e things cleared up here."

Zulthran Torv, normally cautious to the degree of pessimism, was
jubilant when Vall called him.

"We have something, Vall," he said. "It is, roughly, what Dr. Nentrov
suggested--each of the intervals between the designations is a very
minute but very exact fraction of the difference between lesser
designation and the base-line designation."

"You have the base-line designation?" Vall demanded.

"Oh, yes. That's what I was telling you. We worked that out from the
designations you gave me." He recited it. "All the designations you
gave me are--"

Vall wasn't listening to him. He frowned in puzzlement.

"That's not a Fifth Level designation," he said. "That's First Level!"

"That's correct. First Level Abzar Sector."

"Now why in blazes didn't anybody think of that before?" he marveled,
and as he did, he knew the answer. Nobody ever thought of the Abzar
sector.

[Illustration:]

Twelve millennia ago, the world of the First Level had been
exhausted; having used up the resources of their home planet, Mars, a
hundred thousand years before, the descendants of the population that
had migrated across space had repeated on the third planet the
devastation of the fourth. The ancestors of Verkan Vall's people had
discovered the principle of paratime transposition and had begun to
exploit an infinity of worlds on other lines of probability. The
people of the First Level Dwarma Sector, reduced by sheer starvation
to a tiny handful, had abandoned their cities and renounced their
technologies and created for themselves a farm-and-village culture
without progress or change or curiosity or struggle or ambition, and a
way of life in which every day was like every other day that had been
or that would come.

The Abzar people had done neither. They had wasted their resources to
the last, fighting bitterly over the ultimate crumbs, with fission
bombs, and with muskets, and with swords, and with spears and clubs,
and finally they had died out, leaving a planet of almost uniform
desert dotted with vast empty cities which even twelve thousand years
had hardly begun to obliterate.

So nobody on the Paratime Sector went to the Abzar Sector. There was
nothing there--except a hiding-place.

"Well, message that to Subchief Ranthar Jard, Kholghoor Sector at
Nharkan Equivalent, and to Subchief Vulthor, Esaron Sector, Novilan
Equivalent," Vall said. "And be sure to mark what you send Vulthor,
'Immediate att