the estate, and told us about new fields that had been cleared, and a
dam this Lord Ghromdour was building to flood some new rice-paddies.
We located a belt of about five parayears where these improvements had
been made: we started boomeranging the whole belt, time line by time
line. So far, we have ten or fifteen pictures of the main square at
Sohram showing Croutha with firearms, and pictures of Wizard Trader
camps and conveyer heads on the same time lines. Here, let me show
you; this is from an airboat over the forest outside the equivalent of
Sohram."

There was no jungle visible when the view changed; nothing but
clusters of steel towers and platforms and buildings that marked
conveyer heads, and a large rectangle of red-and-white antigrav-buoys
moored to warn air traffic out of the area being boomeranged. The
pickup seemed to be pointed downward from the bow of an airboat
circling at about ten thousand feet.

"Balls ready to go," a voice called, and then repeated a string of
time-line designations. "Estimated return, 1820, give or take four
minutes."

"Varth," Ranthar Jard said, evidently out of the boat's radio. "Your
telecast is being beamed on Dhergabar Equivalent; Chief's Assistant
Verkan is watching. When do you estimate your next return?"

"Any moment, now, sir; we're holding this drop till they
rematerialize."

Vall watched unblinkingly, his fork poised halfway to his mouth.
Suddenly, about a thousand feet below the eye of the pickup, there was