Below, the Organization base--big rectangles of fenced slave pens,
with metal barracks inside; the huge circle of the Kholghoor Sector
conveyer-head building, and a smaller structure that must house
conveyers to other Abzar Sector time lines; the work-shops and living
quarters and hangars and warehouses and docks--was wreathed in
white-green mist. The ring of conveyers at three thousand feet were
opening and spewing out aircars and airboats, farther away, the
greater ring of heavy conveyers were unloading armored and shielded
combat-craft. An aircar which must have been above the reach of the
gas was streaking away toward the west, with three police cars after
it. As he watched, the air around it fairly sizzled blue with the rays
of neutron disruption blasters, and then it blew apart. The three
police cars turned and came back more slowly. The three-thousand-ton
passenger ship which had been hastily fitted with armament was
circling about; the great dock conveyer which had brought it was gone,
transposed back to Police Terminal to pick up another ship.
He recorded a message announcing the arrival of the task-force, pulled
out the tape and sealed it in a capsule, and put the capsule in a mesh
message ball, attaching it to a couple of wires and flipping a switch.
The ball flashed and vanished, leaving the wires cleanly sheared off.
When it got back to Police Terminal, half an hour later, it would
rematerialize, eject a parachute, and turn on a whistle to call
attention to itself. Then he sealed on his helmet, climbed into an
aircar, and turned on his helmet-radio to speak to the driver. The car
lifted a few inches, floated out an open port, and dived downward.
* * * * *
[Illustration:]
He landed at the big conveyer-head building. There were spaces for
fifty conveyers around it, and all but eight of them were in place.
One must have arrived since the gas bombs burst; it was crammed with
senseless Kharanda slaves. A couple of Paratime Police officers were
towing a tank of sleep-gas around on an antigrav-lifter, maintaining
the proper concentration in case any more came in. At the smaller
conveyer building, there were no conveyers, only a number of red-lined
fifty-foot circles around a central two-hundred-foot circle. The
Organization personnel there had been dragged outside, and a group of
paracops were sealing it up, installing robot watchmen, and preparing
to flood it with gas. At the slave pens, a string of two-hundred-foot
conveyers, having unloaded soldiers and fighting-gear, were coming in
to take on unconscious slaves for transposition to Police Terminal.
Aircars and airboats were bringing in gassed slavers; they were being
shackled and dumped into the slave barracks; as soon as the gas
cleared and they could be brought back to consciousness, they would be
narco-hypnotized and questioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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