Kit didn't answer. He'd spent a lot of sleepless hours doing exactly what Malcolm had been doing: blaming himself.

"That doesn't matter, does it, if she's wandered down a gate without telling anyone. She shouldn't have shadowed herself already," he said raggedly, drawing a flinch from Malcolm, "but if she's actually gone down a question gate secretly, she might as well have."

The legal consequences of stepping through an unexplored gate without filing proper forms were minuscule, a mere fine if you actually made it back alive, but the practical consequences ...

If no one knew which gate you'd gone through, no one could even mount a rescue attempt.

Kit tracked down Ripley Sneed at the Down Time Bar & Grill. Malcolm, to his surprise, followed doggedly. Kit ordered a Kirin, offered to buy one for Malcolm, then shrugged and settled into an empty chair at Ripley's table.

"Mind if we join you?"

"Sure," the scout said with a smile. "What have you been up to, Kit?"

"Oh, this and that. I hear you've been exploring unknown gates."

"Sure have," Ripley grinned. His dark hair needed washing. He smelled bad, like month-old gym socks left to soak in mare's sweat. The regulars at the Down Time had taken tables upwind of him.

Doesn't this jerk ever bathe?

"So, I hear you checked out a gate in Phil Jones' place."

Ripley took a long pull of his own beer. "Yep."

"Odd place for a gate to open up. Of course, they've opened in stranger places." Kit smiled politely.

"You're telling me. How come you're interested in gates again? Thought you'd retired?"

"Oh, just curious. I like to keep up with the business."

Ripley laughed. "You're not fooling anybody, Kit. You want to know about that gate worse than I want to get rich. It'll cost you." His eyes glinted.

"Really?" Kit leaned back and folded his hands across his belly. "You'd charge a man for information on a worthless gate? Hell, l'll just wait until it cycles again and take a look, myself."

Ripley chuckled. -Nope. You're too cautious. You've been through too damned many gates, Kit Carson. You want to step through that bad, it'll really cost you to find out whether or not you'll go `pool' before you hit the other side."

Kit restrained the urge to throttle him.

Malcolm leaned forward on his elbows. "You're an unpleasant louse for someone who just spent a week in some poor schmuck's harem, getting his wives pregnant while he was off fighting the Christians."

Ripley laughed, unoffended. "I can afford to be unpleasant. You can't." He belched. "okay, Kit, I'll tell you about the gate if I see a thousand up front."

"A hundred, tops."

They fell to serious haggling. Kit finally agreed to pay Ripley five hundred. The scout dug out his log and downloaded a file, then passed the disk over. "There it is. Enjoy."

"Thanks," Kit said dryly, passing back a check for five hundred.

"Better not bounce," Ripley said, tacking on a grin at the last moment.

"Watch your mouth," Malcolm growled.

"It's all right, Malcolm. Ripley can't help being abrasive any more than a monkey can help having fleas. Come on, let's see if I got my money's worth."

They left Ripley chuckling as he folded up Kit's check and stuffed it into his wallet.

The file contained very little information. Ripley had gone through the gate and logged for location and time: thirty-two degrees east longitude by twenty-six degrees south latitude, late September of 1542. "There's a small Portuguese trading settlement about two miles north of the gate on Delagoa Bay, Mozambique. A number of native tribal groups in the region are split between Swazi and Shona dialects.

"I see some Moslem influence from contact with Islamic traders, but not much. Relations between the indigenous peoples and the Portuguese is hostile at best. There is absolutely nothing of value to be found in this settlement. Delagoa Bay is merely a stopover to take on fresh water and food supplies for Portuguese ships headed to India. From what I've been able to gather, the Jesuits didn't even leave a mission here when Francis Xavier stopped in 1541. My conclusion is that this is an utterly worthless string not warranting further exploration."

The file ended.

"Well," Kit said heavily. "What do you make of that?" "Five hundred is a lot of money to demand for that information. Something's going on here."

Kit called up a map of Mozambique and replaced the video scenes on his office wall with the chart of southern Africa. "Mozambique..." he mused. "That's hell and gone from anything useful. And in 1542 there wouldn't have been any European exploration of the interior. Nothing out there but Shona and Bantu on the high veldt and San nomads in the Kalahari."

"And the Venda-Lemba Semitic groups of the eastern Transvaal,- Malcolm added. "They were isolated until 1898 for God's sake.'

"So why would Ripley demand so much money for this information?" Kit glanced up. "I wonder what Phil Jones has been up to lately?"

"I think we ought to find out."

"Agreed. You want to tackle him or shall I?"

Malcolm managed the first smile Kit had seen out of him in weeks. "You're too conspicuous, Kit. Everybody knows you're looking for traces of Margo. l'll follow that little weasel, see what he's up to, who he's hanging out with these days."

Kit nodded. "Sounds good. I'll give Bull a call. He's trying to find out who else might be missing."

Malcolm left while Kit dialed the phone.

The station manager apologized when he came on the line. "I've been meaning to call you this morning, except that Pteranodon sternbergi of Sue's got sick, then we had an emergency with the water filters and ... Oh, hell, you're not interested in my problems. Only a couple of people I can't account for, but they're interesting.'

"Oh?"

"One of 'em's that Welshman you tangled with."

"Kynan? The guy from Orleans?"

"The same. He and his longbow have gone missing."

A chill chased down Kit's back. "Go on."

"Frankly, I was afraid of foul play until I noticed who else is missing. Remember that big Afrikaner who came in a few years back when South Africa went to hell?"

"Yeah, I remember him." South Africa had suffered desperate damage from earthquakes, tidal waves, even volcanic eruptions in the aftermath of The Accident. The government had collapsed and thousands of people had fled the ensuing riots, massacres, starvation, and rampant plagues. "Koot van something," Kit said "Big guy about my age, if I remember right, maybe a little younger."

"Koot van Beek. Took up time guiding. Drifts from station to station, wherever there's work."

"So he's back?"

"Back and missing."

Kit gazed at the map on his video screens and tried to figure out why a freelance drifter like Koot van Beek, a displaced Welsh bowman, and Margo would have hooked up in connection with a gate that led to sixteenth century Mozambique.

"Thanks, Bull. That's very interesting news. I'll let you know if I come up with anything solid."

Kit pulled out the itemized library bill and studied Margo's recent research. Lift capacity and fuel consumption for a helium-filled ultralight-but with variable equations for hydrogen as an alternative lifting source. Endemic diseases of southern Africa and recommended inoculations or medical treatments where no inoculations were available. Geographical charts of Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana. Even-he grimaced-recommended medications to suppress menstrual flow.

"What the hell is that little idiot up to?"

Unless Kit were wide of the mark, Margo planned a lengthy air expedition into the heart of southern Africa, where Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa met along the Limpopo River.

"But why?" There wasn't anything out there except crocodiles, wildebeest, and fatal diseases.