of some sort, or a
maniac armed with a cutlass. Either theory would conform, more or less,
to the nature of its depredations. Nobody has actually seen it."

"That's good!" Tortha Karf was relieved. "Well, you'll have to go and
bring it out, or kill it and obliterate the body. You know why, as well
as I do."

"Certainly, sir," Verkan Vall replied. "In a primitive culture, things
like this would be assigned supernatural explanations, and imbedded
in the locally accepted religion. But this culture, while nominally
religious, is highly rationalistic in practice. Typical lag-effect,
characteristic of all expanding cultures. And this Europo-American Sector
really has an expanding culture. A hundred and fifty years ago, the
inhabitants of this particular time-line didn't even know how to apply
steam power; now they've begun to release nuclear energy, in a few
crude forms."

Tortha Karf whistled, softly. "That's quite a jump. There's a sector
that'll be in for trouble, in the next few centuries."

"That is realized, locally, sir." Verkan Vall concentrated on
relighting his pipe, for a moment, then continued: "I would predict
space-travel on that sector within the next century. Maybe the next
half-century, at least to the Moon. And the art of taxidermy is very
highly developed. Now, suppose some farmer shoots that thing; what
would he do with it, sir?"

Tortha Karf grunted. "Nice logic, Vall. On a most uncomfortable
possibility. He'd have it mounted, and it'd be put in a museum,
somewhere. And as soon as the first spaceship reaches Venus, and
they find those things in a wild state, they'll have the mounted
specimen identified."

"Exactly. And then, instead of beating their brains about _where_
their specimen came from, they'll begin asking _when_ it came from.
They're quite capable of such reasoning, even now."

"A hundred years isn't a particularly long time," Tortha Karf
considered. "I'll be retired, then, but you'll have my job, and it'll
be your headache. You'd better get this cleaned up, now, while it can
be handled. What are you going to do?"

[Illustration]

"I'm not sure, now, sir. I want a hypno-mech indoctrination, first."
Verkan Vall gestured toward the communicator on the desk. "May I?"
he asked.

"Certainly." Tortha Karf slid the instrument across the desk.
"Anything you want."

"Thank you, sir." Verkan Vall snapped on the code-index, found the
symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. "