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"Of course I do, but you must catch me first." And she turned once more, and I felt a certain fury within me.
It was written that no one could outclimb Mad Jack. I had written it.
I swung my pick and moved like a lizard.
I was near to her a couple of times, but never near enough.
The day's aches began again in my muscles, but I pulled my way up without slackening my pace. I realized, faintly, that the camp was far below me now, and that I was climbing alone through the dark up a strange slope. But I did not stop. Rather, I hurried, and my breath began to come hard in my lungs. I heard her laughter, and it was a goad. Then I came upon a two-inch ledge, and she was moving along it. I followed, around a big bulge of rock to where it ended. Then she was ninety feet above me, at the top of a smooth pi
"Don't you ever tire, Whitey? I thought you would have collapsed by now."
I hitched up the line and climbed further.
"You can't make it up here, you know."
"I don't know," I grunted.
"Why do you want so badly to climb here? There are other nice mountains."
"This is the biggest, girl. That's why."
"It can't be done."
"Then why all this bother to discourage me? Why not just let the mountain do it?"
As I neared her, she vanished. I made it to the top, where she had been standing, and I collapsed there.
Then I heard her voice again and turned my head. She was on a ledge, perhaps eighty feet away.
"I didn't think you'd make it this far," she said. "You are a fool. Good-by, Whitey." She was gone.
I sat there on the pi
I recalled my favorite curses and I said them all, but I didn't feel any better. I couldn't let myself go to sleep. I looked down. I knew the way was long. I knew she didn't think I could make it.
I began the descent.
The following morning when they shook me, I was still tired. I told them the last night's tale, and they didn't believe me. Not until later in the day, that is, when I detoured us around the bulge and showed them the pi
V
We went steadily upward for the next two days. We made slightly under ten thousand feet. Then we spent a day hammering and hacking our way up a great flat face. Six hundred feet of it. Then our way was to the right and upward. Before long we were ascending the western side of the mountain. When we broke ninety thousand feet, we stopped to congratulate ourselves that we had just surpassed the Kasla climb and to remind ourselves that we had not hit the halfway mark. It took us another two and a half days to do that, and by then the land lay like a map beneath us.
And then, that night, we all saw the creature with the sword.
He came and stood near our camp, and he raised his sword above his head, and it blazed with such a terrible intensity that I slipped on my goggles. His voice was all thunder and lightning this time:
"_Get off this mountain!_" he said. "_Now! Turn back! Go down! Depart!_"
And then a shower of stones came down from above and rattled about us. Doc tossed his slim, shiny, case, causing it to skim along the ground toward the creature.
The light went out, and we were alone.
Doc retrieved his case, took tests, met with the same success as before--_i.e._, none. But now at least he didn't think I was some kind of balmy, unless of course he thought we all were.
"Not a very effective guardian," Henry suggested.
"We've a long way to go yet," said Vince, shying a stone through the space the creature had occupied. "I don't like it if the thing can cause a slide."
"That was just a few pebbles," said Stan.
"Yeah, but what if he decided to start them fifty thousand feet higher?"
"Shut up!" said Kelly. "Don't give him any idea. He might be listening."
For some reason, we drew closer together. Doc made each of us describe what we had seen, and it appeared that we all had seen the same thing.
"All right," I said, after we'd finished. "Now you've all seen it, who wants to go back?"
There was silence.
After perhaps half a dozen heartbeats, Henry said, "I want the whole story. It looks like a good one. I'm willing to take my chances with angry energy creatures to get it."
"I don't know what the thing is," said Kelly. "Maybe it's no energy creature. Maybe it's something--supernatural--I know what you'll say, Doc. I'm just telling you how it struck me. If there are such things, this seems a good place for them. Point is--whatever it is, I don't care. I want this mountain. If it could have stopped us, I think it would've done it already. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it can. Maybe it's laid some trap for us higher up. But I want this mountain. Right now, it means more to me than anything. If I don't go up, I'll spend all my time wondering about it--and then I'll probably come back and try it again some day, when it gets so I can't stand thinking about it any more. Only then, maybe the rest of you won't be available. Let's face it, we're a good climbing team. Maybe the best in the business. Probably. If it can be done, I think we can do it."
"I'll second that," said Stan.
"What you said, Kelly," said Mallardi, "about it being supernatural--it's fu
"In Hebrew or Italian?" asked Doc.
"To satisfy you, I suppose they'd have to be drawn up in the form of equations."
"No," he said. "Kidding aside, I felt something fu
"Yes," I said.
"That makes it almost unanimous then, doesn't it?"
Then we all turned to Vince, because he had no Christian background at all, having been raised as a Buddhist on Ceylon.
"What were your feelings concerning the thing?" Doc asked him.
"It was a Deva," he said, "which is sort of like an angel, I guess. I had the impression that every step I took up this mountain gave me enough bad karma to fill a lifetime. Except I haven't believed in it that way since I was a kid. I want to go ahead, up. Even if that feeling was correct, I want to see the top of this mountain."
"So do I," said Doc.
"That makes it unanimous," I said.
"Well, everyone hang onto his angelsbane," said Stan, "and let's sack out."
"Good idea."
"Only let's spread out a bit," said Doc, "so that anything falling won't get all of us together."