pire Sector and sold them into the harem of some Fourth
Level Indo-Turanian sultan."

"Yes. That was your first independent case, Vall. That was when I
began to think you'd really make a cop. One renegade First Level
citizen and four or five ServSec Prole hoodlums, with a stolen
fifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitious
operation." Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Vall
and Tortha Karf were talking cop talk about method of operation and
possible size of the gang involved, and why the slaves had been
shipped all the way from India to the west coast of North America.

"Always ready sale for slaves on the Esaron Sector," Vall was saying.
"And so many small independent states, and different languages, that
outtimers wouldn't be particularly conspicuous."

"And with this barbarian invasion going on on the Kholghoor Sector,
slaves could be picked up cheaply," Tortha Karf added.

In spite of her determination to boycott the conversation, curiosity
began to get the better of her. She had spent a year and a half on the
Kholghoor Sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the local
priests. There'd been nothing to it--the prophecies weren't
precognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren't
psychokinesis, they were sleight-of-hand. She found herself asking:

"What barbarian invasion's this?"

"Oh, Central Asian nomadic people, the Croutha," Tortha Karf told her.
"They came down through Khyber Pass about three months ago, turned
east, and hit the headwaters of the Ganges. Without punching a lot of
buttons to find out exactly, I'd say they're halfway to the delta
country by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh the
Red. A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits to
introduce firearms in the Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdings
there."

She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what was
known as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping--probability of
civilization having developed late on the Indian subcontinent, with
the rest of the world, including Europe, in Stone Age savagery or
early Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among whom she
had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical,
animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine the
roads jammed with fugitives from the barbarian invaders, the conveyer
hidden among the trees, the lurking slavers--

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