Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [59]
"But you didn't."
"No. Sometimes I wish I had," she said. "Especially when I'm standing here." She waved expressively.
Harvey turned, and there were more hills, rising higher and higher until they blended into the Sierra Nevada range. The big mountains looked untouched, never climbed by human. Harvey knew that was an illusion. If you stooped to tie your bootlaces on the John Muir Trail, you were likely to be trampled by backpackers.
The great rock they stood on was cloven toward the edge of the cliff. The cleft was no more than a yard wide, but deep, so deep that Harvey couldn't see the bottom. The top of the rock slanted toward the cleft, and toward the edge beyond it, so that Harvey wasn't even tempted to go near it.
Maureen strolled over there, and without a thought stepped across the cleft. She stood on a narrow strip of rock two feet wide, a three-hundred-foot drop in front of her, the unknown depth of the cleft behind. She looked out in satisfaction, then turned.
She saw Harvey Randall standing grimly, trying to move forward and not able to do it. She gave him a puzzled look; then her face showed concern. She stepped back onto the main rock. "I'm sorry. Do heights bother you?"
"Some," Harvey admitted.
"I should never have done that… what were you thinking of, anyway?"
"How I could get out there if something happened. If I could make myself crawl across that crack—"
"That wasn't nice of me at all," she said. "Anyway, let me show you the ranch. You can see most of it from here."
Afterward, Harvey couldn't remember what they'd talked about. It was nothing important, but it had been a pleasant hour. He couldn't remember a nicer one.
"We ought to be getting back down," Maureen said.
"Yeah. Is there an easier way than the one we came up?"
"Don't know. We can look," she said. She led the way off to their left, around the opposite side of the rock face. They picked their way through scrub brush and along narrow goat trails. There were piles of goat and sheep droppings. Deer too, Harvey thought, although he couldn't be sure. The ground was too hard for tracks.
"It's like nobody was ever here before," Harvey said, but he said it under his breath, and Maureen didn't hear. They were in a narrow gully, nothing more than a gash in the side of the steep hill, and the ranch had vanished.
There was a sound behind them. Harvey turned, startled. A horse was coming down the draw.
Not just a horse. The rider was a little blonde girl, a child not more than twelve. She rode without a saddle, and she looked like a part of the huge animal, fitted so well onto him that it might have been an undergrown centaur. "Hi," she called.
"Hi yourself," Maureen said. "Harvey, this is Alice Cox. The Coxes work the ranch. Alice, what are you doing up here?"
"Saw you going up," she said. Her voice was small and high-pitched, but well modulated, not shrill.
Maureen caught up to Harvey and winked. He nodded, pleased. "And we thought we were the intrepid explorers," Maureen said.
"Yeah. I had enough trouble getting up by myself, without taking a damn big horse." He looked ahead. The way was steep, and it was absolutely impossible for a horse to get down there. He turned to say so.
Alice had dismounted and was calmly leading the horse down the draw. It slipped and scrambled, and she pointed out places for it to step. The horse seemed to understand her perfectly. "Senator coming soon?" she asked.
"Yes, tomorrow morning," Maureen said.
"I sure like talking to him," Alice said. "All the kids at school want to meet him. He's on TV a lot."
"Harvey—Mr. Randall makes television programs," Maureen said.
Alice looked to Harvey with new respect. She didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "Do you like 'Star Trek'?"
"Yes, but I didn't have anything to do with that one." Harvey scrambled down another steep place. Surely that horse couldn't get down that?
"It's my favorite program," Alice said. "Whoa, Tommy. Come on, it's all right, right here—I wrote a story for television. It's about a flying saucer, and how we ran from it and hid in