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.
"Actually, the surface is so irregular that we might be able to climb just using our hands. But we won't!"
By then Alice had climbed the rope up to the projection on which Burton stood. Burton kissed her and went on up after Nur.
Ten hours later, the entire group sat on top of the cliff. After they'd recovered, they walked on looking for a place to shelter them from the wind. They found none until they had traversed at least three miles. Here they came, as Joe said they would, to the base of another cliff. To their left The River, some miles away now, roared as it hurtled over the lip of the falls.
Joe played the beam of his lamp along the rock. ‘
"Damme! If I did go up along the right side of The River, then ve're thcrewed. The tunnel ith on that thide, and ve can't get across The River!"
"If the Ethicals found X's rope and removed it, then they must have found the tunnel," Burton said.
They were too tired to search for the fissure which would be the gate to the tunnel. They walked along until they came to an overhang. Joe used some of his few remaining sticks to make a small fire, and they ate supper. The fire went out quickly. They piled heavy cloths on the rock floor and more over them and slept while The River thundered.
In the morning, while they were eating dried fish, pemmican, and bread, Nur said, "As Dick's pointed out, X wouldn't know which side his recruits would come up. So he must have left two ropes. Therefore, he must have made two tunnels. We should find one on this side."
Burton opened his mouth to say that that tunnel, if it existed, would also have been plugged. Nur held up his hand to forestall him.
"Yes, I know. But if the plug is thin, we can locate it, and we have the tools to dig through it."
One search party hadn't gone more than twenty feet from the camp when it found the plug. It was a few feet inside a fissure broad enough for even Joe to enter.
Great heat had been applied to melt the round plug into the surrounding quartz.
"Hot dog!" Joe said. "Thimmety tham! Maybe ve got a chanthe after all!"
"Perhaps," de Marbot said. "But what if the entire tunnel is plugged up?"
"Then we try the corner. If X was smart enough, he1 would've figured out that the tunnels might be found. So he would have arranged for a climbable angle here just as he did at the other place."
Burton scanned the face of the cliff while his lamp poked a bright hole through the fog. Ten feet from the base, the rock was wrinkled and fissured. But it abruptly became as smooth as a mirror from there to as far as he could see.
Joe swung his hammer against the plug. Burton, his ear close to the rock, said, "It's hollow!"
"Jutht great," Joe said. He removed several tungsten-steel alloy chisels from his backpack and began hammering. When he'd cut out enough of the quartz to make six holes, he and Burton inserted plastic explosive into them. Burton would have liked to daub clay over the plastic, but there wasn't any.
He stuck the ends of wires into the plastic and retreated along the face of the cliff, rolling out the wires. When the group was far enough away, he pressed one wire of his small battery against another. The explosions deafened them, and pieces of quartz flew out.
"Veil," Joe said, "at least my burden'll be lighter now. I von't have to carry thothe canth of plathtik and the battery anymore. That'th the end of them."
They went back into the fissure. Burton shot his light across it. The holes made by Joe had been enlarged. Several of them were big enough for him to see the tunnel beyond it.
He said, "We've got about twelve hours more work, Joe."
"Oh, thyit! Veil, here goeth nothing."
Shortly after breakfast, the titanthrop hacked out the last piece of rock, and the plug fell out.
"Now cometh the hard part," Joe said, wiping the sweat off his face and his grotesquely long nose.
The tunnel was just large enough for Joe to crawl up it, but his shoulders would rub against the sides and his head against the ceiling unless he lowered it. It went at an approximately 45-degree angle upward.
"Wrap clothth around your kneeth and handth," Joe said. "Othervithe, you're going to rub them bloody. You'll probably do tho anyvay."
Frigate, Alice, Behn, and Croomes returned just then with canteens refilled at The River. Joe half-emptied his.
"Now," he said, "ve thyould vait avhile until everybody'th taken a good healthy thyit. Vhen I vath vith thothe Egyptianths, ve neglected that precauthyon. Halfvay up, I couldn't thtand it no longer, tho I emptied my bowelth."
He laughed thunderously.
"You thyould have heard thothe nothelethth little fellowth cuthth! They carried on thomething terrible. They vath hopping mad with no room to hop! Haw, haw!"
He wiped the tears from his eyes. "Jethuth! Did they thmell bad vhen they finally crawled out! Then they got even madder when they had to vath themthelveth off in The River. That vater'th ath cold ath a velldigger'th athth, ath Tham uthed to thay."
More tears flowed as he thought about Clemens. He snuffled, and he wiped off his proboscis on his sleeve.