About three hours and an assortment of semi-healthy snacks arrayed on tables in Presidents Yard later, El Dorado was in possession of the ball. On the sidelines, River watched Croc step back in the pocket and throw a long forward pass to wide receiver, Gordie Tom Preston. It is going to be a seesaw game, he thought, as El Dorado marched down the field in the first possession of the game. Handoff to Journey-Joe Santoro; handoff to Santoro again; Croc to Gordie Tom; Croc to the end zone, where the ball was caught by 6'5" El Dorado wide receiver, Dakota Imali. Huygens 0 - El Dorado 7.

Huygens Defense were slow to warm up this afternoon. "It is not going to be that easy next time, Croc", River thought. In the cafeteria, he had observed the head and tail of the fearsome crocodile tattoo that reached from Croc's wrist to his shoulder. Fingering the powerful Greek good luck charm that he wore beneath his jersey, to himself River repeated: "It is not going to be that easy the next time, Croc."

Set to a rousing version of "Clemintine", the El Dorado band was playing the team fight song: "El Dorado El Dorado, El Dorado scores again."

The Huygens band generally played oniy sporadically and were careful not to interfere with signals per NCAA rules. But, as River ran into the field, he heard a melody that he recognized (in the restaurant kitchen, in certain moods, his mother sang opera)."Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!" River looked at the stands where the Huygens band was ensconced and saw that accompanied by the usual group of technopunk-playing computer science students, two women were playing a semi-coherent melody of opening songs from Mozart's The Magic Flute. The flutist was Durango's wife, Mira Palacio-Earle. He had seen the other woman in the engineering building, but she was so beautiful that he had never dared to approach her. She was playing the glockenspiel.