Geographically speaking, the Britannia was the highest of Shangri-La’s active tour gates. When it opened, tourists climbed up to an immense metal gridwork platform which hovered near the steel beams and girders of the ceiling. Until the advent of that conveyer, sweating baggage handlers and porters had climbed that same ramp, gasping and hurrying to make it through before the gate disappeared into thin air once more.
“Sheesh,” Skeeter muttered, grabbing another trunk by its leather handles and hauling it over to the conveyer, “what’s in some of these monsters? Uranium bricks?” One of the other baggage handlers, a down-timer who worked most gate openings as a porter, grunted sympathetically as Skeeter groused, “They’re only staying in London eight days, for Chrissake. And they’ll be bringing back more than they left with!”
They would, too. Right down to the last yammering, whining kid in line. Parents had to pay a hefty amount of extra cash demanded by Time Tours, Inc. for children’s tickets, a policy put into place after a couple of kids had managed to get themselves fatally separated from tours out of other stations. Children on a time tour were like gasoline on an open campfire. But parents still brought their brats with them in droves, and a surprising number paid the extra fees for kids’ tickets. Others simply dropped the kids off at the station school to “have fun” in the zany world of the station while Mommy and Daddy went time hopping.
Skeeter dragged over another portmanteau. Why anybody would take a child into something like the Ripper terror . . . He could see it now. My summer vacation: how a serial killer cut up women who make their living sleeping with strangers for money. And kids had grown up fast in his day.