The two minutes were up. He aimed his paralyzer at the men around the
altar and squeezed the button, swinging it from one to another and
knocking them down with a bludgeon of inaudible sound. At the same
time, Tammand Drav and his detail were stunning the gamblers. Stepping
forward and to one side, Verkan Vall, Brannad Klav and the others took
care of the sleepers on the floor. In less than thirty seconds, every
Chuldun in the temple was incapacitated.
"All right, make sure none of them come out of it prematurely," Verkan
Vall directed. "Get their weapons, and be sure nobody has a knife or
anything hidden on him. Who has the syringe and the sleep-drug
ampoules?"
Somebody had, it developed, who was still on the First Level, to come
up with the second conveyer load. Verkan Vall swore. Something like
this always happened, on any operation involving more than half a
dozen men.
"Well, some of you stay here: patrol around, and use your paralyzers
on anybody who even twitches a muscle." Ultrasonics were nice,
effective, humane police weapons, but they were unreliable. The same
dose that would keep one man out for an hour would paralyze another
for no more than ten or fifteen minutes. "And be sure none of them are
playing 'possum."
He went back through the door under the plinth, glancing up at the
decorated wooden screen and wondering how much work it would take to
move the new Yat-Zar in from the conveyers. The five priests and the
archer-captain were still unconscious; one of the policemen was
searching them.
"Here's the sort of weapons these priests carry," he said, holding up
a short iron mace with a spiked head. "Carry them on their belts." He
tossed it on the table, and began searching another knocked-out
hierophant. "Like this--_Hey!_ Look at this, will you!"
He drew his hand from under the left side of the senseless man's robe
and held up a sigma-ray needler. Verkan Vall looked at it and nodded
grimly.
"Had it in a regular shoulder holster," the policeman said, handing
the weapon across the table. "What do you think?"
"Find anything else funny on him?"
"Wait a minute." The policeman pulled open the robe and began
stripping the priest of Muz-Azin; Verkan Vall came around the table to
help. There was nothing else of a suspicious nature.
"Could have got it from one of the prisoners, but I don't like the
familiar way he's wearing that holster," Verkan Vall said. "Has the
conveyer gone back, yet?" When the policeman nodded, he continued:
"When it returns, take him to the First Level. I hope they bring up
the sleep-drug with the next load. When you get him back, take him to
Dhergabar by strato-rocket immediately, and make sure he gets back
alive. I want him questioned under narco-hypnosis by a regular
Paratime Commission psycho-technician, in the presence of Chief Tortha
Karf and some responsible Commission official. This is going to be hot
stuff."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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