had spilled when her bag had burst. They both
looked up as Tortha Karf came in and joined them.

"The prisoner's still under the drug," the Chief said. "He'll be out
for a couple of hours; the psych-techs want to let him come out of it
naturally and sleep naturally for a while before they give him a
hypno. He's not a ServSec Prole; uncircumcised, never had any
syntho-enzyme shots or immunizations, and none of the longevity
operations or grafts. Same thing for the two stiffs. And no identity
records on any of the three."

"The men at Salgath's apartment say that his housekeeper and his two
servants checked out through the house conveyer for ServSec
One-Six-Five, at about 1830," Vall said. "There's a Prole
entertainment center on that time line. I suppose Salgath gave them
the evening off before he called you."

Tortha Karf nodded. "I suppose you ordered them picked up. The news
services 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. "Vall, how in blazes are we going to handle this?"

"We ought to keep Salgath's death hushed up, as long as we can," Vall
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 PolTerm, 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--"

"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 Vall and Dalla and Tortha Karf and four or five others looked
across the desk and to t