Of all the stories I have written that have appeared once and then never again, this next is the one I talk about most. I have discussed it in dozens of talks and mentioned it in print occasionally, for a very good reason which I'll come to later.

In April 1953 I was in Chicago. I'm not much of a traveler and that was the first time I was ever in Chicago (and I have returned since then only once).I was there to attend an American Chemical Society convention at which I was supposed to present a small paper. That was little fun, so I thought I would liven things up by going to Evanston, a northern suburb, and visiting the offices of Universe Science Fiction.

This magazine was then edited by Bea Mahaffey, an extraordinarily good-looking young woman. (The way I usually put it is that science fiction writers voted her, two years running, the editor to whom they would most like to submit.)

When I arrived in the office on April 7, 1953, Bea greeted me with great glee and at once asked why I had not brought a story for her with me.

“You want a story?” I said, basking in her beauty..'I'll write you a story. Bring me a typewriter.”

Actually, I was just trying to impress her, hoping that she would throw herself into my arms in a spasm of wild adoration. She didn't. She brought me a typewriter.

I had to come through. Since the task of climbing Mount Everest was much in the news those days (men

had been trying to scale it for thirty years and the seventh attempt to do so had just failed) I thought rapidly and wrote EVEREST.

Bea read it, liked it, and offered me thirty dollars, which I accepted with alacrity. I promptly spent half of it on a fancy dinner for the two of us, and labored-with so much success to be charming, debonair, and suave thatthe waitress said to me, longingly, that she wished her son-in-law were like me.