It begins with a few fuzzy photographs—dark shapes darting across the snow near the summit of Mount Everest. Explorers call them mirages, Sherpas whisper of mountain spirits, and the Planetary Survey wants answers. When a scientist proposes to drop a man onto the summit by airplane, it sounds absurd… until James Abram Robbons volunteers. Two weeks later, alone amid hurricane winds and air too thin to breathe, he becomes the first true visitor to the roof of the world.
When rescuers finally haul him back, Robbons is alive but shaken, refusing reporters and officials alike. Only his supervisor hears the confession: intelligent beings already inhabit Everest. They live where no human can, watching us through telepathy, quietly observing a species about to reach the stars—and worrying about what we’ll do when we get there. They are not Earthborn. They are Martians.
“Everest,” first printed in Universe Science Fiction (December 1953), shows Asimov in rare atmospheric form—mixing scientific reasoning with eerie restraint. He transforms a feat of exploration into a revelation about surveillance, adaptation, and humanity’s cosmic neighbors. In under 3,000 words, Asimov shifts from mountaineering realism to planetary awe, leaving readers to wonder how long we’ve been the ones under observation.
