He and his audience were on a high hill from which the plain, The River, and the land and the mountain wall beyond could be seen. His listeners, even drunker than he, though none had drunk so much, formed a crescent. This left an opening for him to stride into and out of. Tai-Peng did not like barriers of any kind. Walls made him uneasy; prison bars, frenzied.

Though half of the audience was Chinese of the sixteenth century a.d., the others were from here and there, now and then.

Now Tai-Peng stopped composing, and he recited a poem by Chen Tzu-Ang. First, he stated that Chen had died a few years before he, Tai-Peng, was born. Though Chen was wealthy, he had died in a prison at the age of forty-two. A magistrate had put him there so he could cheat him out of his father's inheritance.

"Men of affairs are proud of their cunning and skill, But in the Tao they still have much to learn. They are proud of their exploitations, But they do not know what happens to the body. Why do they not learn from the Master of Dark Truth, Who saw the whole world in a little jade bottle? Whose bright soul was free of Earth and Heaven, For riding on Change he entered into Freedom."

Tai-Peng paused to empty his cup and hold it out for a refill.

One of the group, a black man named Tom Turpin, said, "Ain't no more wine. What about some alky?"

"No more drink of the gods? I don't want your barbarians' juice! It stupifies where wine enlivens!"

He looked around, smiled like a tiger in mating season, and he lifted Wen-Chun and strode off to his hut with her in his arms.

"When the wine stops, it's time to begin with women!"

The brightly colored leaves and blossoms fluttered to the ground as Wen-Chun mock-struggled with him. He looked like a being from ancient myth, a plant man carrying off a human female.

The others laughed, and the group began to break up before Tai-Peng had shut the door of his hut. One of them walked around the hill to his own hut. After entering, he barred the door and drew down bamboo-and-skin blinds over the windows. In the twilight he sat down on a stool. He opened the lid of his grail and sat for a while staring at it.

A man and a woman passed near his door. They were talking of the mysterious event that had taken place less than a month ago down-River. A great noisy monster had flown from over the west­ern mountain at night and had landed on The River. The braver, or more foolish, locals had boated out toward it. But it had sunk into the waters before they could get close to it, and it had not come up again.

Was it a dragon? Some people said there never had been any dragons. These, however, were skeptics from the degenerate nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anybody but a fool knew that dragons did exist. On the other hand, it could have been a flying machine of the beings who had made this world.

It was said that some had seen or thought they'd seen-a manlike figure swimming away from where the dragon had sunk.

The man in the hut smiled.

He thought of Tai-Peng. That was not his true name. Only Tai-Peng and a few others knew what it was. His adopted name meant "The Great Phoenix," a clue to his real name since he had often boasted in Terrestrial life that he was just such.

Tai-Peng had met him long ago, but he did not know this.

The man in the hut spoke a code word. Instantly, the exterior of the grail sprang into light. The light did not shine over the entire surface. Against the grey metal were two large circles, one on each side of the cylinder. Inside each circle, which represented a hemis­phere of the planet, were thousands of very thin, glowing, twisted lines. These intersected many tiny flashing circles. All were empty except for one. This enclosed a flashing pentagram, a five-pointed star.

Each circle, except for that holding the star, emitted dots and dashes of light.

The display was a chart not made to scale. The lines were the valleys, and the circles indicated men and women. The pulse group of each was an identity code.

Clemens and Burton, among others, had been told by X that he had chosen only twelve to assist him. There were twelve times twelve symbols on the lines, not counting the circled star. One hundred and forty-four in all.

A number of circles were pulsing the same group. The man sighed, and he spoke a code phrase. Instantly, the symbols emitting dash-dash-dash-dots disappeared.

Another code phrase. Two glowing symbols appeared near the top of the grail.

Only seventy recruits were still alive. Less than half of the chosen.

How many would there be forty years from now?

Of these, how many would quit before then?

However, there were many nonrecruits who now knew about the tower. Some of these even knew about the person whom Clemens called the Mysterious Stranger or X. The secret was out, and some who'd learned it second-hand were as intensely motivated as the recruits.

Given the changed situation, it was inevitable that others would get in on the quest polarward. And it was possible that not one recruit would get to the tower whereas some nonrecruits might.

He spoke another code phrase. The circles were suddenly accom­panied by other symbols. Triangles, an uncircled pentagram, and one hexagram, a six-pointed star. The triangles, which pulsed code groups, were the symbols of the second-order Ethicals, the agents.

The hexagram was the Operator's.

He spoke again. A square of light appeared in the center of the hemisphere facing him. Then the display outside the square faded away. Immediately, the square expanded. It was a blow-up of the area in which the three stars and a few circles were located.

Another phrase brought forth glowing digits above the square. So, the six-pointed star was down-River by many thousands of kilometers. The Operator had failed to board the Rex. But the second paddlewheeler would be coming along, though much later.

In the neighboring valley to the east was Richard Francis Burton. So near yet so far. Only a day's walk away-if flesh could pass like a ghost through stone.

Burton was undoubtedly on the Rex Grandissimus. His circle had moved too swiftly along his line for him to be traveling by sailboat.

The Operator... what action would the Operator take if he did get on the Mark Twain ? Reveal a part of the truth to Clemens? All of it? Or keep silent?

There was no telling what would happen. The situation had been changed too drastically. Even the computer at HQ would not have been able to indicate more than a small percentage of the probabilities.

So far, there was only one agent on a boat, the Rex. At least ten could be picked up by the Mark Twain, but it was improbable that more than one would be. If that.

Fifty were in the line between the Rex and Virolando.

Of the total of sixty, he could identify only ten. These were upper echelon, heads of their sections.

The chances were that he would encounter none of the sixty.

But... what if he failed to get aboard either boat?

He felt sick.

Somehow, he would do it. He must do it.

To be realistic, he had to admit that he could fail.

At one time he had believed that he could do anything humanly possible and some things which no other humans could do. But his faith in himself had been somewhat shaken.

Perhaps this was because he had lived among the Riverpeople too long.

There were so many journeying up-River, driven by one great desire. By now most of them would have heard Joe Miller's story, though it was at hundredth-hand. They'd be expecting to find the towel rope up which they could climb the precipice. They'd also expect the tunnel which would permit them to detour an almost unscalable mountain. They would expect the path along the face of the mountain.