An Eye at the Top of the World

At some point during the inhumanly cold Himalayan winter straddling 1965 and 1966, a peculiar collection of box-shaped objects -- one sprouting a six-foot, insect-like antenna -- plummets nine thousand feet down the sheer flanks of a remote peak. Ripped from its moorings by an avalanche, the jumbled apparatus slides down a funnel-shaped hourglass of hard snow and shoots over a black cliff band, careening a vertical distance six times the height of the Empire State building. The boxes come to res