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Ringclimber |
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The navigation bar at the top and side of each page allows you to quickly navigate between parts of the novel. At the bottom of each page is another navigation bar for reaching the previous and next sections of the novel.
Images / Maps - Mars and Saturn; use these to help familiarize yourself with placenames and settings.
The Surface Of Mars - The location of the first reunion climb of the Ringclimber team.
The Rings Of Saturn - The environment of the Rings.
Chapter 1 - The Event
Chapter 2 - The Aftermath
Chapter 3 - First Steps
Chapter 4 - Moving On
Chapter 5 - Meeting And Planning
Chapter 6 - Arsia Base Camp
Chapter 7 - First Wall
Chapter 8 - The Choice
Chapter 9 - The Summit
Chapter 10 - Interludes And New Life
Chapter 11 - Life, Death, Friendship And A Cure
Chapter 12 - Birth And Rebirth At Various Ages
Chapter 13 - Ventures And Rescues
Chapter 14 - Return... For A Moment
Chapter 15 - The End Of Nightmares
Chapter 16 - Getting The Maps
Chapter 17 - Bad Dreams Revealed
Chapter 18 - The Day Comes
Chapter 19 - Deep In The Avalanche
Chapter 20 - The Edge
Chapter 21 - And Beyond...
Content, images, and layout - Registered copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman, except as indicated (NASA photos), All Rights Reserved
I created everything in this electronic book, over a period of almost a quarter century. I stayed up late, I lived with the characters, fought with them, listened to them. I imagined their environments, their appearance, their societies, and their technologies.
Now, for the first time, I can offer this labor of love to you in trade. My work for your work. My time for yours.
Modern technology means you can make a copy of these years of labor in the blink of an eye and give it to someone for free. Please... don't. Send them to The Temporal Doorway Storefront, buy them a copy yourself - but please don't copy this work. You're just doing what's right.
The short story which was to become Ringclimber was written in the early 1980s. But the short form was insufficient for the story to be told, and I have spent many years since then developing and enhancing the characters, the setting, and enriching the theme.
I barely remember how the concept was born, except that it emerged from my reading of Arlene Blum's "Annapurna: A Woman's Place", and my fascination with the information returned by Voyager on the Rings of Saturn.
The Rings are an enormous place. To go from the outer edge of the Rings to the inner edge would be to travel a distance of about seventy or eighty thousand miles. By comparison, a trip around the world is about twenty-five thousand miles.
The Rings are composed of ice chunks ranging from sand-grain size to moonlets. The orbital forces in the Rings cause them to separate into vast streamers of material which vary in thickness and opacity. The jostling of Ring particles and the impinging solar wind cause the Ring environment to be highly charged with electricity and radiation.
Mars, another of my favorite worlds, is also an important Ringclimber locale. This cold world, with its thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide and argon, has a surface of rusty sand and shattered boulders from its many meteor impacts. It is home to some of the largest volcanos and valleys in the solar system.
The backgrounds of Ringclimber represent fairly well the current state of our knowledge about the solar system, extrapolated in ways which add to the beauty and exotic adventure. I hope you will enjoy your journey, as much as I have enjoyed its creation.
Belay - The act of protecting another climber against a fall by using the rope. The climber ties the rope to their waist, while the belayer handles the rope running through a belay device, usually attached to a harness worn around the waist.
Protection, or pro - Devices inserted by the climber into the rock, to which the rope is attached by a spring gated metal ring called a carabiner. The leader places pro while climbing, and can fall twice the distance from their waist to the pro (due to the rope being tied to the harness at the waist). The second (climber) is belayed by the leader and extracts the pro from the rock while climbing up to the leader. "Screws" refers to "ice screws" which are protection for climbs on ice. Cams and nuts are the same as their current counterparts. A new kind of protection device, called the matilda, is also available to Ringclimber era leaders, capable of clinging to smooth surfaces.
Crampons and ice axes - Used for climbing in mountaineering situations, on ice flows, ice walls, frozen waterfalls, or giant icicles. Crampons are spiked soles worn on the boots which can be stuck into ice. Ice axes are similar to regular axes, but highly specialized for their role in ice climbing.
Ratings - Climbs are rated by a subjective scale which varies from country to country. The scale used in this book is the Yosemite scale and currently ranges from 5.0 (barely requires a rope) to 5.14d (extremely difficult with only a few people in the world capable of climbing it). The grade refers to the grade of the hardest move on the route. By the time of Ringclimber, climbs in the currently impossible grade of 5.16 are being done. Ice climbs use a different rating system as do "mixed" climbs (rock and ice), but those ratings are not discussed in this book.
My style is to show you a story, not tell you one. The meaning of the story is summed by the events and the actions of the characters, not by anything the narrator will tell you. So watch, listen, remember, and, above all - imagine!