[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

servants of the Wizard Traders may Khokhaat devour his soul forever! dashed
out her brains. And when I struggled to save her. I was thrown on the ground,
and beaten with the fire-whips until I fainted. Then I was dragged into the
forest, along with the others who were chained with me." She buried her head
in her arms, sobbing bitterly.
Dalla stepped forward, taking the flashlight from the interrogator with one
hand and lifting the woman's head with the other. She flashed the light
quickly in the woman's eyes.
"You will grieve no more for your child," she said. "Already, you are
forgetting what happened at the
Wizard Traders' camp, and remembering only that your child is safe from harm.
Soon you will remember her only as a dream of the child you hope to have, some
day." She flashed the light again, then handed it back to the psychist. "Now,
tell us what happened when you were taken into the forest; what did you see
there?"
The psychist nodded approvingly
[Pg 27]
, made a note on the card, and listened while the woman spoke.
She had stopped sobbing, now, and her voice was clear and cheerful.
Vall went over to the long table.
"Those slaves were still chained with the Wizard Traders' chains when they
were delivered here. Where are the chains?" he asked Skordran Kirv.
"In the permanent conveyer room," Skordran Kirv said. "You can look at them
there; we didn't want to bring them in here, for fear these poor devils would
think we were going to chain them again. They're very light, very strong; some
kind of alloy steel. Files and power saws only polish them; it takes fifteen
seconds to cut a link with an atomic torch. One long chain, and
short lengths, fifteen inches long, staggered, every three feet, with a
single hinge-shackle for the ankle. The shackles were riveted with soft
wrought-iron rivets, evidently made with some sort of a power
riveting-machine. We cut them easily with a cold chisel."
"They ought to be sent to Dhergabar Equivalent, Police Terminal, for study of
material and workmanship.
Now, you mentioned some scheme you had for capturing this conveyer that
brings in the slaves for
Nebu-hin-Abenoz. What have you in mind?"
"We still have Coru-hin-Irigod and all his gang, under hypno. I'd
thought of giving them hypnotic conditioning, and sending them back to
Careba with orders to put out some kind of signal the next time
Nebu-hin-Abenoz starts out on a buying trip. We could have a couple
of 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'll buy any firearm
that's better than the one he's carrying; they'll always buy revolvers and
Page 19
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
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
PolTerm. 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 equip
[Pg 28]
ment 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 " [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]