>
>... The query takes considerable time...
>

I recently had the same problem. In my case there were memo fields in a larger table and the query took too long. The memo-Fields where not part of the "order by" or any filter-Options, just cargo. I ended up splitting the query into two queries which speeded up the whole thing a lot.

select TOP 10 ID ;
   from XY ;
    where ...
    order by;
     into cursor JUNK

select A.* from XY A inner join JUNK B;
  on A.ID = B.ID;
   into cursor RESULT