in position near the forestock. He pulled it back
the length of the crossbar and it brought the string with it, stretching
it taut. There was a click as the trigger mechanism locked the bowstring
in place and at the same time a concealed spring arrangement shoved an
arrow into place against the string.

He took quick aim at a distant tree and pressed the trigger. There was a
twang as the arrow was ejected. He jerked the sliding pistol grip
forward and back to reload, pressing the trigger an instant later.
Another arrow went its way.

By the time he had fired the tenth arrow in the magazine he was shooting
at the rate of one arrow per second. On the trunk of the distant tree,
like a bristle of stiff whiskers, the ten arrows were driven deep into
the wood in an area no larger than the chest of a prowler or head of a
unicorn.

"This is better than I hoped for," he said to George. "One man with one
of these would equal six men with ordinary bows."

"I'm going to add another feature," George said. "Bundles of arrows, ten
to the bundle in special holders, to carry in the quivers. To reload the
magazine you'd just slap down a new bundle of arrows, in no more time
than it would take to put one arrow in an ordinary bow. I figured that
with practice a man should be able to get off forty arrows in not much
more than twenty seconds."

George took the bow and went back in the cave to add his new feature.
Humbolt stared after him, thinking, _If he can make something like that
out of wood and unicorn gut, what would he be able to give us if he
could have metal?_

Perhaps George would never have the opportunity to show what he could do
with metal. But Humbolt already felt sure that George's genius would, if
it ever became necessary, make possible the alternate plan for leaving
Ragnarok.

* * * * *

The weeks dragged into months and at last enough snow was gone from the
Craigs that Humbolt and Dan Barber could start. They met no opposition.
The prowlers had long since disappeared into the north and the unicorns
were very scarce. They had no occasion to test the effectiveness of the
new automatic crossbows in combat; a lack of opportunity that irked
Barber.

"Any other time, if we had ordinary bows," he complained, "the unicorns
would be popping up to charge us from all directions."

"Don't fret," Humbolt consoled him. "This fall, when we come back, they
will be."

They reached the mountain