Free TIME PRIME by H. Beam Piper & John F. Carr Page A

men posted in the hills overlooking Careba, and they could send a message-ball through to Police Terminal. Then, a party could be sent with a mobile conveyer to ambush Nebu-hin-Abenoz on the way, and wipe out his party. Our people could take their horses and clothing and go on to take the conveyer by surprise.”
    “I’d suggest one change. Instead of relying on visual signals by the hypno-conditioned Coru-hin-Irigod, send a couple of our men to Careba with midget radios.”
    Skordran Kirv nodded. “Sure. We can condition Coru-hin-Irigod to accept them as friends and vouch for them at Careba. Our boys can be traders and slave buyers. Careba’s a market town; traders are always welcome. They can have firearms to sell—revolvers and repeating rifles. Any Calera will buy any firearm that’s better than the one he’s carrying; they’ll always buy revolvers and repeaters. We can get what we want from Commercial Four-Oh-Seven; we can get riding and pack horses here.”
    Vall nodded. “And the post overlooking or in radio range of Careba on this time-line, and another on Pol-Term. For the ambush of Nebu-hin-Abenoz’s gang and the capture of the conveyer, use anything you want to—sleep-gas, paralyzers, energy-weapons, antigrav-equipment, anything. As far as regulations about using only equipment appropriate to local culture-levels, forget them entirely. But take that conveyer intact. You can locate the base time-line from the settings of the instrument panel, and that’s what we want most of all.”
    Dalla and the police psychist, having finished with and dismissed their subject, came over to the long table.
    “...That poor creature,” Dalla was saying. “What sort of fiends are they?”
    “If that made you sick, remember we’ve been listening to things like that for the last eight hours. Some of the stories were even worse than that one.”
    “Well, I’d like to use a heat-gun on the whole lot of them, turned down to where it’d just fry them medium-rare,” Dalla said. “And for whoever’s back of this, take him to Second Level Khiftan and sell him to the priests of Fasif.”
    “Too bad you’re not coming back from your vacation instead of starting out, Chief ’s Assistant Verkan,” Skordran Kirv said. “This is too big for me to handle alone, and I’d sooner work under you than anybody else Chief Tortha sends in.”
    “Vall!” Dalla cried in indignation. “You’re not going to just report on this and then walk away from it, are you?”
    “But, darling,” Vall replied, in what he hoped was a convincing show of surprise. “You don’t want our vacation postponed again, do you? If I get mixed up in this, there’s no telling when I can get away, and by the time I’m free, something may come up at Rhogom Institute that you won’t want to drop—”
    “Vall, you know perfectly well that I wouldn’t be happy for an instant on the Dwarma Sector, thinking about this—”
    “All right, then; let’s forget about the vacation. You want to stay on for a while and help me with this? It’ll be a lot of hard work, but we’ll be together.”
    “Yes, of course. I want to do something to smash those devils. Vall, if you’d heard some of the things they did to those poor people—”
    “Well, I’ll have to go back to Pol-Term, as soon as I’m reasonably well filled in on this, and report to Tortha Karf and tell him I’ve taken charge. You can stay here and help with these interrogations; I’ll be back in about ten hours. Then, we can go to Kholghoor East India SecReg HQ to talk to Ranthar Jard. We may be able to get something that’ll help us on that end—”
    “You may be able to have your vacation before too long, Dr. Hadron,” Skordran Kirv told her. “Once we capture one of their conveyers, the instrument panel will tell us what time-line they’re working from, and then we’ll have them.”
    “There’s an Indo-Turanian Sector parable about a snake charmer who thought he was picking up