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are going wild about this. I had to make a preliminary statement, to the
effect that Salgath Trod was not arrested, came to Headquarters of his own
volition, and is under no restraint whatever."
"Except, of course, a slight case of rigor mortis," Dalla added. "Did you
mention that, Chief?"
"No, I didn't." Tortha Karf looked as though he had quinine in his mouth.
"Vail, how in blazes are we going to handle this?"
"We ought to keep Salgath's death hushed up, as long as we can," Vail said.
"The
Organization doesn't know positively what happened here; that's why they're
handing out tips to the news services. Let's try to make them believe he's
still alive and talking."
"How can we do it?"
"There ought to be somebody on the Force close enough to Salgath Trod's
anthropometric specifications that our cosmeticians could work him over into a
passable impersonation. Our story is that Salgath is on Pol-Term, undergoing
narco-hypnosis. We will produce an audio-visual of him as soon as he is out of
narco-hyp. That will give us time to fix up an impersonator. We'll need a lot
of sound-recordings of Salgath Trod's voice, of course
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"I'll take care of the Home Time Line end of it; as soon as we get you an
impersonator, you go to work with him. Now, let's see whom we can depend on to
help us with this. Lovranth Rolk, of course; Home Time Line section of the
Paratime Code Enforcement Division. And "
Verkan Vail and Dalla and Tortha Karf and four or five others looked across
the desk and to the end of the room as the telecast screen broke into a
shifting light-
pattern and then cleared. The face of the announcer appeared; a young woman.
"And now, we bring you the statement which Chief Tortha, of the Paratime
Police, has promised for this time. This portion of the program was audio-
visually recorded at Paratime Police Headquarters earlier this evening."
Tortha Karf's face appeared on the screen. His voice began an announcement of
how Executive Councilman Salgath Trod had called him by visiphone, admitting
to complicity in the recently-discovered paratemporal slave-trade.
"Here is a recording of Councilman Salgath's call to me from his apartment to
my office, at 1945 this evening."
The screen-image shattered into light-shards and rebuilt itself; Salgath Trod,
at his desk in the library of his apartment, the brandy-goblet and the needier
within reach, appeared. He began to speak; from time to time the voice of
Tortha Karf interrupted, questioning or prompting him.
"You understand that this confession renders you liable to psycho-
rehabilitation?" Tortha Karf asked.
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Yes, Councilman Salgath understood that.
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"And you agree to come voluntarily to Paratime Police Headquarters, and you
will voluntarily undergo narco-hypnotic interrogation?"
Yes, Salgath Trod agreed to that.
"I am now terminating the playback of Councilman Salgath's call to me," Tortha
Karf said, re-appearing on the screen. "At this point Councilman Salgath began
making a statement about his criminal activities, which we have on record.
Because he named a number of his criminal associates, whom we have no
intention of warning, this portion of Councilman Salgath's call cannot at this
time be made public. We have no intention of having any of these suspects
escape, or of giving their associates an opportunity to murder them to prevent
their furnishing us with additional information. Incidentally, there was an
attempt, made on the landing stage of Paratime Police Headquarters, to murder
Councilman Salgath, when he was brought here guarded by Paratime Police
officers "
He went on to give a colorful and, as far as possible, truthful, account of
the attack by the two pseudo policemen and their pseudo-prisoner. As he told
it, however, all three had been killed before they could accomplish their
purpose, one of them by Salgath Trod himself.
The image of Tortha Karf was replaced by a view of the three assassins lying
on the landing stage. They all looked dead, even the one who wasn't; there was
nothing to indicate that he was merely drugged. Then, one after another, their
faces were shown in closeup, while Tortha Karf asked for close attention and
memorization.
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"We believe that these men were Fifth Level Proles; we think that they were
under hypnotic influence or obeying posthypnotic commands when they made their
suicidal attack. If any of you have ever seen any of these men before, it is
your duty to inform the Paratime Police."
That ended it. Tortha Karf pressed a button in front of him and the screen
went dark. The spectators relaxed.
"Well! Nothing like being sincere with the public, is there?" Dalla commented.
"I'll remember this the next time I tune in a Management public statement."
"In about five minutes," one of the bureau-chiefs, said, "all hell is going to
break loose. I think the whole thing is crazy!"
"I hope you have somebody who can give a convincing impersonation,"
Lovranth Rolk said.
"Yes. A field agent named Kostran Galth," Tortha Karf said. "We ran the
personal description cards for the whole Force through the machine; Kostran
checked to within one-twentieth of one per cent; he's on Police Terminal, now,
coming by rocket from Ravvanan Equivalent. We ought to have the whole thing
ready for telecast by 1730 tomorrow."
"He can't learn to imitate Salgath's voice convincingly in that time, with all
the work the cosmeticians'll have to be doing on him," Dalla said.
"Make up a tape of Salgath's own voice, out of that pile of recordings we got
at his apartment, and what we can get out of the news file," Vail said. "We
have phoneticists who can split syllables and splice them together. Kostran
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deliver his speech in dumb-show, and we'll dub the sound in and telecast them
as one. I've messaged Pol-Term to get to work on that; they can start as soon
as we have the speech written."
"The more it succeeds now, the worse the blow-up will be when we finally have
to admit that Salgath was killed here tonight," the Chief Inter-officer
Coordinator, Zostha Olv said. "We'd better have something to show the public
to justify that."
"Yes, we had," Tortha Karf agreed. "Vail, how about the Kholghoor Sector
operation. How far's Ranthar Jard gotten toward locating one of those Wizard
Trader time lines?"
"Not very far," Vail admitted. "He has it pinned down to the sub-sector, but
the belt seems to be one we haven't any information at all for. Never been any
legitimate penetration by paratimers. He has his own hagiologists, and a
couple borrowed from Outtime Religious Institute; they've gotten everything
the slaves can give them on that. About the only thing to do is start random
observation with boomerang-balls."
"Over about a hundred thousand time lines," Zostha Olv scoffed. He was an old
man, even for his long-lived race; he had a thin nose and a narrow, bitter,
mouth.
"And what will he look for?"
"Croutha with guns," Tortha Karf told him, then turned to Vail. "Can't he
narrow it more than that? What have his experts been getting out of those
slaves?"
"That I don't know, to date." Vail looked at the clock. "I'll find out,
though; I'll transpose to Police Terminal and call him up. And Skordran Kirv.
No, Vulthor
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