In the annals of unsuccessful exploration, no mystery has remained more puzzling than the endless wrangling among historians and New York literary agents over the fate of the legendary lost expedition of Colonel Sir Edward Fallow Pike. In light of the tremendous excitement over the recent discovery of an authentic fragment of Pike's journal in an Argentine wax museum—not to mention the pending books, museum shows, television documentaries, movies, limited edition gift items, and all-star tribute CD—we are proud to present this exclusive and really quite expensive excerpt.

By Marshall Sella

The land is harsh when it is all around you. Can it be that this most Terrible of places, with its verdant salt-flats and the icy gale of the geysers, is the true objective of our long-awaited voyage? The men under my command are beyond exhaustion. Though we have never before glimpsed this tundra paradise, we feel we've been here all our lives. Perhaps it's the silent majesty of the great peak itself, standing watch like a Romanian sentry over the sun-bleached streetcars, the shrimp- fishing vessels, and the Alhambran gardens. When my dying breath escapes me, I shall think of this idyllic valley of gondolas and diamond mines, and I will whisper its name.

Of our expedition Plan, the less said the better. So many have condemned our goals in the general press—doubted us, harangued us, and in some cases actually withheld funding from us—that it is too dispiriting an endeavor to detail our famous mission yet again. Still, I am proud that even as monsoons plunged us into the near-madness of dehydration, not one of my men showed the slightest fear at the Cossack attacks or the screech of the wolfchildren—nor even at the cruel desolation of outer space.

Should this journal be found I want the facts recorded. Unlike explorers of other nations (whose names I shall not utter!), we have mistreated neither our Manchurian ponies nor the many slaves we captured along the way. Will we find the Great River upon which no human has ever set foot? Can men ever discover who created these cave-paintings of the Northwest Passage? And whether the light that shines down on them is particle or wave—or both? Alas. We set out from our homeland certain of only one thing: that some among us would perish along the route, and that those who did return would have a grand tale to tell. That sounds like two things, but it is actually one, bipartite thing.

Illustration: Gerald de Jesus