paddies.
We located a belt of about five parayears where these improvements had
been made: we started boomeranging the whole belt, time line by time
line. So far, we have ten or fifteen pictures of the main square at
Sohram showing Croutha with firearms, and pictures of Wizard Trader
camps and conveyer heads on the same time lines. Here, let me show
you; this is from an airboat over the forest outside the equivalent of
Sohram."

There was no jungle visible when the view changed; nothing but
clusters of steel towers and platforms and buildings that marked
conveyer heads, and a large rectangle of red-and-white antigrav-buoys
moored to warn air traffic out of the area being boomeranged. The
pickup seemed to be pointed downward from the bow of an airboat
circling at about ten thousand feet.

"Balls ready to go," a voice called, and then repeated a string of
time-line designations. "Estimated return, 1820, give or take four
minutes."

"Varth," Ranthar Jard said, evidently out of the boat's radio. "Your
telecast is being beamed on Dhergabar Equivalent; Chief's Assistant
Verkan is watching. When do you estimate your next return?"

"Any moment, now, sir; we're holding this drop till they
rematerialize."

Vall watched unblinkingly, his fork poised halfway to his mouth.
Suddenly, about a thousand feet below the eye of the pickup, there was
a series of blue flashes, and, an instant later, a blossoming of
red-and-white parachutes, ejected from the photo-reconnaissance balls
that had returned from the Kholghoor Sector.

"All right; drop away," the boat captain called. There was a gush,
from underneath, of eight-inch spheres, their conductor-mesh twinkling
golden-bright in the sunlight. They dropped in a tight cluster for a
thousand or so feet and then flashed and vanished. From the ground,
six or eight aircars rose to meet the descending parachutes and catch
them.

The screen went cubist for a moment, and then Ranthar Jard's swarthy,
wide-jawed face looked out of it again. He took his pipe from his
mouth.

"We'll probably get a positive out of the batch you just saw coming
in," he said. "We get one out of about every two drops."

"Message a list of the time-line designations you've gotten so far to
Zulthran Torv, at Computer Office here," Vall said. "He's working on
the Esaron Sector dope; we think a pattern can be established. I'll be
seeing you in about five hours; I'm rocketing out of here as soon as I
get a few mor