The Climb Page 9
Roller-coaster ride!
With a deep sense of purpose, he sat Nestor upright on the slope, and maneuvered himself behind, wrapping his arms around the journalist’s waist as if the two of them were seated in tandem on a toboggan. In fact, that image was exactly Dominic’s plan. It was, in climbing lingo, a glissade — a controlled slide.
Well, this won’t be very controlled, but it’s Nestor’s only chance.
Control was a pretty big concern here because the Col was only 150 yards wide. Veering too far to the left would mean a four-thousand-foot drop over the Lhotse Face. A mistake to the right would send them screaming down the Kangshung.
With trembling hands, Dominic drew his brother’s vial of Dead Sea sand out of his windsuit collar. “If you’re really magic,” he whispered, “now’s the time.” And with that, he drew back his ax and cut the rope.
He dug the tool into the ice, dragging it behind them in an attempt to control their speed. It worked for the first thirty feet or so, but then gravity took over, and the mountain ripped it violently from his hand. With monstrous acceleration, they rocketed down the steep slope. He felt the wind rip the helmet lamp from his head and toss it contemptuously over the Kangshung Face. Clamping his arms around Nestor, he hung on as the ripples of ice passed beneath them at horrifying velocity.
He fought down an impulse to dig in his crampons to slow the slide. At this pace, the move would only catapult him straight up and send him tumbling to his death. Hang in there, he urged himself. He couldn’t begin to imagine their speed — eighty miles an hour? Ninety? The altimeter on his watch was flying like the tenths-of-a-second timer on an NBA clock.
The roaring in his ears drowned out the howling of the wind, and his vision began to darken at the corners. “Stay awake!” he screamed at himself, as if the act of yelling might somehow keep him from losing consciousness. But he was fading, his eyes actually closing, when the rocks of the South Col seized his momentum and used it to bounce him around like a Ping-Pong ball.
* * *
The instant Sammi saw the two helmet lamps speeding down the wall, she knew.
“Hey!” cried Perry in alarm. “The rope went slack!”
Ethan stared at the ghostly circles of light flying down the mountain. “They fell!”
“That’s not it!” exclaimed Sammi as the lamps accelerated in perfect lockstep. “They’re sliding!”
“That shrimp,” said Tilt, shaking his head. “He’s crazier than you are!”
They watched, transfixed, as one of the lamps suddenly somersaulted away from the other, careening wildly before it disappeared down the Kangshung Face.
“What was — ?” Perry let his voice trail off into the gut-tightening silence. Even the labored sounds of the oxygen gear shut down as the team held its collective breath, paralyzed with dread. At that moment, the answer to Perry’s unfinished question seemed pretty clear. They had just seen one of their friends — Nestor or Dominic — plunge to a terrible end.
Tilt heaved himself over the precipice and began front-pointing furiously down the ice. “I’m going down there.”
“Me first!” Sammi was hot on his heels.
“What about Ethan?” asked Perry.
But the revitalized Ethan was already on his way down. Perry had no choice but to follow.
Pain.
That was Dominic’s next reality. His aching body throbbed all over. His mother’s words came to mind, repeated often to her climbing men: “You’ll break every bone in your body!”
Well, Mom, you were right. I finally did it.
No. That wasn’t so. While he hurt just about everywhere, he didn’t seem to be badly hurt anywhere. Just one big bruise from head to toe.
Nothing broken, everything still attached. He sprang up.
The powerful beam from a helmet lamp almost knocked him over again. He squinted below the light until he could make out the gawking face of Cap Cicero, plainly amazed to see him alive at all, let alone upright.
In the space of a split second, the team leader’s face went from surprise to joy to blind rage. “You little maniac! You know how many climbers would have tried that slide? One! The craziest one! And I’m looking right at him — ”
“Where’s Nestor?” Dominic interrupted urgently.
“Andrea’s got him. This Way Up has a rescue team on its way to the Col.”
Dominic watched as the doctor directed Babu and Sneezy to carry the unconscious journalist to the tent.
“He’s got ten crampon punctures in his back,” he advised her. “He’s probably hypoxic, too. And you’d better check for frostbite.”
She stared at him and then blinked. “Dominic — the old monk at Thyangboche — the vision — ”
“Huh?” he asked. After the night’s rescue, their visit to the monastery seemed as if it had happened in another life.
“You’ve got — ” The doctor was practically stammering. “You’ve got shiny coils all around you!”
Dominic looked down to find the remains of Nestor’s Slinky hanging off his wind-suit — silver metal spirals that glistened in the artificial light. The strange lama’s prediction — they had called it a hallucination. And yet it had come true.
Cicero had no time for reminiscences. “What about the others?”
Dominic pointed south, where four dim circles of light inched down the invisible wall like night sprites descending from the sky. “Ethan Zaph is the fourth.”
The team leader frowned. “How nervous should I be?”
“The ice is too thin, and they’ve got no ropes, and — ” Dominic thought it over. Sure, it was a nasty climb. But compared to all they’d been through that endless night, it was a walk in the park. “They’ll make it,” he said confidently.
If only he felt the same way about Nestor.
* * *
Nestor’s ordeal was far from over. At Camp Four, Dr. Oberman stitched up the wounds on his back and gave him a heavy dose of antibiotics to ward off infection. He did not regain consciousness.
The team of This Way Up Sherpas arrived at three A.M. They rested briefly and set out at first light, carrying Nestor in a Gamow bag folded inside a two-person tent. Pasang and Ethan descended with them to assist in the rescue.
Late in the day, the This Way Up climbers arrived at ABC to learn that a rare and risky helicopter evacuation had been set up for the lower Cwm, just beyond Camp One at the top of the Icefall. Cicero and the team were on the Lhotse Face when it happened. They held their breath as they watched, knowing well that the chopper was flying at the very upper edge of its range. At 19,500 feet, the air was too thin to provide the rotor blades with much lift.
The young alpinists watched in agony as the helicopter had to abort its first two approaches. Then, on the third try, the pilot managed to hover three feet off the glacier — low enough for the injured journalist to be loaded aboard.
Sixty seconds later, the chopper was a tiny dot in the sky. Nestor was on his way to a hospital in Kathmandu.
Only then did SummitQuest start descending — and breathing — again.
* * *
The mood at Base Camp was somber for the next two days, and it wasn’t just because of the tense vigil by the satellite phone waiting for news of Nestor.
The weather had deteriorated badly. On the summit ridge, a howling blizzard was dumping four feet of snow on already treacherous ground. The weather satellites predicted that it would go on for at least a week.
Babu and some of the other Sherpas thought this might be the onset of the summer monsoon. If they were right, climbing season was over.
“Stick a fork in us,” Sammi predicted gloomily. “We’re done.”
The thought that their summit chances might be finished had sent Tilt’s mood into a tailspin. Since returning from the Icefall, he had left his sleeping bag only to eat his meals in stony silence. He had not spoken except to scream at Perry for being “too happy.”
“I’m happy I’m not dead!” Perry shot ba
ck through the flurries that fell over Base Camp. “And I’m happy I might not get another chance to be dead!”
“You’ll be dead if you don’t shut up,” Tilt promised. “And it won’t take any mountain to do it.”
Could SummitQuest really be over? Dominic checked with Cicero several times each day.
“Fifty-fifty, kid,” was the reply. Then later, as the forecast worsened. “Seventy-thirty.”
Dominic stubbornly refused to accept that the expedition was in jeopardy. He picked out a new ice ax to replace the one he had lost during his glissade to the Col. He was walking in circles in the snow, getting used to the new weight in his hand, when Pasang ran up, howling like a madman. The excited Sherpa grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the This Way Up mess tent, where a grinning Ethan Zaph handed him the satellite phone.
“The National Daily was right! Everest is no place for a thirteen-year-old! And now an innocent Slinky is dead!”
“Nestor!” Dominic cried delightedly. “You’re okay!”
“Well, sort of,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “You know, considering I’m flat on my face with tubes coming out of places I didn’t even know I had.”
“But you’re alive,” Dominic insisted.
“Thanks to you, Dominic. That’s what I’m calling about. I just want you to know that I’ll never forget how you risked your life to save me.”
“That’s what climbers do.”
“That’s what you do,” Nestor corrected. “There isn’t anyone like you. Not on this planet. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be on that ridge, and we Puerto-Rican Pakistanis don’t freeze well. You take care, kid. You’re going to be famous someday.”
“Safe home, Nestor. We’ll miss you.” Dominic passed the phone to another ecstatic teammate, and Ethan pulled him aside. “It wasn’t me who tipped off the Nepalese about you. You’ve got to believe me on that.”
Dominic nodded slowly. “But you still think I don’t belong.”
The famous young alpinist shook his head vehemently. “You guys saved our lives! There’s something special about you, kid. You more than belong! When the gods made Everest, they probably had you in mind.” He put a hand on Dominic’s shoulder. “I was wrong and I’m sorry. I’ll climb with you any day.”
Dominic was melancholy. “I don’t think any of us are going to be climbing any time soon.”
He stepped out of the tent. A light dusting of powder covered the moraine, belying the violent weather higher up.
We were at 27,700 feet on Lhotse! he thought to himself. Just a quarter mile lower than the Everest summit! We can do this! The top of the world is within reach! All we need is a chance!
The snow continued, settling on Base Camp and on Dominic’s dreams.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GORDON KORMAN started writing novels when he was about the same age as the characters in this book, with his first novel, This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall!, published when he was fourteen. Since then, his novels have sold millions of copies around the world. Most recently, he is the author of Swindle, Zoobreak, and Framed, the trilogies Island, Everest, Dive, and Kidnapped, and the series On the Run. His other novels include No More Dead Dogs and Son of the Mob. He lives in New York with his family, and can be found on the web at www.gordonkorman.com.
LOOK FOR MORE ADVENTURE FROM
GORDON KORMAN
TITANIC
BOOK ONE: UNSINKABLE
BOOK TWO: COLLISION COURSE
BOOK THREE: S.O.S.
KIDNAPPED
BOOK ONE: THE ABDUCTION
BOOK TWO: THE SEARCH
BOOK THREE: THE RESCUE
ON THE RUN
BOOK ONE: CHASING THE FALCONERS
BOOK TWO: THE FUGITIVE FACTOR
BOOK THREE: NOW YOU SEE THEM, NOW YOU DON’T
BOOK FOUR: THE STOWAWAY SOLUTION
BOOK FIVE: PUBLIC ENEMIES
BOOK SIX: HUNTING THE HUNTER
DIVE
BOOK ONE: THE DISCOVERY
BOOK TWO: THE DEEP
BOOK THREE: THE DANGER
EVEREST
BOOK ONE: THE CONTEST
BOOK TWO: THE CLIMB
BOOK THREE: THE SUMMIT
ISLAND
BOOK ONE: SHIPWRECK
BOOK TWO: SURVIVAL
BOOK THREE: ESCAPE
Copyright © 2002 by Gordon Korman.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
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This edition first printing, March 2012
Cover photos by Earl Robicheaux
Cover design by Steve Scott
e-ISBN 978-0-545-66637-4
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