He recorded a message announcing the arrival of the task-force, pulled
out the tape and sealed it in a capsule, and put the capsule in a mesh
message ball, attaching it to a couple of wires and flipping a switch.
The ball flashed and vanished, leaving the wires cleanly sheared off.
When it got back to Police Terminal, half an hour later, it would
rematerialize, eject a parachute, and turn on a whistle to call
attention to itself. Then he sealed on his helmet, climbed into an
aircar, and turned on his helmet-radio to speak to the driver. The car
lifted a few inches, floated out an open port, and dived downward.

* * * * *

[Illustration:]

He landed at the big conveyer-head building. There were spaces for
fifty conveyers around it, and all but eight of them were in place.
One must have arrived since the gas bombs burst; it was crammed with
senseless Kharanda slaves. A couple of Paratime Police officers were
towing a tank of sleep-gas around on an antigrav-lifter, maintaining
the proper concentration in case any more came in. At the smaller
conveyer building, there were no conveyers, only a number of red-lined
fifty-foot circles around a central two-hundred-foot circle. The
Organization personnel there had been dragged outside, and a group of
paracops were sealing it up, installing robot watchmen, and preparing
to flood it with gas. At the slave pens, a string of two-hundred-foot
conveyers, having unloaded soldiers and fighting-gear, were coming in
to take on unconscious slaves for transposition to Police Terminal.
Aircars and airboats were bringing in gassed slavers; they were being
shackled and dumped into the slave barracks; as soon as the gas