bled to the top and caught the ropes that were flung up
to him.

From his vantage point he saw what he had not seen before--the amazing
size of the construction project. This was no piffling little Gizeh
pyramid, no simple tomb for a king. Its base was measured in kilometers
instead of yards, and its top was going to be proportionally high,
apparently. It hardly seemed that there could be enough stone in the
whole world to finish the job. As far as Hanson could see, over the
level sand, the ground was black with the suffering millions of slaves
in their labor gangs.

The idiots must be trying to reach the sky with their pyramid. There
could be no other answer to the immense bulk planned for this structure.
Like the pride-maddened men of Babel, they were building a sky-high
thing of stone. It was obviously impossible, and even Menes must be
aware of that. Yet perhaps it was no more impossible than all the rest
of the things in this impossible world.

When the warlocks of this world had discovered that they could not solve
the problem of the sky, they must have gone into a state of pure
hysteria, like a chicken dashing back and forth in front of a car. They
had sought through other worlds and ages for anyone with a reputation as
a builder, engineer or construction genius, without screening the
probability of finding an answer. The size of the ancient pyramid must
have been enough to sway them. They had used Hanson, Menes, Einstein,
Cagliostro--for some reason of their own, since he'd never been a
builder--and probably a thousand more. And then they had half-supplied
all of them, rather than picking the most likely few and giving full
cooperation. Magic must have made solutions to most things so easy that
they no longer had the guts to try the impossible themselves. A pyramid
seemed like a ridiculous solution, but for an incredible task, an
impossible solution had to be tried.

And maybe, he thought, they'd overlooked the obvious in their own
system. The solution to a problem in magic should logically be found in
magic, not in the methods of other worlds. His mind groped for something
that almost came into his consciousness--some inkling of what should
have been done, or how they had failed. It was probably only an idle
fancy, but--

"Hey!" One of the slaves below was waving at him. While Hanson looked
down, the slave called to another, got a shoulder to lean on, and walked
his way up the side of the block, pushed fr