“There’s the other one,” Eckert shouted, pointing straight to Coburn’s rock. “He’s hiding over there!”
An abrupt silence descended on the aliens and they stared myopically in Coburn’s direction as he sank downwards, cursing Eckert and saying anguished mental goodbyes to Erica. Eckert used the distraction to bold for freedom. With animal swiftness he scrambled to his feet and darted away. Two aliens grabbed for him but he avoided them by easily surmounting a boulder and leaping down on to the flat ground on the other side. There was a sharp splintering sound as he went right through the surface. Coburn glimpsed a jagged black hole from which drifted a despairing scream, fading and Döpplering away into a low moan. It sounded as though Eckert was falling a long way down.
“I knew there were thin patches around here,” one of the gorillas commented. “Mildo’s been skimping on materials again.”
“Never mind that,” a hairless alien said waspishly. “We’d better check out those rocks.” The group fanned out, exactly as they had done once before, and began converging on Coburn. He lurched to his feet and ran, instinctively heading back towards the greenish glow of the portal.
“Get him! Kill him!” an alien shouted. Coburn swore nastily as he recognized the nasal honk of the smallest gorilla, the one he had already classified as a troublemaker. He had always been a pretty good runner, but now—boosted by fear of being caught or of falling through the surface—he skimmed across the snowscape, unable to feel any pressure between his feet and the ground. As the aliens fell behind the green glow brightened ahead and resolved itself into the familiar glowing portal. The dead gorilla was still lying close to one of the black posts.
During the early part of his flight Coburn had had a dreamy conviction he could run clear round the planet at the same speed, but now—one kilometre further on—he was rapidly losing steam, and the aliens were in full cry not far behind. He staggered up to the portal, put one foot through the rectangular sheet of light and quickly withdrew it. The Himalayan winter had seized on his flesh like a ravenous animal.
Breathing noisily, mouth filling with the salt froth of exhaustion, he slumped to the ground. His choices were sharply limited—to a fairly quick death in the cold snows of the real Everest, or a possible very quick death at the hands of the aliens on the fake Everest. Coburn chose the latter, mainly because it absolved him from the trouble of standing up again. The shouts of his pursuers grew louder.
This is it, Erica, he thought. And I did love you.
He looked around with dispirited eyes, striving for a philosophical calm, but derived little comfort from the unlovely form of the dead gorilla. The long hairs of the coat were stirring listlessly in the breeze, revealing a glint of brassy fittings close to the skin. Ornaments? Coburn crawled over to the inert body, pushed the hairs aside and discovered a zip fastener running from the creature’s chin to groin.
Glancing up, eyes full of surmise, he saw the vanguard of the hunting party scrambling over rocks in the middle distance. The greenish aliens were in the lead. There was perhaps a minute left to him. He unzipped the gorilla, pushed back its animal facemask, and found one of the bald-headed greenish aliens dead inside. The hairy outer covering had been both a disguise and a protective suit for the illicit excursions to Earth.
Coburn was jabbering with excitement and panic while he hauled the alien out of its cocoon. The cries of his pursuers became more urgent as they saw what he was doing. They were almost on him now. He struggled into the floppy skin, drew the gorilla-helmet down over his head and, without waiting to do the zip, jumped through the portal just as a clawing greenish hand raked down his back.
The Himalayan wind, accompanied by an incredible stab of cold, entered through the open front of the gorilla suit. Coburn closed it up, hampered by the clumsiness of his gloved hands, and moved away from the portal which from this side manifested itself merely as two black posts. The wind was fierce and he found it almost impossible to keep his balance on the uneven surface, but it was imperative that he put distance between himself and the portal. Those aliens who had been wearing their suits were slower in catching up on him than their unhampered companions had been, but they would come spilling out after him very soon.
Coburn stumbled away into the blinding snowclouds. Within ten minutes he began to feel reasonably safe from capture; an hour later he was absolutely certain he would never see the green-skinned aliens again. The only trouble was he had begun to suspect he would never see anybody again. This was Everest, the awesome king of the Himalayas, howling in elemental triumph all around, and Coburn had neither the experience nor the equipment to get clear.
He kept going, doggedly, heading downwards as best he could and hoping the heater elements in his suit were of heavy duty standard. Gradually, though, his strength began to fail. He began taking more falls and requiring longer to get up. Eventually it was not worth the effort to go on. Coburn sat down on a low rock and waited for the snow to cover him, to blot out all trace of his futile existence. He reconciled himself to facing his eternal rest.
About thirty seconds of eternal rest had passed when a coarsely woven net enveloped his body and pulled him to the ground.
Coburn gave a startled gasp and tried to break free, but the tough cords bound themselves tighter around his arms and legs. The aliens had found him after all, he realized, and this time they were taking no chances. Improvising swear words in Galingua he fought to stand upright, to die like a man, but even this modest ambition was thwarted when something hit him a crushing blow at the base of the skull. As the light faded from his eyes he noticed his captors were wearing ordinary human-style snowsuits …
There followed a confused period in which he was partly unconscious but at times aware of being dragged through the snow in the net. When he recovered sufficiently to voice a protest he discovered the mouth of his gorilla-mask had jammed shut, making intelligent speech impossible. Coburn gave up, lay back and concentrated on avoiding the jagged rocks which seemed to bestrew the path. A few minutes later the group stopped walking, and one of them opened his faceplate.
“We got one,” he called in English to someone outside Coburn’s field of view. We captured a Yeti!”
“How marvellous!” replied a woman.
Coburn’s indignation at being classified and treated as an animal faded abruptly as the voice reached his ears. He sat up and began struggling feverishly with his zip.
The woman knelt in front of him. “A Yeti,” she breathed. “My own Yeti!”
Coburn got the zip undone and pushed back his gorilla-helmet. “Erica,” he said. “My own Erica!”
“Christ Jesus,” she said strickenly. Then her face broke into a radiant smile which even the cold could not dim. “Oh, you foolish, wonderful man! And I really believed you had run away to space and forgotten about me.”
“Never,” he replied, reaching for her.
“No time for that now.” She helped pull him to his feet. “We’ve got to get you indoors before you freeze. And no doubt you’ll have some fantastic story to explain how you came to be following my expedition in an animal suit.”
Coburn put his arm around her waist. “I’ll try to think of one.”