THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

John laughed until the tears came. When he'd finished, he said, "That is a good one. It just so happens that this Podebrad is one of my engineers now."

"Yeah?" one of Frigate's companions said. "We have a score to settle with him."

The speaker was about five feet ten inches high. He had a lean muscular body and dark hair and eyes. His face was strong but handsome and distinctive-looking. He wore a cowboy's ten-gallon hat and high-heeled boots, though his only other clothing was a white kiltcloth.

"Tom Mix at your service, Your Majesty," he said in a Texas drawl.

He puffed on his cigarette and added, "I'm a specialist in the rope and the boomerang, Sire, and I was once a well-known movie star, if you know what that is."

John turned to Strubewell. "Have you ever heard of him?"

"I've read about him," Strubewell said. "He was long before my time, but he was very famous in the twenties and thirties. He was a star of what they called horse operas."

Burton wondered if it was likely that an agent would know that.

"We sometimes make movies on the Rex," John said, smiling. "But we don't have horses, as you know."

"Do I ever!"

The monarch asked Frigate more about the adventure. The American said that at the same time they'd sighted the dirigible, they'd sprung a leak in an apparatus used to heat the hydrogen in the envelope. While trying to cover the leak in the pipe with some quick-setting glue, they'd vented gas from the bag so they could drop quickly into thicker and warmer air and thus open the ports of the gondola.

The leak had been fixed, but a wind started blowing them back and the batteries supplying fresh hydrogen had become dead. They decided to land. When they heard that John had sent a launch ahead to this place to a

"What were you on Earth?"

"A lot of things, like most people. In my middle age and old age, a writer of science-fiction and detective stories. I wasn't exactly obscure, but I was never near as well known as him."

He pointed at a medium-sized but muscular man with curly hair and a handsome Irish-looking face.

"He's Jack London, a great early twentieth-century writer."

"I'm not too fond of writers," John said. "I've had some on my boat, and they've generally caused a lot of trouble. However... who is the Negro who knocked my sergeant on the head without my permission?"

"Umslopogaas, a Swazi, a native of South Africa of the nineteenth century. He is a great warrior, especially proficient with his axe, which he calls Woodpecker. He also is notable as providing the model for the great fictional Zulu hero of the same name created by another writer, H. Rider Haggard."

"And he?"

John pointed at a brown-ski

"That is Nur ed-Din el-Musafir, a much-traveled Iberian Moor, Your Majesty. He lived in your time and is a Sufi. He also happened to have met Your Majesty at your court in London."

John said, "What?" and stood up. He looked closely at the little man, then shut his eyes. When he opened them, he said, "Yes, I remember him well!"

The monarch got up and strode around the table, his arms open, speaking the English of his time rapidly and smiling. The others were astonished to see him embrace the little man and kiss him on both cheeks.

"Jeeze, another Frenchy!" Mix said, but he was gri

After the two had gabbed for some time, John said, "All I have to know is that Nur el-Musafir has traveled far with you and still regards you as his friends. Strubewell, you sign them up and give them instructions. Sergeant Gwalchgwy

On the way down the corridor to their quarters, they ran into Loghu. She stopped, turned pale, then red, and screaming, "Peter, you bastard!" she hurled herself at Frigate. He went down with her hands clutching his throat. Laughing, the black and Mix pulled her off of him.

"You sure got a way with people," Mix said to Frigate.

"Another case of mistaken identity," Burton said. He explained to Loghu what had happened.

After he'd quit coughing and feeling his finger-marked neck, Frigate said, "I don't know who this other Frigate was, but he sure must not be likable."

Reluctantly, Loghu apologised. She was not fully convinced that this Frigate wasn't her former lover.

Mix muttered, "She can grab me any time she wants to, but not around the neck."

Loghu overheard him. She said, "If your whacker is as big as your hat, I might just grab it."

Surprisingly, Mix blushed. When she had hip-swayed away, he said, "Too bold and brassy for me."

Two days later, they were living together.

Burton was not content to admit that the resemblance of the two Frigates was just a coincidence. Whenever he had a chance, he talked to the fellow, delving into his background. What startled him was the discovery that this Frigate, like the other, had been a student of his, Burton's, life.

The American, in his turn, had been watching Burton, though covertly. Every once in a while, Burton caught him staring at him. One night, Frigate cornered him in the grand salon. After looking around to make sure their conversation wasn't overheard, the American said, without preamble and in English, "I'm familiar with the various portraits of Richard Francis Burton. I even had a big blowup of him when he was fifty on the wall in front of my desk. So I think I could recognize him without his mustachios and his forked beard."

"Yaas?"

"I recall well a photograph of him taken when he was about thirty. He had only a mustache then, though it was very thick. If I mentally remove the lip-hair..."

"Yaas?"

"Burton looks remarkably like a certain Dark-Ages Welshman I know. The name he claims is Gwalchgwy

"Very interesting," Burton said after he'd sipped on his grog. "Another coincidence."

Frigate looked steadily at him, disconcerting him a trifle. The devil take him. The fellow looked enough like the other to be his brother. Perhaps he was. Perhaps both were agents, and this one was playing with him as the other had.

"Burton would know all about the Arthurian cycles and the earlier folk tales on which they were based. It would be just like him, if he assumed a disguise—and he was famous on earth for assuming many—to take the name of Gwalchgwy

He would know that it signified a seeker after the Holy Grail, but he wouldn't expect anyone else to."

"I'm not so dense that I can't see that you think I'm that Burton fellow. But I never heard of him, and I don't care to have you pursue this matter even if it amuses you so much. I am not amused."

He lifted the glass to his lips and drank.

"Nur told me when he was visited by the Ethical, the Ethical told him that one of the men he'd picked was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-century explorer."

Burton was able to control himself enough to keep from spitting the drink out.

Slowly, he put the glass down on the bar.

"Nur?"

"You know him. Mr. Burton, the others are waiting in the stage-prop room. Just to show you how sure I am that you're Burton, I'll reveal something. Mix and London used to go under assumed names. But they recently decided to hell with ‘ it. Now, Mr. Burton, would you care to go with me there?" Burton considered. Could Frigate and his companions be agents? Were they waiting to seize and question him, turning the tables on him?