EVENTS, PAST ELAPSED FIVE YEARS.
He punched again; below this line appeared the sub-heading:
EVENTS INVOLVING PARATIME TRANSPOSITION.
Another code-combination added a third line:
(ATTRACTING PUBLIC NOTICE AMONG INHABITANTS.)
He pressed the "start"-button; the headings vanished, to be replaced by page after page of print, succeeding one another on the screen as the two men read. They told strange and apparently disconnected stories—of unexplained fires and explosions; of people vanishing without trace; of unaccountable disasters to aircraft. There were many stories of an epidemic of mysterious disk-shaped objects seen in the sky, singly or in numbers. To each account was appended one or more reference-numbers. Sometimes Tortha Karf or Verkan Vall would punch one of these, and read, on an adjoining screen, the explanatory matter referred to.
Finally Tortha Karf leaned back and lit a fresh cigarette.
"Yes, indeed, Vall; very definitely we will have to take action in the matter of the runaway nighthound of the late Gavran Sarn," he said. "I'd forgotten that that was the time-line onto which the Ardrath expedition launched those antigrav disks. If this extraterrestrial monstrosity turns up, on the heels of that 'Flying Saucer' business, everybody above the order of intelligence of a cretin will suspect some connection."
"What really happened, in the Ardrath matter?" Verkan Vall inquired. "I was on the Third Level, on that Luvarian Empire operation, at the time."