and stopped near its foot where a creek came
down, its water high and muddy with melting snows. There they hunted
until they had obtained all the meat they could carry. They would see no
more game when they went up the mountain's canyons. A poisonous weed
replaced most of the grass in all the canyons and the animals of
Ragnarok had learned long before to shun the mountain.

They found the canyon that Craig and his men had tried to explore and
started up it. It was there that Craig had discovered the quartz and
mica and so far as he had been able to tell the head of that canyon
would be the lowest of all the passes over the mountain.

The canyon went up the mountain diagonally so that the climb was not
steep although it was constant. They began to see mica and quartz
crystals in the creek bed and at noon on the second day they passed the
last stunted tree. Nothing grew higher than that point but the thorny
poison weeds and they were scarce.

The air was noticeably thinner there and their burdens heavier. A short
distance beyond they came to a small rock monument; Craig's turn-back
point.

The next day they found the quartz crystals in place. A mile farther was
the vein the mica had come from. Of the other minerals Craig had hoped
to find, however, there were only traces.

The fourth day was an eternity of struggling up the now-steeper canyon
under loads that seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds; forcing their
protesting legs to carry them fifty steps at a time, at the end of which
they would stop to rest while their lungs labored to suck in the thin
air in quick, panting breaths.

It would have been much easier to have gone around the mountain. But the
Chasm was supposed to be like a huge cavity scooped out of the plateau
beyond the mountain, rimmed with sheer cliffs a mile high. Only on the
side next to the mountain was there a slope leading down into it.

They stopped for the night where the creek ended in a small spring.
There the snow still clung to the canyon's walls and there the canyon
curved, offering them the promise of the summit just around the bend as
it had been doing all day.

The sun was hot and bright the next morning as they made their slow way
on again. The canyon straightened, the steep walls of it flattening out
to make a pair of ragged shoulders with a saddle between them.

They climbed to the summit of the saddle and there, suddenly before
them, was the other side of the world--and the Chasm