THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

“Joe says that it’s about a thousand feet up to the plateau. That’s his estimate based on his memory of its height, and at that time Joe didn’t know the English system of measurement. It might be less than he remembers. Let’s hope so.”

“If you get too tired, come back down,” Joe said. “I don’t vant you to fall.”

“Then stand back so I won’t strike you,” Nur said, smiling. “It would hurt my conscience if I hit you and both of us died. Though I think that you wouldn’t be injured any more than if an eagle defecated on you.”

“It vould hurt me a lot,” Joe said. “Eagleth and their crap vere taboo to my people.”

“Think of me as a sparrow.”

Nur went to the angle and braced himself, his back against one wall and his feet against the other. He slowly worked his way up the angle, holding his feet against one wall, the left foot extended a few inches more than the right. When his footing was secure, he slid his back upward as far as he could before losing his bracing. Then he would slide one foot up until his knee was almost to his chin. Keeping the one foot against the wall, he would slowly work the other up. Then he would slide his back up, and repeat the same maneuvers.

It wasn’t long before he disappeared into the fog. Those below could tell his progress by the rate at which the slim rope was pulled up. It was very slow.

Alice said, “He’ll have to have tremendous endurance to get to the top. And if he doesn’t find a place to tie his rope to so he can haul up another, he might as well come back down.”

“Let’s hope the cliff isn’t that high,” Aphra Behn said.

“Or that the corner doesn’t widen out,” Ah Qaaq said.

When Burton’s wristwatch indicated that Nur had been up for twenty-eight minutes, they heard him shout.

“Good luck! There’s a ledge here! Large enough for two people to stand on, if you don’t count Joe! And there’s a projection I can tie the rope to!”

Burton looked at the titanthrop.

“Evidently the cliff isn’t glass smooth.”

“Yeah. Veil, I mutht have gone up on the right thide of The River, Dick. That’th thmooth all the way up. At leatht, the part I vent up on vath ath thlick ath a cat’th athth.”

The Ethicals hadn’t bothered to make the cliff unscalable all the way. They’d made the lower part smooth but had left the upper part, invisible in the fog, in its original state.

Had X been responsible for that decision?

Had he also arranged it so that the corner here, and perhaps the corner across The River, was angled so that a small light person could use his back and legs to get up the angles?

It was very probable.

If he had done so, then he’d planned on arranging this angle before it had been formed. This was no natural formation. The Ethicals had designed and built these mountains with whatever vast machines they had used.

Nur called down for them to fasten a heavier rope to the end of the light one. They did so, and presently he called down that the second rope was secured.

Burton hauled himself up on it, bracing his feet against the cliff, his body extended almost at right angles to it. He was panting and his arms hurt by the time he reached the ledge. Nur, surprisingly strong for such a skinny little man, helped him get up onto the ledge.

Then they hauled up the backpacks.

Nur looked up through the fog.

“The face is rough,” he said. “It looks like I could climb up on the projections if I used the pitons.”

He removed a hammer and some pitons from the pack. The latter were steel wedges which he would drive into the surface of the rock wall. Some of them contained holes through which a rope could be passed.

Nur disappeared into the mists. Burton heard his hammer now and then. After a while, the Moor called down for Burton to come on up. Nur was on another ledge.