IV
We planned. We mapped and charted and studied the photos. We plotted our ascent and we started a training program. While Doc and Stan had kept themselves in good shape, neither had been climbing since Kasla. Kelly was in top condition. Henry was on his way to fat. Mallardi and Vince, as always, seemed capable of fantastic feats of endurance and virtuosity, had even climbed a couple times during the past year, but had recently been living pretty high on the tall hog, so to speak, and they wanted to get some practice. So we picked a comfortable, decent-sized mountain and gave it ten days to beat everyone back into shape. After that, we stuck to vitamins, calisthenics and square diets while we completed our preparations. During this time, Doc came up with seven shiny, alloy boxes, about six by four inches and thin as a first book of poems, for us to carry on our persons to broadcast a defense against the energy creatures which he refused to admit existed. One fine, bitter-brisk morning we were ready. The newsmen liked me again. Much footage was taken of our gallant assemblage as we packed ourselves into the fliers, to be delivered at the foot of the lady mountain, there to contend for what was doubtless the final time as the team we had been for so many years, against the waiting gray and the lavender beneath the sunwhite flame. We approached the mountain, and I wondered how much she weighed.
You know the way, for the first nine miles. So I’ll skip over that. It took us six days and part of a seventh. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Some fog there was, and nasty winds, but once below, forgotten. Stan and Mallardi and I stood where the bird had occurred, waiting for Doc and the others. “So far, it’s been a picnic,” said Mallardi. “Yeah,” Stan acknowledged. “No birds either.” “No,” I agreed. “Do you think Doc was right–about it being an hallucination?” Mallardi asked. “I remember seeing things on Kasla….” “As I recall,” said Stan, “it was nymphs and an ocean of beer. Why would anyone want to see hot birds?” “Damfino.” “Laugh, you hyenas,” I said. “But just wait till a flock flies over.” Doc came up and looked around. “This is the place?” I nodded. He tested the background radiation and half a dozen other things, found nothing untoward, grunted and looked upwards. We all did. Then we went there. It was very rough for three days, and we only made another five thousand feet during that time. When we bedded down, we were bushed, and sleep came quickly. So did Nemesis. He was there again, only not quite so near this time. He burned about twenty feet away, standing in the middle of the air, and the point of his blade indicated me. “_Go away_,” he said, three times, without inflection. “Go to hell,” I tried to say. He made as if he wished to draw nearer. He failed. “Go away yourself,” I said. “_Climb back down. Depart. You may go no further._” “But I am going further. All the way to the top.” “_No. You may not._” “Stick around and watch,” I said. “_Go back._” “If you want to stand there and direct traffic, that’s your business,” I told him. “I’m going back to sleep.” I crawled over and shook Doc’s shoulder, but when I looked back my flaming visitor had departed. “What is it?” “Too late,” I said. “He’s been here and gone.” Doc sat up. “The bird?” “No, the thing with the sword.” “Where was he?” “Standing out there,” I gestured. Doc hauled out his instruments and did many things with them for ten minutes or so. “Nothing,” he finally said. “Maybe you were dreaming.” “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Sleep tight,” and I hit the sack again, and this time I made it through to daylight without further fire or ado.
It took us four days to reach sixty thousand feet. Rocks fell like occasional cannonballs past us, and the sky was like a big pool, cool, where pale flowers floated. When we struck sixty-three thousand, the going got much better, and we made it up to seventy-five thousand in two and a half more days. No fiery things stopped by to tell me to turn back. Then came the unforeseeable, however, and we had enough in the way of natural troubles to keep us cursing. We hit a big, level shelf. It was perhaps four hundred feet wide. As we advanced across it, we realized that it did not strike the mountainside. It dropped off into an enormous gutter of a canyon. We would have to go down again, perhaps seven hundred feet, before we could proceed upward once more. Worse yet, it led to a featureless face which strove for and achieved perpendicularity for a deadly high distance: like miles. The top was still nowhere in sight. “Where do we go now?” asked Kelly, moving to my side. “Down,” I decided, “and we split up. We’ll follow the big ditch in both directions and see which way gives the better route up. We’ll meet back at the midway point.” We descended. Then Doc and Kelly and I went left, and the others took the opposite way. After an hour and a half, our trail came to an end. we stood looking at nothing over the edge of something. Nowhere, during the entire time, had we come upon a decent way up. I stretched out, my head and shoulders over the edge, Kelly holding onto my ankles, and I looked as far as I could to the right and up. There was nothing in sight that was worth a facing movement. “Hope the others had better luck,” I said, after they’d dragged me back. “And if they haven’t…?” asked Kelly. “Let’s wait.” They had. It was risky, though. There was no good way straight up out of the gap. The trail had ended at a forty-foot wall which, when mounted, gave a clear view all the way down. Leaning out as I had done and looking about two hundred feet to the left and eighty feet higher, however, Mallardi had rested his eyes on a rough way, but a way, nevertheless, leading up and west and vanishing. We camped in the gap that night. In the morning, I anchored my line to a rock, Doc tending, and went out with the pneumatic pistol. I fell twice, and made forty feet of trail by lunchtime. I rubbed my bruises then, and Henry took over. After ten feet, Kelly got out to anchor a couple of body-lengths behind him, and we tended Kelly. Then Stan blasted and Mallardi anchored. Then there had to be three on the face. Then four. By sundown, we’d made a hundred-fifty feet and were covered with white powder. A bath would have been nice. We settled for ultrasonic shakedowns.