ference between A and B is, maybe, one-decillionth of the
difference between X and A, and the difference between B and C is
one-decillionth of the difference between X and B, and so on--"

A voice came out of one of the communication boxes:

"Dr. Nentrov; the patient's out of the drug, and he's beginning to
stir about."

"That's it," the psychist said. "I have to run." He handed the sheet
back to Vall, took a last drink from his coffee cup, and bolted out of
the room.

Dalla picked up the sheet of paper and looked at it. Vall told her
what it was.

"If those time lines are in regular series, they relate to the base
line of operations," she said. "Maybe you can have that worked out. I
can see how it would be; a stated interval between the Esaron Sector
lines, to simplify transposition control settings."

"That was what I was thinking. It's not quite as simple as Dr. Nentrov
expressed it, but that could be the general idea. We might be able to
work out the location of the base line from that. There seems to be a
break in the number sequence in here; that would be the time line
Skordran Kirv found those slaves on." He reached for the pipe he had
left on the desk when he had gone to Police Terminal and began filling
it.

A little later, a buzzer sounded and a light came on on one of the
communication boxes. He flipped the switch and said, "Verkan Vall
here." Sothran Barth's voice came cut of the box.

"They've just brought in Salgath Trod's servants. Picked them up as
they came out of the house conveyer at the apartment building. I don't
believe they know what's happened."

Vall flipped a switch and twiddled a dial; a viewscreen lit up,
showing the landing stage. The police car had just landed: one
detective had gotten out, and was helping the girl, Zinganna, who had
been Salgath Trod's housekeeper and mistress, to descend. She was
really beautiful. Vall thought: rather tall, slender, with dark eyes
and a creamy light-brown skin. She wore a black cloak, and, under it,
a black and silver evening gown. A single jewel twinkled in her black
hair. She could have very easily passed for a woman of his own race.

The housemaid and the butler were a couple of entirely different
articles. Both were about four or five generations from Fourth Level
Primitive savagery. The maid, in garishly cheap finery, was big-boned
and heavy-bodied, with red-brown hair; she looked like a member of one
of the northern European reindeer-he