Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 55: Line 176 (969)

 They began to imagine, jointly and severally, some rescuer entering the crew spaces, moving among them, weighing, choosing, a creature of fantasy to bring them back each to his innocence, to lead him out of his unreliable body and his unique loss of courage, so many years in the making—though, much as he enjoyed unanimous admiration from the crew, it had not turned out to be Lew Basnight.

* * * * * * * * * *

"so many years in the making"
The boys are, supposedly, way too young to be having these kind of elderly thoughts. What horrors and traumas have they been exposed to to leave them without innocence or courage, to feel their bodies lack reliability, at the age in which those three things should be virtually indestructible? Is it possible the Chums have somehow managed to experience the whole of the fictional and non-fictional world? Somehow having infinite time in their young lives to visit every major event, historical or popularized by fiction, being that they are characters in a series of young adult books (in the reality of the fiction Pynchon has placed them in)?

This sentence feels like it could have come straight out of Stephen King's novel, It. The adult versions of the children trying to find that thing, or that person, that could bring them back to the only moment in time where they were capable of destroying the monster and yet they failed. So they must find the innocence and the courage and the reliability of body once more, somehow. It's Bill loading his wife onto the handlebars of Silver to ride her through time to find those things so she can emerge from her coma. Really, it's time travel they're all looking for. But not just time travel, more a reversal of time, a way back, a do-over.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 55: Line 175 (968)

 "Hang it, fellows," Randolph expostulated, "we've got to try to pull out of this!"

* * * * * * * * * *

"Hang it, fellows"
Hang the problem instead of yourselves. They were just talking about suicide so I'm probably supposed to make the link, right? Otherwise it's just an even more distanced from version of "Damn it all to Hell!" than "Dang it!"

"we've got to try to pull out of this"
Just like a skyship captain to use a skyship metaphor about averting disaster.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 55: Line 174 (967)

 When not reeling about quite as uncontrollably as drunkards, the boys would gather to dine on these horrible wet-and-dry sandwiches, drinking the low-priced wine and noting with cogged humor how swiftly each seemed to fatten before the gazes of the others.

* * * * * * * * * *

Are the boys even making excursions aboard the Inconvenience anymore? Or did their assignment basically end when Lew Basnight was shipped off to Denver? Their entire assignment was to give access to the Fair from above for White City Investigations, right? Their mission having been cut short before the end of the fair by Lew's departure, the boys now have "resorted" to living in near squalor and drunken revelry while they await their next assignment, an assignment that was probably planned to start after the end of the Fair. Now they find themselves in a liminal waiting space, between the end of one mission cut short and the next not quite ready to begin, eating, drinking, and getting fat.

"horrible wet-and-dry sandwiches"
Barf.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Pages 54-55: Line 173 (966)

 Autumn deepened among the desolate city blocks, an edge appeared to the hum of life here, invisible sometimes and furtive as worn boot-heels vanishing round the corners of the stately arcades where the boys resorted, in great shabby rooms, among the smells of stale animal fat and ammonia on the floor, with glass-roofed steam-tables offering three choices of sandwich, lamb, ham, or beef, all heavy on the fat and gristle, stale odors, frown-lined women slapping together meat and bread, a shaken spoon that smacked the flour-heavy gravy on like plaster, eyes cast downward all day long, behind them in front of the mirror rising a pyramid of cheap miniature bottles, known hereabouts as "Mickeys," holding three choices of wine, red, white, and muscatel.

* * * * * * * * * *

Speaking of extended duties destroying morale . . . .

Pynchon turns so quickly from the Chums seeming to enjoy their time at the Fair and keeping company with their new friend Lew, to suicide, depression, and job weariness that I barely could tell what was happening. Whatever the spell or orders or mission keeping them in Chicago, it had caused the boys to find themselves long past the limits of their cheer's endurance. Was it Heino's talk of the death of the Frontier? Lew's gift, an inadvertent reminder of suicide? The stench of death forever hanging over The Stockyards, and thus, the city itself? Or was it simply the amount of time at a single location with the knowledge of the work they were doing slowly dawning on them, that they were now participants in making the lives of the working class even more miserable by helping union busters?

The tone and mood has shifted. The Chums now walk a "desolate" environment. Anxiety and worry, "an edge to the hum of life," has settled around their routines. They have "resorted" to "shabby rooms" with this depressing description of the food served and the beat down women serving it.

"resorted"
I just wanted to drop the definition of resorted here as explanation of where the boys have found themselves: "turn to and adopt (a strategy or course of action, especially a disagreeable or undesirable one) so as to resolve a difficult situation." I assumed they spent downtime either aboard the Inconvenience or, as earlier, in camp nearby where it is moored. But earlier they spoke of room aboard for supplies and perhaps this mission has gone on so long that they've found themselves with scant food left, thus having to "resort" to these depressing dining halls with gristle and fat sandwiches slapped together by the most downtrodden of women.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 54: Line 172 (965)

 They seemed held here, as if under some unconfided spell.

* * * * * * * * * *

"unconfided spell"
A spell that forces them to do things they otherwise would not do? As if they were merely characters at the mercy of some author's whim? Not only unable to break free but to even wish to break free, being that their motivations and actions are also controlled by this unknown auteur? I'd suggest more mundane reasons, like poverty or being orphans or possibly some form of community service stemming form an early life of pickpocketing and other urchinry, but Pynchon is the one who brought up spellcraft.

I do like the idea of a punishment though. Especially in the case of Randolph St. Cosmo who could possibly be one of those angels sent to work off some slight toward God by helping mankind out of one jam per week for twenty-four weeks, with summers off.

Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 54: Line 171 (964)

 Cheerfulness, once taken as a condition of life on the Inconvenience, was in fact being progressively revealed to the boys as a precarious commodity, these days.

* * * * * * * * * *

"a precarious commodity, these days"
Because times are changing or because they're growing older?

Are they growing older though? I still have some serious issues with the Chums of Chance timeline! Perhaps some of them are growing older, the ones who aren't horny angels.