1

October 1975

A crystalline veil of stars stretched like a dewy web from horizon to horizon, each radiant pinpoint a gem set into the black velvet expanse beyond.

T. G. Shass lay on his back, his hands behind his head, peering wide-eyed into the inky depth of the cold Colorado night sky. As the warm glow of the campfire washed over his still form, he wished that the city sky at home could be even half as clear and wondrous as the panorama above him. He imagined himself looking not up but out, as if the ground beneath him were a wall to which he had been pinned and the sparkling display were spread head to toe before him. Meteorites cut momentary scars of brilliant light into the chilled autumn air, dramatically underscoring the eternal stillness of deep space.

T. G. listened to the trees all around him, their branches and leaves sounding a timeless serenade of wind against wood. The cold mountain air was cleansing and pure, causing his breath to fog. He would sleep well tonight.

He rolled onto his left side, adjusting the warm cocoon of his sleeping bag, and saw in the distance a brilliant orb of cold orange rust. The moon rose slowly over the mountain peaks, throwing an ocher sparkle upon the blankets of snow at their summits. He remembered the sights and sounds of the past vacations he and his parents had once taken there in the Snowmass Wilderness.

The beauty of his surroundings faded then. Gentle memory was replaced by the hard bitterness that had become T. G. Shass only two years before. Since that time he had struggled in vain to find an object that could sustain the blows of his blinding anger, but his rage and cruel words had only alienated his friends.

The unwelcome and hated image fell before his mind’s eye as it had so often, a reflection through tears that had first registered three days after his twenty-second birthday. T. G. saw the glint of polished bronze as it was gently and conclusively lowered into the cold, hard November earth, a twofold farewell unwarmed by the bright hues of floral sympathies and the meager words of the peripheral few who had shared T. G.’s life. The emotional disfigurement had slashed deeply into his being, leaving him hollow and alone—little more than a shell of inconsolable, bitter misery.

He slammed his eyes shut as if to cut off the memory. His right hand clenched the thick, zippered edge of his down bag, his palm warming as his grip tightened. Anger burned within him, anger toward a God he could no longer believe existed. His parents had believed so, but they could not have been right—surely a God such as the One in Whom they had had faith would never orphan an only child and leave him so agonizingly alone, with no living family whatsoever.

Never.

He sat up, ran his fingers through his dark hair, and looked at the dusty chrome bumper of the white hatchback parked beyond the tent. He allowed himself a moment to simply sit and watch the firelight dance upon the polished metal of the car’s trim. Such moments of respite had become few, for his guilt-racked mind had determined to torture itself, as if it deserved no better.

With difficulty he forced himself to think of tomorrow, when he and David, who slept inside the tent, would awaken for a day of serious hiking.

David Cernan was his best friend, one of the handful of friends who remained.

There was another, but tonight T. G. feared he had lost her forever. She had been more than just a good friend. He had wanted to marry her. He had loved her.

Her name was Jenni.

He had known her since elementary school, though their relationship had deepened only a few years before. She was the loveliest girl he had ever seen, and he had been stunned beyond words at her acceptance of his awkward, nervous request that she accompany him to their senior-year, high-school homecoming dance. T. G. could still smell her perfumed hair, could still see her wondrous, vibrant smile—

And he could still hear the irrational, cutting words he had hurled at her on another, more recent night, hurting her more than she ever deserved, forcing tears to stream from her dark, sparkling eyes. His pain had driven away all those around him, finally even the woman who might have been his wife.

How could I have been so stupid—?

The brightest remaining light in his life had been all but extinguished, and he knew he had been in the wrong that night, hammering away at her over an insignificance that now shamed him. But pride had prevailed in the moment, and the harsh words would not stop pouring from his bitter lips until she was gone. A part of him deep inside had wanted to cry out to her, to embrace her, to keep her from leaving—but his pain was too strong, too unyielding, too stubborn. In seconds, the damage had been done, and T. G. had since tried to relegate himself to a life lived in the dark.

When his parents died so cruelly and so unfairly, the T. G. that David and Jenni had known died with them.

He stood and stretched, drawing his six-foot frame to its full height. Momentary dizziness made him sway slightly After it passed, he picked up his sleeping bag and walked toward the yellow nylon-and-canvas tent. A little dirt on the campfire and it was extinguished, leaving a frustrated, knotted finger of smoke to rise into the gentle, biting breeze.

The night sky and its cast of characters were familiar to him, thanks to a once-intense but since-neglected interest in astronomy. He paused to look again at the vigilant moon, which rose alongside its bright, reddish guardian that night, the warrior planet Mars. A few weeks from now, once T. G. had returned home to New York and had settled back into his daily routine, it would be a lonely moon, stripped of its ruddy escort, that would shine through his window each night as he lay in bed, alone in his apartment.

Alone.

He easily pinpointed the tiny spot on the lunar terminator where human footprints had first compressed the dusty surface of the dark Sea of Tranquillity. He knew all the Apollo landing sites, just as he knew the faces and names of the men who had so bravely walked there. He, too, had wanted to be an astronaut once, long ago.

Someday, somehow, I’ll get into space, he had sworn. I’ll be up there, on the moon, looking down on this blue planet—someday.

With great excitement he had followed each manned mission, building plastic models of the spacecraft and drawing pictures of the flights and their spacesuited astronauts. But that was when he was much younger, and much had changed since.

Too much, too quickly.

He opened the tent where his friend slept and hoped he would be able to endure the intermittent snoring that shook its nylon seams. The warm air of the small camp heater welcomed him, and he tossed his sleeping bag into the vacancy beside his friend.

T. G. paused to take one last look at the watchful moon. Once, as he and his father had shared their small, backyard telescope, the rugged, lifeless world above had seemed almost a friend. Now it was but a cold, distant outsider—uncaring, unknowing, and unreachable.

He turned to the west, toward the twin moonlit peaks of the Maroon Bells. Almost imperceptibly, each tiny, flickering star disappeared beneath the horizon, slipping inexorably away, just as his family had—leaving only a dark emptiness in its place.

He went inside.

Click!

The shutter of the SLR camera snapped again, perhaps for the hundredth time that day. T. G. adjusted its zoom lens once more, focusing on a distant snowcap.

“You about through, Ansel?” David asked, watching the lengthening shadows around him. “I’m beat … and we need to be getting back.”

“Just a couple more,” T. G. replied, ignoring the playfully sarcastic reference to the great photographer. “Look at that … beautiful.”

“Make it quick, T-square. October’s running out on us.” David had given T. G. the nickname in junior high, soon after they had first met, after he had taken note of T. G.’s love of classical music, Shakespeare, and time-honored literature—the longhaired stuff for which David had little use. T. G. was the only person his friend had ever known who had actually read Wuthering Heights on his own time, of his own free will. An act to be considered only at gunpoint, at least in David’s mind, the deed had been a defining moment in his growing perception of his friend and had, once and forever, certified that T. G. was unlike anyone he had ever known.

Even in name. No living person knew what T. G.’s initials stood for, and he worked hard to keep it that way. Even his driver’s license reflected this one privacy, a secret David doubted his friend would ever share with anyone.

They were on the northwestern bank of tiny Crater Lake, one of many small, glacial bodies of water that were fed by the snow runoff from the Maroon Bells. The water was pure and cold and clear, its surface like glass. The lake mirrored the densely surrounding trees and the distant mountains, reflecting them with an inverted image of almost equal clarity.

The young men’s hiking expertise had been earned over time, first in the Boy Scouts and then in summer classes they had taken together during their stint in high school. David, however, had gained far more experience in the wilderness than T. G. had and often served as the guide. A self-admitted adrenaline junkie, he had always embraced the more adventurous and athletic aspects of the great outdoors, seeking any opportunity to stretch his limitations, while T. G.’s primary interests had been in sights, sounds, and smells. The thrill-seeking David had often talked his reluctant friend into attempting the riskier activities of climbing and rappelling, citing the photographic possibilities that existed at greater altitudes.

Peering through his viewfinder, T. G. was having trouble lining up the shot he wanted. Frustrated, he leaned out over the edge of the bank, trying for an angle that paralleled the grassy shoreline.

“Watch it,” David called from a distance as his friend leaned dangerously out over the water. “Remember your knee. You could—”

Unstable ground gave way, sending T. G.’s left leg into the cold, shallow water just below. His foot sank deep into the muddy bottom as he rallied to keep his balance, and he fell hard against the shore. Only the strap around his neck saved his heavy camera from a watery grave. He felt a twinge in his left knee beneath the elastic brace he wore. He grimaced.

David laughed, seeing that his friend was more embarrassed than hurt. He walked up and extended a hand, providing the leverage T. G. needed to pull his boot free of the viscous ooze. “You okay? If you wanted to swim, you should have brought your trunks.”

“Yeah, yeah … laugh it up,” T. G. complained with all seriousness, wiping his bemired hiking boot against the grass and cursing under his breath. “These boots are brand new … thirty lousy dollars …” He slammed his mud-caked sole into the ground, shaking loose as much of the brown sediment as would let go. “I don’t know why I came on this stupid trip in the first place.”

“Lighten up, T-square. Getting a little wet never killed anybody.”

“I guess you never saw The Wizard of Oz,” T. G. moaned, shifting the weight of his daypack. As they walked on he continued to complain, the incident opening a floodgate of negative comments about dozens of ridiculously trivial things that had irritated him in recent days.

“Look, I wasn’t going to say anything,” David interrupted, “but you’ve been in a sorry mood ever since we got here. I know you’ve been through a lot the last couple of years … but, you know, you’re not as nice to be around as you used to be.”

David continued to scold him as they walked uphill, away from the shoreline, as T. G. paused every few steps to shake more water from his wet pant leg. “Sure, life’s dealt you a lousy hand, but, man … the attitude’s gotta stop.”

“Is that all?”

“I guess I should thank you for the fact that you stopped whistling ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ a little while ago. Don’t get me wrong … the first couple of hundred times weren’t so bad.”

“Sorry.”

David shook his head. “Listen … it’s not just today, but going back a good while. I mean, haven’t you noticed how the guys at the university have been going out of their way not to be around you? It isn’t coincidence. And I know it may not be any of my business, but you were way out of line with Jenni last week. You know that. You need her … she’s the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ve been close since grade school, man. Don’t blow it, if you haven’t already. It’s time to get on with life.”

“Lay off, Dave,” T. G. snapped, his head down. “I’m coping with things in my own way.”

David stopped and wheeled around, his face in his friend’s. After an awkward silence of a few seconds, he spoke slowly and distinctly. “Because I’m your friend—one of the few you have left, I might add—you can believe me when I tell you that your way ain’t workin’.” He turned and walked on, up the hill and into the dense forest, leaving T. G. to weigh the words alone.

T. G. hated what he had become, yet his anger would not be appeased. The world had taken from him that which was most precious, and he would make it pay. Somehow it would pay.

They did not speak again for half an hour, and only then because T. G. stopped to rest on a downed tree trunk. “Wait up …”

David paused and turned back to face him. “Tired already?”

“It’s my knee. It’s starting to act up. I guess I strained it a little when I got wet. I should have known better than to try such a long hike.”

“It’s been, what, since you hurt it … four years? They say a knee injury like yours never really heals. It’ll force Namath to retire … you watch.”

“I wish my knee had been as hard as my head,” T. G. monotoned in an effort to smooth things over. “Listen, about what happened back there—”

“It’s forgotten.” David winked at him, nodding.

T. G. pulled up his pant leg and adjusted the tight elastic brace on his left knee. “I hate this thing. How far have we gone anyway?”

A dead branch snapped beneath David’s heavy boot as he stretched to step over the trunk of a fallen pine, and as he leaned to catch his balance, the bark of a standing one made a deep impression in the palm of his hand. “Well,” he began, calculating aloud, “we left camp at nine, and it’s about five-thirty now. We’ve kept up a pretty good pace …”

“All uphill, seems like,” T. G. said.

“We stopped for lunch and rest stops, and so you could get your exciting action shots of the lake. Figure about … eight miles.”

“You could check the pedometer,” T. G. suggested.

“Anyone could do that,” David smiled. “This is pioneer instinct talking …”

“Check the pedometer.”

He grudgingly looked down at the small aluminum gauge. “It says six and eight tenths. Happy?”

“Thank you.” T. G. looked toward the dropping sun. Its rays filtered through the glorious autumn foliage above, leaving thin, brilliant pencils of light to scatter below.

David looked around, enjoying the splendor of the magnificent terrain. “The colors are great, aren’t they? I love this time of year …”

“You know, considering the point where we began to loop back, we might not be more than a couple of hours from camp.”

“Good thing,” David said, adjusting the visor of his baseball cap. “I’d say that’s about how much light we’ve got left.” They continued on, encountering no one along the way. Not that they expected to, since they were well away from the marked trails, blazing their own and enjoying the adventure.

The sun disappeared from sight, though it was not yet sunset; the warm, brilliant orb had hidden itself behind the mountains, throwing a cool shadow upon the surrounding timberlands. The rims of advancing cumulus clouds glowed a golden, incandescent orange in the falling light, and the temperature began to drop as the still of the early evening blanketed the mountains.

T. G. and David moved quickly along the wooded mountainside, their pace hurried, their conversation minimal. Should dark fall before they reached their camp, the inky blackness of the night woods would rob them of both landmarks and stars, making their return extremely difficult. Even their flashlights would be of little help, they knew, without a solid fix on their destination.

“I’d say we’re still at least forty-five minutes away,” T. G. noted, pausing to check his pocket map and his watch. “I don’t think we’ll make it. It’s already almost sunset.”

“That’s what I like. A good, positive attitude.”

“Must be a shortcut here someplace,” T. G. hoped aloud, examining the map more closely. David stepped up to take a look.

“Well …”

“Tough call. We’re just east of West Maroon Creek. Could be that’s Len Shoemaker Ridge just there,” he said, indicating the high forest terrain to their right. “As for a shortcut …”

“See one?”

“Not right off, nothing definite. But if we cut across the northwest shoulder of Pyramid Peak, and if we really hustle, that could put us back at the car just before dark. Then we just unload, pitch the tent again and we’re in like Flynn.”

“Okay … it has to be double-time from here on,” David said, adjusting the straps of his daypack. “Maybe triple-time. Can your knee take it?”

“I’ll be fine. Let’s go.” As T. G. folded the map he noticed a new and sudden drop in temperature. It was sharp and worrisome. “Feel that?”

“Yeah. Not good. Conditions don’t seem right for a storm, though.”

“No … but when they hit out here, they hit fast.”

They began again, their pace more rapid. “If we get caught in a downpour, it’ll be trouble,” T. G. said. “Night’s bad enough as it is …”

They watched the light trickle away as a boiling mass rapidly built in the sky overhead. “Sure there isn’t a real shortcut on there somewhere?” David hoped.

T. G. opened the map back up, studying it as closely as he could while walking. He spotted an indefinite area near their position that was not clearly characterized by any of the markings in the map’s legend. “Might be something right here,” he called out. “Could be a narrow valley or something, well away from the marked trails. Hard to tell with the scale of this map.” He checked his compass. “North-northeast.”

“I say we go for it. Don’t think we’ve got much choice.”

Forcing their aching legs onward, they changed direction, moving quickly. Dark, menacing clouds swirled as they formed in the sky overhead, giving every indication that an intense and violent storm was minutes away. The thunderhead grew, fueled by a complex vortex of winds, churning within itself as it became increasingly brutal. T. G. looked up as he ran, catching glimpses of the threat through gaps in the dense foliage. He feared the angry mass.

“The cloud base is dropping lower,” he said. “Look at that. Bad news … real bad.”

The wind picked up dramatically, numbing their ears with the clatter of shaking branches and rustling leaves. A wail rose among the towering pines, sprinkling needles onto the hikers, and the temperature drop increased, throwing sheets of cold air against their sweat-coated skin.

Adrenaline kicked in, and T. G. and David ran faster. The dense forest grew even more crowded, making it difficult to find a sure path. The carpet of fallen leaves deepened, and the thick underbrush made their hurried footing less certain. Tangles of dead branches clutched at their legs as they ran past, like pleading skeletal hands. David leaped over a fallen trunk, almost twisting his ankle as he came down on a second, smaller one he had not seen beneath its brittle, leafy covering. T. G. leaped wide, avoiding it, but paid the price when he lost his balance and fell sideways into a pine trunk. Its stabbing bark drew blood as it dug into his left forearm, just above the wrist.

“Aaahhhh!” he shouted, momentarily pausing to put pressure on the jagged, bleeding, L-shaped scrape. The sweat of his palm stung against it. David turned to check on his friend, knowing they could not stop.

“No time!” he warned, examining the injury. “Bleed later … come on!”

They began again. The heavy rasp of their breathing grew, as did the ache in their lungs. A flash flared around them, displacing the gloom for an instant, followed moments later by a dull, rolling roar that came from no discernible direction. A new twinge of pain began to flare within T. G.’s knee.

“We’re not going to make it,” he feared.

Suddenly, a lightness appeared ahead, beyond the towering trunks. A clearing promised to open before them at the end of another hundred feet of forest. They picked up their pace, their aching legs cramping.

“Finally,” David managed, his breath coming in sharp gulps.

But T. G. got there first, and as he passed the last tree before hitting the open expanse he suddenly cried out, clutched madly for a low-hanging branch to his right, then slid to a sitting position as the slender limb held and his feet shot out from beneath him. David, not understanding, ran headlong into T. G., who reached up and managed to grab hold of his friend’s fluttering shirttail.

It was barely enough to stop David’s momentum, but it was enough. He fell onto T. G., coming to rest less than three feet from the edge of a sheer drop of nearly a hundred feet.

His heart pounding, David carefully peered over the precipice, unbelieving. Their limbs weak from fear and exhaustion, the hikers lay there for a moment, gathering themselves.

“Man…,” David managed, breathing heavily, “you saved … my life.”

“We must have … missed something …,” T. G. replied, also breathing heavily. “I misread the map … I guess …”

“You guess?” David laughed in relief, his hands shaking, still pumped on adrenaline. “One more step … and we’d have been … customers for Dad.”

“At least we’d have gotten … the family discount.”

“Now what?” David asked, greedily gulping the cool air. The wind increased, and as the weary pair looked up into the dark turmoil above they saw rotation and dark fingers of enraged air that seemed to reach down toward them.

“We’ll never make it around this drop-off … not before the storm hits. It goes on around the bend for as far as I can see.”

“Okay … forget the car … where’s the public campground from here?”

T. G. pointed out beyond the cliff. “About half a mile that way, as the crow flies.”

“Then we take the direct route,” David said. “No choice.” He looked over the cliff once again and saw what appeared to be a dense carpet of knee-deep brush covering the valley floor below. Inconvenient to wade through, but much quicker than the alternative.

T. G. watched as his friend dropped his pack and unhooked the bungee cords that held his colorful blue-green kernmantle rope to its base. “Really bad idea,” he said, indicating the swirling mass above. “Sure we even have enough rope?” A flash of lightning in the distance punctuated his warning.

“No more than a hundred feet to the bottom, at most,” David assured him as thunder rumbled around them. “We’ll be down in less than two minutes. Thick as those clouds are, it’ll be dark in ten minutes, and we can be at the campground by then. The storm will be here sooner than that. No choice, buddy.” He tied his rope to a tree trunk, then, satisfied with its solidity, slipped into his leather harness. “We lose the ropes at the bottom and come back for them tomorrow. Look there …” He pointed down and across the way to a small, distant light, which flickered like a single bulb among the trees on the other side of the rough clearing. “Gotta be a public rest room, at the very least. Maybe even the campground itself. Shelter, at any rate. You coming?”

T. G., seeing no other option, reluctantly began to unpack his equipment. The sky was growing darker by the second, and the building wind was heavy with the dampness of coming rain. Another flash struck out as David began down the face of the cliff, carefully easing the rope through his carabiners. “Come on!”

T. G. fastened his harness and checked the buckles one last time as he watched his friend rappel out of sight, below the cliff’s edge. Tossing his 165 feet of rainbow rope over the edge, he took one final look up into the dark sky, dreading the violence above him. For a moment he thought he saw a face amidst the throbbing, black whirlpool churning overhead. A face of primordial malignancy. A face of death, skull-like and angry.

A new sound echoed against the walls of the cliff. A solid curtain of cold rain advanced upon them, only a few hundred feet away and moving rapidly. David was already halfway down, but T. G. was only just beginning his rappel. Thunder roared closer. “Move it!” T. G. heard Dave shouting at him. He knew that time had run out. The glittering wall swept closer, reflecting the ever-increasing lightning flashes like a distorted, living mirror.

It got dark. Too dark, too fast.

A sudden, violent gust threw David against the cliff face, twisting him on his rope like a puppet on tangled strings. As the first icy drops stung his face he regained proper attitude and quickly dropped the final twenty feet into the bed of lush growth below. The rain became hard and painful as huge drops swept cruelly into him. Then, as he began to free himself from his harness, David’s face and hands were stung repeatedly by something else, something solid. An incessant clicking sound all around him became louder and more intense, and he realized that a torrent of small hailstones was pelting the rockface, T. G., and himself.

“T-square!” he yelled, unable to look upward into the driving rain for more than an instant at a time. In the darkness he saw no sign of his friend, but the cold glare of lightning against the cliff wall revealed T. G.’s rope still hanging there. The rope was moving, but as if tossed by wind, not as if it were being shaken by a rappeller above. “T-square! You okay?” David shouted, straining his voice as he shielded his face from the storm. Struggling to look up again, he saw that darkness and rain some thirty feet above swallowed their ropes. There was no sign of his friend, so David fearfully and quickly searched the brushy ground around him for any sign that T. G. had fallen. There was none.

No one who began a rappel could climb back up so quickly, David knew. T. G. could have reached the ground in a tenth the time it would have taken him to make his way back to the top. David feared that his friend had become entangled or injured and was hanging, beyond the darkness, at the storm’s mercy. Dropping his daypack, he quickly reached for his ascenders and attached them to the thin rope that had taken him safely to the base of the cliff. “Really good idea, idiot,” he chastised himself, knowing that rappelling in the face of an oncoming storm, under any circumstances, had been less than wise.

The rope had become wet and slippery in the fierce downpour, but the ratchet system in each ascender would hold fast nonetheless. David began a tedious, painful climb, pelted by frigid rain and marble-sized hail, bucking winds that were gusting harder than any he could remember. He angled his head so the bill of his cap might protect his face, but a sudden gust caught the hat and knocked it away. It disappeared into the darkness below.

He managed to swing over and grab hold of T. G.’s rope, using it to guide him to that spot just above where he knew his friend had to be. Slowly, one leg at a time, he inched upward. A too-close, white-hot lightning strike momentarily blinded him, its instantaneous and deafening crack shaking him and turning adrenaline loose in his bloodstream. Fear filled him, pushing his already beaten limbs to move faster and more surely upward.

“I’m coming,” he shouted, barely able to hear himself. The hail ceased, but the rain became more intense as if to compensate. David passed the fifty-foot mark, but still could not see his friend. “T. G.? Can you hear me?” he yelled, his voice breaking. “Answer me …”

At sixty feet, a cold, drenched David found something that his mind labored to accept, something that met his hand as he glided it upward along T. G.’s wet, slippery rope. It was an impossibility that caused David to hang there, staring in disbelief, pressing against the wet, raw stone with his fingertips. The storm, the darkness, the danger all paled as the lightning revealed for an instant at a time a sight that could not be, yet was. Again and again he ran his numbing fingers up T. G.’s rope.

Right up to the point where it disappeared into the rock face.

At a point some six feet higher the rope reemerged, taut and headed upward, where it quickly disappeared into the dark rain above. A steady torrent of chilled water coursed down the rope, streaming onto the cliff face at the point where rope and rock became one. David frantically tugged, throwing himself off balance again and again as he fought to free the line, but it held fast as if embedded in concrete. His knuckles became battered and bloodied as, with each desperate pull, they banged into the stone. His shoulders slammed repeatedly into the wet rock as his motions and the wind threw him about, yet he felt no pain.

“T. G.!” he screamed again and again. His cries bounced uselessly off the rock and were swallowed up by the hungry, raging storm.