at her for an
instant.

"Go on," Tortha Karf encouraged. "This sounds interesting."

"The people back of this," Dalla said, "are definitely classifiable as
criminals. They may never perform a criminal act themselves, but they
give orders for and profit from such acts, and they must possess the
motivation and psychology of criminals. We define people as criminals
when they suffer from psychological aberrations of an antisocial
character, usually paranoid--excessive egoism, disregard for the
rights of others, inability to recognize the social necessity for
mutual cooeperation and confidence. On Home Time Line, we have
universal psychological testing, for the purpose of detecting and
eliminating such characteristics."

"It seems to have failed in this case," Tortha Karf began, then
snapped his fingers. "Of course! How blasted silly can I get, when I'm
not trying?"

"Yes, of course," Verkan Vall agreed. "Find out how these people
missed being spotted by psychotesting; that'll lead us to _who_ missed
being tested adequately, and also who got into the Bureau of
Psychological Hygiene who didn't belong there."

"I think you ought to give an investigation of the whole BuPsychHyg
setup very high priority," Dalla said. "A psychotest is only as good
as the people who give it, and if we have criminals administering
these tests--"

"We have our friends on Executive Council," Tortha Karf said. "I'll
see that that point is raised when Council re-convenes." He looked at
the clock. "That'll be in three hours, by the way. If it doesn't
accomplish another thing, it'll put Salgath Trod in the middle. He
can't demand an investigation of the Paratime Police out of one side
of his mouth and oppose an investigation of Psychological Hygiene out
of the other. Now what else have we to talk about?"

[Illustration:]

"Those hundred slaves we got off the Esaron Sector," Vall said. "What
are we going to do with them? And if we locate the time line the
slavers have their bases on, we'll have hundreds, probably thousands,
more."

"We can't sort them out and send them back to their own time lines,
even if that would be desirable," Tortha Karf decided. "Why, settle
them somewhere on the Service Sector. I know, the Paratime
Transposition Code limits the Service Sector to natives of time lines
below second-order barbarism, but the Paratime Transposition Code has
been so badly battered by this business that a few more minor literal
infractions