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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77254 ***
+
+
+
+
+                                 EVEREST
+
+                                   by
+
+                              Isaac Asimov
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  =Perhaps you’ve read how Everest has now been climbed? But have you
+  heard of Planetary Survey? Here’s the real truth about it. Everest
+  has been climbed twice.=
+
+
+In 1952 they were about ready to give up trying to climb Mt. Everest.
+It was the photographs that kept them going.
+
+As photographs go, they weren’t much; fuzzy, streaked and with just
+dark blobs against the white to be interested in. But those dark blobs
+were living creatures. The men swore to it.
+
+I said, “What the hell, they’ve been talking about creatures skidding
+along the Everest glaciers for forty years. It’s about time we did
+something about it.”
+
+Jimmy Robbons (pardon me, James Abram Robbons) was the one who pushed
+me into that position. He was always nuts on mountain climbing, you
+see. He was the one who knew all about how the Tibetans wouldn’t go
+near Everest because it was the mountain of the gods, he could quote
+me every mysterious manlike footprint ever reported in the ice 25,000
+feet up, he knew by heart every tall story about the spindly white
+creatures, speeding along the crags just over the last heart-breaking
+camp which the climbers had managed to establish.
+
+It’s good to have one enthusiastic creature of the sort at Planetary
+Survey headquarters.
+
+The last photographs put bite into his words, though. After all, you
+_might_ just barely think they were men.
+
+Jimmy said, “Look, boss, the point isn’t that they’re there, the point
+is that they move fast. Look at that figure. It’s blurred.”
+
+“The camera might have moved.”
+
+“The crag here is sharp enough. And the men swear it was running.
+Imagine the metabolism it must have to run at that oxygen pressure.
+Look, boss, would you have believed in deep-sea fish if you’d never
+heard of them? You have fish which are looking for new niches in
+environment which they can exploit, so they go deeper and deeper into
+the abyss until one day they find they can’t return. They’ve adapted so
+thoroughly they can live only under tons of pressure.”
+
+“Well-”
+
+“Damn it, can’t you reverse the picture? Creatures can be forced up a
+mountain can’t they? They can learn to stick it out in thinner air and
+colder temperatures. They can live on moss or on occasional birds, just
+as the deep-sea fish in the last analysis live on the upper fauna that
+slowly go filtering down. Then, someday, they find they can’t go down
+again. I don’t even say they’re men. They can be chamois or mountain
+goats or badgers or anything.”
+
+I said stubbornly, “The witnesses said they were vaguely manlike, and
+the reported footprints are certainly manlike.”
+
+“Or bearlike,” said Jimmy. “You can’t tell.”
+
+So that’s when I said, “It’s about time we did something about it.”
+
+Jimmy shrugged and said, “They’ve been trying to climb Mt. Everest for
+forty years.” And he shook his head.
+
+“For gossake,” I said. “All you mountain climbers are nuts. That’s
+for sure. You’re not interested in getting to the top. You’re just
+interested in getting to the top in a certain way. It’s about time
+we stopped fooling around with picks, ropes, camps and all the
+paraphernalia of the Gentlemen’s Club that sends suckers up the slopes
+every five years or so.”
+
+“What are you getting at?”
+
+“They invented the airplane in 1903, you know?”
+
+“You mean fly over Mt. Everest!” He said it the way an English lord
+would say “Shoot a fox!” or an angler would say, “Use worms!”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “fly over Mt. Everest and let someone down on the top.
+Why not?”
+
+“He won’t live long. The fellow you let down, I mean.”
+
+“Why not?” I asked again. “You drop supplies and oxygen tanks, and the
+fellow wears a spacesuit. Naturally.”
+
+It took time to get the Air Force to listen and to agree to send a
+plane and by that time Jimmy Robbons had swivelled his mind to the
+point where he volunteered to be the one to land on Everest’s peak.
+“After all,” he said in half a whisper, “I’d be the first man ever to
+stand there.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That’s the beginning of the story. The story itself can be told very
+simply, and in far fewer words.
+
+The plane waited two weeks during the best part of the year (as far as
+Everest was concerned, that is) for a siege of only moderately nasty
+flying weather, then took off.
+
+They made it. The pilot reported by radio to a listening group exactly
+what the top of Mt. Everest looked like when seen from above and then
+he described exactly how Jimmy Robbons looked as his parachute got
+smaller and smaller.
+
+Then another blizzard broke and the plane barely made it back to base
+and it was another two weeks before the weather was bearable again.
+
+And all that time Jimmy was on the roof of the world by himself and I
+hated myself for a murderer.
+
+The plane went back up two weeks later to see if they could spot his
+body. I don’t know what good it would have done if they had, but that’s
+the human race for you. How many dead in the last war? Who can count
+that high? But money or anything else is no object to the saving of one
+life, or even the recovering of one body.
+
+They didn’t find his body, but they did find a smoke signal; curling up
+in the thin air and whipping away in the gusts. They let down a grapple
+and Jimmy came up, still in his spacesuit, looking like hell, but
+definitely alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The p.s. to the story involves my visit to the hospital last week to
+see him. He was recovering very slowly. The doctors said shock, they
+said exhaustion, but Jimmy’s eyes said a lot more.
+
+I said. “How about it, Jimmy, you haven’t talked to the reporters, you
+haven’t talked to the government. All right. How about talking to me?”
+
+“I’ve got nothing to say,” he whispered.
+
+“Sure you have,” I said. “You lived on top of Mt. Everest during a
+two-week blizzard. You didn’t do that by yourself, not with all the
+supplies we dumped along with you. Who helped you, Jimmie boy?”
+
+I guess he knew there was no use trying to bluff. Or maybe he was
+anxious to get it off his mind. He said, “They’re intelligent, boss.
+They compressed air for me. They set up a little power pack to keep
+me warm. They set up the smoke signal when they spotted the airplane
+coming back.”
+
+“I see.” I didn’t want to rush him. “It’s like we thought. They’re
+adapted to Everest life. They can’t come down the slopes.”
+
+“No, they can’t. And we can’t go up the slopes. Even if the weather
+didn’t stop us, they would!”
+
+“They sound like kindly creatures, so why should they object? They
+helped _you_.”
+
+“They have nothing against us. They spoke to me, you know. Telepathy.”
+
+I frowned. “Well, then.”
+
+“But they don’t intend to be interfered with. They’re watching us,
+boss. They’ve got to. We’ve got atomic power. We’re about to have
+rocket ships. They’re worried about us. And Everest is the only place
+they can watch us from!”
+
+I frowned deeper. He was sweating and his hands were shaking.
+
+I said, “Easy, boy. Take it easy. What on Earth are these creatures?”
+
+And he said, “What do you suppose would be so adapted to thin air and
+subzero cold that Everest would be the only livable place on Earth to
+them? That’s the whole point. They’re nothing at all on Earth. They’re
+Martians.”
+
+And that’s it.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note:
+
+
+This etext was produced from Universe Science Fiction, December 1953.
+
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+on this publication was renewed.
+
+Obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected in this
+version.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77254 ***
diff --git a/77254-h/77254-h.htm b/77254-h/77254-h.htm
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      Everest | Project Gutenberg
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+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    color: black;
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+    margin-bottom:5em;
+    font-family:sans-serif, serif;
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77254 ***</div>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowe25_2500" id="cover600">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/cover600.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<h1>
+EVEREST</h1>
+
+<p class="p5 center">by</p>
+
+<p class="p10 center">Isaac Asimov</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowe46_8750" id="everest">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/everest.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+<br>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><b>Perhaps you’ve read how Everest has now been climbed? But have you
+heard of Planetary Survey? Here’s the real truth about it. Everest has
+been climbed twice.</b></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In 1952 they were about ready to give up trying to climb Mt. Everest.
+It was the photographs that kept them going.</p>
+
+<p>As photographs go, they weren’t much; fuzzy, streaked and with just
+dark blobs against the white to be interested in. But those dark blobs
+were living creatures. The men swore to it.</p>
+
+<p>I said, “What the hell, they’ve been talking about creatures skidding
+along the Everest glaciers for forty years. It’s about time we did
+something about it.”</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy Robbons (pardon me, James Abram Robbons) was the one who pushed
+me into that position. He was always nuts on mountain climbing, you
+see. He was the one who knew all about how the Tibetans wouldn’t go
+near Everest because it was the mountain of the gods, he could quote
+me every mysterious manlike footprint ever reported in the ice 25,000
+feet up, he knew by heart every tall story about the spindly white
+creatures, speeding along the crags just over the last heart-breaking
+camp which the climbers had managed to establish.</p>
+
+<p>It’s good to have one enthusiastic creature of the sort at Planetary
+Survey headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>The last photographs put bite into his words, though. After all, you
+<i>might</i> just barely think they were men.</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy said, “Look, boss, the point isn’t that they’re there, the point
+is that they move fast. Look at that figure. It’s blurred.”</p>
+
+<p>“The camera might have moved.”</p>
+
+<p>“The crag here is sharp enough. And the men swear it was running.
+Imagine the metabolism it must have to run at that oxygen pressure.
+Look, boss, would you have believed in deep-sea fish if you’d never
+heard of them? You have fish which are looking for new niches in
+environment which they can exploit, so they go deeper and deeper into
+the abyss until one day they find they can’t return. They’ve adapted so
+thoroughly they can live only under tons of pressure.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well-”</p>
+
+<p>“Damn it, can’t you reverse the picture? Creatures can be forced up a
+mountain can’t they? They can learn to stick it out in thinner air and
+colder temperatures. They can live on moss or on occasional birds, just
+as the deep-sea fish in the last analysis live on the upper fauna that
+slowly go filtering down. Then, someday, they find they can’t go down
+again. I don’t even say they’re men. They can be chamois or mountain
+goats or badgers or anything.”</p>
+
+<p>I said stubbornly, “The witnesses said they were vaguely manlike, and
+the reported footprints are certainly manlike.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or bearlike,” said Jimmy. “You can’t tell.”</p>
+
+<p>So that’s when I said, “It’s about time we did something about it.”</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy shrugged and said, “They’ve been trying to climb Mt. Everest for
+forty years.” And he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>“For gossake,” I said. “All you mountain climbers are nuts. That’s
+for sure. You’re not interested in getting to the top. You’re just
+interested in getting to the top in a certain way. It’s about time
+we stopped fooling around with picks, ropes, camps and all the
+paraphernalia of the Gentlemen’s Club that sends suckers up the slopes
+every five years or so.”</p>
+
+<p>“What are you getting at?”</p>
+
+<p>“They invented the airplane in 1903, you know?”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean fly over Mt. Everest!” He said it the way an English lord
+would say “Shoot a fox!” or an angler would say, “Use worms!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” I said, “fly over Mt. Everest and let someone down on the top.
+Why not?”</p>
+
+<p>“He won’t live long. The fellow you let down, I mean.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?” I asked again. “You drop supplies and oxygen tanks, and the
+fellow wears a spacesuit. Naturally.”</p>
+
+<p>It took time to get the Air Force to listen and to agree to send a
+plane and by that time Jimmy Robbons had swivelled his mind to the
+point where he volunteered to be the one to land on Everest’s peak.
+“After all,” he said in half a whisper, “I’d be the first man ever to
+stand there.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That’s the beginning of the story. The story itself can be told very
+simply, and in far fewer words.</p>
+
+<p>The plane waited two weeks during the best part of the year (as far as
+Everest was concerned, that is) for a siege of only moderately nasty
+flying weather, then took off.</p>
+
+<p>They made it. The pilot reported by radio to a listening group exactly
+what the top of Mt. Everest looked like when seen from above and then
+he described exactly how Jimmy Robbons looked as his parachute got
+smaller and smaller.</p>
+
+<p>Then another blizzard broke and the plane barely made it back to base
+and it was another two weeks before the weather was bearable again.</p>
+
+<p>And all that time Jimmy was on the roof of the world by himself and I
+hated myself for a murderer.</p>
+
+<p>The plane went back up two weeks later to see if they could spot his
+body. I don’t know what good it would have done if they had, but that’s
+the human race for you. How many dead in the last war? Who can count
+that high? But money or anything else is no object to the saving of one
+life, or even the recovering of one body.</p>
+
+<p>They didn’t find his body, but they did find a smoke signal; curling up
+in the thin air and whipping away in the gusts. They let down a grapple
+and Jimmy came up, still in his spacesuit, looking like hell, but
+definitely alive.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The p.s. to the story involves my visit to the hospital last week to
+see him. He was recovering very slowly. The doctors said shock, they
+said exhaustion, but Jimmy’s eyes said a lot more.</p>
+
+<p>I said. “How about it, Jimmy, you haven’t talked to the reporters, you
+haven’t talked to the government. All right. How about talking to me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve got nothing to say,” he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“Sure you have,” I said. “You lived on top of Mt. Everest during a
+two-week blizzard. You didn’t do that by yourself, not with all the
+supplies we dumped along with you. Who helped you, Jimmie boy?”</p>
+
+<p>I guess he knew there was no use trying to bluff. Or maybe he was
+anxious to get it off his mind. He said, “They’re intelligent, boss.
+They compressed air for me. They set up a little power pack to keep
+me warm. They set up the smoke signal when they spotted the airplane
+coming back.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see.” I didn’t want to rush him. “It’s like we thought. They’re
+adapted to Everest life. They can’t come down the slopes.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, they can’t. And we can’t go up the slopes. Even if the weather
+didn’t stop us, they would!”</p>
+
+<p>“They sound like kindly creatures, so why should they object? They
+helped <i>you</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“They have nothing against us. They spoke to me, you know. Telepathy.”</p>
+
+<p>I frowned. “Well, then.”</p>
+
+<p>“But they don’t intend to be interfered with. They’re watching us,
+boss. They’ve got to. We’ve got atomic power. We’re about to have
+rocket ships. They’re worried about us. And Everest is the only place
+they can watch us from!”</p>
+
+<p>I frowned deeper. He was sweating and his hands were shaking.</p>
+
+<p>I said, “Easy, boy. Take it easy. What on Earth are these creatures?”</p>
+
+<p>And he said, “What do you suppose would be so adapted to thin air and
+subzero cold that Everest would be the only livable place on Earth to
+them? That’s the whole point. They’re nothing at all on Earth. They’re
+Martians.”</p>
+
+<p>And that’s it.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"><div class="transnote"><h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Note">Transcriber’s Note:</h2>
+<p>This etext was produced from Universe Science Fiction, December 1953.</p>
+
+<p>Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+on this publication was renewed.</p>
+
+<p>Obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected in this
+version.</p>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77254 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77254
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77254)