tonlike ultrasonic paralyzer on
his belt and made sure that the radio and sound-phones in his helmet
were working. He hoped that the frantic efforts to gather several
thousand spacesuits onto Police Terminal from the Industrial and
Commercial and Interplanetary Sectors hadn't started rumors which had
gotten to the ears of some of the Organization's ubiquitous agents.

* * * * *

The country below was already turning to the parched browns and
yellows of the Abzar Sector. There was not another of the conveyers in
sight, but electronic and mechanical lag in the individual controls
and even the distance-difference between them and the central radio
control would have prevented them from going into transposition at the
same fractional microsecond. The recon-details began piling into their
cars. Then the red light overhead winked to green, and the dome
flickered and solidified into cold, inert metal. The screens lighted
up again, and Vall could see Skordran Kirv, across Asia and the
Pacific, getting into his helmet. A dot of light in the center of the
underview screen widened as the mesh under the conveyer irised open
around the pickup.

Below, the Organization base--big rectangles of fenced slave pens,
with metal barracks inside; the huge circle of the Kholghoor Sector
conveyer-head building, and a smaller structure that must house
conveyers to other Abzar Sector time lines; the work-shops and living
quarters and hangars and warehouses and docks--was wreathed in
white-green mist. The ring of conveyers at three thousand feet were
opening and spewing out aircars and airboats, farther away, the
greater ring of heavy conveyers were unloading armored and shielded
combat-craft. An aircar which must have been above the reach of the
gas was streaking away toward the west, with three police cars after
it. As he watched, the air around it fairly sizzled blue with the rays
of neutron disruption blasters, and then it blew apart. The three
police cars turned and came back more slowly. The three-thousand-ton
passenger ship which had been hastily fitted with armament was
circling about; the great dock conveyer which had brought it was gone,
transposed back to Police Terminal to pick up another ship.

He recorded a message announcing the arrival of the task-force, pulled
out the tape and sealed it in a capsule, and put the capsule in a mesh
message ball, attaching it to a couple of wires and flipping a swi