ck him dead,
as gods on this plane of culture are supposed to do, and if any of
them noticed the needler at all, they'd think it was just a holy
amulet of some kind."

[Illustration:]

"But the law is the law--" Brannad Klav began.

Verkan Vall shook his head. "Brannad, as I understand, you were
promoted to your present position on the retirement of Salvan Marth,
about ten years ago; up to that time, you were in your company's
financial department. You were accustomed to working subject to the
First Level Commercial Regulation Code. Now, any law binding upon our
people at home, on the First Level, is inflexible. It has to be. We
found out, over fifty centuries ago, that laws have to be rigid and
without discretionary powers in administration in order that people
may be able to predict their effect and plan their activities
accordingly. Naturally, you became conditioned to operating in such a
climate of legal inflexibility.

"But in paratime, the situation is entirely different. There exist,
within the range of the Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal-field generator,
a number of time-lines of the order of ten to the hundred-thousandth
power. In effect, that many different worlds. In the past ten thousand
years, we have visited only the tiniest fraction of these, but we have
found everything from time-lines inhabited only by subhuman ape-men to
Second Level civilizations which are our own equal in every respect
but knowledge of paratemporal transposition. We even know of one
Second Level civilization which is approaching the discovery of an
interstellar hyperspatial drive, something we've never even come close
to. And in between are every degree of savagery, barbarism and
civilization. Now, it's just not possible to frame any single code of
laws applicable to conditions on all of these. The best we can do is
prohibit certain flagrantly immoral types of activity, such as
slave-trading, introduction of new types of narcotic drugs, or
out-and-out piracy and brigandage. If you're in doubt as to the
legality of anything you want to do outtime, go to the Judicial
Section of the Paratime Commission and get an opinion on it. That's
where you made your whole mistake. You didn't find out just how far it
was allowable for you to go."

He turned to Stranor Sleth again. "Well, that's the background, then.
Now tell me about what happened yesterday at Zurb."

"Well, a week ago, Kurchuk came out with this decree closing our
temple at