THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

"Had he lived through the battle? If he had, then he was among the few survivors of the Not For Hire now in this immediate area.

Perhaps. He might have left at once and gone up-River or he might have gotten to the other bank.

Burton went back after Goring and asked him if he'd heard about any survivors on the other side of the lake or any who'd gone through on the cliffpath above the strait.

"No," Goring said. "If there had been any, they'd have been reported."

Burton tried not to show his excitement.

Goring, however, said, smiling, "You think that X is here, don't you? At hand but in disguise?"

"You're deucedly clever," Burton said. "Yes, I do, unless he's been killed. Strubewell and Podebrad were agents, I don't mind telling you that now, and they were killed. So perhaps X was also."

"Did anyone see Strubewell and Podebrad die?" Goring said. "I know Joe Miller thinks Strubewell was dead because he didn't see him get out of the pilothouse after it fell. But Strubewell could have gotten out later on. All we know about Podebrad is that he was seen no more after the vessels collided."

"I wish they were available," Burton said. "I'd get the truth out of them somehow. I believe, however, that they died. That you citizens haven't seen them goes a long way to prove that. As for X, well..."

He said so-long to Goring and walked to the partly burned dock at which the Bins was tied up. It looked like a monstrous black turtle. Its high rounded hull was the shell, and the long narrow prow was part of the head sticking out. The barrel of the steam machine gun projecting from the extreme front of the prow was the turtle's tongue; the steam gun poking out from the stern, the turtle's tail.

Burton had been told by one of its crew that it carried a large batacitor and could hold fifteen people comfortably and twenty with some inconvenience. It could go thirty-five miles per hour against a ten-mile-per-hour current and a ten-mile-per-hour wind. It had an armory of fifteen rifles and fifteen pistols using gunpowder-filled cartridges and ten compressed air rifles and many other weapons.

Joe Miller, his enormous arm in a plaster cast, several of the crew and some survivors of the Not For Hire were standing on the dock. Having had the new captain of the Bills described to him, Burton had no difficulty picking him out. Kimon was a short burly dark man with intense hazel eyes, an ancient

Greek whose life Burton had studied in school and afterward. He's been a great general, naval commander, and statesman, one of the main builders of the Athenian empire after the Persian wars. He was born in 505 B.C., if Burton remembered correctly.

Kimon was a conservative who had favored alliance with Sparta and so ran counter to the policies of Pericles. His father was the famous Miltiades, the victor of the battle of Marathon, in which the Greeks turned back the hordes of Xerxes. Kimon ^served during the naval battle of Salamis in which the Athenians sank two hundred enemy vessels with a loss of only forty and forever broke the Persian naval power.

In 475 Kimon drove out the pirates of Skyros and then located and brought to Athens the bones of Theseus, the legendary founder of the Attic state and killer of the Minotaur of the labyrinth of Knossos. Kimon was one of the judges who gave Sophocles first prize for tragedy in the competitions held at Dionysia in 468.

In 450 Kimon led an expedition against Cyprus, where he died during the siege of Kitium. His bones were brought back to Athens and buried there.

He certainly looked alive now and very mean, too. Kimon and a number of Clemensites were arguing loudly. Burton, acting as if he were just another Virolander, stood with those listening in.

Apparently, the argument was about which of Clemens' people would go on up The River and also about seniority. In addition to the eleven crew members of the Bills, ten people from the Not For Hire had survived. Kimon was outranked by three of these, but he was insisting that he was the commander of the launch and anybody who went along on it would be his subordinate. Moreover, he would not allow more than eleven on the voyage, and he thought that the crew of the Bills should be these. But he was willing to take some from the motherboat if some of his crew didn't want to go on.

After a while, Kimon and the others went inside the launch. Nevertheless, their voices came out loudly through the open ports.

The titanthrop had not gone aboard. He stood in one spot, softly talking to himself. His eyes were red, and he looked as if he'd grieved much.

Burton introduced himself.

Joe Miller, speaking in a deep kettledrum voice in English said, "Yeth, I've heard about you, Mithter Burton. Tham told me about you. Vhen did you get here?"

Reluctantly, Burton said, "I was on the Rex."

"Vhat the hell vere you doing on that? You vere vone of the Ekth'th men, veren't you?"

"Yes," Burton said. "But I didn't know until yesterday that some of his recruits were on the Not For Hire. Though, to tell the truth, I suspected that some would be."

"Who told you?"

"Cyrano de Bergerac."

Joe brightened. "Thyrano? He'th alive? I thought he died! Vhere ith he?"

"No, he was killed. But he recognized me, and he told me that Clemens and he had also been visited by the Ethical."

Burton thought it would be better not to tell Miller that it was his woman who'd slain de Bergerac.

The titanthrop looked as if he were struggling with himself. Then he stopped shaking, and he smiled slightly. His giant hand shot out.

"Here. Thyake. I don't hold it againtht you. Ve vath all thtupid. Ath Tham uthed to thay, it'th the fortuneth of var."

Burton's hand was enfolded, squeezed, not too hard, and then released. Burton said, "I don't think we should talk here. Too many people around. You come with me, and I'll introduce you to two who also know about the Ethical."

They went to the foothill behind the temple. Here Alice and others were building huts. Burton called her, Frigate, Nur, and Aphra Behn to one side. After introducing Miller, Burton asked him to tell everything relevant he knew about X and those who'd been recruited by him. It was a long tale, interrupted by many questions, and it was not finished until long after supper. Since the huts were not completed, the five slept on the portico of the temple under piles of cloths. After breakfast, they returned to their building. By late afternoon they had two huts finished. Miller went down to the launch for a while to check on what was going on. When he returned, Burton told his story. That had to be stopped W the funeral of the casualties whose bodies had not sunk. These, which had been preserved in alcohol until the ceremony, were laid out on wooden biers. Miller wept over Sam Clemens and his cabinmate, a huge redheaded ancient Cimmerian woman. After Burton, representing the Rex, and Kimon, representing the Not For Hire, had spoken a few words about their dead comrades, La Viro gave a short but passionate speech about the uselessness of their deaths. Then the bodies were put on a huge pyre and burned to ashes.

Not until the rains came at about six in the morning were the tales of Burton and his people finished.

"I vathn't going on up," Miller told them. "Veil, actually, I vath going up a little vay. Vhen I found thome of my own people, I vath going to thettle down vith them. Maybe. I'm not tho thyure I'd be happy vith them now. I've theen too much, traveled too much, become too thivilithed to be happy vith them, maybe.

"Anyvay, I'd given up going on to the tower. It didn't theem vorthvhile. But now I've met you, maybe I will go on. If I didn't, it vould make Tham'th death, the thufferingth and the deathth of all thothe people, in vain.

"Bethideth, I vant to find out who Ekth ith. If he'th been tricking uth, me and Tham veren't too thyure he vathn't, I'll tear him apart, thkin by thkin."