Of course, though the public knew nothing concrete, beyond the usual gee-whiz speculations, there was… the wormhole. She couldn’t get her mind around that possibility, how just knowledge of it would affect this Earther culture. Not yet.

Now Fraq was forcing the invention of another extreme sport. Thing about aliens is…

Everest was already nearly impossible to get permission to climb. All the accumulated debris and wear from centuries of people trekking up it had damaged it through centuries now. Huge helicopters even flew all the way to the summit, hovering while tourists jumped out for their few minutes and photos to paste on their refrigerators back home. That had peaked back in the Age of Appetite, around the turn of the millennium.

That age was still here, in weird frozen monuments. She had seen or knew of the honored dead bodies at points on the climb.

These gruesome trail markers even had names: Crucified Guy, Green Boots, Sleeping Beauty. Those frozen failed climbers came to be legacy points. Oh, sure, when you get to Green Boots make a hard left up the slope to Sleeping Beauty.

She shook herself. It was hard to fathom the fantastically oblivious past.

Now here came a new invasion. Fast-flight to the top.

Did all this say something about humanity? And why did it take an alien to invent the idea?

And here came the bird alien. Zooming up, wiggling a bit as it came, the Lifter gave off a confident roar in the sharp, clear air. Fraq hovered over the landing spot and looked around, his helmet a sleek bulge giving his glittery eyes a wide view. Then he descended from a hundred meters above them. At the last moment the Lifter coughed, barked—and settled in.

The tech team looked alarmed. They rushed over to his Lifter, leaving one guy behind to assist and talk down Chen. She came up sedately, hovering not far from the steep glacier below. Rachel could see Chen through the bubble, sitting rigidly, and her head jerking around. Stiff. Scared.

The tech guy waved her in. She hovered, bobbed up a bit from overcompensating, and then settled down. Three media people scrambled over, their lenses leading.

Rachel walked over to Chen across a rough gray moraine patch. Her boots crunched in the snow cover. It had come down that morning and already had a hard skin. Chen climbed down from her perch in the Lifter and stumbled as she met solid ground. Her padded suit and oxy feed looked odd around the full-face helmet. But her large eyes danced, and Rachel wondered about that.

“How’d it go?” Rachel asked.

Chen ignored her and gave the media team a smile like scissors. “Great!” she shouted in a phony, boisterous tone. She even gave the lenses a thumbs-up.

“Just one more to the summit,” Rachel said, and felt foolish. “Holding steady?”

“It’s, it’s spectacular.” The smile broadened as she turned straight in toward the cameras.

Then Chen swiveled and shot a quick phrase to Rachel. “I’m scared, but I’m going through with it.”