circular desk in the center, departing or returning police officers
were checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot
clerks, or talking to human attendants. Some were in the regulation
green uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; more
were in outtime costumes from all over paratime. Fringed robes and
cloth-of-gold sashes and conical caps from the Second Level Khiftan
Sector; Fourth Level Proto-Aryan mail and helmets; the short tunics
and kilts of Fourth Level Alexandrian-Roman Sector; the Zarkantha
loincloth and felt cap and daggers; there were priestly vestments
stiff with gold, and military uniforms; there were trousers and
jackboots and bare legs; blasters, and swords, and pistols, and bows
and quivers, and spears. And the place was loud with a babel of voices
and the clatter of teleprinters.

[Illustration:]

Dalla was looking about her in surprised delight; for her, the
vacation had already begun. He was glad; for a while, he had been
afraid that she would be unhappy about it. He guided her through the
crowd to the desk, spoke for a while to one of the human attendants,
and found out which was their conveyer. It was a fixed-destination
shuttler, operative only between Home Time Line and Police Terminal,
from which most of the Paratime Police operations were routed. He put
Dall in through the sliding door, followed, and closed it behind him,
locking it. Then, before he closed the starting switch, he drew a
pistollike weapon and checked it.

In theory, the Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal transposition field was
uninfluenced by material objects outside it. In practice, however,
such objects occasionally intruded, and sometimes they were alive and