Thorpe's Candle

VULCAN

With a loud hiss and a billowing cloud of steam, the Vulcan probe touched the frozen surface of the glacier. Suspended by steel cables and wenches from a massive derrick, the ten-foot-wide bottom of the cylinder-shaped probe glowed bright red. With the twin diesel meltdown generators roaring as they powered the Vulcan’s internal heating elements, the probe began its descent into the ice.

Thick cables and a collection of high-pressure vacuum hoses ran bundled together down into the top of the Vulcan. The cables supplied the electricity for the heating elements that turned the solid ice to boiling water, and the hoses suctioned off the water through a series of intake holes in the probe’s head. The water traveled up through the hoses to a pump a few hundred yards away. There it sprayed out over the glacier and turned back into ice.

The Vulcan could melt through thirty feet of ice in a twenty-four-hour period. Working around the clock and with only two minor breakdowns, it took just over nine days before the probe reached the DC-4 260 feet below. Entombed for over fifty years in the frozen grip of the ice, Arctic Air Cargo 101 once again felt the rush of air on its skin.

“We’re there,” Dr. Bjoernsson said into the two-way radio.

“Coming, Peter,” Skyler answered. He and Gates left the command Quonset hut and walked over to the derrick supporting the Vulcan. They watched as the probe was pulled from the shaft and swung away.

“Would you like to do the honors?” Skyler asked Gates.

“Normally I would say yes, but this is definitely your show, Sky.”

With a nod and a broad smile, Skyler strapped on a harness connected to 100 meters of nylon rope. Swinging out over the edge of the shaft, he gave a confident salute before repelling down.

The light on top of his hard hat cast an eerie glow on the translucent walls — the black hole beneath him seemed endless and foreboding. Because the depth of the shaft extended below the water table, the constant dripping made it feel like he was in light rain.

With a thud, Skyler found himself standing on the partially exposed cowling of an airplane engine — its surface was battered and bumpy but intact. The blade of a propeller stuck out of the ice — its paint scarred and the tip bent back, evidence of a hard impact.

“What have you found?” Gates’ voice boomed out over the two-way radio strapped to Skyler’s waist.

“Contact Chief Inspector Smyth,” Skyler said with a grin. “Tell him to pack his bags.”

Based on the motor block’s serial number, Skyler confirmed that what he had first stood on was the DC-4’s #2 engine. That meant they had reached the plane’s left wing not far from the cockpit. Over the next two days, the hot-water hoses were used to melt through the ice in the direction of the fuselage. Once there, the crew started melting the ice toward the aft of the plane to locate the cargo door.

The glacier had not been kind to Arctic Air Cargo 101, Skyler thought as he stood back watching the slow melting process. The outer skin resembled the surface of the moon, pitted and dented from the force of crushing ice. The #2 engine had moved several inches forward, tearing it from its mounts, linkages and connections. Oil, once contained in the suspended animation of the frozen tomb, now covered the floor of the cave — its alien texture and color seemed to violate the virgin ice. As more of the fuselage was revealed, Skyler realized that even he had underestimated the force of the glacier. The plane had suffered a torturous death.

Over the last week, he had watched Rainer Knebel working with the Inuits. They seemed more than eager to do whatever the South African asked including working in round-the-clock shifts — an unusual characteristic. Skyler had had no such luck with them in the past. The locals usually worked on their own timetable, one that rarely synchronized with the outside world.

It was Rainer Knebel who woke Skyler from a deep sleep at 2:00 a.m. “You asked to be notified when we had the door cleared.” Knebel stood in the darkness of Skyler’s tent.

“Thanks.” He rolled out of his bunk and put on his heavy-weather gear.

It was snowing lightly as he followed Knebel out of the tent and over to the hut protecting the entrance to the shaft. The electric cage hoist was in operation since the shaft was completed, and the two men stepped onto its steel mesh floor. Knebel threw the power switch and the cage shuddered as it started down.

At the bottom, they made their way through the tunnel from the #2 engine to the side of the plane. Moving aft, they entered the cramped chamber where the hot water hoses had uncovered the cargo door. An Inuit used a gas torch to cut the last of the door’s outline. Sparks flew everywhere, and Skyler thought they gave the small ice chamber a shimmering ethereal luminescence.

The man switched off the torch and flipped up his protective visor. He turned around smiling to reveal a stubby beard and a mouth full of discolored teeth. A second man stood nearby holding a crowbar. With a nod from Knebel, the man inserted it into the newly cut seam. The resulting metallic screech reminded Skyler of a wounded animal’s cry as the large metal door was forced away from the fuselage. The first Inuit picked up another crowbar, working the opposite seam. A few moments later, the door fell with a dull clank onto the oil-stained ice floor. The two Inuits stepped aside as Knebel handed Skyler a lithium ion lantern and moved out of the way.

Skyler took a few steps until he stood at the mouth of the cargo bay. For a second, he was reminded of Howard Carter and how the Egyptian explorer must have felt when he first peered into the just-opened tomb of King Tut. Would he see wondrous things as Carter had or a jumbled mass of wood, wires and sheet metal?

He flicked on the light, and took a cautious step into the fuselage. As his eyes adjusted, he looked at the crumpled ceiling of the plane. It was cracked and bleeding stalactites of ice — the metal girders and supports were bent and twisted. Then he swept the beam revealing not the gold- and jewel-encrusted sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh, but something that certainly would prove even more valuable. Wooden crates — splintered, fractured and somewhat mangled, but miraculously intact — lay before him. The words Niagara Technologies, Buffalo, New York, were stenciled on the sides of each. They contained what Skyler knew would be the lost shipment — five thousand pounds of korium.

He continued swinging the light’s beam around the bitter cold cargo bay until it fell on an object in a dark corner near the bulkhead to his right. It was the body of a man sitting on the floor with his back against one of the crates. His limbs were stiff, his skin dark and leathery, an expression of despair on his face. He clutched a faded duffel bag in a frozen embrace.

Skyler aimed the lantern at the corpse. “And you must be Henry Bristol.”