The Announced Third Attempt — referred to within the congregation simply as "tonight" — is the Herd's present and imminent effort to wake The Calf, acting on The Third Transmission. It is undertaken with an expanded congregation: a body of new initiates who serve as delegates of humanity, present to authorize the crossing on everyone's behalf. Framed, like its predecessors, as a launch, it is the third attempt after two recorded failures. The scribes note that Duncan Horst will be forty this year — the traditional minimum age for the kind of ascent attempted — and regard the timing as fitting.