* * * * *

An air-taxi, emblazoned with the device of the Paratime Police, was
waiting. Verkan Vall said good-by to the rocket-pilot and took his seat
beside the pilot of the aircab; the latter lifted his vehicle above the
building level and then set it down on the landing-stage of the Paratime
Police Building in a long, side-swooping glide. An express elevator took
Verkan Vall down to one of the middle stages, where he showed his sigil
to the guard outside the door of Tortha Karf's office and was admitted
at once.

The Paratime Police chief rose from behind his semicircular desk, with
its array of keyboards and viewing-screens and communicators. He was a
big man, well past his two hundredth year; his hair was iron-gray and
thinning in front, he had begun to grow thick at the waist, and his calm
features bore the lines of middle age. He wore the dark-green uniform
of the Paratime Police.

"Well, Vall," he greeted. "Everything secure?"

"Not exactly, sir." Verkan Vall came around the desk, deposited his
rifle and bag on the floor, and sat down in one of the spare chairs.
"I'll have to go back again."

"So?" His chief lit a cigarette and waited.

"I traced Gavran Sarn." Verkan Vall got out his pipe and began to fill
it. "But that's only the beginning. I have to trace something else.
Gavran Sarn exceeded his Paratime permit, and took one of his pets
along. A Venusian nighthound."

Tortha Karf's expression did not alter; it merely grew more intense.
He used one of the short, semantically ugly terms which serve, in place
of profanity, as the emotional release of a race that has forgotten all
the taboos and terminologies of supernaturalistic religion and
sex-inhibition.

"You're sure of this, of course." It was less a question than
a statement.

Verkan Vall bent and took cloth-wrapped objects from his bag, unwrapping
them and laying them on the desk. They were casts, in hard black
plastic, of the footprints of some large three-toed animal.

"What do these look like, sir?" he asked.

Tortha Karf fingered them and nodded. Then he became as visibly angry
as a man of his civilization and culture-level ever permitted himself.

"What does that fool think we have a Paratime Code for?" he demanded.
"It's entirely illegal to transpose any extraterrestrial animal or
object to any time-line on which space-travel is unknown. I don't care
if he is a green-seal thavrad; he'll face charges, when