Everest

For decades, climbers have reported strange, manlike figures racing across the upper slopes of Everest—along with footprints that vanish into the snow. When blurry photographs finally capture dark, moving shapes near the summit, the evidence is too tantalizing to ignore. At Planetary Survey headquarters, an argument begins: could creatures have adapted to the freezing air and crushing isolation of the world’s highest mountain?

Rather than risk another conventional expedition, the narrator proposes an audacious solution: fly over Everest and drop a suited explorer directly onto the peak. Jimmy Robbons, an enthusiastic mountain climber who has spent years studying the legends, eagerly volunteers for the mission. But after a storm strands him alone on the summit, the rescue effort becomes a tense race against weather, altitude, and the unknown. This compact science-fiction mystery blends wry humor with scientific speculation as it asks what might survive in Earth’s most hostile environment—and what a determined explorer could discover there.