e. 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.

"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?" Della
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."
Vall said. "We have phoneticists who can split syllables and splice
them together. Kostran will deliver his speech in dumb-show, and we'll
dub the sound in and telecast them as one. I've messaged PolTerm to
get to work on that; they can start as soon as we have the speech
written."

[Illustration:]

"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 Cooerdinator, Zostha Olv said. "We'd better have
something to show the public to justify that."

"Yes, we had," Tortha Karf agreed. "Vall, how about the Kholghoor
Sector operation. How far's Ranthar Jard gotten toward locating one of
those Wizard Trader time lines?"

"Not very far," Vall admitted. "He has it pinned down to the
sub-s