The trail led to Ur of the Chaldees, to ancient Sumeria, to Babylonia, the cradle of civilization. Always Tedor arrived too late, always the angry little pip darting about on his chronoscreen indicated Laniq Hadrien was one step ahead of him.
But it was not until he left Second Dynasty Egypt that he noticed another pip on the screen. He was following Laniq, but so was someone else. Another saucer-shaped craft plied the time streams in their wake, making all the stops they made, starting up again when they did. Experimentally, Tedor thrust his own conveyor forward in time until he'd passed the girl and left her decades behind him. The second conveyor became a frenzied pip on the screen, plummeting through the years with him.
The second conveyor did not follow Laniq Hadrien. It followed Tedor. He considered it and got nowhere. It failed to make sense. In the first place, privately owned time-craft were rare, belonging only to the few rich people who could afford them, to members of Laniq Hadrien's organization or to Time Agents. The century coaches carried most traffic through time, and no century coach would go off the well-traveled trails to follow Tedor.
One of the Hadrien woman's people? Perhaps, but he wouldn't have immediately accelerated through time to chase Tedor, not if he were trailing the woman for protection. A rich man on a pleasure jaunt? Hardly likely. Certainly not another Time Agent! Tedor scowled and turned his attention back to the girl. Laniq was landing.
Quickly, Tedor checked the time-charts, plugged in a hypnosleep spool, fastened the electrodes to his temples, drugged himself, and within an hour learned thoroughly the Attic Greek spoken by the denizens of the Fifth Century who had rubbed shoulders in the Agora with Socrates, Alcibiades and Pericles, five hundred years before Christ was born and some generations before Attica and its Athens were to feel the grim tread of the Macedonian phalanxes then of the Roman legions. Tedor ran the microfilm projector, found the pictures he sought, fed them into the slot of the matter duplicator and soon donned the mantle and tunic, the sandals and head band of an Athenian gentleman.
He stepped outside into a grove of plane trees, found Laniq Hadrien's craft a hundred yards away but saw nothing of the third conveyor. Shrugging, he set out upon the road to Athens, wondering how many minutes he was behind the girl. Other citizens walked the road with Tedor, some chatting aimlessly with him, others strolling by in polite silence because he had selected the garment of a high-ranking citizen and they were beneath his station.
The slave at the gate, an immense bronze man, skin and hair slick with olive oil, looked up from where he'd been resting his chin on the haft of his spear when Tedor asked, "Did you see an unescorted woman come through this gate?"
"Yes sir." The voice was deep, metallic of timbre. "A lone woman is unusual on these avenues, as you of course know." Women were second class citizens in Athens, remaining in their homes except on rare intervals and never venturing out alone unless they were so old and so ugly no men would care to look at them. "Further," the slave went on, "this girl carried a strange black box which she pointed at me. I heard a clicking sound and wondered what kind of magic might dwell within it."
"You have nothing to fear," Tedor assured him. So Laniq Hadrien was taking pictures. "Which way did the woman go?"
"She asked the direction of the Agora. Again, most peculiar, as who does not know the location of the marketplace in Athens?"