e detriment of his equilibrium and confidence. Was it vertigo, or
did the ladder or the Tower itself sway in the singing wind? Who was
to say that the earth itself did not heave like fermenting mash? Was
any object inherently more solid than any other object? What was
"stability"?

When he looked down at the city he could not pick out the building in
which he had worked. There was nothing in any feature of the
landscape. Nothing. If his position, clinging to a girder high above
the city, made no sense, it did not make less sense than the position
of a man, or a Dewforth, sitting in a blind cell among thousands of
other blind cells down there, drawing tiny lines. Nothing bound him to
the drafting room nor even to the Dewforth of the drafting room--not
so much as a spider web or a shaft of light. The light pointed to
itself. The wind got under his shirt and chilled his navel, a
poignant reminder of disconnectedness.

An eagle glided close and screamed at him. It was like the laughter of
his wife. He resumed his climb, looking down no more.

The last few yards of the climb were the worst. Some bolts holding the
ladder in place were shapeless little masses of rust. The eleventh
rung from the top broke under his weight, and for the last ten steps
he had to lighten his body by means of a technique of autosuggestion
and will-projection which he invented on the spot, demonstrating what
could be done under pressure of extreme necessity. He could see above
his head a tiny balcony not more than a yard square, at which the
ladder terminated. The floor of this balcony appeared to be made of
long, weatherbeaten cigars which reason told him were badly corroded
iron bars. Reason also told him that there would be a door there.

He could not see a door through the skeleton floor of the balcony, but
the idea that there would not be a door there was, under the
circumstances, insupportable. There would be a door, he told himself
as he made his way upwards by means of levitation and the most
tentative of steps. It would probably have an inhospitable sign on
it--NO TRESPASSING, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, DANGER or perhaps HIGH
VOLTAGE. It might prove to be locked. If so, he would pound on it
until some one opened it, he decided.

There was even an outside possibility that no one would be inside. He
had never considered that possibility before that time. He decided
that it was not time to consider it now.

When Dewforth heaved himself u