Tortha Karf shook his head. "Not as much as he claims to, I suppose;
he wouldn't want to reduce his own trade-in value. But he's been
involved in this thing for the last fifteen years, and with his
political prominence, he'd know quite a lot."

"We can protect him from his own gang; can we protect him from
psycho-rehabilitation?"

"No, and he knows it. He's willing to accept that. He seems to think
that death at the hands of his own associates is the only other
alternative. Probably right, too."

The floodlighted green towers of the Paratime Building were wheeling
under them as they circled down.

"Why would they sacrifice a valuable accomplice like Salgath Trod, in
order to make a transparently false accusation against us?" Vall
wondered.

"Ha, that's our new rookie cop's idea!" Tortha Karf chuckled, nodding
toward Dalla. "We got Zortan Harn to introduce an urgent-business
motion to appoint a committee to investigate BuPsychHyg, this morning.
The motion passed, and this is the reaction to it. The Organization's
scared. Just as Dalla predicted, they don't want us finding out how
people with potentially criminal characteristics missed being spotted
by psychotesting. Salgath Trod is being sacrificed to block or delay
that."

Vall nodded as the wheels bumped on the landing stage and the antigrav
field went off. That was the sort of thing that happened when you
started on a really fruitful line of investigation. They got out and
hurried over under the marquee, the car lifting and moving off toward
the hangars. This was the real break; no matter how this Organization
might be compartmented, a man like Salgath Trod would know a great
deal. He would name names, and the bearers of those names, arrested
and narco-hypnotized, would name other names, in a perfect chain
reaction of confessions and betrayals.

Another police car had landed just ahead of them, and three men were
climbing out; two were in Paratime Police green, and the third,
hand-cuffed, was in Service Sector Proletarian garb. At first, Vall
though that Salgath Trod had been brought in disguised as a Prole
prisoner, and then he saw that the prisoner was short and stocky, not
at all like the slender and elegant politician. The two officers who
had brought him in were talking to a lieutenant, Sothran Barth,
outside the antigrav shaft kiosk. As Vall and Tortha Karf and Dalla
walked over, the car which had brought them lifted out.

"Something that just cam