How had it come to this, flirting with death as if it were something I did every day? I would never have predicted that it would end like this, though. I guess I came by it honestly, looking back on those who had gone before me.
My great-grandfather was an Earther who had spent his entire life climbing mountains all over his home planet. I never met him, but he was a feisty old bugger who climbed until he was 94 years of age, when he and a couple of his nonagenarian friends disappeared in the Transantarctic Mountains in a bad storm. Everybody knew him as the Desert Mountaineer, and I wish I had known him. Maybe the mountain-climber gene can skip a generation, because his son, my grandfather, never had any interest in the world of mountains. But my father, Steve, had the climbing bug big-time, and I’m guessing I followed in his footsteps. He and two of his friends did the first ascent of Olympus Mons, which was believed to be the tallest mountain in the solar system at the time. That Martian climb was considered to be just about the most amazing first ascent ever done, way back in the year 2041. The old man really caught hell for that one, though. They basically went AWOL and did the climb over a several-day period, almost losing a man in the process. The Astronaut Corps busted him down a couple of ranks for that stunt.
That brings us to me. If I say so myself, I’ve done pretty well so far in mountaineering circles. Never having done any climbing on Earth (it never really interested me, since every peak on the planet had been climbed by 2036), I had always set my sights elsewhere. Having been born on Moonbase Gamma had given me an interesting perspective. I had done a ton of climbing there, and after my astronaut training on Earth, I was shipped off to the Martian colony for more experience. There, I had climbed all the big volcanoes, including a difficult new route on Elysium Mons. But I was looking for more. I had pulled a few strings and had arranged a transfer to Iapetus, where I spent two years at the scientific research station. Under the guise of science, a few of us had managed to climb a couple of 20,000-foot peaks. We even managed a month-long trip to the deep-space transfer station on Titan, where we spent some time exploring an unmapped canyon system nearly 30,000 feet deep.
As the years passed and human space exploration pushed ever deeper into the outermost reaches of the solar system, the flood of money from private industry made a lot of things possible. It was all about profit. Sources of rare elements had been located on outer worlds, elements which were essential to science, medicine and space exploration itself. The price of promethium had been over 80,000 Terran dollars per gram for the last 5 years. Huge for-profit companies back on Earth were able to bankroll even the most daring space exploration projects in order to secure deposits of these elements, with almost callous disregard of the cost of doing so. Propulsion systems were now so advanced that you could make the trip from Earth all the way to the Kuiper Belt in just over 2 months. The suits needed to survive on airless, frigid worlds were amazing. They were lightweight, strong and comfortable, and so hi-tech and self-contained that you could survive in one for up to 20 days, or so said the specs – not that anyone had ever tried to do that yet.
So, here we were, the first humans to set foot on Charon. First discovered way back in 1978, the place had been mapped in great detail years ago by early space probes, and two interesting details had emerged: there was an abundance of some of the rarest elements sought by man, and there was the mountain. Charon, at 750 miles in diameter, had been formed as a result of a collision between a large Kuiper-belt object and Pluto over four billion years ago. Ejected material from Pluto’s mantle had coalesced into what had became the largest of its moons, but, due to still-unexplained processes, a huge mountain stood out from the gentler terrain around it. And I do mean huge.
By comparison, Olympus Mons on Mars rises 72,000 vertical feet above the surrounding plains, and the central peak of Rheasilvia crater on the asteroid 4 Vesta, maybe a bit more. But this mountain – there was nothing else like it in our solar system. It rose a full 88,000 feet above its surroundings, and it was quite a bit steeper than Olympus Mons.
We had set down our lander, which was to act as our base of operations while we were here, near the foot of this peak. Large surface mineral deposits were nearby, and we were to have a good look at them. And that we did, but every waking moment was overshadowed by the presence of the mountain, which loomed large over everything we did. We found ourselves staring at it, talking about it, losing sleep over it. Of the three of us on this mission, Singh and I were the climbers; Mendez, not so much. But even he was falling under the spell, asking us about what it was like to be really high up on a big mountain. About a week after we had arrived, I blurted out to the others that I wanted to climb it, that it was making me crazy just seeing it all the time and doing nothing about it. Singh said he was all for it, and that we should start as soon as possible. Mendez, ever the cautious one, brought up a good point – how would be be able to explain away the long absence from our work? When he asked us how much time we thought it would take, we knew that we had him, that there was a better-than-even chance we could talk him into it.
Singh suggested that we should make the climb by Earth standards – after all, what was the point of climbing the highest mountain in the solar system if you did it in a way that gave you a huge advantage over the conditions you would encounter as a climber on the home planet. Specifically, he was suggesting that we adjust our air flow to the same mix found at sea level on Earth, not the oxygen-rich mixture that our suits normally delivered. But the main thing he was saying was that we should adjust the gravity setting on our suits to Earth-normal. This was a fairly easy matter – small, extremely efficient gyroscopes attached to the arms and legs of the suits could provide resistance similar to the force of gravity on Earth. The gravity on Charon was not quite 3% of that found on Earth. That meant that, here, humans could literally leap tall buildings with a single bound. What’s the point of climbing a mountain if you could take 100-foot-long leaps up the thing in the low gravity – you’d be at the top in no time and it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge. If our suits were set to Earth-normal gravity, climbing this thing would be a huge challenge, beyond anything climbers had ever done before.
So, the decision was made. We would start after the next sleep cycle. Work be damned, careers be damned! There’s only one first ascent of anything, and we were gonna do it – there was nothing higher in our entire solar system. We’d be in the history books, that’s for sure. There wasn’t much preparation to be done, just make sure our suits were fully charged. Who knows, maybe we’d be back before we were missed – not!
The time came to start out, and we quickly covered the half-mile to the base of the climb. The outside temperature was a nippy minus 385 degrees Fahrenheit, about average for Charon, but that didn’t much matter – our suits could easily protect us. We figured the average slope for our peak was about fifteen degrees, not very steep but still three times steeper than Olympus Mons. We were all in excellent physical condition and we were really psyched. The climb was on!
The hours passed, and we moved steadily upward. Our suits delivered an ideal mix of nutrients into our digestive systems at all times, so we never really felt hungry or thirsty. Even our wastes were recycled efficiently by these amazing suits. Whenever we got tired, we stopped to rest. The sky was always black, due to the virtual lack of an atmosphere and our distance from the sun. There was enough light to see, barely, from stars (Sol was so far away that it was merely a bright star at this distance), but the lights on our suits provided all the illumination we needed. After being on the move for about fourteen hours, we decided to call it a “day”. We reclined as well as we could on a more level spot for several hours. This first day had gone well – we had climbed over 11,000 feet and felt pretty good about it.
The next day, we encountered several cliff bands – they weren’t too hard, but they did slow us down considerably. Usually, we were just plodding along on easy ground which was sometimes gravelly, sometimes on rock slabs – we could make good time on any of that. But, by the end of the second day, we had only added 7,800 feet to our total, and we felt more tired that we did at the end of the first day. We rested fitfully for several hours, then started out again. If memory serves me well, I think it was on this day that Mendez expressed the first doubts about our chances for success. Up until then, he had been a real trooper, moving well and seeming pleased with our progress. Now, he was beginning to think that he might not have the right attitude for this, that maybe it was more of a commitment than he could make. Singh and I reassured him that he was doing great. Climbers with many years of experience, when climbing a big peak, don’t keep thinking about how far it is to the top – they just get into a zone where they can enjoy the moment and keep on going.
One day merged into the next, and much of it became a blur. On what was probably the ninth day, our luck ran out. We were climbing up through an area of extremely sharp outcropping rock when, somehow, Mendez fell. He was behind me when it happened. I heard a sort of yelp over the communicator and turned around as quickly as I could, and I saw him lying on his back, motionless. Singh got to him first. He had died almost instantly, not from the short distance he had fallen, but because his suit had torn on the jagged rock. The suits were amazingly tough, but even they had their limits. His fall was like cutting the material with a razor-sharp knife. He was no longer protected from the unfathomable cold, and, once the pressure in his suit dropped, his blood boiled instantly in the vacuum of space. We were stunned, yet there was nothing we could do. Carrying his body into a more sheltered area, we noted the coordinates of the spot and took stock of our situation. Our friend was gone and nothing would bring him back. He would have wanted us to continue, we were sure of that, but how did we feel about the climb now? After resting for a while, it felt like we could carry on, physically refreshed but still emotionally drained. The hard effort helped us get past the pain of losing Mendez, and we didn’t stop for another six hours.
On what would have been the eleventh day, Singh complained about feeling light-headed. Nevertheless, he powered on – he was strong like a bull, and I had never seen him give up on anything. But after another three or four hours, he was slowing down, weakening. Both of us checked all the controls and readings on his suit and discovered that he was almost out of power! How could that be? We knew we could descend this mountain faster than we had climbed up it, and felt certain that today would be our summit day. Twenty days of suit time would have given us enough time to summit and then descend safely to our camp, so it should have all worked out okay. He lay down and tried to rest for a bit, but it was obvious he was having trouble breathing. I felt so helpless, there was nothing I could do. The last words he whispered were “Go for it, finish what we started……..” and then he died in my arms.
I sat there with him for a while – he was my closest friend, and now he was gone. I was stunned by the whole thing. At least I could honor him and Mendez by continuing. But should I? There’d be no shame in turning around now. I could adjust the gravity on my suit to be closer to Charon-normal and quickly but carefully descend the entire distance in one very long day. My readings showed that I was less than 2,500 vertical feet from the top. I gave it some more thought – the climber in me won out, and I decided to continue. Climbing slowly, I carried on for a few hours more, fighting back tears. It seemed like I was on autopilot now, just putting one foot in front of the other. Part of me wanted to turn back, I felt so terribly alone. Finally, I stopped and sat down, thinking I’d just take a while to rest one last time. Closing my eyes, I dozed off.
Why was I so groggy? I had a terrible headache and was having a hard time focusing. I checked my readings and found I had slept for six hours, way too long, but something was terribly wrong. Nauseated, I stumbled to my feet. It was then that I realized that I too was almost out of power. My suit, my only means of survival, was failing – I had gambled and lost. There was no way I could make it back to base now. The summit was much closer than I had thought – there was nothing to do now but finish it, no turning back. Our suits recorded everything in great detail. The emergency markers would guide the follow-up team directly to each of us, whether we lay there for a day or a year.
The slope soon became less and was then level. I was there – it was over! Funny, we hadn’t even figured out a name for this thing. My great-grandfather and his climbing buddies used to joke about how much they were prepared to sacrifice to make the summit – would you still go for it if you knew you’d lose some fingers or a few toes to frostbite? Maybe, but your life? No way! Well, no matter now. The race was run, I was there, on the summit of the highest mountain in the solar system. Was it worth it? I thought so – Mendez and Singh would have agreed. Need to lie down for a bit, finding it hard to think, hard to get a breath…….feeling peaceful, happy to be here………….eyes closed, so tired…………………….