Pandora's curse

“Hey, look at that.” Ira had a digital camera to his eye.

“What is it?”

“Land ho!” he shouted, handing the Nikon to Marty.

When it was his turn, Mercer could see a sheer rock peak smeared with snow and ice that rose from above the sea fog like a lonely sentinel. It was one of the thousands of islands that dotted Greenland’s jagged, glacier- carved coast. To the others it was an uninspiring sight, but Mercer couldn’t help but be intrigued. The rock was certainly granite, some of the toughest stone in the world, and yet it had been ground smooth over hundreds of millions of years. The tremendous pressure of Greenland’s ice sheet was a force that even the earth itself could not stop.

“That’s Kulusuk Island,” a crewman called from the bridge wing high over the deck.

“Kulusuk has an airstrip that was left over from the DEW line station on the north part of the island,” Ira Lasko said. “The old Distant Early Warning radar facility was dismantled years ago and the airport was turned over to the locals. It’s only about an hour and a half flight from Reykjavik. I think we’re pretty close to Ammassalik.”

An hour later, the Njoerd was surrounded by towering ramparts of stone as she entered Tasiilaq Bay. Here the mountains were as sharp as glass, black silhouettes that cut into the clear sky. She wasn’t the first ship of the season into the bay because a wide channel had been carved through the pack ice leading toward the town of Ammassalik. As they threaded their way deeper into the bay, they passed more bergs, twisted sculptures of ice that were as beautiful as fairy castles. The newer bergs were blindingly white, while those that had floated in the bay for a few seasons were shaded the pale blue of a natural gas flame.

The town of Ammassalik appeared off the port side. The first thing they saw was a wall of garbage sloping from the town’s dump into the sea. Behind it was a tremendous trash fire.

“Not an encouraging sight,” Erwin Puhl said. Most everyone was at the ship’s rail watching the approach.

“The natives were used to throwing garbage outside their huts,” Igor said. “Mostly bones that dogs ate. After the Danes moved them here and introduce Western packaging, they still do same thing, not knowing metal cans and plastic wrappers don’t disappear after one winter. Town used to look like junkyard. Is better this way.”

Past a clutch of huge fuel tanks, a small inlet cut into the land, and on the other side lay Ammassalik’s concrete pier backed by a large warehouse. The inlet was full of ice chunks and tired fishing boats. At its head, a stream of melt water tumbled under a bridge and poured into the bay. The town itself flanked the inlet, rising above the waters on steep hills that were dappled with snow. The houses were wood framed and colorful, as if to make up for the monochrome blandness of the surroundings. Next to most of the homes stood rickety drying racks covered with fish and chunks of seal. It was a forlorn and isolated place that sixteen hundred Inuit and a handful of Danish administrators called home.

Coming in to the dock, the ship’s air horns gave a long, mournful blast that was answered by a chorus of sled dog cries.

“Welcome to Greenland, everyone,” Werner Koenig called happily. Greta Schmidt was at his side, her blond hair shimmering like white gold. “First part of our journey is finished. The captain informed me that the rotor-stat should be here in about thirty minutes, so step number two can commence. Is everyone ready?”

“The Surveyor’s Society’s all set,” Marty answered. “Equipment’s been checked and resecured.”

Werner looked to Igor. “How about it?”

“Da. Is all good.”

“Excellent. I’ve been asked to have everyone leave the ship or stay in the wardroom until the Sno-Cats and Land Cruiser have been carried up to the ice sheet. I’ve posted a manifest in the wardroom so you’ll know which ’Cat is yours for the trek to Camp Decade. Since the rotor-stat is still considered experimental, she’s not allowed to carry passengers. We’ll use helicopters to get us to the ice.”

Mercer unzipped the nylon shell he wore and plucked a pair of brand-new polarized sunglasses from an inside pocket. “I can’t wait to see this,” he said to no one in particular. Both Ira Lasko and Marty Bishop gave him a smile. His excitement about the rotor-stat was infectious.

The airship arrived on schedule, announcing its approach with a deep droning sound that echoed off the bay for ten minutes before it floated into view. There was a defiant serenity to the mammoth dirigible, as if it was immune to the laws of gravity. Unlike the squashed-looking Goodyear blimps, the rotor-stat was torpedo shaped but flattened along her top and bottom. At over four hundred feet long, she was also twice the length of a blimp. Her bow was shaped like a shark’s snout, and her tail had a long taper that supported four cruciform fins. Because of her partial internal skeleton, the four streamlined engine pods were mounted along her flank so that noise and vibration wouldn’t disturb those in the twenty-passenger gondola slung under her nose. The carbon-fiber skin was white, which made her look like a cloud. She was so new exhaust had yet to darken the sections behind the engines.

It was an unworldly sight and Mercer felt himself grinning as her shadow crept along the bay like an advancing ink stain.

“Jesus!” Ira exclaimed. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”

“More’s the shame,” Mercer said.

The expedition members joined a growing throng of awestruck locals on the pier when the rotor-stat came to a hover above the Njoerd, her engine pods transitioning from forward flight to station’s keeping. With the pods tilted skyward, her massive props beat the air like a helicopter’s, but until she took on a cargo load her 1.2 million cubic feet of helium kept her aloft.

The rotor-stat maintained enough altitude so the mooring rope dangling from her nose would not interfere with the heavy steel cables that were lowered from the cargo bay amidships. Deckhands on the research ship quickly secured the four cables to the skid placed under the first Sno-Cat and trailer, coordinating their efforts with the airship’s pilot via walkie-talkie. When the signal was given, the throb of the rotor-stat’s engines deepened as her twenty-five-foot blades took greater bites out of the air. The slack in the lines vanished and the cables vibrated with the strain of the thirty-ton load. As gently as a mother raising a child from a crib, the airship lifted the tracked vehicle from the deck.

A gasp went up from the crowd, and the expedition members cheered. The rotor-stat continued to climb vertically. The Sno-Cat was too big to be drawn fully into her hold, so it continued to hang about twenty feet below the dirigible. She pivoted in place, pointing her nose westward, toward the main bulk of Greenland. In unison, the engine pods tilted forward, giving the great ship some forward momentum while still providing lift. It was then that Mercer realized her hull was shaped like an airfoil that would provide supplemental lift at speed, vastly improving her fuel efficiency.

To the west, a wall of mountains three thousand feet tall separated Ammassalik island from the Greenland massif. The rotor-stat steered for a notch in the mountains, gaining altitude and speed with each passing moment. In ten minutes she was lost from view.

“They’ll be back for the second Sno-Cat in less than an hour,” Werner told them. “The top of the Hann glacier is our staging area on the mainland. It’s only about twenty miles away.”

“Provided nothing goes wrong,” Marty said, “that puts everything in place at seven tonight. Bit late to start out, don’t you think?”

“I’ve already considered that. We’ll sleep on the Njoerd tonight and head out tomorrow at dawn. The small advance team leaving from Reykjavik will arrive a day ahead of us, which gives them more than enough time to set up the first building we will use until everything else is constructed.”

“Once the base is habitable you’ll send for the rest of your scientists?” Mercer asked.

Werner nodded. “It’ll take about two days to put together our buildings and stow the provisions. And then your obligation to us is completed and you can begin to unearth Camp Decade and Dr. Bulgarin and his people can begin their own research.”

The rotor-stat returned to Ammassalik for the last time at 10:30 P.M., having made its first of two runs to Camp Decade two hundred miles north of the town. The floors and roofs of the base buildings were too bulky for the Sno-Cats and had to be flown up. The last trip was to haul food, the hotrocks, and the fuel. Then the airship would head back to Europe. It would return in September when the entire base was to be dismantled by order of the Danish government.

Mercer was on deck when the airship faded into the twilight. He’d been watching a white smear of light