He frowned up the slope, noting the innumerable white scrapes and scratches on the exposed rocks. The whole width of the hill was marked with scratched rocks and grooved and dented dirt where previous recruits had come up against this same problem, and somehow solved it some way.
Looking at the hill, it occurred to Roberts that maybe he didn’t have to work the whole answer out by himself, after all. Obviously, those other recruits had solved it and got out of here. How? Perhaps the hill would tell him.
Intently, he studied the hill, seeking some place where the scratches were conspicuously few. That might be the place where there had been the fewest slips and falls because, for some reason, it was easiest to get up there.
But the stony hill was scratched more or less evenly from side to side. It was only free of scratches near the bottom, where the slope was very gentle—and near the top, where it was steepest. Apparently, no one dropped the cone when he had it near the top. Why? As far as Roberts could see, only a physical superman could hope to get it up the last ten feet of that slope.
The only peculiarity Roberts could see was the number of dents in the ground at the foot of the hill—from dropping the cone, wide-end down? That, he supposed, must have happened from misjudging the weight of the cone the first time it was picked up. But he had made many false tries himself, and yet he had never done that.
He looked around, noting the straggling green grass of the hillside, the blue sky, the drifting white clouds, the fence, and the trees outside. He looked down at the massive cone, with its flattened small end, and its spherically-curved large end, the whole thing mirror-smooth and hard to hold.
How to get a grip on a thing like this?
Outside, life went on. Meanwhile, here he was, stuck with this damnably simple problem.
Mentally, he pictured every conceivable way of climbing that hill. But the trouble was always the same—that steep slope near the top. No feat of gymnastics could get this thing up that last steep slope.
Supposedly, it might be possible to scratch out a kind of ramp up that steep slope, from one side of the hill to the other. But aside from the lack of tools and the time it would take, there was the little question of those mines that were supposed to be laid inside the enclosure. Where were they, and how deep? Supposedly, they were somewhere near the fence. But then, so was that steep slope.
Roberts groped around for more ideas, and none came to him. But he couldn’t just stand here and go to sleep on his feet, so he crouched, and gripped the massive, awkwardly shaped chunk of metal. He straightened up, damning the weight of the thing. It had been bad enough to begin with, and seemed heavier every time. What was it made out of, anyway?
Heavily, his muscles straining, he walked up the gentle beginning of the hill, and even managed to climb the first part of the steepening slope. Then he sank down, lowering the weight heavily to the ground.
He waited until his breathing became even, then he crouched beside the weight, and shoved the large end of the cone uphill in a semicircle. He seized the smaller end, and levered it up and over so that the large end was again downhill.
With steady concentration, he moved it monotonously up the hill, first one end, and then the other, as the slope gradually steepened, and became worse and worse to climb, and then a soundless buzz caught his attention, to provide a welcome break in the hopeless job.
Heaving the small end up and over, Roberts crouched beside the cone, holding it in position with his right hand as he took out the little communicator with his left hand.
Hammell’s voice said, “I thought I ought to mention it. This damned thing is gimmicked somehow.”
Roberts’ right foot slipped on a loose pebble, his right leg shot out behind him, and he slid downhill, losing his hold on the cone. The cone’s small end came up and flipped over. The large end rumbled around in half a circle, then the small end flipped over again, and the large end went around in another half-circle, the whole thing slipping in the dust and loose rock fragments, and starting to gather speed.
Roberts in a flying jump landed across the cone, but his right hand, outstretched, slid in a spray of gravel, while his left hand, still gripping the communicator, was out of action. Somehow, the cone got free, and banged and thudded down the hill.
Roberts peered sourly down the slope to see the dust blow away, showing the cone once again at the bottom. He sat up, and raised the communicator.
“It’s gimmicked? I don’t see that the damned thing needs to be gimmicked. It’s impossible just as it is.”
Hammell seemed to think Roberts doubted his word. “Well, it is gimmicked. There’s no question of that. There’s a column of mercury or some such thing in it.”
It seemed to Roberts that he could get along nicely without this superfluous complication. One impossibility at a time.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice expressing no great conviction.
Hammell said shortly, “Listen, I’ve tried half-a-dozen times to keep the damned thing on the base of this fence. It falls off every time.”
“M’m,” said Roberts noncommittally, getting up and starting downhill toward the cone.
” ‘M’m’?” Hammell said, losing his temper. “Try it! See what happens!”
Roberts’ eyes narrowed. Exactly what made Hammell assume he was the only one who might have thought of that?
Still, there was no point having an argument over it. They might yet be able to help each other work out the answer.
Roberts strained hard to keep the anger out of his voice, but the accidental result was that he spoke in a kind of drawl:
“Well, you see, I’ve already tried that.”
There was a little silence, accompanied by a sense of a thickening of the atmosphere.
Hammell snarled, “And what was your experience?”
“No trouble with it falling off.”
“How come you didn’t get it all the way to the top?”
“It slipped loose, about a third of the way up that steepest section.”
“But it didn’t ever fall off the base when you put it there? The hell you say.”
“Oh,” said Roberts, his suppressed anger coming to the surface, “the hell I say, eh?”
He stuffed the communicator back in its case and crouched to grip the cone. He staggered to his feet with it, stunned at its weight. He could only imagine he must have worn himself out trying to get it up the hill the last time. This added frustration further infuriated him. Meanwhile, a little voice was repeating Hammell’s “The hell you say,” over and over in his mind, and this affected him like being stung by a yellow jacket that doesn’t rest content with stinging once, or stinging twice, but stings as many times as it can sting until it is killed.
Roberts’ anger boiled over, and he gripped the cone with redoubled force.
The cone tore itself loose, and he barely managed to guide it aside and yank his foot out of the way. The cone hit the ground with a thud that he both heard and felt, and that was heavier by far than he would have thought possible.
For an instant he stared at it, then he seized it again, tried to wrestle it up off the ground, and couldn’t do it.
He snapped the communicator from its case, and switched it on.
A roaring crackle came out that no one could have talked through. The communicator had been jammed.
Roberts put it away, and stared at the cone.
He must be close to the answer.
He strung a series of virulent epithets in chains, and aimed them all at the cone. Once started, the emotion snowballed and when he’d reached the point of dull raging frustration lined with pure hatred, he crouched down, tried to grip the curved underside of the cone, and couldn’t work his fingers under it.
The cone had now sunk heavily into the stony dirt. By no stretch of the imagination could he ever have lifted anything that heavy.
In fact, it just couldn’t be that heavy—unless it contained a mixture gravitor with a device keyed to his own moods and designed to compound his own frustration.
He turned away, forcing his breath to come quietly and evenly. He looked off at the dark-green trees and up at the fluffy white clouds. Soon, he told himself, he would be out of here. He would be out of here, with just one more test, one more “little formality,” awaiting him. But the main thing was, he would be out of here. Because now he had a handle on the slippery featureless problem.