At noon they landed near a trekker’s stop in a village called Bagarchap, and Hosni entertained the local children with tours of the Bell while Sam and Remi ate sack lunches.
Soon they were airborne again and heading north through the Bintang Glacier and toward Mount Manaslu.
“Eighty-one hundred meters high,” Hosni called, pointing to the mountain.
Sam translated for Remi: “About twenty-four thousand feet.”
“And five thousand less than Everest,” Hosni added.
“It’s one thing to see these in pictures or from the ground,” Remi said. “But, from up here, I can see why they call this place the rooftop of the world.”
After lingering so Remi could take some pictures, Hosni turned the Bell west and descended into another glacier-the Pung Gyen, Hosni called it-which they followed for eight miles before turning north again.
“Our friends are back,” Hosni said over the headset. “Right side.”
Sam and Remi looked. The Chinese Z-9 was indeed back, again paralleling their course; this time, however, the helicopter had closed the gap to only a few hundred yards.
Sam and Remi could see silhouettes staring back at them through the cabin windows.
The Z-9 shadowed them for a few more miles, then veered off and disappeared into a cloud bank.
“Next search area coming up in three minutes,” Hosni called.
Sam and Remi got situated near the windows.
As had become routine, Hosni lifted the Bell’s nose over a ridgeline, then banked sharply into the target valley, bleeding off altitude as he went. He slowed the Bell to a hover.
Sam was the first to notice the valley’s surreal landscape below. While the upper slopes were thick with pine trees, the lower reaches looked as if they had been carved by a rectangular cookie cutter, leaving behind sheer cliffs plummeting into a lake. Jutting from the opposite slope and encircling one end was an ice-covered plateau. A runnel of churning water sliced through the shelf and cascaded to the waters below.
“Hosni, how deep do you think this is?” Sam asked. “The valley, I mean.”
“From the ridgeline to the lake, perhaps eight hundred feet.”
“The cliffs are half that at least,” said Sam.
Honsi eased the Bell forward, following the slope, as Sam and Remi scanned the terrain through their binoculars. As they drew even with the plateau, and Hosni came about, they saw that the plateau was deceptively deep, narrowing for a few hundred yards before ending at a towering wall of ice bracketed by vertical cliffs.
“That’s a glacier,” Sam said. “Hosni, I didn’t see this plateau on any maps. Does it look familiar?”
“No, you are right. This is relatively new. You see the color of the lake, the greenish gray?”
“Yes,” said Remi.
“You see that after glacial retreat. This section of the valley is less than two years old, I would estimate.”
“Climate change?”
“Most definitely. The glacier we passed earlier-the Pung Gyen-lost forty feet last year alone.”
Pressed up against her window, Remi suddenly lowered her binoculars. “Sam, look at this!”
He slid over to her side and peered out the window. Directly below them was what looked like a wooden hut half buried in a waist-high ice shelf.
“What in the world is that?” Sam asked. “Hosni?”
“I have no idea.”
“How close to the coordinates are we?”
“Not quite a kilometer.”
Remi said, “Sam, that’s a gondola.”
“Pardon?”
“A wicker gondola-for a hot-air balloon.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hosni, set us down!”
31
Hosni crabbed the Bell sideways over the plateau until he found a spot he decided was solid enough to bear the helicopter’s weight, then touched down. Once the rotors had spooled down, Sam and Remi climbed out and donned their jackets, caps, and gloves.
Hosni called, “Step carefully! There will be many crevasses in an area like this.”
They waved their understanding and started across the plateau toward the object.
“Here, wait . . .” Hosni called. They walked back. He climbed out of the cockpit and stooped beside the tail storage compartment. He removed what looked like a foldable tent pole and handed it to Sam. “Avalanche probe. Works as well with crevasses. Best to be safe.”
“Thanks.” Sam gave the probe a flick, and it snaked outward, the inner bungee cord snapping the sections into place. “Nifty.”
They set off again, this time with Sam probing as they walked.
The ice sheet that partially covered the plateau was rippled like waves frozen in place, leftover, they assumed, by the glacier’s slow grinding retreat up the valley.
The object in question lay near the far edge of the plateau, sitting kitty-corner to the rest of the plateau.
After five minutes of careful walking, they stood before it.
“I’m glad I didn’t bet you,” Sam said. “That’s a gondola, all right.”
“Upside down. That explains why it looked like a hut. They don’t make them like this anymore. What in the world is it doing here?”
“No idea.”
Remi took a step forward; Sam halted her with a hand on her shoulder. He probed the ice in front of the gondola, found it solid, then began poking around what should have been its sides.
“There’s more,” Sam said.
They continued sidestepping left, paralleling the gondola, probing as they went, until they reached the end.
Sam frowned and said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”
Remi asked. “How long is it?”
“Roughly thirty feet.”
“That’s impossible. Aren’t most maybe three feet by three feet?”
“More or less.” He slid the probe over the gondola’s upturned bottom as far as he could reach. “Nearly eight feet wide.”
Sam handed her the probe, then knelt down and crawled forward, hands sliding through the snow along the gondola’s side.
“Sam, be care-”
His arm plunged into the snow up to his elbow. He froze.
“I can’t be entirely sure,” he said with a grin, “but I think I found something.” He laid himself flat.
“I got you,” Remi replied. She grabbed his boots.
Sam used both hands to punch a basketball-sized hole in the ice, then poked his head inside. He turned back to Remi. “A crevasse. Very deep. The gondola’s half straddling it diagonally.”
He took another peek through the hole, then wriggled back away from the crevasse and pushed himself to his knees. He said, “I’ve found the answer to how it got here.”
“How?”
“It flew. There’s rigging still attached to the gondola-wooden stays, some kind of braided cord . . . I even saw what looked like a fabric of some sort. The whole tangled mess is hanging in the crevasse.”
Remi sat down beside him, and they stared at the gondola for a bit. Remi said, “A mystery for another time?”
