Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Maybe after he dragged all this luggage through the Britannia and came back to look for Ianira some more, he’d volunteer to haul baggage to Denver for a couple of weeks, just to miss out on the whole sordid thing? The Wild West Gate opened tomorrow, after all, and Time Tours was perennially short of baggage handlers. If only they’d found Ianira by then, and Marcus, and little Artemisia and bright-eyed, laughing Gelasia.

If, if, IF!

It was the not knowing that was intolerable, the not knowing or being able to find out. He wanted this job over with, so he could get back to searching. Skeeter stared intently through the crowd, trying to spot anybody he might recognize from The Found Ones. Any news was better than none. But he couldn’t see a single down-timer in that crowd who wasn’t already busy to distraction hauling luggage. Which meant they wouldn’t know spit about the search underway, either.

God, how much longer until this blasted gate cycled?

He peered up at the huge chronometer boards suspended from the distant ceiling, picking out the countdown for Gate Two: five minutes. At the rate time was creeping past, it might as well be five years.

“Jackson! Do you really like scrubbing toilets that much?”

He started so violently he nearly dropped the carpet bag dangling from his hands. Celosia Enyo was glaring at him, lips thinned to a murderous white line.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he muttered. “I was hoping I might see someone who’d heard about Ianira—“

“We’re all worried! But that gate doesn’t give a damn who’s missing or found. We get that—“ she jabbed a finger toward the small mountain of luggage “—through the gate on time or some millionaire will have your head on his dinner platter for having to buy a new wardrobe in London. Worry about your friends on your own time. Or by God, your own time is all you’ll have!”