The other set of pictures showed the Wizard Trader camps and conveyer heads. In each case, a wide oval had been burned out in the jungle, probably with heavy-duty heat guns. The camps were surrounded with stout wire-mesh fence: in each there were a number of metal prefab-huts, and an inner fenced slave-pen. A trail had been cut from each to a similarly cleared circle farther back in the forest, and in the centers of one or two of these circles he saw the actual conveyer domes. There was a great deal of activity in all of them, and he screwed the magnification-adjustment to the limit to scrutinize each human figure in turn. A few of the men, he was sure, were First Level Citizens; more were either Proles or outtimers. Quite a few of them were of a dark, heavy-featured, black-bearded type.
“Some of these fellows look like Second Level Khiftans,” he said. “Rush an individual picture of each one, maximum magnification consistent with clarity, to Dhergabar Equivalent to be transposed to Home Timeline. You get all the dope from Zulthran Torv?”
“Yes; Abzar Sector,” Ranthar Jard said. “I’d never have thought of that. Wonder why they used that series system, though. I’d have tried to spot my operations as completely at random as possible.”
“Only thing they could have done,” Vall said. “When we get hold of one of their conveyers, we’re going to find the control panel’s just a mess of arbitrary symbols, and there’ll be something like a computer-machine built into the control cabinet, to select the right timeline whenever a dial’s set or a button pushed, and the only way that could be done would be by establishing some kind of a numerical series. And we were trustingly expecting to locate their base from one of their conveyers! Why, if we give all those people in the pictures narco-hyps, we won’t learn the baseline designation; none of them will know it. They just go where the conveyers take them.”
“Well, we’re all set now,” Ranthar Jard said. “I have a plan of attack worked out; subject to your approval, I’m ready to start implementing it now.” He glanced at his watch. “The Salgath telecast is over, on Home Timeline, and in a little while, a transcript will be on this timeline. Want to watch it here, sir?”
The telecast screen in the living room of Tortha Karf’s town apartment was still on; in it, a girl with bright red hair danced slowly to soft music against a background of shifting color. The four men who sat in a semicircle facing it sipped their drinks and watched idly.
“Ought to be getting some sort of public reaction soon,” Tortha Karf said, glancing at his watch.
“Well, I’ll have to admit, it was done convincingly,” Zostha Olv, the Chief Interoffice Coordinator, admitted grudgingly. “I’d have believed it, if I hadn’t known the real facts.”
“Shooting it against the background of those wide windows was smart,” Lovranth Rolk said. “Every schoolchild would recognize that view of the rocketport as being on Police Terminal. And including that girl Zinganna; that was a real masterpiece!”
“I’ve met her, a few times,” Elbraz Vark, the Political Liaison Assistant, said. “Isn’t she lovely!”
“Good actress, too,” Tortha Karf said. “It’s not easy to impersonate yourself.”
“Well, Kostran Galth did a fine job of acting, too,” Lovranth Rolk said. “That was done to perfection—the distinguished politician, supported by his loyal mistress, bravely facing the disgraceful end of his public career.”
“You know, I believe I could get that girl a booking with one of the big theatrical companies. Now that Salgath’s dead, she’ll need somebody to look after her.”
“What sharp, furry ears you have, Mr. Elbraz!” Zostha Olv grunted.
The music stopped as though cut off with a knife, and the slim girl with the red hair vanished in a shatter of many colors. When the screen cleared, one of the announcers was looking out of it.
“We interrupt the program for an important newscast of a sensational development in the Salgath affair,” he said. “Your next speaker will be Yandar Yadd—”
“I thought you’d managed to get that blabbermouth transposed to PolTerm,” Zostha said.
“He wouldn’t go.” Tortha Karf replied. “Said it was just a trick to get him off Home Timeline during the Council crisis.”
Yandar Yadd had appeared on the screen as the pickup swung about.
“… Recording ostensibly made by Councilman Salgath on Police Terminal Timeline, and telecast on Home Timeline an hour ago. Well, I don’t know who he was, but I now have positive proof that he definitely was not Salgath Trod!”
“We’re sunk!” Zostha Olv grunted. “He’d never make a statement like that unless he could prove it.”
“… Something suspicious about the whole thing, from the beginning,” the newsman was saying. “So I checked. If you recall, the actor impersonating Salgath gestured rather freely with his hands, in imitation of a well-known mannerism of the real Salgath Trod; at one point, the ball of his right thumb was presented directly to the pickup. Here’s a still of that scene.”
He stepped aside, revealing a viewscreen behind him; when he pressed a button, the screen lighted; on it was a stationary
