simply beastly thing to happen, two days after you take charge here!"

"Not his fault," the Paratime Police agent said. "I'm the one the
Company'll be sore at, but I'd rather have them down on me rather than
old Tortha Karf. Well, sit on the lid till I get back," he told both
of them. "We'll need some kind of a story for the locals. Let's
see--Explain to the guards, in the hearing of some of the more
talkative slaves, that these slaves are from the Asian mainland, that
they are of a people friendly to our people, and that they were
kidnaped by pirates, our enemies. That ought to explain everything
satisfactorily."

On his way back to the plantation house, he saw a clump of local
slaves staring curiously at the stockade, and noticed that the guards
had unslung their rifles and fixed their bayonets. None of them had
any idea, of course, of what had happened, but they all seemed to
know, by some sort of ESP, that something was seriously wrong. It was
going to get worse, too, when strangers began arriving, apparently
from nowhere, at the plantation.

* * * * *

Verkan Vall waited until the small, dark-eyed woman across the
circular table had helped herself from one of the bowls on the
revolving disk in the middle, then rotated it to bring the platter of
cold boar-ham around to himself.

"Want some of this, Dalla?" he asked, transferring a slice of ham and
a spoonful of wine sauce to his plate.