oexistent with one on a top floor
of some outtime tall building, and let down in front of a low
prefabricated steel shed. A man in police uniform came out to meet
them. There was a fifty-foot conveyer dome inside, and a fifty-foot
red-lined circle that marked the transposition point of an outtime
conveyer. They all entered the dome, and the operator put on the
transposition field.

"You haven't heard the worst of it yet." Skordran Kirv was saying. "On
this time line, we have reason to think that the native,
Nebu-hin-Abenoz, who bought the slaves, actually saw the slavers'
conveyer. Maybe even saw it activated."

"If he did, we'll either have to capture him and give him a
memory-obliteration, or kill him," Vall said. "What do you know about
him?"

"Well, this Careba, the town he bosses, is a little walled town up in
the hills. Everybody there is related to everybody else; this man we
have, Coru-hin-Irigod, is the son of a sister of Nebu-hin-Abenoz's
wife. They're all bandits and slavers and cattle rustlers and what
have you. For the last ten years, Nebu-hin-Abenoz has been buying
slaves from some secret source. Before the Kholghoor Sector people
began coming in, they were mostly white, with a few brown people who
might have been Polynesians. No Negroes--there's no black race on this
sector, and I suppose the paratime slavers didn't want too many
questions asked. Coru-hin-Irigod, under narco-hypnosis, said that they
were all outlanders, speaking strange languages."

"Ten years! And this is the first hint we've had of it," Vall said.
"That's not a bright mark for any of us. I'll bet the slave population
on some of these Esaron time lines is an anthropologist's nightmare."

"Why, if this has been going on for ten years, there must have been
millions upon millions of people dragged from their own time lines
into slavery!" Dalla said in a shocked voice.

"Ten years may not be all of it," Vall said. "This Nebu-hin-Abenoz
looks like the only tangible lead we have, at present. How does he
operate?"

"About once every ten days, he'll take ten or fifteen men and go a
day's ride--that may be as much as fifty miles; these Caleras have
good horses and they're hard riders--into the hills. He'll take a big
bag of money, all gold. After dark, when he has made camp, a couple of
strangers in Calera dress will come in. He'll go off with them, and
after about an hour, he'll come back with eight or ten of these
strangers and a coup