In its own way, this engine, though smaller, was more spectacular than the supporting frame on the cliff. The black ropelike material came through the hole and wound around a drum. This drum, on an arm-thick shaft, was held to the back of the vertical rock face by four sturdy legs. It could obviously take an immense strain as there was nothing to uproot: all of the pressure would be carried directly to the rock face, seating the legs even more firmly. A meter-wide gear wheel, fitted to the end of the drum, meshed with a smaller pinion gear that could be turned by a long crank handle. This was appareiitly made of wood, but Jason did not pay much attention to the fact. A number of pawls and ratchets made sure that nothing could slip.

It could not take a mechanical genius to understand what the device was for. Jason turned to Temuchin, forcefully controlling the tendency for one eyebrow to lift, and said: “Is this the mechanism by which we are supposed. to descend to the lowlands?”

The warlord seemed about as impressed by the machine as Jason was himself.

“It is. It does not appear to be the sort of thing one would usually risk one’s life with, but we have no choice. The tribe which built and operated it, a branch of the stoat clan, have sworn that they used it often to raid the lowlands. They told many tales, and had wood and gunpowder to prove it. The survivors are here and they will operate the thing. They will be killed if there is any trouble. We will go first.”

“That won’t help us very much if something goes wrong.”

“Man is born to die. Life consjsts only of a daily putting off of the inevitable.”

Jason had no answer to this one. He looked up as, with pained cries, a group of men and squat women were driven down the hill toward the winch.

“Stand back and let them do their work,” Temuchin ordered, and the soldiers instantly withdrew. “Watch them closely and if there is treachery or mistakes, kill them at once.”

Thus encouraged, the stoat clansmen turned to their jobs. They appeared to know what they were doing. Some turned the handle while others adjusted the clanking pawis. One man even pulled himself out on the frame, far over the cliff’s edge, to grease the pulley wheel on its end.

“I will go first,” Temuchin said, slinging a heavy leather harness around his body under his arms, “I hope that rope thing is long enough,” Jason said, and instantly regretted it when Temuchin turned to glare at him.

“You will come next, after you have sent down my morope. See that it is blindfolded so it does not panic. Then you, then another Inorope, in that order. The inoropes will be brought to the cliff only one at a time so they do not see what is happening to the others.” He turned to the officers. “You have heard my orders.”

Chanting in unison, the stoats turned the handle to wind the rope onto the drum, the pawls slowly clanking over. The pressure came on the harness but the rope stretched and thinned before Temuchin was lifted from the ground. Then his toes swung clear and he grabbed the rope as he swung out over the abyss, oscillating slowly up and down. When the bobbing had damped the operators reversed the motion and he slowly dropped from sight. Jason went to the lip and saw the warlord’s figure get smaller and finally vanish into the woolly clouds below. A piece of rock broke loose under the pressure of Jason’s toe and he stepped backward quickly.

Every hundred meters, more or less, the men slowed and worked cautiously as a blob appeared where two sections of the elastic rope were joined together. They turned the handle carefully until the knot had cleared the pulley, then went back to their normal operating speed. Men changed positions on the cranks without stopping so that the rope moved out and down continuously.

“What is this rope?” Jason asked one of the stoats who seemed to be supervising the operation, a greasy-haired individual whose only tooth appeared to be a yellowed fang that projected above his upper lip.

“Plant things, growing things-long with leaves. What you call them inentri—”

“Vines?” Jason guessed.

“Yah, vines. Big, hard to find. Crow down the cliff. Stretch and very strong.”

“They had better be,” Jason said, then pointed and grabbed the man as the vine rope suddenly began to bounce up and down. He wriggled in Jason’s numbing grip and hurried to explain.

“All right, good. That means the’ man is down, let the vine go; it bounces up and down. Bring up!” he added, shouting at the crank operators.

Jason loosened his grip on the man, who moved quickly away rubbing the injured spot. It made sense; when Temuchin had let go of the rope, the sudden decrease in weight on the cable would have caused it to oscillate, though not too much. His weight was surely only a small part of the overall weight of that massive length of cable.

“The inorope next,” Jason ordered when the hook and sling were finally hauled up to the cifftop once more. The beast was led forward, blinking its red little eyes suspiciously at the brink ahead. The stoats efficiently fitted a broad harness about its body, then covered its eyes with a leather sack pulled down tight and tied under its jaw. After the hook had been attached, the morope stood patiently until it began to feel its weight coming off the ground. Then, panic-stricken, it began to struggle, its claws raking grooves in the dirt and cracking chips from the stone. But the operators had experience with this as well. The man whom Jason had been talking to ran up with a long-handled sledgehammer and, with a practiced swing, hit a mark en the bag, which must have been right above the creature’s eyes. It went instantly limp. With much shouting and heaving, the dead weight was swung clear of the ground and started over the edge.

“Hit just right,” the man said. “Too hard, kill it, Not hard enough, it wake up soon and jump around, break rope.”

“Well hit,” Jason said, and hoped that Temuchin was not standing directly below.

Nothing appeared to be wrong and the rope vine clanked out endlessly. Jason found himself dozing off and stepped farther back from the edge. Suddenly there were shouts and he opened his eyes to see the rope jerking back and forth, heaving with great bounces. It even jumped from the pulley and one of the men had to climb up to reseat it.

“Did it break?” Jason asked the nearest operator.

“No, good, all fine. Just bounce big when the morope come off.”

This was understandable. When the greater weight of the large beast was removed the elastic vine would do a great deal of heaving about. The motion had damped and they were bringing it up now. Jason realized that he was next and was aware of a definite dropping sensation in his stomach. He would have given a great deal not to suffer a descent on this iron-age elevator.

The beginning alone was bad enough. He realized that his feet were dragging free of the rock as the tension came on the vine and he automatically scratched with his toes, trying to stay on the solid mountaintop. He did not succeed. The wheel turned another clank and he was airborne, swinging out from the cliff and above the cloud-bottomed drop. He took one look down between his twirling feet, then riveted his attention straight ahead. The clifftop slowly rose above his head and the grim-faced nomads vanished from sight. He tried to think of something funny to say but, for once, was completely out of humorous ideas. Rotating slowly as he dropped, he could, for the first time, see the continent-spanning cliff sweeping away on both sides and could appreciate the incredible vastness of it. The air was clear and dry with the early-morning sun lighting up the rock face so that every detail could be plainly seen.

Below was the white sea of the clouds, washing and breaking against the base of the continentwide cliff. The jagged gray mountains that could be seen rising behind it were dwarfed by comparison. Against the immensity of this cliff, Jason felt like a spider on a thread, drifting down an endless wall, moving yet seemingly suspended forever at the same spot because the scale was so large. As he rotated, he looked first right, then left, and in each direction the grained escarpment ran straight to the horizon, still erect and sky-touching where it dimmed and vanished.