Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein

Well, it would take very fine sighting of that silly arrow; we might hit the wrong pigeonhole. But the important reason was that I hadn’t thought of it.

Star was sitting and nursing her wounded arm. I said, “Honey, can you fly us, slow and easy, down a couple of setbacks and into that hole we want?”

She looked up with drawn face. “No.”

“Well. Too bad.”

“I hate to tell you–but I burned out the garters on that speed run. They won’t be any good until I can recharge them. Not things I can get here. Green mug-wort, blood of a hare–things like that.”

“Boss,” said Rufo, “how about using the whole top of the Tower as a hitching post?”

“How do you mean?”

“We’ve got lots of line.”

It was a workable notion–walk the line around the top while somebody else held the bitter end, then tie it and go down what hung over. We did it–and finished up with only a hundred feet too little of line out of a thousand yards.

Star watched us. When I was forced to admit that a hundred feet short was as bad as no line at all, she said thoughtfully, “I wonder if Aaron’s Rod would help?”

“Sure, if it was stuck in the top of this overgrown ping-pong table. What’s Aaron’s Rod?”

“It makes stiff things limp and limp things stiff. No, no, not that. Well, that, too, but what I mean is to lay this line across the roof with about ten feet hanging over the far side. Then make that end and the crossing part of the line steel hard–sort of a hook.”

“Can you do it?”

“I don’t know. It’s from The Key of Solomon and it’s an incantation. It depends on whether I can remember it–and on whether such things work in this universe.”

“Confidence, confidence! Of course you can.”

“I can’t even think how it starts. Darling, can you hypnotize? Rufo can’t–or at least not me.”

“I don’t know a thing about it.”

“Do just the way I do with you for a language lesson. Look me in the eye, talk softly, and tell me to remember the words. Perhaps you had better lay out the line first.”

We did so and I used a hundred feet instead of ten for the bill of the hook, on the more-is-better principle. Star lay back and I started talking to her, softly (and without conviction) but over and over again.

Star closed her eyes and appeared to sleep. Suddenly she started to mumble in tongues.

“Hey, Boss! Damn thing is hard as rock and stiff as a life sentence!”

I told Star to wake up and we slid down to the setback below as fast as we could, praying that it wouldn’t go limp on us. We didn’t shift the line; I simply had Star cause more of it to starch up, then I went on down, made certain that I had the right opening, three rows down and fourteen over, then Star slid down and I caught her in my arms; Rufo lowered the baggage, weapons mostly, and followed. We were in the Tower and had been on the planet–correction: the “place”–we had been in the place called Karth-Hokesh not more than forty minutes.

I stopped, got the building matched in my mind with the sketch block map, fixed the direction and location of the Egg, and the “red line” route to it, the true path.

Okay, go on in a few hundred yards, snag the Egg of the Phoenix and go! My chest stopped hurting.

Chapter 15

“Boss,” said Rufo, “Look out over the plain.”

“At what?”

“At nothing,” he answered. “Those bodies are gone. You sure as hell ought to be able to see them, against black sand and not even a bush to break the view.”

I didn’t look. “That’s the moose’s problem, damn it! We’ve got work to do. Star, can you shoot left-handed? One of these pistol things?”

“Certainly, milord.”

“You stay ten feet behind me and shoot anything that moves. Rufo, you follow Star, bow ready and an arrow nocked. Try for anything you see. Sling one of those guns–make a sling out of a bit of line.” I frowned. “We’ll have to abandon most of this. Star, you can’t bend a bow, so leave it behind, pretty as it is, and your quiver. Rufo can sling my quiver with his; we use the same arrows. I hate to abandon my bow, it suits me so. But I must. Damn.”