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They gri
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Margo nodded. "Thought You'd try a Winchester model 73 first. Malcolms taking us to Denver, so I thought I might as well tackle period rifles. I'll try a model 76 Cente
"just those two?"
Margo let go a genuine, healthy laugh. "And who taught me to carry only the right weapon for the job? This is just this morning's practice session. Tomorrow morning I have a date with handguns of every imaginable design and manufacture, just so long as they were invented before 1885; then Sven gets a crack at me before lunch."
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Margo just rolled her eyes. "I can't stop you. Besides, I might need help crawling out of the gym."
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"Are you kidding?" It came out sour as early Mi
"They just outlawed metallic emery boards, for God's sake."
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Five sets of jaws dropped-again.
Margo gri
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Before she left, Margo glanced at the rifles and pistols that had been quietly laid out on the benches while they spoke. Uh-oh. Thought so. Smart-but stupid. Typical academicians. You'd think they'd eventually change.
Margo found the keys right off, then unlocked a largish room built inside the range itself. Made entirely of steel four inches thick in every dimension, with a heavy door whose hingepins were on the inside, it contained firearms of literally every time period from their invention in the 1300s onward. Door still open, she half heard A
Margo squirmed--all 'eighty-sixers knew who'd pulled her bacon out of the fire (literally) on that trip; but she was still young and vain enough to wish she could've seen the expressions on those stuffy academic faces as it registered: a woman time scout. She gri
Oh, damn! She figured she had about three months before those five idiots out there blabbed to every uptime newsie in the business that a woman time scout by the name of Margo Smith was working out of TT-86. She'd be swarmed over by reporters, particularly the tabloid kind. And they were nearly impossible to shake off once they got interested in you.
Now she'd never get any studying done. She abruptly understood her grandfather's uncompromising, lifelong hatred of news reporters. Well, Margo, my girl, just make the best of at and maybe you'll build up a reputation big enough to satisfy even your ego.
She gri
The size of the 76 caused Margo to remember Koot van Beek's rifle and that great, horrid Cape Buffalo. That was a barely scabbed over memory, too. She hastily snagged the Cente
Putting aside the memory, Margo carted all the items to an empty shooting bench on lane four. A
"Let me know when you're ready to go `hot,' Margo," she called down the line.
Margo nodded and curiously studied the begi
One of them-Margo's electronic earmuffs picked up conversations from an astonishing distance demanded in a voice that would have frozen lava, "We are not renting and wearing this crap! Why would we possibly need eye and hearing protection? This is supposed"-the word dripped venom-"to be a trial run for our field work. We'll have none of this junk downtime! Will we?"
Margo continued shamelessly eavesdropping-how else did one survive in a cruel world, particularly when one was studying to become a real scout whose job was to overhear and remember just such conversations? A
As Margo's first, lamentable lessons had shown, while A
Some customers refused to listen, went downtime improperly armed and/or trained, and usually came back needing a hospital-or staying downtime in a long pine box.
Time Tours, Inc., of course, liked to keep that kind of publicity to a strict minimum, but the company executives-looking for ever more gate profit-did nothing about requiring weapons or self-defense training before allowing a tourist to go downtime. Lessons with the terminal's pro's were strictly on a voluntary basis.