- [last lines]
- Man at Lop: Be careful, my lord. One drop will poison an army.
- Tegana: I will use it wisely, on all but the first of Marco Polo's water gourds. For tomorrow, the caravan sets out to cross the Gobi Desert. Now you will follow us, and on the third night I will walk back to you. Then we're going to ride back here to Lop, wait for two days, and then return to the caravan to collect the thing of magic that will bring the mighty Kublai Khan to his knees.
- Ping-Cho: The marriage has been arranged by my family. I know only two things about him.
- Susan Foreman: Well, what are they?
- Ping-Cho: He is a very important man...
- Susan Foreman: That's a good start.
- Ping-Cho: ...and he's seventy-five years old.
- Ping-Cho: Where are you from?
- Susan Foreman: That's a very difficult question to answer, Ping-Cho.
- Ping-Cho: You do not know where your home is?
- Susan Foreman: Well, I've had many homes... in many places.
- Marco Polo: Listen, the carriage they travel in has no wheels! It just stands there, like a warlord's tomb on one end. And another thing... it is not large enough to carry four people.
- Tegana: It must be!
- Marco Polo: I say it is not, and yet I saw all four walk from it. Upon my sword, I swear it to you!
- Marco Polo: [writing in his journal] Success - my plan has worked! The strangers and their unusual caravan accompany me to Lop. Our route takes us across the Roof of the World, down to the Kashgar Valley, and south-east to Tarkand. Here, we join the old silk road, along which the commerce and culture of a thousand years has traveled to and from Cathay. I wonder what the strangers' reaction will be when I tell them what I propose to do?
- Marco Polo: A caravan that flies!... Do you imagine what this will mean to the Khan? It will make him the most powerful ruler the world has ever known; stronger than Hannibal... mightier than Alexander the Great!