”Margo? You know her?” Bax demanded. “Who is she?”
Malcolm dragged over an empty chair. Ann highsigned Marcus for another beer. “No,” he admitted with a chagrined air, “I don’t know her. She came barreling through Primary and collared me right off, asking about Kit, then promptly got lost back in Residential looking for the Down Time. I was hoping maybe she’d told you guys why she wants to find Kit. Prickly little cactus blossom, isn’t she?”
Sven laughed at the look on Granville Baxter’s face. “Bax, she’d put you in an early grave. Stick to Time Tours if you want to die young.”
Bax shot him a look of utter disgust and studied his beer.
”Well,” Malcolm nodded thanks when Marcus brought him a chilled mug, “I get the feeling things are going to be lively for a while.” He saluted the group with his beer and grinned.
”You,” Sven Bailey muttered, just said a freakin’ mouthful. The sixty-four thousand dollar question is, do we warn Kit?”
Ann and Rachel exchanged glances, Bax choked on his beer, and across the bar even Marcus started to laugh. Malcolm chuckled. “Poor Kit. Well, let’s put it to a vote, shall we? All in favor?”
Solemnly, but with eyes twinkling, Kit’s friends cast their votes with their hands. Malcolm plucked a few threads from the raveling hem of his tunic. “Short thread does the honors.”
Malcolm, of course, came up short. As always. He sighed, took the inevitable ribbing with a long drag at his beer, and headed for the phone.
* * *
CHAPTER TWO
Government paperwork was only one of many things about running a time-terminal hotel which Kit Carson hated. A laundry list of his favorite complaints, carefully filed away in one corner of his mind where they wouldn’t distract, included laundry bills, the price of food brought in past customs, the cost of replacing towels, ashtrays, and plumbing fixtures carted off by the guests, a work force likely to vanish at a moment’s notice, crushing boredom interspersed with ulcer-generating crises, and-near the top of the list tourists.