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[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          mikebailey:
          now there's an interesting possibility.  
          Reef or Frank, no problem, but Kit'd 
          need Iceland Spar to be there.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. It's not as if Kit lacks 
access to the right sort of crowd where you could easily procure that sort 
of thing. And there is some temporal criss-crossing going on as well. . . .

             How stupefied he must have looked. He followed the 
             group dumbly down a flight of winding metal steps to 
             an electric-lit platform where others, quite a few others 
             in fact, were boarding a curious mass conveyance, 
             of smooth iron painted a dark shade of industrial gray, 
             swept and sleek, with the pipework of its exhaust 
             manifold led outside the body, running lights all up and 
             down its length. He got on, found a seat. The vehicle 
             began to move, passing among factory spaces, power 
             generators, massive instillations of machinery whose 
             purpose was less certain---sometimes wheels spun, 
             vapors burst from relief valves, while other plants stood 
             inert, in unlighted mystery---entering at length a system 
             of tunnels and, once deep inside, beginning to accelerate. 
             The sound of passage, hum and wind-rush, grew 
             louder, somehow more comforting, as if confident in its 
             speed and direction. There seemed to be no plan to stop, 
             only to continue at increasing velocity. Occasionally, 
             through the windows, inexplicably, there were glimpses of 
             the city above them, though how deep beneath it they 
             were supposed to be traveling was impossible to tell. 
             Either the track was rising here and there to break above 
             the surface or the surface was making deep, even heroic, 
             excursions downward to meet them. The longer they traveled, 
             the more "futuristic" would the scenery grow. Hunter was on 
             his way to refuge, whatever that might have come to mean 
             anymore, in this world brought low. 155