Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955 (British Edition) — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

TIME CRIME | 97 ““We went in on that time line, that same night, with an airboat and made a recon in the hills back of Careba. Scared the fear of Safar into a party of Caleras while we were working at low altitude, by the way. We found the conveyer-head site; hundred-foot circle with all the grass and loose dirt trans- posed off it, and a pole pen, very unsanitary, where about two-three hundred slaves would be kept at a time. No indications of use in the last ten days. We did some pretty thorough boomeranging on that spatial equivalent over a couple of thousand time lines and found thirty more of them. I believe the slavers have closed out the whole Esaron Sector operation, at least temporarily.” That was what he’d been afraid of; he hoped they wouldn’t do the same thing on the Kholghoor Sector. “Let me have the designations of the time lines on which you found conveyer heads,” he said. “Just a moment, Chief’s Assistant; I'll photoprint them to you. Set for reception?”’ Vall opened a slide under the screen and saw that the photoprint film was in place, then closed it again, nodding. Skordran Kirv fed a sheet of paper into his screen cabinet and his arm moved forward out of the picture. “On, sir,” he said. He and Vall counted ten seconds together, and then _ Skordran Kirv said: “Through to you.” Vall pressed a lever under his screen, and a rectangle of microcopy print popped out. “That’s about all I have, sir. Want me to keep my troops ready here, or shall I send them somewhere else?’’ “Keep them ready, eye Vall told him, “You may need them before long. Call you later.”’ He put the microcopy in an enlarger, and carried the enlarged print with him to the conveyer room. There was something odd about the list of time line designations. They were expressed numerically, in First Level notation; extremely short groups of symbols capable of exact expression of almost inconceivably enormous numbers. Vall had only a general-education smatter- ing of mathematics—enough to qualify him for the chair of Higher Mathe- matics at any university on, say, the Fourth Level Europo-American Sector— and he could not identify the peculiarity, but he could recognize that there existed some sort of pattern. Shoving in the starting lever, he relaxed in one of the chairs, waiting for the transposition field to build up around him, and feel asleep before the mesh dome of the conveyer had vanished. He woke, the list of time line designations in his hand, when the conveyor rematerialized on Home Time Line. Putting it in his pocket, he hurried to an antigrav shaft and floated up to the floor on which Tortha Karf’s office was. Tortha Karf was asleep in his chair; Dalla was eating a dinner that had been ‘brought in to her—something better than the sandwich and mug of coffee Vall had mentioned to Thalvan Dras. Several of the bureau chiefs who had been there when he had gone out had left, and the psychist who had taken charge of the prisoner was there. “I think he’s coming out of the drug, now,” he reported. “Still asleep, though. We want him to waken naturally | before we start on him. They’ call me as soon as he shows signs of stirring.” 2 comichbookszcom