we've been lucky, so far. I never was on an Akor-Neb operation; don't
even have a hypno-mech for that sector. All I know is from general
reading.

"Like all the Second Level, its time-lines descend from the
probability of one or more shiploads of colonists having come to Terra
from Mars about seventy-five to a hundred thousand years ago, and then
having been cut off from the home planet and forced to develop a
civilization of their own here. The Akor-Neb civilization is of a
fairly high culture-order, even for Second Level. An atomic-power,
interplanetary culture; gravity-counteraction, direct conversion of
nuclear energy to electrical power, that sort of thing. We buy fine
synthetic plastics and fabrics from them." He fingered the material of
his smartly-cut green police uniform. "I think this cloth is Akor-Neb.
We sell a lot of Venusian _zerfa_-leaf; they smoke it, straight and
mixed with tobacco. They have a single System-wide government, a
single race, and a universal language. They're a dark-brown race,
which evolved in its present form about fifty thousand years ago; the
present civilization is about ten thousand years old, developed out of
the wreckage of several earlier civilizations which decayed or fell
through wars, exhaustion of resources, et cetera. They have legends,
maybe historical records, of their extraterrestrial origin."

Tortha Karf nodded. "Pretty good, for consciously acquired knowledge,"
he commented. "Well, our luck's run out, on that sector; we have
troubles there, now. I want you to go iron them out. I know, you've
been going pretty hard, lately--that nighthound business, on the
Fourth Level Europo-American Sector, wasn't any picnic. But the fact
is that a lot of my ordinary and deputy assistants have a little too
much regard for the alleged sanctity of human life, and this is