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“Well, we were only trying to stay inside the Paratime Code,” Brannad Klav pleaded. “If it isn’t too late, now, you can count on me for every co-operation.” He fiddled with some papers on the desk. “What do you want me to do to help?”

“I’ll tell you that in a minute.” Verkan Vall walked to the wall and looked at the map, then returned to Stranor Sleth’s desk. “How about these dungeons?” he asked. “How are they located, and how can we get in to them?”

“I’m afraid we can’t,” Stranor Sleth told him. “Not without fighting our way in. They’re under the palace citadel, a hundred feet below ground. They’re spatially co-existent with the heavy water barriers around one of our company’s plutonium piles on the First Level, and below surface on any unoccupied time-line I know of, so we can’t transpose in to them. This palace is really a walled city inside a city. Here, I’ll show you.”

Going around the desk, he sat down and, after looking in the index-screen, punched a combination on the keyboard. A picture, projected from the microfilm-bank, appeared on the view-screen. It was an air-view of the city of Zurb–taken, the high priest explained, by infrared light from an airboat over the city at night. It showed a city of an entirely pre-mechanical civilization, with narrow streets, lined on either side by low one and two story buildings. Although there would be considerable snow in winter, the roofs were usually flat, probably massive stone slabs supported by pillars within. Even in the poorer sections, this was true except for the very meanest houses and out-buildings, which were thatched. Here and there, some huge pile of masonry would rear itself above its lower neighbors, and, where the streets were wider, occasional groups of large buildings would be surrounded by battlemented walls. Stranor Sleth indicated one of the larger of these.

“Here’s the palace,” he said. “And here’s the temple of Yat-Zar, about half a mile away.” He touched a large building, occupying an entire block; between it and the palace was a block-wide park, with lawns and trees on either side of a wide roadway connecting the two.

“Now, here’s a detailed view of the palace.” He punched another combination; the view of the City was replaced by one, taken from directly overhead, of the walled palace area. “Here’s the main gate, in front, at the end of the road from the temple,” he pointed out. “Over here, on the left, are the slaves’ quarters and the stables and workshops and store houses and so on. Over here, on the other side, are the nobles’ quarters. And this,”–he indicated a towering structure at the rear of the walled enclosure–“is the citadel and the royal dwelling. Audience hall on this side; harem over here on this side. A wide stone platform, about fifteen feet high, runs completely across the front of the citadel, from the audience hall to the harem. Since this picture was taken, the new temple of Muz-Azin was built right about here.” He indicated that it extended out from the audience hall into the central courtyard. “And out here on the platform, they’ve put up about a dozen of these triangles, about twelve feet high, on which the sacrificial victims are whipped to death.”

“Yes. About the only way we could get down to the dungeons would be to make an airdrop onto the citadel roof and fight our way down with needlers and blasters, and I’m not willing to do that as long as there’s any other way,” Verkan Vall said. “We’d lose men, even with needlers against bows, and there’s a chance that some of our equipment might be lost in the melee and fall into outtime hands. You say this sacrifice comes off tomorrow at sunset?”

“That would be about actual sunset plus or minus an hour; these people aren’t astronomers, they don’t even have good sundials, and it might be a cloudy day,” Stranor Sleth said. “There will be a big idol of Muz-Azin on a cart, set about here.” He pointed. “After the sacrifice, it is to be dragged down this road, outside, to the temple of Yat-Zar, and set up there. The temple is now occupied by about twenty Chuldun mercenaries and five or six priests of Muz-Azin. They haven’t, of course, got into the House of Yat-Zar; the door’s of impervium steel, about six inches thick, with a plating of collapsed nickel under the gilding. It would take a couple of hours to cut through it with our best atomic torch; there isn’t a tool on this time-line that could even scratch it. And the insides of the walls are lined with the same thing.”