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tonight about having captained a warship during the Russo-Japanese War \ . . . but, Pedro, as I recall my world history, that | was . . . well, at least seventy years ago, and if he'd only been, say, thirty at the time, that still would make him a hundred or more now. Could he be a century old, do you think? He shaves his head completely and apparently has no beard, his eyebrows are white, but he certainly doesn't look or move or act like a centenarian."

    "Actually," he answered, "Tadahira is probably older than a century, Danna. Ships are not, as a rule, given into the hands of inexperienced officers, so for a thirty-year-old to command a warship would have been most exceptionable in a nation that at that time must have had more than sufficient numbers of veteran maritime officers.
    "But how did this subject come up? He never once has spoken of a naval career to me, Danna, and Tve known him for quite a few years/'
    The woman shuddered strongly, rubbed her forearms briskly to lay the gooseflesh that had sprung up upon them, then drained off the remainder of her sherry and said in a low, hushed voice, "It's a long story, Pedro, a ... a weird story. I . . . sense that it is completely true—or that Mr. Hara believes it to be true, anyway."
    She did not think it a good idea, then and there, to tell her employer, partner and friend that, using the telepathy that Fitz had so recently shown her how to employ, she had entered just far enough into her ancient friend's mind to ascertain that he was indeed imparting the truth as he knew it in his singular narrative.
    Then, of a sudden, she recalled time and place: especially time. "But, Pedro, it's nearly midnight and you've got to get home and get at least some sleep tonight."
    Rising, he strode to the liquor cabinet and brought back the two decanters of cognac and sherry, saying, "Whatever Tadahira told you tonight, it shook you, and you don't shake up easily, as I well know. Just recalling it all shook you again, too. So, if you don't

    tell it to me, here and now, I'd lie awake the rest of this night wondering just what you knew that I don't yet of the gentleman's past. So sip your sherry like a good girl and tell me."
    When she had refilled her goblet with the amontil-lado, she took from her bag a small, fancifully-carved meerschaum pipe, packed it slowly and carefully from an eelskin pouch, then used one of the gold lighters from the cigar-chest on Pedro's desk to puff it into life. Then she began to speak.
    "Mr. Hara says that, after the virtual destruction of the Czar's Pacific Ocean Fleet at Port Arthur, the Japanese admiral ordered his fleet to disperse and steam back to Japan. Mr. Hara was commanding a light cruiser—only recently completed and commissioned, new, sleek and modern by the standards of that day—and was very proud of having been chosen to take her out and be her captain during her baptism of fire.
    "Steaming homeward through the Yellow Sea, having experienced some minor boiler problems that he feels still were due to the inferior quality of captured Russian coal then stocking his bunkers, his ship had fallen behind the rest of the fleet, even his escorting destroyers. But with those few Russian ships remaining afloat and uncaptured fleeing the area at flank speed, he knew that he and his fine, strong, well-armed and fully-manned warship had nothing to fear, so he proceeded slowly while his crew worked on the boiler repairs and refittings.
    "As the sun came up of a morning, with the repairs effected and the coast of Chosen a dim smudge off the port bow on the horizon, he was hastily

    summoned to the bridge by the watch-officer to view a brace of 'monsters' disporting in the sea some thousand meters off his starboard and almost every officer and man aboard his ship crowding the rails to watch them."
    "Does he have any idea what they were?" asked Pedro.
    She shrugged. "He says that in his crew there were former fishers and whalers, as well, and that none of