I looked down at it and I was sick! I wondered, where did it lead?Stars?

There were no words. I stared and I stared, and I cursed the factthat the thing existed and that someone had found it while I was stillaround.

"Well?" said Lanning, and he banked the flier so that I could lookupward.

I shook my head and shaded my already shielded eyes.

"Make it go away," I finally told him.

"Can't. It's bigger than I am."

"It's bigger than anybody," I said.

"I can make _us_ go away..."

"Never mind. I want to take some pictures."

He brought it around, and I started to shoot.

"Can you hover--or get any closer?"

"No, the winds are too strong."

"That figures."

So I shot--through telescopic lenses and scan attachment and all--aswe circled it.

"I'd give a lot to see the top."

"We're at thirty thousand feet, and fifty's the ceiling on thisbaby. The Lady, unfortunately, stands taller than the atmosphere."

"Funny," I said, "from here she doesn't strike me as the sort tobreath ether and spend all her time looking at stars."

He chuckled and lit a cigarette, and I reached us another bulb ofcoffee.

"How _does_ the Gray Sister strike you?"

And I lit one of my own and inhaled, as the flier was buffeted bysudden gusts of something from somewhere and then ignored, and I said,"Like Our Lady of the Abattoir--right between the eyes."

We drank some coffee, and then he asked, "She too big, Whitey?"and I gnashed my teeth through caffeine, for only my friends call meWhitey, my name being Jack Summers and my hair having always been thisway, and at the moment I wasn't too certain of whether Henry Lanningqualified for that status--just because he'd known me for twentyyears--after going out of his way to find this thing on a world with athin atmosphere, a lot of rocks, a too-bright sky and a name like LSDpronounced backwards, after George Diesel, who had set foot in thedust and then gone away--smart fellow!

"A forty-mile-high mountain," I finally said, "is not a mountain.It is a world all by itself, which some dumb deity forgot to throwinto orbit."

"I take it you're not interested?"

I looked back at the gray and lavender slopes and followed themupward once more again, until all color drained away, until thesilhouette was black and jagged and the top still nowhere in sight,until my eyes stung and burned behind their protective glasses; and Isaw clouds bumping up against that invincible outline, like icebergsin the sky, and I heard the howling of the retreating winds which hadessayed to measure its grandeur with swiftness and, of course, hadfailed.

"Oh, I'm interested," I said, "in an academic sort of way. Let'sgo back to town, where I can eat and drink and maybe break a leg ifI'm lucky."

He headed the flier south, and I didn't look around as we went. Icould sense her presence at my back, though, all the way: The GraySister, the highest mountain in the known universe. Unclimbed, ofcourse.

She remained at my back during the days that followed, casting hershadow over everything I looked upon. For the next two days I studiedthe pictures I had taken and I dug up some maps and I studied them,too; and I spoke with people who told me stories of the Gray Sister,strange stories....

During this time, I came across nothing really encouraging. Ilearned that there had been an attempt to colonize Diesel a couplecenturies previously, back before faster-than-light ships weredeveloped. A brand-new disease had colonized the first colonists,however, wiping them out to a man. The new colony was four years old,had better doctors, had beaten the plague, was on Diesel to stay andseemed proud of its poor taste when it came to worlds. Nobody, Ilearned, fooled around much with the Gray Sister. There had been afew abortive attempts to climb her, and some young legends thatfollowed after.

During the day, the sky never shut up. It kept screaming into myeyes, until I took to wearing my climbing goggles whenever I went out.Mainly, though, I sat in the hotel lounge and ate and drank andstudied the pictures and cross-examined anyone who happened to pass byand glance at them, spread out there on the table.

I continued to ignore all Henry's questions. I knew what hewanted, and he could damn well wait. Unfortunately, he did, andrather well, too, which irritated me. He felt I was almost hooked bythe Sister, and he wanted to Be There When It Happened. He'd made afortune on the Kasla story, and I could already see the openingsentences of this one in the smug lines around his eyes. Whenever hetried to make like a poker player, leaning on his fist and slowlyturning a photo, I could see whole paragraphs. If I followed thedirection of his gaze, I could probably even have seen the dustjacket.

At the end of the week, a ship came down out of the sky, and somenasty people got off and interrupted my train of thought. When theycame into the lounge, I recognized them for what they were and removedmy black lenses so that I could nail Henry with my basilisk gaze andturn him into stone. As it would happen, he had too much alcohol inhim, and it didn't work.

"You tipped off the press," I said.

"Now, now," he said, growing smaller and stiffening as my gazegroped its way through the murk of his central nervous system andfinally touched upon the edges of that tiny tumor, his forebrain."You're well known, and...."

I replaced my glasses and hunched over my drink, looking far gone,as one of the three approached and said, "Pardon me, but are you JackSummers?"

To explain the silence which followed, Henry said, "Yes, this isMad Jack, the man who climbed Everest at twenty-three and every otherpile of rocks worth mentioning since that time. At thirty-one, hebecame the only man to conquer the highest mountain in the knownuniverse--Mount Kasla on Litan--elevation, 89,941 feet. My book--"

"Yes," said the reporter. "My name is Cary, and I'm with GP. Myfriends represent two of the other syndicates. We've heard that youare going to climb the Gray Sister."

"You've heard incorrectly," I said.

"Oh?"

The other two came up and stood beside them.

"We thought that--" one of them began.

"--you were already organizing a climbing party," said the other.

"Then you're not going to climb the Sister?" asked Cary, while oneof the two looked over my pictures and the other got ready to takesome of his own.

"Stop that!" I said, raising a hand at the photographer. "Brightlights hurt my eyes!"

"Sorry. I'll use the infra," he said, and he started fooling withhis camera.

Cary repeated the question.

"All I said was that you've heard incorrectly," I told him. "Ididn't say I was and I didn't say I wasn't. I haven't made up mymind."

"If you decide to try it, have you any idea when it will be?"

"Sorry, I can't answer that."

Henry took the three of them over to the bar and startedexplaining something, with gestures. I heard the words "...out ofretirement after four years," and when/if they looked to the boothagain, I was gone.

I had retired, to the street which was full of dusk, and I walkedalong it thinking. I trod her shadow even then, Linda. And the GraySister beckoned and forbade with her single unmoving gesture. Iwatched her, so far away, yet still so large, a piece of midnight ateight o'clock. The hours that lay between died like the distance ather feet, and I knew that she would follow me wherever I went, eveninto sleep. Especially into sleep.

So I know, at that moment. The days that followed were a game Ienjoyed playing. Fake indecision is delicious when people want you todo something. I looked at her then, my last and my largest, my veryown Koshtra Pivrarcha, and I felt that I was born to stand upon hersummit. Then I could retire, probably remarry, cultivate my mind, notworry about getting out of shape, and do all the square things Ididn't do before, the lack of which had cost me a wife and a home,back when I had gone to Kasla, elevation 89,941 feet, four and a halfyears ago, in the days of my glory. I regarded my Gray Sister acrossthe eight o'clock world, and she was dark and noble and still andwaiting, as she had always been.