Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21 Blind panic surged through him. He scrambled to his knees and began to push against the top with the strength of his entire body. All at once, there was a clunk, and the resistance was gone. Dan exploded out of the casket as if he'd been fired from a missile silo. He landed in a heap on top of the rice bag that had been leaning on the coffin lid. He tried to laugh it off. It wasn't funny. He took stock of his surroundings. The dog was gone. No more meat cookies. In the pet carrier's place stood three tall stainless steel canisters. Something was sloshing inside of them. If it wasn't sulfuric acid, he was going to drink it. He pried off the seal. Milk. Probably goat's, maybe even yak's. Definitely unpasteurized. Gross.

第二十一章他心中一阵盲目的恐慌。 他爬了起来，开始用全身的力量顶着屋顶。 突然，哐当一声，抵抗消失了。 丹从棺材里炸了出来，就像从导弹发射井里被发射出来一样。 他落在靠在棺材盖上的米袋上，堆成了一堆。 他试图一笑置之。这一点都不好笑。 他估量了一下周围的环境。 狗不见了。不要再吃肉饼干了。 在装宠物的地方放着三个高高的不锈钢罐子。 有什么东西在他们体内晃动。 如果不是硫酸，他就会喝下去。 他撬开了封条。牛奶。 可能是山羊的，甚至是牦牛的。 未经高温消毒的。恶心。

Nothing had ever tasted better. At an altitude of 26,000 feet, the South Col of Everest was already higher than all but a handful of the world's mountains. This barren, rocky, storm-swept platform in the sky was formed in the place where Everest met its neighboring peak, Lhotse, creating the loftiest, coldest, least hospitable valley on the face of the earth. It was a typical night on the Col— eighty below zero, with sustained winds that would have counted as a category two hurricane anyplace else. "Isn't it beautiful, Ham?" shouted Eisenhower Holt over the howling of the gale. "A wind like this would toss an Ekat or a Lucian clean off the mountain! Finally the clue hunt comes around to something we Holts are good at!" It was almost time for them to begin their push for the summit. On Everest, a team headed for the top in the middle of the night in order to arrive around midday with plenty of time to get back down again in daylight. The Holts were looking forward to this with the

没有比这更美味的了。 在海拔26000英尺的地方，珠穆朗玛峰的南Col已经比世界上几乎所有的山脉都要高。 天空中这个贫瘠的、岩石嶙峋的、风暴肆虐的平台是在珠穆朗玛峰与邻近的洛子峰相遇的地方形成的，形成了地球表面上最高、最冷、最不适宜居住的山谷。 这是一个典型的零下八十度的夜晚，持续的风在其他任何地方都可以算作二级飓风。 “这不是很美吗，哈姆？”艾森豪威尔·霍尔特在呼啸的大风中喊道。 “这样的风会把伊卡特人或卢西恩人从山上刮下来！”最后，线索搜寻终于到了我们霍尔特人擅长的地方！”他们几乎是时候开始为峰会努力了。 在珠穆朗玛峰上，一个团队在半夜前往山顶，以便在中午左右到达，有足够的时间在白天再次下山。 霍尔特夫妇很期待这次

joy of true athletes anticipating a monumental physical challenge. For most of the contest, they'd been out-maneuvered and outsmarted by their competition. Yet the Tomas had long known that George Mallory had been in cahoots with Emperor Puyi when the legendary mountaineer disappeared on Everest in 1924. What none of those smarty-pants branches had ever figured out was that Reginald Fleming Johnston, Puyi's tutor, had not been just a Janus scientist but also a cunning Tomas spy. Too cunning— Johnston had never revealed to anybody, not even his Tomas handlers, what Mallory had been carrying to the summit. It had taken some Holt-style persuasion, but Johnston's grandson had finally spilled the beans about what was up there. This prize would be more than enough to catapult the Holts into first place in the Clue hunt. "I'm pumped!" Hamilton barked, and father and son bonked climbing helmets. "Reagan!" he bellowed at their tent. He switched on his flashlight and shone it in through the flap. His sister Reagan, nearly as big and brawny as he was, crawled out onto the Col, zipping her

真正的运动员期待着巨大的身体挑战的喜悦。 在比赛的大部分时间里，它们都被对手耍得团团转。 然而，当传奇登山家乔治·马洛里1924年在珠穆朗玛峰失踪时，托马斯家族早就知道他是溥仪的同谋。 这些自作聪明的分支都没有想到的是，溥仪的导师雷金纳德·弗莱明·约翰斯顿（Reginald Fleming Johnston）不仅是一名Janus科学家，还是一名狡猾的托马斯间谍。 太狡猾了——约翰斯顿从来没有向任何人透露过马洛里随身携带的东西，甚至连他的托马斯手下也没有透露。 经过了霍尔特式的劝说，约翰斯顿的孙子终于把上面的事情说了出来。 这笔奖金足以让霍尔特一家成为线索搜寻的第一名。 “我抽!”汉密尔顿叫了起来，父子俩撞了撞攀岩头盔。 “里根！”他朝他们的帐篷吼道。 他打开手电筒，从门缝里照进来。 他的妹妹里根，几乎和他一样高大健壮，爬到Col上，拉上拉链

wind suit. "Let's do this thing!" she cheered, and choked up momentarily. "I only wish poor Madison could be with us tonight." "No, you don't!" Eisenhower boomed. "You're tickled pink that your sister got altitude sickness so you can hold it over her head forever!" "She's not dead," Reagan defended herself. "A couple of days in a hyperbaric bag, and she'll be good as new." "Save your breath," Eisenhower advised. "You're going to need it. They call it the Death Zone up here. Above twenty-five thousand feet, you're slowly dying— one cell at a time!" It brought a cheer from his son and daughter. The Holts were all about living on the edge. And you couldn't get much more edgy than the Col, where, if you missed a step, the next one was more than a mile straight down. "Oxygen!" The three of them put masks over their noses and mouths and started toward Everest's looming summit pyramid, their crampons scraping on the barren rocks.

风套装。“让我们做这件事吧！”她欢呼着，一时哽咽了。 “我只希望可怜的麦迪逊今晚能和我们在一起。” “不，你不需要！”艾森豪威尔蓬勃发展。 “你妹妹有高原反应，你高兴极了，所以你可以永远把它举在她头上！”“她没死，”里根为自己辩护。 “在高压氧袋中待上几天，她就会像新的一样好了。” “省省吧，”艾森豪威尔建议道。 “你会需要它的。他们管这里叫死亡地带。 在两万五千英尺的高空，你正在慢慢死去——一个细胞一个细胞地死去！”这让他的儿子和女儿都欢呼起来。 霍尔特家的人都是生活在边缘的。 没有什么比在深谷里更让人紧张的了，在那里，如果你错过了一步，下一步就会直下去一英里多。 “氧气!”他们三人用口罩蒙住鼻子和嘴巴，开始向隐约可见的珠峰峰顶金字塔走去，他们的冰爪在贫瘠的岩石上刮着。

Greatness awaited above. The windchill was unimaginable; the altitude made every step a gasping, painful effort. But Eisenhower Holt might as well have been dancing through a garden of hyacinths. Gone was the humiliation of washing out at West Point. Gone was the myth that the Holts lacked the smarts to keep up with their illustrious family. Tonight, they were reaching for the sky. And nobody, Cahill or otherwise, stood between them and the top of the world. They had not yet even reached the slope of the summit pyramid when another team passed them by, moving quickly across the Col. Four of the members were Sherpas— the stalwart Himalayan climbing guides who lived in the Khumbu Valley, the region around Everest on the Nepal side. They were accompanying a figure wearing what looked like a space suit. Accompanying? They were practically carrying him! As the incline began, they were actually hoisting him under the arms as he moved forward. His high-tech costume pumped in oxygen and maintained the atmospheric pressure of sea level. Without it, anyone not acclimatized to Everest's

伟大在上面等待着。寒风是难以想象的；在这样的海拔高度，每走一步都是吃力而痛苦的。 但艾森豪威尔·霍尔特（Eisenhower Holt）也可能是在风信子花园中跳舞。 在西点军校被淘汰的耻辱一去不复返了。 关于霍尔特家族缺乏跟上显赫家族脚步的智慧的神话一去不复返了。 今晚，他们要飞向天空。 没有人，无论是卡荷尔还是其他人，挡在他们和世界之巅之间。 他们还没走到金字塔顶端的斜坡上，另一支队伍就从他们身边经过，迅速地穿过了峡谷。 其中四名成员是夏尔巴人——住在昆布山谷的喜马拉雅登山向导，该地区位于珠峰尼泊尔一侧。 他们和一个穿着太空服的人在一起。 陪同吗?他们几乎是在抬着他！当斜坡开始时，他们实际上是在他前进的时候把他吊在胳膊下面。 他的高科技服装可以吸入氧气，维持海平面的大气压。 没有它，任何人都无法适应珠峰

thin air would have passed out in minutes. The space-suited climber turned and waved at the thunderstruck Holts. His face was clearly visible through the Plexiglas of his helmet. Ian Kabra. The Lhasa airport was only a fraction the size of Beijing's, and certainly not state of the art. It was even a lot smaller than Chengdu's, where Amy and Nellie had spent a miserable night trying to sleep on rows of benches, waiting for their travel papers for Tibet. There was no jet bridge. The passengers exited the aircraft down portable stairs directly onto the tarmac. By the time they reached the terminal building, Nellie was out of breath, puffing from the effort of lugging her backpack and Saladin's pet carrier. "Man, when this contest is over, I've got to get back to the gym. I'm way out of shape!" "That's not it," Amy told her, a little breathless herself. "It's the altitude. Lhasa's over eleven thousand feet. And Tingri is even higher than that.

稀薄的空气会在几分钟内消失。 穿着太空服的登山者转过身，向被雷击的霍尔特挥手。 透过头盔的树脂玻璃，可以清楚地看到他的脸。 伊恩Kabra。拉萨机场的规模只有北京机场的一小部分，当然也不是最先进的。 它甚至比成都的还要小得多。在成都，艾米和内莉在一排排长椅上度过了一个痛苦的夜晚，试图睡觉，等待他们的西藏旅行证件。 没有喷气桥。乘客们下了飞机，沿着可移动的楼梯直接来到停机坪上。 当他们到达航站楼时，内莉已经上气不接下气了，因为她要费力地拖着背包和萨拉丁的宠物袋。 “伙计，当这场比赛结束后，我必须回到健身房。 我的身材走形了！”“不是这样的，”艾米对她说，自己也有点喘不过气来。 “是海拔。拉萨海拔超过一万一千英尺。 定日甚至更高。