Time Crime

A routine purchase of plantation workers becomes a police matter when guard captain Kiro Soran recognizes a language from another probability line. The people brought into the stockade have crossed between worlds, and their presence points to an organized trade in human beings. Soran returns to his duties with the Paratime Police, turning an uneasy business transaction into the opening clue of a much larger investigation.

H. Beam Piper combines speculative technology with the practical work of tracing a concealed organization. Investigators consider currency exchanges, specialized equipment and the ways powerful figures might escape psychological screening. Conversations about authority and responsibility give the case a political dimension alongside its puzzle. Readers interested in science fiction built around institutions and detective reasoning will find a setting where movement between alternate worlds creates both opportunities for wrongdoing and difficult problems for those charged with stopping it.