He checked the chronometer built into his personal log. “Which is currently April 28,1910, 22:01:17, locale. Tibetan-time zone. Time guides have to be careful, too.”
Malcolm nodded. “It’s why we guides tend to specialize in tours through Just a handful of gates leading out of one terminal. I could go to one of the other terminals and look for a scouting job, but I’d have to do careful homework first to be sure which terminals and which tours were safe for me. The Denver and London gates here in La-La Land can be just as deadly. The Denver gate is currently opening into 1885, the London gate into 1888. If I try to take a tourist to Denver during the same week I’d already taken someone else to London three years previously…” He shrugged. “I’d accidentally kill myself. So we keep damned good records of where and when we’ve been. That little credit card you were issued when you bought your Primary Gate ticket? The one they encoded for you before you came down time? When tourists use the gates, their Timecards are encoded-in both directions-going down time and coming back-so they have a record of when they’ve been. If the computer catches an overlap, it sounds an alarm.”
Margo’s eyes were beginning to take on a glazed look.
”Careful as the precautions are,” Kit added grimly, “there are still accidents, even with the tourists. Time scouts have to be paranoid about it For instance, I could only visit TT-17 if I went up time and stayed for at least a year. TT-17’s always twelve months and six hours behind this one, same geographical zone, about a thousand miles north of here. If I went through TT-17’s Primary without letting it “catch up” and pass by my last exit from TT-86, I’d never live to see the other side.”