Where We're At: Parts 2.20-2.21: Iceland Spar

In New York City with the Chums (on leave); it's 1903:

• The Chums receive instructions via Plug Loafsley, a street Arab, whose headquarters is the Lollipop Lounge, a child bordello. While delivering the message Loafsley makes a casual sarcastic remark about "the time machine" and the Chums ask to meet with him further.
• Chick and Darby meet with Plug at the Lollipop Lounge to ask about the time machine; Plug takes them to see Dr. Zoot, under the Ninth Avenue el, who made the time machine. Zoot lets them have a sample ride, which he rescues them from--they see strange scary beings. He explains that he didn't build the defective machine; he bought it from Alonzo Meatman at the Ball in Hand bar at the annual summer time-travel conference at Candlebrow University in Ohio.

The Chums travel to Ohio to Candlebrow University.

• Vanderjuice is a guest lecturer at this year's conference. With Vanderjuice, the Chums visit the local junkyard and see hulls of many failed time machines--but not of Zoot's machine.
• The Chums go to the Ball in Hand bar to look for Alonzo Meatman. (Image of a girl with a pygmy lover here--third time so far for a pygmy lover.) They see a boy vanish, and leave. Chick returns and learns that the boy who vanished is Meatman.
• Meatman tells Chick that the resurrected ghosts (or whatever) are everywhere and takes Chick to meet the visiting dead.
• Chick meets Mr. Ace who explains he's come from the future for refuge from [his own] present: "We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present--your future--a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty--the end of the capitalistic experiment. Once we came to understand the simple thermodynamic truth that Earth's resources were limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalist illusion fell to pieces." Because of their economic heresy they've been forced to migrate in time--and here they are. Ace tells Chick that the Chums' assignments have all ultimately been to prevent the attempts of the future to enter the present and asks Chick to consider accepting occasional assignments from the future undead; compensation would be eternal youth (which is better than eternal life).
• Chick "[afterwards] [c]ould not rid himself of the impression...of having been psychically interfered with. Another image here of Deliverance.
• Chick reports back to the Chums--images of the Pilgrims and the Indians the Pilgrims' first winter. But what if they're not innocents, what if they're raiders, wanting to take something back to the future. Or maybe, says Chick, they're bunco artists, testing the Chums' loyalty to their Hierarchy.
• Chick brings Miles with him to meet again with Mr. Ace. Miles recognizes Ace-he's out for no good, Miles has seen them before watching him.
• The crew begins to find evidence of Trespass in the ship. (Chums, not just this bunch, had been believing that they were immune from aging by being Chums. On finding that false, they've been willing to sell out to gain (or regain) eternal youth.)
• To escape from the Trespassers, the Chums join the Marching Academy Harmonica Band at Candlebrow? In Illinois somewhere? The other student harmonicists are other Chums sections?
• Alonzo Meatman is there, too. He's a "squealer" (rat). He disappears.
• The Chums begin to wonder whether they're not actually harmonicists, whether it's all a hoax they're playing on themselves. They begin to forget the Chums, wonder whether they're actually readers who've been serving as volunteer decoys for the real Chums. They get used to the idea, the longing for the actual Chums ebbs.
• And finally they see in the distance a road, and the Inconvenience at the end of the road, and there's Pugnax. And the Trespassers are still there but the crew has learned to ignore them.
• Alonzo Meatman reappears with orders from Higher Authority--the Sfinciuno Itinerary, and orders to go to Inner Asia, Bukhara. They're to meet the frigate Saksaul, Captain Q. Zane Toadflax. They'll need Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus ("Hypops apparatus"), which they ask Vanderjuice about. Vanderjuice tells them that Roswell Bounce invented it for the Vibe corporation.
• Bounce tells them that the Hypops apparatus lets one travel beneath sand (i.e., desert) as if beneath water. Vibe corporation stole the idea from him; he'll undercut their price. He sells six units to the Chums. Something about flight into the next dimension (time). They leave Candlebrow (and Alonzo still there) and proceed to Bukhara.

Page 428. End of Iceland Spar section.