Nobody, of course, would have the least idea that there was a uranium mine in operation under it, shipping ore to another timeline. The Hulgun people knew nothing about uranium, and neither did they as much as dream that there were other timelines. The secret of paratime transposition belonged exclusively to the First Level civilization which had discovered it, and it was a secret that was guarded well.
Stranor Sleth, dropping to the bottom of the antigrav shaft, cast a hasty and instinctive glance to the right, where the freight conveyers were. One was gone, taking its cargo over hundreds of thousands of parayears to the First Level. Another had just returned, empty, and a third was receiving its cargo from the robot mining machines far back under the mountain. Two young men and a girl, in First Level costumes, sat at a bank of instruments and visor-screens, handling the whole operation, and six or seven armed guards, having inspected the newly-arrived conveyer and finding that it had picked up nothing inimical en route, were relaxing and lighting cigarettes. Three of them, Stranor Sleth noticed, wore the green uniforms of the Paratime Police.
“When did those fellows get in?” he asked the people at the control desk, nodding toward the green-clad newcomers.
“About ten minutes ago, on the passenger conveyer,” the girl told him. “The Big Boy’s here. Brannad Klav. And a Paratime Police officer. They’re in your office.”
“Uh huh; I was expecting that,” Stranor Sleth nodded. Then he turned down the corridor to the left.
Two men were waiting for him, in his office. One was short and stocky, with an angry, impatient face—Brannad Klav, Transtemporal’s vice president in charge of operations. The other was tall and slender with handsome and entirely expressionless features; he wore a Paratime Police officer’s uniform, with the blue badge of hereditary nobility on his breast, and carried a sigma-ray needler in a belt holster.
“Were you waiting long, gentlemen?” Stranor Sleth asked. “I was holding Sunset Sacrifice up in the temple.”
“No, we just got here,” Brannad Klav said. “This is Verkan Vall, Mavrad of Nerros, special assistant to Chief Tortha of the Paratime Police, Stranor Sleth, our resident agent here.”
Stranor Sleth touched hands with Verkan Vall.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, sir,” he said. “Everybody working in paratime has, of course. I’m sorry we have a situation here that calls for your presence, but since we have, I’m glad you’re here in person. You know what our trouble is, I suppose?”
“In a general way,” Verkan Vall replied. “Chief Tortha, and Brannad Klav, have given me the main outline, but I’d like to have you fill in the details.”
“Well, I told you everything,” Brannad Klav interrupted impatiently. “It’s just that Stranor’s let this blasted local king, Kurchuk, get out of control. If I—” He stopped short, catching sight of the shoulder holster under Stranor Sleth’s left arm. “Were you wearing that needler up in the temple?” he demanded.
“You’re blasted right I was!” Stranor Sleth retorted. “And any time I can’t arm myself for my own protection on this timeline, you can have my resignation. I’m not getting into the same jam as those people at Zurb.”
“Well, never mind about that,” Verkan Vall intervened. “Of course Stranor Sleth has a right to arm himself; I wouldn’t think of being caught without a weapon on this timeline, myself. Now, Stranor, suppose you tell me what’s been happening, here, from the beginning of this trouble.”
“It started, really, about five years ago, when Kurchuk, the King of Zurb, married this Chuldun princess, Darith, from the country over beyond the Black Sea, and made her his queen, over the heads of about a dozen daughters of the local nobility, whom he’d married previously. Then he brought in this Chuldun scribe, Labdurg, and made him Overseer of the Kingdom—roughly, prime minister. There was a lot of dissatisfaction about that, and for a while it looked as though he was going to have a revolution on his hands, but he brought in about five thousand Chuldun mercenaries, all archers—these Hulguns can’t shoot a bow worth beans—so the dissatisfaction died down, and so did most of the leaders of the disaffected group. The story I get is that this Labdurg arranged the marriage, in the first place. It looks to me as though the Chuldun emperor is intending to take over the Hulgun kingdoms, starting with Zurb.
“Well, these Chulduns all worship a god called Muz-Azin. Muz-Azin is a crocodile with wings like a bat and a lot of knife blades in his tail. He makes this Yat-Zar look downright beautiful. So do his habits. Muz-Azin fancies human sacrifices. The victims are strung up by the ankles on a triangular frame and lashed to death with iron-barbed whips. Nasty sort of a deity, but this is a nasty timeline. The people here get a big kick out of watching these sacrifices. Much better show than our bunny-killing. The victims are usually criminals, or overage or incorrigible slaves, or prisoners of war.
“Of course, when the Chulduns began infiltrating the palace, they brought in their crocodile-god, too, and a flock of priests, and King Kurchuk let them set up a temple in the palace. Naturally, we preached against this heathen idolatry in our temples, but religious bigotry isn’t one of the numerous imperfections of this sector. Everybody’s deity is as good as anybody else’s—indifferentism, I believe, is the theological term. Anyhow, on that basis things went along fairly well, till two years ago, when we had this run of bad luck.”
“Bad luck!” Brannad Klav snorted. “That’s the standing excuse of every incompetent!”
“Go on, Stranor; what sort of bad luck?” Verkan Vall asked.
“Well, first we had a drought, beginning in early summer, that burned up most of the grain crop. Then, when that broke, we got heavy rains and hailstorms and floods,
