“Uh, sure—”

“He says his kind don’t come from a planet at all, not anymore.”

“What?”

“That’s why he likes doing these things. Taking risks. They live in a place far from the ‘early times,’ he says. So mountains, atmospheres—they’re exotic.”

“Then where—?”

“He told me just before we took off.” Chen blinked and looked terrified, wide-eyed and yet somehow brave.

Then the media folk peppered her with questions, cutting off the conversation.

Rachel shook her head and strode over to Fraq’s Lifter. The translator was doing her number with the shouting knot of media, with Fraq at the center, uttering his gravel sentences. The media folk were rapt, listening to his descriptions, reactions, tidbits of alien philosophy.

So Rachel turned to the tech team. “What was that noise?”

The big, bald engineer grinned and turned so the media people would not hear. “He ran out of fuel. Maxed it. It was burnin’ fumes when he came down.”

Rachel had guessed as much, from the coughing plume, but—“Why would he do that?”

The big man shrugged. “Lives life to the limit. Like an eagle, he is.” A lofty, eager smile. “Can’t blame him. He’s a long way from home, for sure.”

6.

She had talked over the entire scenario with Chen—that altitude sickness, weather, or wind could end the whole attempt. And now the wind was picking up. It looked like sullen clouds were moving in from the south and it might snow yet again.

They talked. Ate some fruit bars for energy, slipping them in beneath their oxy feeds. The extra boost felt good. Rachel stated her case, but it made no difference. They were going for it. Fraq had psyched out the lot of them, so that this odd stunt now became the entire purpose, the focus no matter what. Everest or nothing. The media loved it, of course.

The two Lifters took off with a hammering surge, fully fueled so they could get to the summit and back down to this halfway point. The tech and media teams got it all, applauding as the roaring Lifters shot up fast, into air thinner than most of them had ever experienced.

Rachel watched them roar and soar away in the stark bleached light of noon. Chen had not gotten over her rigid stance on the first leg. She stood in the Lifter like a mannequin in a store window, lifting into enameled light, a pioneer without purpose.

Rachel watched them closely on binocs and so saw it all. The following helicopter clawed its way far behind them. The superior technology Fraq had suggested, added to the Lifter now, was definitely better.

The Lifters gained another kilometer in the hard, clear light, then banked over to fly along the ridgeline, toward the summit. The peak seemed impossibly high from here. Clouds swept from it, billows of snow stripping from the slopes in long, filmy white streamers like flags.

They nearly made it.

Rachel watched as the two white dots ascended. They skated along the ridge, keeping out of the prevailing wind so they did not get buffeted. Fraq was ahead, as usual, accelerating with big plumes of exhaust from the Lifter, like banners unfurling. The Lifters roared loudly in the thin, cold air. But they had to rise above a convoluted summit ridge that looked razor-sharp in this light.