tion Code, and the
First Level Criminal Code, all together. If you know what's good for
you, you'll start talking."

"I'm not saying anything till I have legal advice," the man who had
been using the local alias of Labdurg replied. "And if you're through
searching me, I'd like to have my cigarettes and lighter back."

"Smoke one of mine, for a change," Verkan Vall told him. "I don't know
what's in yours beside tobacco." He offered his case and held a light
for the prisoner before lighting his own cigarette. "I'm going to be
sure you get back to the First Level alive."

The former Overseer of the Kingdom of Zurb shrugged. "I'm still not
talking," he said.

"Well, we can get it all out of you by narco-hypnosis, anyhow," Verkan
Vall told him. "Besides, we got that man of yours who was here at the
temple when we came in. He's being given a full treatment, as a
presumed outtime native found in possession of First Level weapons. If
you talk now it'll go easier with you."

The prisoner dropped the cigarette on the floor and tramped it out.

"Anything you cops get out of me, you'll have to get the hard way," he
said. "I have friends on the First Level who'll take care of me."

"I doubt that. They'll have their hands full taking care of
themselves, after this gets out." Verkan Vall turned to the two in
the black robes. "Either of you want to say anything?" When they shook
their heads, he nodded to a group of his policemen; they were hustled
into the conveyer. "Take them to the First Level terminal and hold
them till I come in. I'll be along with the next conveyer load."

* * * * *

The conveyer flashed and vanished. Brannad Klav stared for a moment at
the circle of concrete floor from whence it had disappeared. Then he
turned to Verkan Vall.

"I still can't believe it," he said. "Why, those fellows were First
Level paratimers. So was that priest, Ghromdur: the one you rayed."

"Yes, of course. They worked for your rivals, the Fourth Level Mineral
Products Syndicate; the outfit that was trying to get your Proto-Aryan
Sector fissionables franchise away from you. They operate on this sector
already; have the petroleum franchise for the Chuldun country, east of
the Caspian Sea. They export to some of these internal-combustion-engine
sectors, like Europo-American. You know, most of the wars they've been
fighting, lately, on the Europo-American Sector have been, at least in
part, motivated b