As for Kit Carson, internationally famous time scout …
She glared at his retreating back. He looked nothing like the famous photos Time magazine had done a decade previously, or the even older photos from his days as one of Georgetown’s brightest young faculty members. For one thing, he’d been smiling in those pictures. For another, he’d aged; or maybe “weathered” was a better term for it. Clearly, time-scouting was hard on the health.
Moreover, he wasn’t in “uniform.” She wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to be wearing, but that drab suit and wilted tie was a considerable letdown. The Time pictorial, the one which had fired her childhood imagination and had given her the courage to get through the last few years, had shown the pioneer of all time scouts in full regalia, armed to the teeth and ready for the Roman arena. The man whose current scowl boded ill things for Margo’s future, the man who had “pushed” the famous Roman Gate-the one right here in Shangri-la Station which Time Tours ran so profitably-was a real disappointment in the heroing department.
If legend were accurate, he had nearly died pushing that gate. Margo didn’t put much stock in the legend, now. Kenneth “Kit” Carson didn’t look a thing like a man who’d survived gladiatorial combat. Long, thin, and wiry, he wore that rumpled business suit the way a convict might wear his uniform and sported a bristly mustache as thin and scraggly as the rest of him. His hair-too long and combed back from a high, craggy forehead-was going grey. He slouched when he walked, looking several inches shorter than the six-foot-two she knew him to be. He darted his gaze around the dim room like a man searching for enemies, rather than someone looking for a private table in a perfectly ordinary bar.