She nodded briskly and turned to cater to another customer’s needs. Kit eased his way between tables, greeting friends as he went and parrying curious questions with a smile and offhand jokes. Margo watched the ritual with wide eyes. He finally set the water glasses down and took the other chair. Margo sipped-then shot him a startled glance.
”Water? I’m not a baby!”
”You’re drinking what I am. Pay attention.”
Kit didn’t think he’d ever seen a more skillful disgruntled female flounce–stationary, no less, in a straight-backed bar chair-but she didn’t argue. “I’m listening.”
Given the rapt attention on her face, she was, too. “All right, Margo. Phase One: Equipment Lecture.”
Kit rummaged in the satchel for his personal log and ATLS. Margo would need her own set. Kit made a quick note on his mental to-do list, then set both items out for inspection. “These two pieces of hardware are your lifeline.”
Margo peered at them without offering to touch. “What are they? I read that scouts used microcomputers and some gizmo to determine absolute time and Skee– mean,” she flushed, “I was saving money from my job to buy whatever I’d need. Is that what these are?”
”Yes.” Kit picked up the personal log. A compact unit, smaller than an average letter-sized sheet of paper, it weighed more than it looked. “This is a time scout’s personal log.” He opened the case, pressed a latch, and lifted the tiny screen, revealing a keypad and the mesh grid of a microphone. “The casing is waterproof, shockproof, just about everything we can protect it from, except maybe immersion in strong acid or molten metal or molten rock. It can be used in either voice or key mode. Scanners and digitizing micro-cameras can be attached The personal log operates on a solar-powered system backed up with batteries that last about twenty-four hours between charges. It writes automatically to a micro-layer space-grown crystal matrix for storage, so there’s no chance of losing data even if you do experience catastrophic power failure. They’re expensive, but you don’t set foot through a gate without one.”