He got set ... and lifted. A thousand miles nearer the refuge! Got set ... and lifted, balanced over plunging gulfs. His reach found a round pilaster at the top, a perfect grip for a hand. He drew himself up, and this time his cleated foot cut through snow to stone, and slipped, but his hold was too good. And there he was.
No salutes, no cheers, only one more victory for life.
Even in victory, unlife gave you no respite. The doorstep was three feet wide, hollowed by eighty years of traffic, and filled with frozen drippings from its pseudo-Norman arch. He had to tilt across it and catch the brass knob—like snatching a ring in a high dive.
No danger now, except sitting down in a growing puddle till someone came along to hoist him under the armpits, and then arriving at the general's late, with his seat black-wet.... You unhorse your foeman, curvet up to the royal box to receive the victor's chaplet, swing from your saddle, and fall flat on your face.
But, he cogitated on the bench inside, getting his other cleat off and the tip back on his stick, things do even out. No hearty helper had intervened, no snot-nosed, gaping child had twitched his attention, nobody's secretary—pretty of course—had scurried to helpfully knock him down with the door. They were all out front superintending arrival of the computer.
The general said only, if tartly, "Oh yes, major, come in. You're late, a'n't you?"
"It's still icy," said Ed Scott. "Had to drive carefully, you know."
In fact, he had lost minutes that way, enough to have saved his exact deadline. And that excuse, being in proportion to Filipson's standard dimension, was fair game.