l be needed." He turned to Brannad Klav. "I suppose you
keep spare regalia in stock on the First Level?"

"Yes, of course; we keep plenty of everything in stock. Robes, miters,
false beards of different shades, everything."

"And these big Yat-Zar idols: they're mass-produced on the First
Level? You have one available now? Good. I'll want some alterations
made on one. For one thing, I'll want it plated heavily, all over,
with collapsed nickel. For another, I'll want it fitted with antigrav
units and some sort of propulsion-units, and a loud-speaker, and
remote control.

[Illustration:]

"And, Stranor, you get in touch with this swordmaker, Crannar Jurth,
and alert him to co-operate with us. Tell him to start calling Zurb
temple on his radio about noon tomorrow, and keep it up till he gets
an answer. Or, better, tell him to run his conveyer to his First Level
terminal, and bring with him an extra suit of clothes appropriate to
the role of journeyman-mechanic. I'll want to talk to him, and furnish
him with special equipment. Got all that? Well, carry on with it, and
bring your own paratimers, priests and mining operators, back with you
as soon as you've taken care of everything. Brannad, you come with me,
now. We're returning to First Level immediately. We have a lot of
work to do, so let's get started."

"Anything I can do to help, just call on me for it," Brannad Klav
promised earnestly. "And, Stranor, I want to apologize. I'll admit,
now, that I ought to have followed your recommendations, when this
situation first developed."

* * * * *

By noon of the next day, Verkan Vall had at least a hundred men
gathered in the big room at the First Level fissionables refinery at
Jarnabar, spatially co-existent with the Fourth Level temple of
Yat-Zar at Zurb. He was having a little trouble distinguishing between
them, for every man wore the fringed blue robe and golden miter of an
upper-priest, and had his face masked behind a blue false beard. It
was, he admitted to himself, a most ludicrous-looking assemblage; one
of the most ludicrous things about it was the fact that it would have
inspired only pious awe in a Hulgun of the Fourth Level Proto-Aryan
Sector. About half of them were priests from the Transtemporal Mining
Corporation's temples; the other half were members of the Paratime
Police. All of them wore, in addition to their temple knives,
holstered sigma-ray needlers. Most of them c