He smiled as he remembered one he had once gotten. It had read: “Man who count chickens before they hatch is egghead.”

Biff finished his tea. He reached for the fortune cooky. Just as he did so, someone lurched against his shoulder, upsetting the tray. Cup, saucer, and fortune cooky fell to the floor. Both Biff and the awkward passenger reached to pick up the scrambled tray. Biff’s eyes met his helper’s—it was one of the two Chinese! There was no reason for him to have stumbled. The plane was flying smoothly. It appeared to Biff that the shoulder bumping had been intentional.

“So sorry,” the Chinese said. His dark glasses glinted as he straightened up. “Too bad. Fortune cooky smashed to bits. But slip of paper still okay.”

Smiling briefly, he handed Biff the slender slip of tissue paper, and made his way hurriedly forward.

Biff watched him go, still puzzled by the man’s action. The boy smoothed out the slip. It had only a Chinese character scrawled on it. Through the Chinese printing had been drawn a red “X.” “Now what the dickens is this?” Biff thought. He started to crumple the paper, but something about it held his attention. There was something familiar about it. Then he had it. Carefully, he took out his key chain. He bent low, and compared the character on the cooky slip with that on the surface of the ring’s green stone. They were identical—the letter “K!”—the seal of the lords of the House of Kwang.

Was this a warning of some kind? Did the red “X” cancel out the protection and good fortune the ring was supposed to insure? But why? Why? Biff’s brain kept signaling that one word with its question mark.

The plane climbed over the coastal mountains of Viet Nam, dropped down to skim over the rice fields of Thailand, then swung out over the Bay of Bengal for its approach to Rangoon.

As the plane banked, Biff could see the many mouths of the Irrawaddy River, spread out like long fingers from the broad, brown arm of the river itself.

The plane came low over the bay on its approach to the city, and Biff could see the colorful sails of the dhows, the native craft which dotted the harbor. Some of the sails were bright red, some dirty brown. Many wore patches of every color of the rainbow.

The plane followed the course of the Hlaing River, twenty-one miles inland to the city of Rangoon. Standing out against the low, white 

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