teen minutes just to hear a human voice again. I haven't much hope of
reaching anyone with my five milliwatt suit transmitter but I'll keep
trying.

"Just before I start the climb there are two things I want to get on
tape. The first is how I got here. I've remembered something from my
military training, when I did some parachute jumps. Terminal velocity
for a human body falling through air is about one hundred twenty m.p.h.
Falling fifty miles is no worse than falling five hundred feet. You'd be
lucky to live through a five hundred foot fall, true, but I've been
lucky. The suit is bulky but light and probably slowed my fall. I hit a
sixty mile an hour updraft this side of the mountain, skidded downhill
through about half a mile of snow and fetched up in a drift. The suit is
part worn but still operational. I'm fine.

"The second thing I want to say is about the Chingsi, and here it is:
watch out for them. Those jokers are dangerous. I'm not telling how
because I've got a scientific reputation to watch. You'll have to figure
it out for yourselves. Here are the clues:

(1) The Chingsi talk and laugh but after all they aren't human. On an
alien world a hundred light-years away, why shouldn't alien
talents develop? A talent that's so uncertain and rudimentary here
that most people don't believe it, might be highly developed out
there.

(2) The _Whale_ expedition did fine till it found Chang. Then it hit a
seam of bad luck. Real stinking bad luck that went on and on till
it looks fishy. We lost the ship, we lost the launch, all but one
of us lost our lives. We couldn't even win a game of ping-pong.

"So what is luck, good or bad? Scientifically speaking, future chance
events are by definition chance. They can turn out favorable or not.
When a preponderance of chance events has occurred unfavorably, you've
got bad luck. It's a fancy name for a lot of chance results that didn't
go your way. But the gambler defines it differently. For him, luck
refers to the future, and you've got bad luck when future chance events
won't go your way. Scientific investigations into this have been
inconclusive, but everyone knows that some people are lucky and others
aren't. All we've got are hints and glimmers, the fumbling touch of a
rudimentary talent. There's the evil eye legend and the Jonah, bad luck
bringers. Superstition? Maybe; but ask the insurance companies about
accident prones. What's in a n