Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955 (British Edition) — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TIME CRIME 89 down in the rear seat. He motioned them to silence, and did not speak until the car was rising above the building. “IT wanted to fill you in on this, as soon as possible,” he said. ““Your hunch about Salgath Trod was good; just a few minutes before I called you, he called me. He says this slave trade is the work of something he calls the Organiza- tion; says he’s been taking orders from them for years. His attack on the Management and motion for a censure-vote were dictated from Organization top echelon. Now he’s convinced that they’re going to force him to make false accusations against the Paratime Police and then kill him before he’s com- pelled to repeat his charges under narco-hypnosis. So he’s offered to surrender and trade information for protection.” ““How much does he know?” Vall asked. Tortha Karf shook his head. “Not as much as he claims to, I suppose; he wouldn’t want to reduce his own trade-in value. But he’s been involved in this thing for the last fifteen years, and with his political prominence, he’d know quite a lot.” ‘““We can protect him from his own gang; can we protect him from psycho- rehabilitation?”’ “No, and he knows it. He’s willing to accept that. He seems to think that death at the hands of his own associates is the only other alternative. Probably right, too.” The floodlighted green towers of the Paratime Building were wheeling under them as they circled down. ‘““Why would they sacrifice a valuable accomplice like Salgath Trod, in order to make a transparently false accusation against us?”’ Vall wondered. ‘Ha, that’s our new rookie cop’s idea!”” Tortha Karf chuckled, nodding toward Dalla. “We got Zortan Harn to introduce an urgent-business motion to appoint a committee to investigate BuPsychHyg, this morning. The motion passed, and this is the reaction to it. The Organization’s scared. Just as Dalla predicted, they don’t want us finding out how people with potentially criminal characteristics missed being spotted by psycho-testing. Salgath Trod is being sacrificed to block or delay that.” Vall nodded as the wheels bumped on the landing stage and the antigrav field went off. That was the sort of thing that happened when you started on a really fruitful line of investigation. They got out and hurried over under the marquee, the car lifting and moving off toward the hangars. This was the real break ; no matter how this Organization might be compartmented, a man like Salgath Trod would know a great deal. He would name names, and the bearers of those names, arrested and narco-hypnotized, would name other names, in a perfect chain reaction of confessions and betrayals. Another police car had landed just ahead of them, and three men were climbing out; two were in Paratime Police green, and the third, hand-cuffed, was in Service Sector Proletarian garb. At first, Vall thought that Salgath Trod had been brought in disguised as a Prole prisoner, and then he saw that the prisoner was short and stocky, not at all like the slender and elegant politician. The two officers who had brought him in were talking to a lieutenant, Sothran Barth, outside the antigrav shaft kiosk. As Vall and Tortha Karf and Dalla walked over, the car which had brought them lifted out. ae COMICHOOKS.COM