back, for this!"</p>
<p>"He <i>was</i> a green-seal thavrad,"
Verkan Vall corrected. "And he
won't be coming back."</p>
<p>"I hope you didn't have to deal
summarily with him," Tortha Karf
said. "With his title, and social
position, and his family's political
importance, that might make difficulties.
Not that it wouldn't be
all right with me, of course, but we
never seem to be able to make either
the Management or the public realize
the extremities to which we are
forced, at times." He sighed. "We
probably never shall."</p>
<p>Verkan Vall smiled faintly. "Oh,
no, sir; nothing like that. He was
dead before I transposed to that
time-line. He was killed when he
wrecked a self-propelled vehicle he
was using. One of those Fourth
Level automobiles. I posed as a
relative and tried to claim his body
for the burial-ceremony observed
on that cultural level, but was told
that it had been completely
destroyed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></SPAN></span>
by fire when the fuel tank
of this automobile burned. I was
given certain of his effects which
had passed through the fire; I found
his sigil concealed inside what appeared
to be a cigarette case." He
took a green disk from the bag and
laid it on the desk. "There's no
question; Gavran Sarn died in the
wreck of that automobile."</p>
<p>"And the nighthound?"</p>
<p>"It was in the car with him, but
it escaped. You know how fast
those things are. I found that
track"—he indicated one of the
black casts—"in some dried mud
near the scene of the wreck. As
you see, the cast is slightly defective.
The others were fresh this
morning, when I made them."</p>
<p>"And what have you done so
far?"</p>
<p>"I rented an old farm near the
scene of the wreck, and installed
my field-generator there. It runs
through to the Hagraban Synthetics
Works, about a hundred miles east
of Thalna-Jarvizar. I have my
this-line terminal in the girls' rest
room at the durable plastics factory;
handled that on a local police-power
writ. Since then, I've been
hunting for the nighthound. I
think I can find it, but I'll need
some special equipment, and a hypno-mech
indoctrination. That's
why I came back."</p>
<p>"Has it been attracting any attention?"
Tortha Karf asked anxiously.</p>
<p>"Killing cattle in the locality;
causing considerable excitement.
Fortunately, it's a locality of forested
mountains and valley farms,
rather than a built-up industrial
district. Local police and wild-game
protection officers are concerned;
all the farmers excited, and
going armed. The theory is that
it's either a wildcat of some sort,
or a maniac armed with a cutlass.
Either theory would conform, more
or less, to the nature of its depredations.
Nobody has actually seen
it."</p>
<p>"That's good!" Tortha Karf
was relieved. "Well, you'll have
to go and bring it out, or kill it and
obliterate the body. You know why,
as well as I do."</p>
<p>"Certainly, sir," Verkan Vall replied.
"In a primitive culture,
things like this would be assigned
supernatural explanations, and imbedded
in the locally accepted religion.
But this culture, while
nominally religious, is highly rationalistic
in practice. Typical lag-effect,
characteristic of all expanding
cultures. And this Europo-American
Sector really has an expanding
culture. A hundred and fifty years
ago, the inhabitants of this particular
time-line didn't even know
how to apply steam power; now
they've begun to release nuclear
energy, in a few crude forms."</p>
<p>Tortha Karf whistled, softly.
"That's quite a jump. There's a
sector that'll be in for trouble, in
the next few centuries."</p>
<p>"That is realized, locally, sir."
Verkan Vall concentrated on relighting
his pipe, for a moment,
then continued: "I would predict
space-travel on that sector within
the next century. Maybe the
next<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></SPAN></span>
half-century, at least to the Moon.
And the art of taxidermy is very
highly developed. Now, suppose
some farmer shoots that thing;
what would he do with it, sir?"</p>
<p>Tortha Karf grunted. "Nice
logic, Vall. On a most uncomfortable
possibility. He'd have it
mounted, and it'd be put in a museum,
somewhere. And as soon as
the first spaceship reaches Venus,
and they find those things in a wild
state, they'll have the mounted
specimen identified."</p>
<p>"Exactly. And then, instead of
beating their brains about <i>where</i>
their specimen came from, they'll
begin asking <i>when</i> it came from.
They're quite capable of such reasoning,
even now."</p>
<p>"A hundred years isn't a particularly
long time," Tortha Karf considered.
"I'll be retired, then, but
you'll have my job, and it'll be your
headache. You'd better get this
cleaned up, now, while it can be
handled. What are you going to
do?"<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image03.png" width-obs="500" height-obs="597" alt="Vall studies nighthounds" title="Vall studies nighthounds" /></div>
<p>"I'm not sure, now, sir. I want
a hypno-mech indoctrination, first."
Verkan Vall gestured toward the
communicator on the desk. "May
I?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Certainly." Tortha Karf slid
the instrument across the desk.
"Anything you want."</p>
<p>"Thank you, sir." Verkan Vall
snapped on the code-index, found
the symbol he wanted, and then
punched it on the keyboard. "Special
Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall,"
he identified himself. "Speaking
from office of Tortha Karf, Chief
Paratime Police. I want a complete
hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds,
emphasis on wild state, special
emphasis domesticated nighthounds
reverted to wild state in
terrestrial surroundings, extra-special
emphasis hunting techniques
applicable to same. The word
'nighthound' will do for trigger-symbol."
He turned to Tortha
Karf. "Can I take it here?"</p>
<p>Tortha Karf nodded, pointing to
a row of booths along the far wall
of the office.</p>
<p>"Make set-up for wired transmission;
I'll take it here."</p>
<p>"Very well, sir; in fifteen minutes,"
a voice replied out of the
communicator.</p>
<p>Verkan Vall slid the communicator
back. "By the way, sir; I had
a hitchhiker, on the way back. Carried
him about a hundred or so
parayears; picked him up about
three hundred parayears after leaving
my other-line terminal. Nasty-looking
fellow, in a black uniform;
looked like one of these private-army
storm troopers you find all
through that sector. Armed, and
hostile. I thought I'd have to ray
him, but he blundered outside the
field almost at once. I have a record,
if you'd care to see it."</p>
<p>"Yes, put it on," Tortha Karf
gestured toward the solidograph-projector.
"It's set for miniature
reproduction here on the desk; that
be all right?"</p>
<p>Verkan Vall nodded, getting out
the film and loading it into the projector.
When he pressed a button,
a dome of radiance appeared on the
desk top; two feet in width and a
foot in height. In the middle of
this appeared a small solidograph
image of the interior of the conveyor,
showing the desk, and the
control board, and the figure of
Verkan Vall seated at it. The little
figure of the storm trooper appeared,
pistol in hand. The little
Verkan Vall snatched up his tiny
needler; the storm trooper moved
into one side of the dome and vanished.</p>
<p>Verkan Vall flipped a switch and
cut out the image.</p>
<p>"Yes. I don't know what causes
that, but it happens, now and then,"
Tortha Karf said. "Usually at the
beginning of a transposition. I remember,
when I was just a kid,
about a hundred and fifty years
ago—a hundred and thirty-nine, to
be exact—I picked up a fellow on
the Fourth Level, just about where
you're operating, and dragged him
a couple of hundred parayears. I
went back to find him and return
him to his own time-line, but before
I could locate him, he'd been
arrested<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></SPAN></span>
by the local authorities as a
suspicious character, and got himself
shot trying to escape. I felt
badly about that, but—" Tortha
Karf shrugged. "Anything else
happen on the trip?"</p>
<p>"I ran through a belt of intermittent
nucleonic bombing on the
Second Level." Verkan Vall mentioned
an approximate paratime location.</p>
<p>"Aaagh! That Khiftan civilization—by
courtesy so called!" Tortha
Karf pulled a wry face. "I
suppose the intra-family enmities of
the Hvadka Dynasty have reached
critical mass again. They'll fool
around till they blast themselves
back to the stone age."</p>
<p>"Intellectually, they're about
there, now. I had to operate in
that sector, once—Oh, yes, another
thing, sir. This rifle." Verkan
Vall picked it up, emptied the
magazine, and handed it to his superior.
"The supplies office slipped
up on this; it's not appropriate to
my line of operation. It's a lovely
rifle, but it's about two hundred
percent in advance of existing arms
design on my line. It excited the
curiosity of a couple of police officers
and a game-protector, who
should be familiar with the weapons
of their own time-line. I evaded
by disclaiming ownership or intimate
knowledge, and they seemed
satisfied, but it worried me."</p>
<p>"Yes. That was made in our
duplicating shops, here in Dhergabar."
Tortha Karf carried it to a
photographic bench, behind his
desk. "I'll have it checked, while
you're taking your hypno-mech.
Want to exchange it for something
authentic?"</p>
<p>"Why, no, sir. It's been identified
to me, and I'd excite less suspicion
with it than I would if I
abandoned it and mysteriously acquired
another rifle. I just wanted
a check, and Supplies warned to be
more careful in future."</p>
<p>Tortha Karf nodded approvingly.
The young Mavrad of Nerros
was thinking as a paratimer should.</p>
<p>"What's the designation of your
line, again?"</p>
<p>Verkan Vall told him. It was a
short numerical term of six places,
but it expressed a number of the
order of ten to the fortieth power,
exact to the last digit. Tortha Karf
repeated it into his stenomemograph,
with explanatory comment.</p>
<p>"There seems to be quite a few
things going wrong, in that area,"
he said. "Let's see, now."</p>
<p>He punched the designation on a
keyboard; instantly, it appeared on
a translucent screen in front of
him. He punched another combination,
and, at the top of the
screen, under the number, there appeared:</p>
<div ><p class="center">EVENTS, PAST ELAPSED
FIVE YEARS.</p>
</div>
<p>He punched again; below this
line appeared the sub-heading:</p>
<div><p class="center">EVENTS INVOLVING PARATIME
TRANSPOSITION.</p>
</div>
<p>Another code-combination added
a third line:</p>
<div ><p class="center">(ATTRACTING PUBLIC
NOTICE AMONG
INHABITANTS.)</p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>He pressed the "start"-button;
the headings vanished, to be replaced
by page after page of print,
succeeding one another on the
screen as the two men read. They
told strange and apparently disconnected
stories—of unexplained fires
and explosions; of people vanishing
without trace; of unaccountable
disasters to aircraft. There were
many stories of an epidemic of
mysterious disk-shaped objects
seen in the sky, singly or in numbers.
To each account was appended
one or more reference-numbers.
Sometimes Tortha Karf or
Verkan Vall would punch one of
these, and read, on an adjoining
screen, the explanatory matter referred to.</p>
<p>Finally Tortha Karf leaned back
and lit a fresh cigarette.</p>
<p>"Yes, indeed, Vall; very definitely
we will have to take action
in the matter of the runaway nighthound
of the late Gavran Sarn,"
he said. "I'd forgotten that that
was the time-line onto which the
<i>Ardrath</i> expedition launched those
antigrav disks. If this extraterrestrial
monstrosity turns up, on the
heels of that 'Flying Saucer' business,
everybody above the order of
intelligence of a cretin will suspect
some connection."</p>
<p>"What really happened, in the
<i>Ardrath</i> matter?" Verkan Vall inquired.
"I was on the Third Level,
on that Luvarian Empire operation,
at the time."</p>
<p>"That's right; you missed that.
Well, it was one of these joint-operation
things. The Paratime Commission
and the Space Patrol were
experimenting with a new technique
for throwing a spaceship into
paratime. They used the cruiser
<i>Ardrath</i>, Kalzarn Jann commanding.
Went into space about halfway
to the Moon and took up
orbit, keeping on the sunlit side
of the planet to avoid being observed.
That was all right. But
then, Captain Kalzarn ordered
away a flight of antigrav disks, fully
manned, to take pictures, and finally
authorized a landing in the western
mountain range, Northern Continent,
Minor Land-Mass. That's
when the trouble started."</p>
<p>He flipped the run-back switch,
till he had recovered the page he
wanted. Verkan Vall read of a
Fourth Level aviator, in his little
airscrew-drive craft, sighting nine
high-flying saucerlike objects.</p>
<p>"That was how it began," Tortha
Karf told him. "Before long, as
other incidents of the same sort occurred,
our people on that line began
sending back to know what was
going on. Naturally, from the different
descriptions of these 'saucers',
they recognized the objects as
antigrav landing-disks from a
spaceship. So I went to the Commission
and raised atomic blazes
about it, and the <i>Ardrath</i> was ordered
to confine operations to the
lower areas of the Fifth Level.
Then our people on that time-line
went to work with corrective action.
Here."</p>
<p>He wiped the screen and then
began punching combinations. Page
after page appeared, bearing accounts
of people who had claimed
to have seen the mysterious
disks,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></SPAN></span>
and each report was more fantastic
than the last.</p>
<p>"The standard smother-out technique,"
Verkan Vall grinned. "I
only heard a little talk about the
'Flying Saucers', and all of that was
in joke. In that order of culture,
you can always discredit one true
story by setting up ten others, palpably
false, parallel to it—Wasn't
that the time-line the Tharmax
Trading Corporation almost lost
their paratime license on?"</p>
<p>"That's right; it was! They
bought up all the cigarettes, and
caused a conspicuous shortage, after
Fourth Level cigarettes had been
introduced on this line and had become
popular. They should have
spread their purchases over a number
of lines, and kept them within
the local supply-demand frame.
And they also got into trouble with
the local government for selling unrationed
petrol and automobile tires.
We had to send in a special-operations
group, and they came closer
to having to engage in out-time local
politics than I care to think of."
Tortha Karf quoted a line from a
currently popular song about the
sorrows of a policeman's life.
"We're jugglers, Vall; trying to
keep our traders and sociological
observers and tourists and plain
idiots like the late Gavran Sarn out
of trouble; trying to prevent panics
and disturbances and dislocations of
local economy as a result of our
operations; trying to keep out of
out-time politics—and, at all times,
at all costs and hazards, by all
means, guarding the secret of paratime
transposition. Sometimes I
wish Ghaldron Karf and Hesthor
Ghrom had strangled in their cradles!"</p>
<p>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 thousand years. 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 could do
to keep alive. After we began paratime
transposition, our population
climbed to ten billion, and there it
stayed for the last eight thousand
years. Just enough of us to enjoy
our planet and the other planets of
the system to the fullest; enough of
everything for everybody that nobody
needs fight anybody for anything.
We've tapped the resources
of those 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 few places—the
Dakota Badlands, and the
Gobi, on the Fourth Level, for instance—but
we've done no great
damage to any of them."</p>
<p>"Except the time they blew up
half the Southern Island Continent,
over about five hundred parayears
on the Third Level," Tortha Karf
mentioned.</p>
<p>"Regrettable accident, to be
sure," Verkan Vall conceded. "And
look how much we've learned from
the experiences of those other
time-lines. During the Crisis, after
the Fourth Interplanetary
War,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></SPAN></span>
we might have adopted Palnar
Sarn's 'Dictatorship of the Chosen'
scheme, if we hadn't seen what an
exactly similar scheme had done to
the Jak-Hakka Civilization, on the
Second Level. When Palnar Sarn
was told about that, he went into
paratime to see for himself, and
when he returned, he renounced his
proposal in horror."</p>
<p>Tortha Karf nodded. He
wouldn't be making any mistake in
turning his post over to the Mavrad
of Nerros on his retirement.</p>
<p>"Yes, Vall; I know," he said.
"But when you've been at this desk
as long as I have, you'll have a sour
moment or two, now and then, too."</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>A blue light flashed over one of
the booths across the room. Verkan
Vall got to his feet, removing
his coat and hanging it on the back
of his chair, and crossed the room,
rolling up his left shirt sleeve.
There was 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 the indoctrination he called
for, and then sat down in the chair
and lowered the helmet over his
head, inserting the ear plugs and
fastening the chin strap. Then he
touched his left arm with an injector
which was lying on the arm
of the chair, and at the same time
flipped the starter switch.</p>
<p>Soft, slow music began to chant
out of the earphones. The insidious
fingers of the drug blocked off
his senses, one by one. The music
diminished, and the words of the
hypnotic formula lulled him to
sleep.</p>
<p>He woke, hearing the lively
strains of dance music. For a
while, he lay relaxed. Then he
snapped off the switch, took out the
ear plugs, removed the helmet and
rose to his feet. Deep in his subconscious
mind was the entire body
of knowledge about the Venusian
nighthound. He mentally pronounced
the word, and at once it
began flooding into his conscious
mind. He knew the animal's evolutionary
history, its anatomy, its
characteristics, its dietary and reproductive
habits, how it hunted,
how it fought its enemies, how it
eluded pursuit, and how best it
could be tracked down and killed.
He nodded. Already, a plan for
dealing with Gavran Sarn's renegade
pet was taking shape in his
mind.</p>
<p>He picked a plastic cup from the
dispenser, filled it from a cooler-tap
with amber-colored spiced wine,
and drank, tossing the cup into the
disposal-bin. He placed a fresh
injector on the arm of the chair,
ready for the next user of the
booth. Then he emerged, glancing
at his Fourth Level wrist watch and
mentally translating to the First
Level time-scale. Three hours had
passed; there had been more to
learn about his quarry than he had
expected.</p>
<p>Tortha Karf was sitting behind
his desk, smoking a cigarette. It
seemed as though he had not moved
since Verkan Vall had left him,
though the special agent knew that
he had dined, attended several
conferences,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></SPAN></span>
and done many other
things.</p>
<p>"I checked up on your hitchhiker,
Vall," the chief said. "We won't
bother about him. He's a member
of something called the Christian
Avengers—one of those typical Europo-American
race-and-religious
hate groups. He belongs in a belt
that is the outcome of the Hitler
victory of 1940, whatever that was.
Something unpleasant, I daresay.
We don't owe him anything; people
of that sort should be stepped on,
like cockroaches. And he won't
make any more trouble on the line
where you dropped him than they
have there already. It's in a belt of
complete social and political anarchy;
somebody probably shot him
as soon as he emerged, because he
wasn't wearing the right sort of a
uniform. Nineteen-forty what, by
the way?"</p>
<p>"Elapsed years since the birth
of some religious leader," Verkan
Vall explained. "And did you find
out about my rifle?"</p>
<p>"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 a company that went out of business
sixty-seven years ago, elapsed
time, on your line of operation.
What made the difference was the
Second War Between The States.
I don't know what that was, either—I'm
not too well up on Fourth
Level history—but whatever, your
line of operation didn't have it.
Probably just as well for them,
though they very likely had something
else, as bad or worse. I put
in a complaint to Supplies about it,
and got you some more ammunition
and reloading tools. Now, tell me
what you're going to do about this
nighthound business."</p>
<p>Tortha Karf was silent for a
while, after Verkan Vall had
finished.</p>
<p>"You're taking some awful
chances, Vall," he said, at length.
"The way you plan doing it, the
advantages will all be with the
nighthound. Those things can see
as well at night as you can in daylight.
I suppose you know that,
though; you're the nighthound specialist, now."</p>
<p>"Yes. But they're accustomed
to the Venus hotland marshes; it's
been dry weather for the last two
weeks, all over the northeastern
section of the Northern Continent.
I'll be able to hear it, long before it
gets close to me. And I'll be wearing
an electric headlamp. When I
snap that on, it'll be dazzled, for a
moment."</p>
<p>"Well, as I said, you're the nighthound
specialist. There's the communicator;
order anything you
need." He lit a fresh cigarette from
the 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; I
don't want to have to repeat the
process with somebody else before
I can retire."</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>The grass was wet as Verkan
Vall—who reminded himself that
here he was called Richard Lee—crossed
the yard from the
farmhouse<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></SPAN></span>
to the ramshackle barn, in
the early autumn darkness. It had
been raining that morning when
the strato-rocket from Dhergabar
had landed him at the Hagraban
Synthetics Works, on the First
Level; unaffected by the probabilities
of human history, the same
rain had been coming down on the
old Kinchwalter farm, near Rutter's
Fort, on the Fourth Level.
And it had persisted all day, in a
slow, deliberate drizzle.</p>
<p>He didn't like that. The woods
would be wet, muffling his quarry's
footsteps, and canceling his only
advantage over the night-prowler
he hunted. He had no idea, however,
of postponing the hunt. If
anything, the rain had made it all
the more imperative that the nighthound
be killed at once. At this
season, a falling temperature would
speedily follow. The nighthound,
a creature of the hot Venus
marshes, would suffer from the
cold, and, taught by years of domestication
to find warmth among human
habitations, it would invade
some isolated farmhouse, or, worse,
one of the little valley villages. If
it were not killed tonight, the incident
he had come to prevent would
certainly occur.</p>
<p>Going to the barn, he spread an
old horse blanket on the seat of the
jeep, laid his rifle on it, and then
backed the jeep outside. Then he
took off his coat, removing his pipe
and tobacco from the pockets, and <!-- Erroneous "," commented out. -->
spread it on the wet grass. He unwrapped
a package and took out a
small plastic spray-gun he had
brought with him from the First
Level, aiming it at the coat and
pressing the trigger until it blew itself
empty. A sickening, rancid
fetor tainted the air—the scent of
the giant poison-roach of Venus,
the one creature for which the
nighthound bore an inborn, implacable
hatred. It was because of
this compulsive urge to attack and
kill the deadly poison-roach that the
first human settlers on Venus, long
millennia ago, had domesticated the
ugly and savage nighthound. He
remembered that the Gavran family
derived their title from their vast
Venus hotlands estates; that Gavran
Sarn, the man who had brought
this thing to the Fourth Level, had
been born on the inner planet.
When Verkan Vall donned that
coat, he would become his own living
bait for the murderous fury of
the creature he sought. At the moment,
mastering his queasiness and
putting on the coat, he objected
less to that danger than to the hideous
stench of the scent, to obtain
which a valuable specimen had
been sacrificed at the Dhergabar
Museum of Extraterrestrial Zoology,
the evening before.</p>
<p>Carrying the wrapper and the
spray-gun to an outside fireplace,
he snapped his lighter to them and
tossed them in. They were highly
inflammable, blazing up and vanishing
in a moment. He tested the
electric headlamp on the front of
his cap; checked his rifle; drew the
heavy revolver, an authentic product
of his line of operation, and
flipped the cylinder out and in
again. Then he got into the jeep
and drove away.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>For half an hour, he drove
quickly along the valley roads. Now
and then, he passed farmhouses,
and dogs, puzzled and angered by
the alien scent his coat bore, barked
furiously. At length, he turned into
a back road, and from this to the
barely discernible trace of an old log
road. The rain had stopped, and,
in order to be ready to fire in any
direction at any time, he had removed
the top of the jeep. Now he
had to crouch below the windshield
to avoid overhanging branches.
Once three deer—a buck and two
does—stopped in front of him and
stared for a moment, then bounded
away with a flutter of white tails.</p>
<p>He was driving slowly, now;
laying behind him a reeking trail of
scent. There had been another
stock-killing, the night before, while
he had been on the First Level.
The locality of this latest depredation
had confirmed his estimate of
the beast's probable movements, and
indicated where it might be prowling,
tonight. He was certain that
it was somewhere near; sooner or
later, it would pick up the scent.</p>
<p>Finally, he stopped, snapping out
his lights. He had chosen this spot
carefully, while studying the Geological
Survey map, that afternoon;
he was on the grade of an old railroad
line, now abandoned and its
track long removed, which had
served the logging operations of
fifty years ago. On one side, the
mountain slanted sharply upward;
on the other, it fell away sharply.
If the nighthound were below him,
it would have to climb that forty-five
degree slope, and could not
avoid dislodging loose stones, or
otherwise making a noise. He
would get out on that side; if the
nighthound were above him, the
jeep would protect him when it
charged. He got to the ground,
thumbing off the safety of his rifle,
and an instant later he knew that
he had made a mistake which could
easily cost him his life; a mistake
from which neither his comprehensive
logic nor his hypnotically
acquired knowledge of the beast's
habits had saved him.</p>
<p>As he stepped to the ground, facing
toward the front of the jeep, he
heard a low, whining cry behind
him, and a rush of padded feet. He
whirled, snapping on the headlamp
with his left hand and thrusting
out his rifle pistol-wise in his right.
For a split second, he saw the
charging animal, its long, lizardlike
head split in a toothy grin, its talon-tipped
fore-paws extended.</p>
<p>He fired, and the bullet went
wild. The next instant, the rifle
was knocked from his hand. Instinctively,
he flung up his left arm
to shield his eyes. Claws raked his
left arm and shoulder, something
struck him heavily along the left
side, and his cap-light went out as
he dropped and rolled under the
jeep, drawing in his legs and fumbling
under his coat for the revolver.</p>
<p>In that instant, he knew what
had gone wrong. His plan had been
entirely too much of a success. The
nighthound had winded him as he
had driven up the old railroad-grade,
and had followed. Its best
running speed had been just good
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></SPAN></span>
enough to keep it a hundred or so
feet behind the jeep, and the motor-noise
had covered the padding of
its feet. In the few moments between
stopping the little car and
getting out, the nighthound had
been able to close the distance and
spring upon him.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image04.png" width-obs="600" height-obs="416" alt="Vall shoots nighthound" title="Vall shoots nighthound" /></div>
<!-- Image replaces thought-break. -->
<p>It was characteristic of First-Level
mentality that Verkan Vall
wasted no moments on self-reproach
or panic. While he was
still rolling under his jeep, his mind
had been busy with plans to retrieve
the situation. Something touched
the heel of one boot, and he froze
his leg into immobility, at the same
time trying to get the big Smith &
Wesson free. The shoulder-holster,
he found, was badly torn,
though made of the heaviest skirting-leather,
and the spring which retained
the weapon in place had been
wrenched and bent until he needed
both hands to draw. The eight-inch
slashing-claw of the nighthound's
right intermediary limb had raked
him; only the instinctive motion of
throwing up his arm, and the fact
that he wore the revolver in a shoulder-holster,
had saved his life.</p>
<p>The nighthound was prowling
around the jeep, whining frantically.
It was badly confused. It
could see quite well, even in the
close darkness of the starless night;
its eyes were of a nature capable of
perceiving infrared radiations as
light. There were plenty of these;
the jeep's engine, lately running on
four-wheel drive, was quite hot.
Had he been standing alone, especially
on this raw, chilly night, Verkan
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></SPAN></span>
Vall's own body-heat would
have lighted him up like a jack-o'-lantern.
Now, however, the hot
engine above him masked his own
radiations. Moreover, the poison-roach
scent on his coat was coming
up through the floor board and
mingling with the scent on the seat,
yet the nighthound couldn't find the
two-and-a-half foot insectlike thing
that should have been producing it.
Verkan Vall lay motionless, wondering
how long the next move
would be in coming. Then he heard
a thud above him, followed by a
furious tearing as the nighthound
ripped the blanket and began rending
at the seat cushion.</p>
<p>"Hope it gets a paw-full of seat-springs,"
Verkan Vall commented
mentally. He had already found a
stone about the size of his two fists,
and another slightly smaller, and
had put one in each of the side
pockets of the coat. Now he slipped
his revolver into his waist-belt and
writhed out of the coat, shedding
the ruined shoulder-holster at the
same time. Wriggling on the flat
of his back, he squirmed between
the rear wheels, until he was able
to sit up, behind the jeep. Then,
swinging the weighted coat, he flung
it forward, over the nighthound and
the jeep itself, at the same time
drawing his revolver.</p>
<p>Immediately, the nighthound,
lured by the sudden movement of
the principal source of the scent,
jumped out of the jeep and bounded
after the coat, and there was considerable
noise in the brush on the
lower side of the railroad grade. At
once, Verkan Vall swarmed into the
jeep and snapped on the lights.</p>
<p>His stratagem had succeeded
beautifully. The stinking coat had
landed on the top of a small bush,
about ten feet in front of the jeep
and ten feet from the ground. The
nighthound, erect on its haunches,
was reaching out with its front
paws to drag it down, and slashing
angrily at it with its single-clawed
intermediary limbs. Its back was
to Verkan Vall.</p>
<p>His sights clearly defined by the
lights in front of him, the paratimer
centered them on the base of the
creature's spine, just above its secondary
shoulders, and carefully
squeezed the trigger. The big .357
Magnum bucked in his hand and
belched flame and sound—if only
these Fourth Level weapons weren't
so confoundedly boisterous!—and
the nighthound screamed and fell.
Recocking the revolver, Verkan
Vall waited for an instant, then
nodded in satisfaction. The beast's
spine had been smashed, and its
hind quarters, and even its intermediary
fighting limbs had been
paralyzed. He aimed carefully for
a second shot and fired into the base
of the thing's skull. It quivered
and died.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>Getting a flashlight, he found his
rifle, sticking muzzle-down in the
mud a little behind and to the right
of the jeep, and swore briefly in the
local Fourth Level idiom, for Verkan
Vall was a man who loved good
weapons, be they sigma-ray needlers,
neutron-disruption blasters, or
the solid-missile projectors of the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></SPAN></span>
lower levels. By this time, he was
feeling considerable pain from the
claw-wounds he had received. He
peeled off his shirt and tossed it
over the hood of the jeep.</p>
<p>Tortha Karf had advised him to
carry a needler, or a blaster, or a
neurostat-gun, but Verkan Vall had
been unwilling to take such arms
onto the Fourth Level. In event of
mishap to himself, it would be all
too easy for such a weapon to fall
into the hands of someone able to
deduce from it scientific principles
too far in advance of the general
Fourth Level culture. But there
had been one First Level item which
he had permitted himself, mainly
because, suitably packaged, it was
not readily identifiable as such.
Digging a respectable Fourth-Level
leatherette case from under the
seat, he opened it and took out a
pint bottle with a red poison-label,
and a towel. Saturating the towel
with the contents of the bottle, he
rubbed every inch of his torso with
it, so as not to miss even the smallest
break made in his skin by the
septic claws of the nighthound.
Whenever the lotion-soaked towel
touched raw skin, a pain like the
burn of a hot iron shot through
him; before he was through, he was
in agony. Satisfied that he had disinfected
every wound, he dropped
the towel and clung weakly to the
side of the jeep. He grunted out a
string of English oaths, and capped
them with an obscene Spanish blasphemy
he had picked up among the
Fourth Level inhabitants of his island
home of Nerros, to the south,
and a thundering curse in the name
of Mogga, Fire-God of Dool, in a
Third-Level tongue. He mentioned
Fasif, Great God of Khift, in a
manner which would have got him
an acid-bath if the Khiftan priests
had heard him. He alluded to the
baroque amatory practices of the
Third-Level Illyalla people, and
soothed himself, in the classical
Dar-Halma tongue, with one of
those rambling genealogical insults
favored in the Indo-Turanian Sector
of the Fourth Level.</p>
<p>By this time, the pain had subsided
to an over-all smarting itch.
He'd have to bear with that until
his work was finished and he could
enjoy a hot bath. He got another
bottle out of the first-aid kit—a flat
pint, labeled "Old Overholt," containing
a locally-manufactured specific
for inward and subjective
wounds—and medicated himself
copiously from it, corking it and
slipping it into his hip pocket
against future need. He gathered
up the ruined shoulder-holster and
threw it under the back seat. He
put on his shirt. Then he went and
dragged the dead nighthound onto
the grade by its stumpy tail.</p>
<p>It was an ugly thing, weighing
close to two hundred pounds, with
powerfully muscled hind legs which
furnished the bulk of its motive-power,
and sturdy three-clawed
front legs. Its secondary limbs,
about a third of the way back from
its front shoulders, were long and
slender; normally, they were carried
folded closely against the body,
and each was armed with a single
curving claw. The revolver-bullet
had gone in at the base of the skull
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></SPAN></span>
and emerged under the jaw; the
head was relatively undamaged.
Verkan Vall was glad of that; he
wanted that head for the trophy-room
of his home on Nerros.
Grunting and straining, he got the
thing into the back of the jeep, and
flung his almost shredded tweed
coat over it.</p>
<p>A last look around assured him
that he had left nothing unaccountable
or suspicious. The brush was
broken where the nighthound had
been tearing at the coat; a bear
might have done that. There were
splashes of the viscid stuff the thing
had used for blood, but they
wouldn't be there long. Terrestrial
rodents liked nighthound blood, and
the woods were full of mice. He
climbed in under the wheel, backed,
turned, and drove away.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>Inside the paratime-transposition
dome, Verkan Vall turned from the
body of the nighthound, which he
had just dragged in, and considered
the inert form of another animal—a
stump-tailed, tuft-eared, tawny
Canada lynx. That particular animal
had already made two paratime
transpositions; captured in the
vast wilderness of Fifth-Level
North America, it had been taken
to the First Level and placed in the
Dhergabar Zoological Gardens, and
then, requisitioned on the authority
of Tortha Karf, it had been brought
to the Fourth Level by Verkan
Vall. It was almost at the end of
all its travels.</p>
<p>Verkan Vall prodded the supine
animal with the toe of his boot;
it twitched slightly. Its feet were
cross-bound with straps, but when
he saw that the narcotic was wearing
off, Verkan Vall snatched a syringe,
parted the fur at the base of
its neck, and gave it an injection.
After a moment, he picked it up in
his arms and carried it out to the
jeep.</p>
<p>"All right, pussy cat," he said,
placing it under the rear seat,
"this is the one-way ride. The way
you're doped up, it won't hurt a
bit."</p>
<p>He went back and rummaged in
the debris of the long-deserted barn.
He picked up a hoe, and discarded
it as too light. An old plowshare
was too unhandy. He considered
a grate-bar from a heating furnace,
and then he found the poleax, lying
among a pile of wormeaten boards.
Its handle had been shortened, at
some time, to about twelve inches,
converting it into a heavy hatchet.
He weighed it, and tried it on a
block of wood, and then, making
sure that the secret door was closed,
he went out again and drove off.</p>
<p>An hour later, he returned.
Opening the secret door, he carried
the ruined shoulder holster, and the
straps that had bound the bobcat's
feet, and the ax, now splotched with
blood and tawny cat-hairs, into the
dome. Then he closed the secret
room, and took a long drink from
the bottle on his hip.</p>
<p>The job was done. He would
take a hot bath, and sleep in the
farmhouse till noon, and then he
would return to the First Level.
Maybe Tortha Karf would want
him to come back here for a while.
The situation on this time-line was
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></SPAN></span>
far from satisfactory, even if the
crisis threatened by Gavran Sarn's
renegade pet had been averted. The
presence of a chief's assistant might
be desirable.</p>
<p>At least, he had a right to expect
a short vacation. He thought of
the little redhead at the Hagraban
Synthetics Works. What was her
name? Something Kara—Morvan
Kara; that was it. She'd be coming
off shift about the time he'd
make First Level, tomorrow afternoon.</p>
<p>The claw-wounds were still
smarting vexatiously. A hot bath,
and a night's sleep—He took another
drink, lit his pipe, picked up
his rifle and started across the yard
to the house.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>Private Zinkowski cradled the
telephone and got up from the desk,
stretching. He left the orderly-room
and walked across the hall to
the recreation room, where the rest
of the boys were loafing. Sergeant
Haines, in a languid gin-rummy
game with Corporal Conner, a sheriff's
deputy, and a mechanic from
the service station down the road,
looked up.</p>
<p>"Well, Sarge, I think we can
write off those stock-killings," the
private said.</p>
<p>"Yeah?" The sergeant's interest
quickened.</p>
<p>"Yeah. I think the whatzit's had
it. I just got a buzz from the railroad
cops at Logansport. It seems
a track-walker found a dead bobcat
on the Logan River branch, about
a mile or so below MMY signal
tower. Looks like it tangled with
that night freight up-river, and
came off second best. It was near
chopped to hamburger."</p>
<p>"MMY signal tower; that's right
below Yoder's Crossing," the sergeant
considered. "The Strawmyer
farm night-before-last, the Amrine
farm last night—Yeah, that would
be about right."</p>
<p>"That'll suit Steve Parker; bobcats
aren't protected, so it's not his
trouble. And they're not a violation
of state law, so it's none of our
worry," Conner said. "Your deal,
isn't it, Sarge?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. Wait a minute." The
sergeant got to his feet. "I promised
Sam Kane, the AP man at
Logansport, that I'd let him in on
anything new." He got up and
started for the phone. "Phantom
Killer!" He blew an impolite noise.</p>
<p>"Well, it was a lot of excitement,
while it lasted," the deputy sheriff
said. "Just like that Flying Saucer
thing."</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="center">THE END</p>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />