I smiled at him. “However, I think I’ll take a look around and see what’s so attractive about Huascan.”
“I shall pray for you,” he said. “Perhaps—well, Señor, for all the loss of my legs, I am not a weak man. I can stand much hardship. I can ride a burro.”
“I don’t doubt your willingness, Fra Rafael,” I said. “But it’s necessary to be practical. It’s dangerous and it’s cold up there. Your presence would only handicap me. Alone, I can go faster—remember, I don’t know how far I’ll have to travel.”
The priest sighed. “I suppose you are right. When—”
“Now. My burro’s packed.”
“Your porters?”
“They won’t go,” I said wryly. “They’ve been talking to your villagers. It doesn’t matter. I’ll go it alone.” I put out my hand, and Fra Rafael gripped it strongly.
“Vaya con Dios,” he said.
I went out into the bright Peruvian sunlight. The Indios were standing in straggling knots, pretending not to watch me. My porters were nowhere in evidence. I grinned, yelled a sardonic goodbye, and started to lead the burro toward the Pass.
The fog vanished as the sun rose, but it still lay in the mountain canyons toward the west. A condor circled against the sky. In the thin, sharp air the sound of a distant rockfall was distinctly audible.
White Huascan towered far away. A shadow fell on me as I entered the Pass. The burro plodded on, patient and obedient. I felt a little chill; the fog began to thicken.
Yes, the Indios had talked to me. I knew their language, their old religion. Bastard descendants of the Incas, they still preserved a deep-rooted belief in the ancient gods of their ancient race, who had fallen with Huayna Capac, the Great Inca, a year before Pizarro came raging into Peru. I knew the Quichua—the old tongue of the mother race—and so I learned more than I might have otherwise.
Yet I had not learned much. The Indios said that something had come into the mountains near Huascan. They were willing to talk about it, but they knew little. They shrugged with apathetic fatalism. It called the young virgins, no doubt for a sacrifice. Quien sabe? Certainly the strange, thickening fog was not of this earth. Never before in the history of mankind had there been such a fog. It was, of course, the earthquake that had brought the—the Visitant. And it was folly to seek it out.
Well, I was an anthropologist and knew the value of even such slight clues as this. Moreover, my job for the Foundation was done. My specimens had been sent through to Callao by pack-train, and my notes were safe with Fra Rafael. Also, I was young and the lure of far places and their mysteries was hot in my blood. I hoped I’d find something odd—even dangerous—at Huascan.
I was young. Therefore, somewhat of a fool. …
The first night I camped in a little cave, sheltered from the wind and snug enough in my fleece-lined sleeping-bag. There were no insects at this height. It was impossible to make a fire for there was no wood. I worried a bit about the burro freezing in the night.
But he survived, and I repacked him the next morning with rather absurd cheerfulness. The fog was thick, yes, but not impenetrable.
There were tracks in the snow where the wind had not covered them. A girl had left the village the day before my arrival, which made my task all the easier. So I went up into that vast, desolate silence, the fog closing in steadily, getting thicker and thicker, the trail getting narrower until at last it was a mere track.
And then I was moving blind. I had to feel my way, step by step, leading the burro. Occasional tracks showed through the mist, showed that the native girl had walked swiftly—had run in places—so I assumed that the fog was less dense when she had come by this way. As it happened, I was quite wrong about that. …
We were on a narrow path above a gorge when I lost the burro. I heard a scrambling and clashing of hoofs on rock behind me. The rope jerked out of my hand and the animal cried out almost articulately as it went over. I stood frozen, pressing against the stone, listening to the sound of the burro’s fall. Finally the distant noise died in a faint trickling of snow and gravel that faded into utter silence. So thick was the fog that I had seen nothing.
I felt my way back to where the path had crumbled and rotten rock had given way under the burro’s weight. It was possible for me to retrace my steps, but I did not. I was sure that my destination could not be much further. A lightly clad native girl could not have gone so far as Huascan itself. No, probably that day I would reach my goal.
So I went on, feeling my way through the thick silent fog. I was able to see only a few inches ahead of me for hours. Then, abruptly the trail grew clearer. Until, at last I was moving in the shadowless, unearthly mist over hard-packed snow, following the clearly marked footprints of a girl’s sandals.
Then they vanished without warning, those prints, and I stood hesitant, staring around. I could see nothing, but a brighter glow in the misty canopy overhead marked the sun’s position.
I knelt and brushed away the snow with my hands, hoping to undo the wind’s concealing work. But I found no more footprints. Finally I took my bearings as well as I could and ploughed ahead in the general direction the girl had been traveling.
My compass told me I was heading due north.
The fog was a living, sentient thing now, secretive, shrouding the secret that lay beyond its gray wall.
Suddenly I was conscious of a change. An electric tingle coursed through my body. Abruptly the fog-wall brightened. Dimly, as through a translucent pane, I could make out vague
