“Regrettable accident, to be sure,” Verkan Vall conceded. “And look how much we’ve learned from the experiences of those other timelines. During the Crisis, after the Fourth Interplanetary War, we might have adopted Palnar Sarn’s ‘Dictatorship of the Chosen’ scheme, if we hadn’t seen what an exactly similar scheme had done to the Jak-Hakka Civilization, on the Second Level. When Palnar Sarn was told about that, he went into paratime to see for himself, and when he returned, he renounced his proposal in horror.”
Tortha Karf nodded. He wouldn’t be making any mistake in turning his post over to the Mavrad of Nerros on his retirement.
“Yes, Vall; I know,” he said. “But when you’ve been at this desk as long as I have, you’ll have a sour moment or two, now and then, too.”
A blue light flashed over one of the booths across the room. Verkan Vall got to his feet, removing his coat and hanging it on the back of his chair, and crossed the room, rolling up his left shirt sleeve. There was a relaxer-chair in the booth, with a blue plastic helmet above it. He glanced at the indicator-screen to make sure he was getting the indoctrination he called for, and then sat down in the chair and lowered the helmet over his head, inserting the ear plugs and fastening the chin strap. Then he touched his left arm with an injector which was lying on the arm of the chair, and at the same time flipped the starter switch.
Soft, slow music began to chant out of the earphones. The insidious fingers of the drug blocked off his senses, one by one. The music diminished, and the words of the hypnotic formula lulled him to sleep.
He woke, hearing the lively strains of dance music. For a while, he lay relaxed. Then he snapped off the switch, took out the ear plugs, removed the helmet and rose to his feet. Deep in his subconscious mind was the entire body of knowledge about the Venusian nighthound. He mentally pronounced the word, and at once it began flooding into his conscious mind. He knew the animal’s evolutionary history, its anatomy, its characteristics, its dietary and reproductive habits, how it hunted, how it fought its enemies, how it eluded pursuit, and how best it could be tracked down and killed. He nodded. Already, a plan for dealing with Gavran Sarn’s renegade pet was taking shape in his mind.
He picked a plastic cup from the dispenser, filled it from a cooler-tap with amber-colored spiced wine, and drank, tossing the cup into the disposal-bin. He placed a fresh injector on the arm of the chair, ready for the next user of the booth. Then he emerged, glancing at his Fourth Level wrist watch and mentally translating to the First Level time-scale. Three hours had passed; there had been more to learn about his quarry than he had expected.
Tortha Karf was sitting behind his desk, smoking a cigarette. It seemed as though he had not moved since Verkan Vall had left him, though the special agent knew that he had dined, attended several conferences, and done many other things.
“I checked up on your hitchhiker, Vall,” the chief said. “We won’t bother about him. He’s a member of something called the Christian Avengers—one of those typical Europo-American race-and-religious hate groups. He belongs in a belt that is the outcome of the Hitler victory of 1940, whatever that was. Something unpleasant, I daresay. We don’t owe him anything; people of that sort should be stepped on, like cockroaches. And he won’t make any more trouble on the line where you dropped him than they have there already. It’s in a belt of complete social and political anarchy; somebody probably shot him as soon as he emerged, because he wasn’t wearing the right sort of a uniform. Nineteen-forty what, by the way?”
“Elapsed years since the birth of some religious leader,” Verkan Vall explained. “And did you find out about my rifle?”
“Oh, yes. It’s reproduction of something that’s called a Sharp’s Model ’37 .235 Ultraspeed-Express. Made on an adjoining paratime belt by a company that went out of business sixty-seven years ago, elapsed time, on your line of operation. What made the difference was the Second War Between The States. I don’t know what that was, either—I’m not too well up on Fourth Level history—but whatever, your line of operation didn’t have it. Probably just as well for them, though they very likely had something else, as bad or worse. I put in a complaint to Supplies about it, and got you some more ammunition and reloading tools. Now, tell me what you’re going to do about this nighthound business.”
Tortha Karf was silent for a while, after Verkan Vall had finished.
“You’re taking some awful chances, Vall,” he said, at length. “The way you plan doing it, the advantages will all be with the nighthound. Those things can see as well at night as you can in daylight. I suppose you know that, though; you’re the nighthound specialist, now.”
“Yes. But they’re accustomed to the Venus hotland marshes; it’s been dry weather for the last two weeks, all over the northeastern section of the Northern Continent. I’ll be able to hear it, long before it gets close to me. And I’ll be wearing an electric headlamp. When I snap that on, it’ll be dazzled, for a moment.”
“Well, as I said, you’re the nighthound specialist. There’s the communicator; order anything you need.” He lit a fresh cigarette from the end of the old one before crushing it out. “But be careful, Vall. It took me close to forty years to make a paratimer out of you; I don’t want to have to repeat the process with somebody else before I can retire.”
The grass was wet as Verkan Vall—who reminded himself that here he was called Richard Lee—crossed the yard from the farmhouse to the ramshackle barn, in the early autumn darkness. It
