"H. Beam Piper - Police Operation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

Synthetics Works, where we took off, is part of an abandoned farm; on the site of Hagraban City is a
little farming village. Those things are there, right now, both in primary time and in the plenum. They are
about two hundred and fifty thousand parayears perpendicular to each other, and each is of the same
general order of reality."

The red light overhead flashed on. The pilot looked into his visor and put his hands to the manual
controls, in case of failure of the robot controls. The rocket landed smoothly, however; there was a slight
jar as it was grappled by the crane and hoisted upright, the seats turning in their gimbals. Pilot and
passenger unstrapped themselves and hurried through the refrigerated outlet and away from the
glowing-hot rocket.




An air-taxi, emblazoned with the device of the Paratime Police, was waiting. Verkan Vall said good-by
to the rocket-pilot and took his seat beside the pilot of the aircab; the latter lifted his vehicle above the
building level and then set it down on the landing-stage of the Paratime Police Building in a long,
side-swooping glide. An express elevator took Verkan Vall down to one of the middle stages, where he
showed his sigil to the guard outside the door of Tortha Karf's office and was admitted at once.
The Paratime Police chief rose [Pg 13] from behind his semicircular desk, with its array of keyboards and
viewing-screens and communicators. He was a big man, well past his two hundredth year; his hair was
iron-gray and thinning in front, he had begun to grow thick at the waist, and his calm features bore the
lines of middle age. He wore the dark-green uniform of the Paratime Police.

"Well, Vall," he greeted. "Everything secure?"

"Not exactly, sir." Verkan Vall came around the desk, deposited his rifle and bag on the floor, and sat
down in one of the spare chairs. "I'll have to go back again."

"So?" His chief lit a cigarette and waited.

"I traced Gavran Sarn." Verkan Vall got out his pipe and began to fill it. "But that's only the beginning. I
have to trace something else. Gavran Sarn exceeded his Paratime permit, and took one of his pets along.
A Venusian nighthound."

Tortha Karf's expression did not alter; it merely grew more intense. He used one of the short,
semantically ugly terms which serve, in place of profanity, as the emotional release of a race that has
forgotten all the taboos and terminologies of supernaturalistic religion and sex-inhibition.

"You're sure of this, of course." It was less a question than a statement.

Verkan Vall bent and took cloth-wrapped objects from his bag, unwrapping them and laying them on the
desk. They were casts, in hard black plastic, of the footprints of some large three-toed animal.

"What do these look like, sir?" he asked.

Tortha Karf fingered them and nodded. Then he became as visibly angry as a man of his civilization and
culture-level ever permitted himself.

"What does that fool think we have a Paratime Code for?" he demanded. "It's entirely illegal to transpose