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

his snake and found that he had hold of an elephant’s tail,” Vall said. “That might be a good thing to bear in mind till we find out just what we have picked up.”

I
    Coming down a hallway on the hundred and seventh floor of the Management wing of the Paratime Building, Yandar Yadd paused to admire, in the green mirror of the glassoid wall, the jaunty angle of his silver-feathered cap, the fit of his short jacket, and the way his weapon hung at his side. This last was not instantly recognizable as a weapon; it looked more like a portable radio, which indeed it was. It was, nonetheless, a potent weapon. One flick of his finger could connect that radio with one at Tri-Planet News Service, and within the hour anything he said into it would be heard by all Terra, Mars and Venus. In consequence, there existed around the Paratime Building a marked and understandable reluctance to antagonize Yandar Yadd.
    He glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes short of 1000, when he had an appointment with Baltan Vrath, the comptroller general. Glancing about, he saw that he was directly in front of the doorway of the Outtime Claims Bureau, and he strolled in, walking through the waiting room and into the claims-presentation office. At once, he stiffened like a bird dog at point.
    Sphabron Larv, one of his young legmen, was in an altercation across the counter-desk with Varkar Klav, the Deputy Claims Agent on duty at the time. Varkar was trying to be icily dignified; Sphabron Larv’s black hair was in disarray and his face was suffused with anger. He was pounding with his fist on the plastic counter-top.
    “You have to!” he was yelling in the older man’s face. “That’s a public document, and I have a right to see it. You want me to go into Tribunes’ Court and get an order? If I do, there’ll be a Question in Council about why I had to before the day’s out!”
    “What’s the matter, Larv?” Yandar Yadd asked lazily. “He trying to hold something out on you?”
    Sphabron Larv turned; his eyes lit happily when he saw his boss, and then his anger returned.
    “I want to see a copy of an indemnity claim that was filed this morning,” he said. “Varkar, here, won’t show it to me. What does he think this is, a Fourth Level dictatorship?”
    “What kind of a claim, now?” Yandar Yadd addressed Larv, ignoring Varkar Klav.
    “Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs—one of the Thalvan Interests companies— just claimed forty thousand P.E.U. for a hundred slaves bought by one of their plantation managers on Third Level Esaron from a local slave dealer. The Paratime Police impounded the slaves for narco-hypnotic interrogation and then transposed the lot of them to Police Terminal.”
    Yandar Yadd still held his affectation of sleepy indolence. “Now why would the Paracops do that, I wonder? Slavery’s an established local practice on Esaron Sector; our people have to buy slaves if they want to run a plantation.”
    “I know that.” Sphabron Larv replied. “That’s what I want to find out. There must be something wrong, either with the slaves, or the treatment our people were giving them, or the Paratime Police, and I want to find out which.”
    “To tell the truth, Larv, so do I.” Yandar Yadd said. He turned to the man behind the counter. “Varkar, do we see that claim, or do I make a story out of your refusal to show it?” he asked.
    “The Paratime Police asked me to keep this confidential,” Varkar Klav said. “Publicity would seriously hamper an important police investigation.”
    Yandar Yadd made an impolite noise. “How do I know that all it would do would be to reveal police incompetence?” he retorted. “Look, Varkar; you and the Paratime Police and the Paratime Commission and the Home Time Line Management are all hired employees of the Home Time Line public. The public has a right to know what its employees are doing, and it’s my business to see that they’re informed. Now, for the last time—will