On An Asteroid III

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 20.

The peak is a gnarled, twisted, 1500-meter, metal spire with a hook like an eagle's beak stretching out over the fracture plain. Beynac tells Nkuhlu and Oliveira:

to climb to the top;
en route, to take pictures and gamma readings;
from the top, to get samples with laser-gridded locations, a core and a seismic sounding.

In low gravity but with massive gear, the spacesuited men climb precipitous faces, sometimes peering at the next stage for an hour before further ascent. Well-anchored and with a line attached, each man saves the other from a fatal fall.

Meanwhile, Beynac and Ilitu go beyond the peak to explore tiered and jumbled rock with theory-defying strata. The horizons to either side are thirty meters apart with murkiness ahead. One man, either Rydberg or Kaino, who can pilot the ship home alone must stay on the ship. Both stay, the former training the latter.

The omniscient narrator tells us that this is all building up to Beynac's death but, moving at this snail's pace, I have not got to that yet. "Heigh ho! says Rolly."