Pandora's Curse

THE DENMARK STRAIT

The wave smashed into the bow of the Njoerd like a torpedo strike, blasting up an explosion of white froth that showered the forward windows and fell back to the deck, pooling deep and green before racing for the scuppers. The ship dropped into the following trough, her steep bows cleaving a wedge of seawater at the very bottom before her twin props hauled her to the next crest.

Mercer peered through the shimmering water still sliding from the armored glass in the ship’s wardroom. Ira Lasko was at his elbow. As his view cleared, he saw that the sea was calm. The wave had been a rogue. “Where’d that come from?”

“Just Mother Nature reminding us not to get too comfortable,” Lasko drawled. “Waves like that are why I went into submarines. Twenty-two years in the Navy and the only times I ever got seasick were on bumboats and sub tenders.”

They turned away from the window. Marty Bishop was at one of the Formica tables with Igor Bulgarin and another of his teammates, a German meteorologist named Erwin Puhl. Puhl was in his early forties but looked older because he was so tall and stooped. Little of his hair remained and what fringed his head was gray and poorly washed. He wore thick glasses perched on a large bony nose. His posture and features reminded Mercer of a vulture’s, and his gloomy mien did little to dispel the perception.

The Geo-Research people and off-duty crewmen occupied the other tables in the brightly lit wardroom. Greta Schmidt and Werner Koenig held court at a head table. It seemed the segregation that had existed at breakfast would last a while longer. All through dinner and the lecture that Koenig had given afterward, no one other than Igor and his people had approached Marty Bishop’s team. In fact, Mercer had noted the Njoerd’s crew wasn’t overly communicative with them either. Whenever an officer came to tell the expedition something, like their sailing time to Ammassalik, he would go straight to Koenig and have him make the announcement rather than simply telling the whole room. It was strange. Scientific jealousy was nothing new to Mercer, but this continued secretiveness was getting ridiculous.

“When Soviet Union was still a country,” Igor said, continuing the story he’d started before the wave had sent a shudder through the Njoerd and elicited a collective gasp from its passengers, “I was on research ship much larger than this one. It was cooperative expedition with a dozen French scientists on board. Not only were we not allowed to talk to them unless a KGB watcher was in room, but we had to report everything said if we happened to pass in the halls.” He looked to where Schmidt and Koenig were laughing at someone’s joke. “I know now how French felt. Is no room in science for egos or secrets. All scientists should be as one.”

Mercer nodded. “It’s a nice thought, Igor, but you know as well as I do that scientists are some of the most childish and vindictive people in the world.”

“Da.” The big Russian laughed at a memory. “We discover after expedition that French had stolen much equipment and all of our data.”

“What were you doing on a ship?” Ira Lasko asked over the rim of a coffee cup. “I thought you’re some kind of astronomer looking for chunks of space rock.”

“I was meteorologist, like Erwin,” Igor replied. “I give up weather research for planetary geology.”

Mercer cocked an eyebrow at him. “Looking for the big one that’ll wipe us out like the dinosaurs?”

“If it comes, I want plenty warning. Many women I need to see before time runs out.” He laughed at his own joke.

“Tell me, Mercer,” Marty invited, changing the subject. “How do those chemical melters we’ve got with us work? Charlie said you’re the real expert.”

“We’re going to have to hand dig down to the firn line, that’s the demarcation plane between granular snow and solid ice. Then we work with the hotrocks. Once our preliminary shaft is sleeved with plastic to hold back the snow, I mix the chemicals at the bottom. The trick is to layer the stuff so the ice melts evenly. Weights attached to the bottom section of sleeving keep it pressed down to the ice and hold the melt water in the tunnel. Pumps will take care of the water. As the chemicals become diluted and lose their potency, we make sure the shaft’s pumped dry and then repeat the process again.”

“Why not just use hot water to melt the ice away?”

“Too difficult to control. Without enough pumps, you end up with a big cone-shaped hole that’s so wide at the base it’ll collapse in on itself. Also, even if you use a hot-water heater suspended on a cable, you need a massive amount of fuel to bore a shaft of any depth. Since Camp Decade is only about thirty feet down, the chemical heat is the most efficient. We need just a single pump, no fuel-hungry boilers, and the chemicals themselves. I counted twenty barrels on the deck when I came aboard, which is more than enough.”

“And you think the three of us can handle it?” Ira asked.

“Four would have been better. Since we can borrow someone from Geo-Research, we should be okay,” Mercer answered and glanced over Marty’s shoulder to see Werner Koenig approaching.

When their eyes met, Koenig smiled broadly and put out his hand. “You have to be Mercer. Willie Haas said to say hello and remind you that, the next time you’re in Hamburg, you’re buying dinner.”

Mercer laughed, totally unprepared for the German’s easy use of English and friendly greeting. “You tell Willie that his taking me to McDonald’s the last time I saw him doesn’t count for a real meal.” He shook Koenig’s hand. “How do you know him?”

Willie Haas was a staff geologist for a German mining concern that had hired Mercer for a consulting job a few years ago. The two saw each other about once a year, usually at trade conferences.

“We’ve been friends since our days at university,” Werner explained. “He told me you saved his company a fortune when you worked for them. He’s convinced you sold your soul to the devil for your geological insights.”

“I bartered my soul to escape hangovers,” Mercer joked. “The insight comes from a Ouija board.”

“Whatever works.” Werner smiled. “I’m glad to have you with us. With Greenland’s surface covered by a few miles of ice, there won’t be much for you to study, but I bet your skills will come in handy anyway. In fact, when we get our ice-coring drill running, I would appreciate if you took a look at the samples we draw up to the surface.”

“I’d be delighted,” Mercer answered. Koenig was making the first effort to breach the gulf between his team and the others, and for that, Mercer was thankful. That task should have fallen on Marty Bishop since the Surveyor’s Society had ruined Geo-Research’s plans, but Mercer didn’t think Bishop understood how important it was to keep all three teams as cohesive as possible.

Koenig had a cloth bag in one hand, and he reached in to extract a small green bottle of brennivin, the Icelandic version of aquavit commonly known as Black Death. “I’ve prohibited alcohol at the base camp for safety reasons. However we won’t reach Ammassalik until noon tomorrow, so sharing a few bottles tonight won’t do any harm.”

“Mighty neighborly of you,” Bishop said, taking the bottle and twisting off its cap. He poured a measure into his empty coffee cup and passed the bottle to Ira Lasko.

Koenig knelt next to Mercer so only he could hear what he said next. “Greta told me what happened this morning, about your confrontation outside the hotel.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t call it a confrontation, just a simple misunderstanding.”

“Yes, well, she can be… difficult. I have not seen her for about a year, and she is very different from the woman I once knew. The woman I almost…” He wanted to say “married” but couldn’t. “Anyway, she was made number two person on this expedition over my objections, and if she tries to overstep her bounds, please tell me.”

“I thought you made all the personnel decisions for Geo-Research,” Mercer said to cover his confusion. Koenig’s admission wasn’t something he had expected.

“Normally, yes. This trip is a little different. You see, I no longer own Geo-Research and my parent company wanted her along. She is dating my new boss. You know how it is.” He stood suddenly as if he’d said too much. “Enjoy the brennivin, gentlemen.” He moved on to have a few words with those at the next table and give them a bottle of their own.

Igor Bulgarin eyed the caraway-flavored liquor with a glassy look. He stood abruptly. “I must wish you a good night.” This startled everyone but Erwin Puhl. “I’m afraid I like alcohol a bit too much. One drink becomes ten and laughter becomes tears. Quickly my hands become fists. Is best I leave now. But watch out for Erwin. Turn your back and bottle gone” — he snapped his fingers — “just like that.”

The dour Puhl’s face split into an impish smile. “I’ve never taken that long to finish a bottle of anything.” After Igor left the wardroom, Erwin poured himself a dram. “He’s been sober for about a year. It’s still tough for him to be around alcohol.”

“Known him long?”

Before Puhl answered, his eyes swept the room as if he were afraid of being overheard. “Eighteen years or so. I studied at Moscow University when East Germany was still a Soviet satellite, and I worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences up until the Wall came down in 1989. We have worked together a few times since then.”

“What’s the goal of your team?” Mercer asked.

“We are at the end of a particular solar cycle that culminates in an event called the solar max, a time of intense sunspot activity and the ejection of tremendous volumes of charged particles. It’ll disrupt communications and power distribution all over the globe. We’re going to measure the intensity of the particles as they follow earth’s magnetic lines. So far north, the activity should be particularly intense.”

“Isn’t there some big religious meeting on a cruise ship coming up this way to take advantage of the aurora borealis?” Ira asked.

“The Universal Convocation,” Erwin answered at once. “The route’s a secret but I heard they’re going to circle Iceland from the north. If they want inspiration from above, they’re going to get it.”

Mercer wasn’t really listening to their conversation. He was thinking about what Koenig had told him and decided to do nothing with the information. He had enough to do without worrying about Geo-Research’s internal squabbles. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see an undercurrent of tension between Greta and Werner. It was actually more a unidirectional thing. Greta seemed secure in her position. It was Werner who was uncomfortable. Mercer felt bad for him, imagining what it must be like to work with a former lover, especially since it appeared Koenig had yet to get over her.

He finally took a sip of the brennivin and nearly choked. “This stuff’s like drinking gravel.” As he spoke, he adjusted his Tag Heuer back an hour to put it on Greenland time. “I’m going to call it a night. We should recheck our equipment before we reach Ammassalik.”

During a severe winter, pack ice extended all the way from Greenland to Iceland, a distance of about three hundred miles. This ice wasn’t the cause of the North Atlantic’s famous icebergs. Those calved from glaciers on Greenland’s west coast. Rather, the pack ice was a frozen surface accumulation that reached only a few yards in thickness. It melted as it broke up and offered little hazard to navigation during summer. The difficulty reaching Greenland came from the fact that the deepwater fjords that ring the island like a necklace were ice choked until early July and refroze again in late September. The three-month window is the only time that ships can call on the few settlements on the eastern coast.

As the Njoerd nosed her way toward the Ammassalik Fjord, thin ice still layered much of the water, which was dotted with huge bergs held immobile like white islands. The ship rammed her way through. None of the expedition members were allowed on the bridge during icebreaking operations, so the best view was from the forward windows in the wardroom.

When Mercer arrived the next morning, he found himself alone except for the cooks preparing breakfast in the galley. He poured a cup of coffee from the continuously refilled urn and took a seat. In moments he realized that the ice was too thin and rotten to make an impression on the Njoerd. Even at a slower speed, she knifed through the pack without check. If it weren’t for the scrape of ice against her hull plates and the occasional slab that showed above her bows before being thrust aside, he wouldn’t have known they had reached the pack.

“Morning,” Ira Lasko called as he entered the wardroom. He went to the coffee urn before joining Mercer.

“Looks like you need to shave.”

Ira ran a hand around the circle of stubble on his otherwise bald head, and chuckled. “I’m thinking about letting it grow in. How’s the show?”

“Icebreaking’s more dramatic on television.”

“If we’d tried this even a month ago, we wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Ammassalik.”

“How do people live up here?”

“Most of the fifty thousand people on Greenland are native Inuits. While they’ve become dependent on Denmark for a lot of their supplies, I think they’d be fine if the Danes left ’em alone too.”

“I was reading a guidebook on the flight from the States that said Greenland’s Inuits can understand the native languages spoken in Alaska. They’re separated by a quarter of the world and fifteen hundred years of isolation and the languages are still recognizable. Remarkable when you consider that we need dictionaries to help us understand the subtleties of Shake-speare and he’s only been dead for five hundred years.”

“Have you listened to a teenager recently? I can barely understand them, and it’s only been a single generation.” They laughed and Lasko added, “Speaking of teenagers, I ran into Marty in the hallway next to the bathroom last night and he reeked of perfume. Looks like he’s going to have some fun even if he doesn’t want to be here.”

The dining room filled slowly as others came awake and went in search of coffee and food. Marty was one of the last to come to breakfast, and all through the meal he kept glancing over at a young German girl who was Geo-Research’s assistant camp cook. When their eyes met, the brunette would blush and look away demurely.

“Get enough sleep, Marty?” Ira teased.

Bishop looked wolfish. “No, and I don’t think I’ll get much tonight either.”

After breakfast, the Society team went back to their cabins for their parkas and then met on the deck. A steady wind blew across the ship, carrying with it the clean smell of ice and sea. The temperature was thirty-five degrees but the sun was warm. As they checked over their gear, layers of clothes were stripped away. While they were working, Werner Koenig approached to talk about the potential dangers they could face on the ice and warn them about not allowing themselves to sweat.

“If you’re away from the camp and your clothes become sweaty, your body heat will leach away so fast you’ll be dead before you know it. That goes especially for your boots. We’ll be wearing moon boots on the ice, and they heat up fast and take forever to dry out. If your boots get wet from your feet sweating, get out of them immediately or you’re going to get frostbite. It takes less time than you think, so just get back to the camp and change.” He moved on to give the same advice to Igor Bulgarin’s team.

Most of the loose equipment had been stored in the four Sno-Cats or their towed trailers. The machines were big boxy vehicles resembling tracked moving vans, painted red with a decal for Geo-Research affixed to their front doors. Their tracks were heavily notched, like a bulldozer’s, and extended beyond the cabins to give them a wide footprint that distributed their weight better over soft snow. Two of the trailers were basically boxes standing ten feet tall and about twenty-five feet long. They were painted a matching shade of red and mounted on spring-cushioned skis. The other two trailers were open and held sections of prefabricated walls for the base-camp buildings. There were also a few preloaded pallets of gear: fuel drums, floors and roofs for the buildings, the Society’s chemical heat, and crates of food that would be carried directly to Camp Decade by the rotor-stat.

“Why the hell don’t they lug all this stuff right to the site with the blimp?” Ira complained as he rooted through a trailer, looking for lengths of hose for their pump.

“Cost and insurance,” Marty said. “The rotor-stat is still experimental and its owners aren’t willing to use it to lift equipment from a ship at sea. Liability issues if something goes wrong, I imagine. That means we have to be tied up to a pier. And I guess it’s only rated to carry one Sno-Cat and trailer at a time. Fully loaded, these rigs weigh about thirty tons. Geo-Research wasn’t willing to pay for that many trips from Ammassalik to the base camp, so they decided to drive the ’Cats overland and have the rotor-stat make only a couple of runs with the fuel and the other heavy stuff. It’s a pain in the ass, but saved about fifty grand.

“And since we’re paying for the right to join their expedition,” he added, “the burden of driving the ’Cats to Camp Decade falls on us.”

“Geo-Research is sending a few of their people with us, aren’t they?” Mercer asked.

“Yeah, in case something goes wrong.”

“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 clinging to the distant mountains. He knew instinctively that it was the reflection of the setting sun on the vast ice sheet. He felt a deep pull in his chest and was more relaxed than he’d been in a long time.

When he was prospecting in the field, Mercer was always the expedition leader, and he was forced to deal with the hundreds of details that cropped up on a daily basis. It wasn’t an ego issue. He actually preferred to fade into the background. But when a mining company was paying him thousands of dollars a day, sitting back wasn’t an option. They expected results. On this trip, it was refreshing not to have that kind of responsibility. Mercer wouldn’t have to deal with the burden of command. That fell on Werner Koenig, who seemed more than qualified to handle any emergencies, and Marty Bishop, who was starting to show interest.

Mercer took a deep breath, feeling the burn of icy air in his lungs. It was so clean it left his head spinning for an instant. This was one of those moments of pure happiness, a precious and rare feeling that he savored with each moment it lasted. He laughed aloud as the glow of reflected light faded to blue and then vanished altogether.