”What Down Time Bar and Grill?”
Grimly, Margo picked up her case again, regretting the decision to stuff everything into one piece of luggage. She looked for a terminal directory, something like she’d always found at ordinary shopping malls, but saw nothing remotely resembling one. She didn’t want to betray complete ignorance by asking someone. Margo was desperate to give the impression that she was worldly, well-traveled, able to take care of herself.
But the Down Time Bar & Grill was apparently close kin to the Flying Dutchman, because it didn’t appear to exist Maybe it was down time? Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody’d put a bar on the other side of a time gate. Finally she started hunting down the maze of cross linked, interconnecting corridors that formed the private portion of TT-86. Stairways led to corridors on other levels, some of them brightly lit, others dim and deserted. Within minutes, she was hopelessly lost and fuming.
She set the case down again and rubbed her aching palm. Margo glared at a receding stretch of corridor broken occasionally by more corridors and locked doors. “Don’t these people believe in posting a directory somewhere?”
”May I help you?”
The voice was polite, male, and almost directly behind her.
She spun around.
The guy in the tunic. Oh, shit…. Ever since New York she’d been so careful-and this was a down-timer, God knew what he’d try to pull
”Are you following me?” she demanded, furious that her voice came out breathy and scared instead of calm and assured.