A plasma with a valley density profile at the required electron density for high-gain operation of an x-ray laser could be obtained using a normally incident $300\mathrm{ps}$ laser pulse followed by a grazing-incident $300\mathrm{ps}$ laser pulse. Sudden heating of the valley plasma region by another grazing-incident $300\mathrm{fs}$ laser pulse would then yield a highly efficient x-ray laser beam with a deflecting angle of $2\mathrm{mrad}$ and a divergence angle of $4\mathrm{mrad}$ . Saturation operation of the x-ray laser beam at $32.6\mathrm{nm}$ could be achieved with a total pump energy of less than $100\mathrm{mJ}$ .