The Fields of Eressa 1

Moulin /mu:lin/ noun 1. A vertical shaft in a glacier, maintained by a constant descending stream of water and debris.

ICE

Dr. Garrett Miller prayed his crampons would hold in the softening snow. Both hands held a volleyball-sized GPS float as he edged closer to the torrent of blue-white water at the foot of a slope of dirty ice.  Twenty meters downstream, the entire crashing cataract disappeared into “The Moulin,” a blue ice cavern capable of swallowing a two story house, if two story houses floated on melt rivers in Greenland, which of course they don’t, but if they did .... 

Garrett shook his head and tried to silence the absurd internal dialogue. That dirty blue to black abyss extended for nearly two miles to the bedrock beneath Greenland’s ice sheet, and he tried to drive from his mind what it might be like to be swept into that darkness. How far would one fall before hitting a pillar of razor-sharp ice or rock? Would one even feel it given the hypothermic state of one’s core temperature? But then, two minutes is a long time when one is trapped in an ice waterfall and ever accelerating with the gravitational constant. Not that one is in free-fall when body-rafting down an ice cave.

Garrett was tempted to “do the math,” but once again shook the thought out of his head and decided against his tendency to disassociate from his fears of immediate death, a death that would be much less likely if he concentrated on what he was doing. Besides, that calculation was untenable. Too many variables, while certain death was, well, certain.

 Vibrations from thundering white water radiated up though his old Asolo boots, and he wondered how normal this was for moulins of this size. His main research concerned ocean currents. As of two summers ago, ice dynamics had become a factor as data on Paleolithic freshwater pulses now graced the desks of bureaucrats worldwide. Research funding in oceanography now required the study of ice and moulins.

He had traveled by Snow Cat to this remote section of the ice cap because of the unprecedented size of this moulin, “The Moulin” as those at Geo Summit described it. Their descriptions fell utterly short of the actual terror only 20 meters downstream from the spikes attached to his left boot.  Seasonal melt of the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet created hundreds of surface rivers pouring into dozens of moulins, presumably much smaller than this one. Over the last five years, the melt was clearly accelerating. He would be documenting the consequence of that acceleration all arctic summer long.

Summer? Right! Temperatures hovered just above freezing, but with the intensity of the Arctic sunlight and a thin layer of cloud, it was warm enough to soften the entire surface of Greenland’s ice sheet, or play Frisbee in short sleeves. Past documentation of ice core sampling showed a 100% surface softening happened rarely, once in a 750 year period, and that the last such event was 150 years ago.  Now? This was the fifth summer in a row with full surface melt. Global warming’s thermometer was right here, and thus, the increase in these glacial water drains. Others documented and measured even last summer were much smaller. Worse, the way physics worked, there could well be more moulins as massive as this one. 

“So, how close is the ice sheet to catastrophic failure?” Garrett asked himself yet again.

 The general opinion of the geological and climate science communities speculated rapid failure at maybe fifty years from the present. Today, right here with the vibrations in the ice, and the periodic exhalations coming from the maw downstream numbing his cheeks, fifty years seemed irresponsibly optimistic. 

            “So… if rock vibrated like this ice, I wouldn’t attempt it even with a rope on, and I really don’t like ice climbing. And if this flakes? That is exactly what I’ll be doing. The hydraulic forces down there have to be immense, but then ice, especially old ice like this is tough stuff. Ah man! Here I go again. Stop freaking out and get this done. You’ve got a rope on and a belay, and you’ll be done in another ten minutes. And I can feel the snow balling up under my crampons. Man oh man!”

The rope clipped to his harness seemed a distant comfort with each tentative, crab-like step down the ever steepening ice slope.  He hesitated. The ice seemed even softer under his feet. Mushy snow paste packed in around the spikes under his boots. He would have to clear his crampons by hand. He began to lean toward the angled wall of blue ice.

            “Stop! Dr. Miller! What the hell! Get your ass over your feet! Now!”

The commands in a southern drawl exploded from his earpiece. Garrett arrested his motion and fought down the urge to drop the GPS float and scramble best he could back up the ice bank. He imagined what he must look like from her vantage point, a mere ten meters above him. Here was another geo-nerd affecting awkward baby-steps down an ice encrusted slope not even close to vertical, and nothing in his body language indicated confidence.  Self-evaluation marched through Garrett’s thoughts. Was he overly cautious? The roar of rapidly moving water disappearing into a blue-black cavern of ice hammered in his ears. 

            “Maybe you want to do this?” Garrett yelled into the mouthpiece angled next to his cheek.

            “Look. I’m sorry, but you lean like that and your crampons will come out. I’ve got you, but the ice is changing. I’ve got a bad feeling… I mean the ice screw will hold if you lose it. So I think you’re safe… Jesus! Just get the thing launched and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Grady McPherson replanted her crampons for the hundredth time. She was micro-managing again. She just didn’t want this setup to take a hard fall.  Her guts screamed that this was a bad idea, but there was a job to do, and the ice screw and rope and harnesses were just precautions. Others had done this without all this protection many, many times. This slope just wasn’t that steep. All these reasons, and her gut was still tied in knots, for no good reason whatsoever. But, the ice was much better last season. Hell, it was better yesterday. Sounds coming from the glacier were freaking her out. It was like the ice moaned in great pain.

            Garrett rolled his eyes and thought, “Great! Just great! I need a prankster on the other end of the rope!”  Aloud he waxed sarcastic, “I’m not Jesus and I’m getting a feel for this ice. It’s been awhile! But I am walking on water. Get it? The Jesus allusion, and the walking on water… only this is frozen, but it’s funny. Right? But you’re not laughing.”

            “Just sayin’ you lean like that again and we’ll both be… never mind! Just stay on your feet and get that thing in the water! We need that study. Bad.”

            Garrett crabbed down a couple more steps. He knew they needed it. The research data in which he had soaked himself for the past decade, and the satellite phone calls from Marius Koingsen, or Dr. K as his students referred to him, indicated what he was seeing all around him. Data was cold, sterile and safe. Field studies brought everything to life. Everything coming into his senses screamed of rapid change.

He and Grady had moved out of their remote research station only two days ago when the sink appeared underneath the Snow Cat. Overnight, the once solid snow sagged so much it had taken Chris’s O’Hara, nicknamed “the Crawler,” to pull it out.  Another two steps down. And, the glacial earthquakes in the south were now becoming more frequent in the north this spring. This meant huge sheets of ice were moving and creating tremors in the magnitude 6 range, even a magnitude7 earthquake on one rare occasion.

            “Why does my brain go there? Not now!”  Two more steps down, and two more. He called up to the jokester-research assistant above him, “I’m gonna try it. Give me a little slack. Not that much! Crap!”

            “Could you not yell into the mic? You’re ok. I’ve got you,” Grady breathed. “Look. We’re both nervous. I get it. Let’s just get this done.”

            Garrett knelt down with both hands wrapped firmly around the volleyball-sized white GPS float, head down toward the torrent rumbling just below him. He stretched out to his full length. He wasn’t close enough. He tried to stand, but his right crampon shifted, throwing Garrett off balance, and tipping him toward the edge. His climbing harness gripped through his Gortex pants and then loosened. Grady swore into his earpiece. He instinctively crouched and shifted his weight over his left foot. It held.

            “Thanks for the stop, Grady,” Garrett breathed.

            “Ok. Try not to do that again. I want to keep us both dry,” whispered Grady. Her belay seat had sloughed. 

“Ok. I can float the unit now,” said Garrett, “confirm the signal.”

“Yep. They got it.”

Garrett reached the float out and set it into the flow. The GPS unit bobbed in the flow, then rapidly rolled downstream over a standing wave, and then dropped into blackness.

“That is a whole lot of water going in without a known exit. All this is supposed to drain to the coast,” Garrett observed.

“Yeah, well, the ones in this area don’t. We’ve repeated the GPS thing maybe a dozen times over the last five years and haven’t found anything. But you know we’re like 150 miles from the coast.” Grady winced inside, “Actually 186 miles. Yeah. He knew that. God! I’m actin’ like a school girl.”

The ice shook. A gut clenching moan became a mind numbing roar and ice began cascading off the steep bank just on the other side of the narrow river.

            “Get up! Get up!” Grady’s voice screamed through his ear piece, but he was already on his feet and running up the sloping ice, careful not to step on the rope ahead of him. The dangerous loop below grew larger with each panicked step. Then the shock wave hit, and the ice slope convulsed, taking Garrett off his feet. He slid head first toward the glacial river and the black abyss. His harness bit and then gave and then bit again slowing him enough to see the icy blue water rising to meet him. An ear-numbing explosion and suddenly the whole river fell into a widening blue crack. In slow motion Garrett spilled over the edge.  He stopped. Chunks of ice fell into blackness. White blobs of water turned lazily in space, and sunlight glinted in rainbows from droplets just as the darkness swallowed them.

            Grady squeaked, “Stand up! Stand up! Screw’s pulling! Can’t… hold…”

            Garrett righted himself and kicked hard into the ice cliff, left then right. The spikes on the front of his boots held. The tension on his waist eased and his body tipped slightly backward.

            “Tension! Tension! Hold…”

            The harness bit again. He stopped. Everything stopped. An icy blast of wind swept up the back of his hair. His face, his right shoulder, arm and ribs were numb with the expectation of pain. He knew he’d taken some damage.

            “How much tension can you give me?”

            “Nothin’! You gotta climb. Lost the primary… it’s all me. You gotta climb. God! I hope you can do this. This is really, really bad. Go easy, but go now.”

            Garrett’s mind raced for a solution. Nothing but vertical ice to climb on… I’m hurt. I’ll know how badly in a minute, but my arm’s not working well. Hurts to move it. Gotta try for the ax, but don’t know if I can hold it. Protection’s blown… just her and me. Ah God help me! I fall and that’s two dead. This can’t happen to her. And we just don’t have time…. To Grady he yelled, “It’s not gonna happen… I got nothing solid above me. Get off belay! Do it!”

            “Like hell! Use your short axe!”

            “Stubborn gets two killed! You can’t help me.”

            “Shut! Up! Get the ax in!”

            He was already feeling for the nylon webbing clipped by a carabineer to his harness. His hand felt uncoordinated. Garrett leaned his forehead against hard ice as he whispered, “Look! This is dicey at best…” He found the gate and opened it. “…could go bad… really quick.”  Garrett found the loop, slipped his wrist through it, and unclipped the ice ax from his waist belt. “I won’t take you with me… get off belay… or I cut the rope.”

            Spikes of pain radiated up through his arm, but he gripped the handle, and swung high. The pick sank into the ice.  He leaned his weight onto the loop around his wrist; it felt like it might explode. Garrett reset his toe spikes, right then left. Everything held. He looked up. Almost fifteen feet of vertical.  Nothing looked solid. Even with two ice axes, his chances weren’t good. One more tremor and everything he clung to might just disintegrate into fragments. Then… there would be two dead.

            “Look! I don’t know what I’m doing… I’ve never done this. Nothing above me looks solid enough to climb on…. You gotta unclip. I’ll do this better if I’m not thinking about you. I want you to survive this. You got the slack now… do it!”

            “Shut up! I’m resetting the screw. Don’t move!” And then Garrett could hear her muttering to herself, “Only got one. What the hell was I thinkin’…. Wasn’t supposed to be ice climbin’… just a routine data collection… not good… not good! Nope. Ah shit! Just nothin’ any good. Garrett? I can’t get a good placement. Go a move at time. Make ‘em solid. You feel the tension. I’ll keep the rope tight as I can. Go!”

He tested his left hand, his free hand. It felt ok, but he couldn’t switch it to the ice ax now. So with his free hand, Garrett dug into his pocket and found his Swiss Army knife and opened the blade with his teeth. Breathing hard, he cut the rope.

            “What the… you son of a….”

            “One dead is better than two.”

Garrett tuned out her stream of language. The sound of scraping nylon against her mic told him she was running. Garrett looked at his knife and the stub of fraying nylon rope at his waist. His eyes focused on the saw blade tucked inside the knife. He raised it to his mouth, opened the saw blade with his teeth as the knife blade cut into his numb cheek. Blood ran freely and dripped from his chin. He wrapped the loop of parachute cord tied to his knife around his wrist and gripped the handle and stabbed the twin blades into the ice. He pulled gently. It wouldn’t hold much, but maybe….

            “I got my knife in the ice. What do I do?” Small chunks of ice rained down on him.

            Grady was breathing hard, “Which hand’s your ice ax in?”

            “Right.”

            “Move your right foot first. Don’t kick hard. Just enough to bury the spikes.” Heavy breathing and the staccato sounds of running. “Angle the knife into the ice slightly.” Breathing. “Use for balance. Rock climber?”

            “Yeah.”

           “You can do this.”

            A tremor ran through the ice. Garrett felt sick with fear, but he willed his feet to move. He shifted his weight to his right hand and reset his left foot closer to the center line of his body. It felt firm.  He kicked his right crampon in a few inches higher. Below, a roar of falling ice and warmer air blew up from the chasm forming under his feet, and then suddenly a blast of numbing cold pelted him with fragments of ice. He thought he could hear the ocean below him. Garrett shook the crazy thought out of his head and focused on straightening his legs while keeping weight on his ice ax.

            “Wait! Wait! Don’t move.”

            Garrett lifted himself up six inches, weighted his right foot, and right hand and balanced with the knife in his left. He stepped up with his left, kicked gently and buried his toe spikes. It felt solid, but the knife in the ice didn’t. He had to get his ice ax up higher. Ice continued to slough off the far bank. The now distant roar of water echoed up from below.

            Grady breathed, “I’m throwing a rope. Watch your head.”

            Garrett felt a sudden puff of wind and saw the rope snake down ten feet from his left. He heard Grady swear. The rope disappeared back up the ice wall. The wind was going to play hell with getting a rope to him. He couldn’t wait. He had to move, but he had too much weight on his right hand. It would have to be a quick jab up higher. Not the move he wanted to make. He willed the rope to find him.

            “How far off?”

            “Ten feet. Left.”

            “Comes again. Cover.”

            This time the rope slapped his back and something stung his left calf. Carabineer. He fished for the rope with his left hand; his knife dangled from his wrist. He found the rope, put it in his mouth, grabbed the carabineer, and clipped it to his belay loop.

            “I’m on!”

            Heavy breathing, “You’re not on. I got slack. Just a…”

            Deafening cracking. The ice wall convulsed and Garrett fell. Glancing hard off a sloping part of the wall, a moment of freefall, and he hit slush and then stinging ice water as the rope went tight. The shock of impact and submersion drove the air from his lungs, but instantly his head was free of the water so cold it burned. Rising slush-bucket water lifted him back up the ice wall. The rope pulled tight and kept pace with his ascent. Life-giving warmth leached from his body. His mind spoke of death in five minutes if he couldn’t get warm. He thought he could hear the whirr of the Snow Cat’s winch.

Where the ice wall now angled back from vertical into a steep slope, the water stopped rising, the harness around his waist went tight, and Garrett was dragged thirty feet up the slope. The ascending rope pulled him up and over a knife edge of ice and onto level ground. He stopped moving. His head throbbed and his ribs screamed pain with every short gasp of breath. His back and shoulders ached and pinched, but at least the aching cold was fading into numbness.  He tried to stand, but found it difficult. The world beyond his body seemed distant, unimportant. He fought through the pain of moving and tried to get his feet under him. He heard slushy footsteps rapidly approaching.

            “Oh shit, Garrett, you’re bleedin’. Can you stand up? You gotta walk with me! I can’t lift you.”

            Somebody grabbed his jacket collar and screamed, “Garrett!”

            He wondered, in the annals of last words, how many times the word “shit” appeared. Maybe just a few pages less than “This otta work.” He got his legs moving, but was still having trouble staying upright.

            “Yeah.” Heavy breathing. “Keep at it.” Strained words. “We gotta get you up.”

            He staggered to his feet and struggled to control his body. He staggered a few steps forward and felt himself falling. Grady swore and pulled at his jacket to get him standing again. Garrett focused his thought on leaning into her as he got to his feet and stepped. Something at the edge of his mind spoke of time and survival. A need he had. A need to lay down and rest, sleep maybe. No. No!  Absolutely not! A need to move. Keep moving. He could see only partially out of one eye. Ice, but he couldn’t wipe his eyes and not fall. He heard the crackling of a diesel engine.  Everything felt distant. Nonsensical words breathed into his ear.

            “Base. Come on talk to me. Base! Why the hell aren’t you answering! Ok.” Heavy breathing. “Gar… Garrett. I need you to get into the Snow Cat. Lift your feet. Come on. Step. Yeah, that’s it.”

            Through blurred vision, he saw his hand on the rail, felt his boot on the thin metal step. Lift. Step. Lift. Repeat. The door was already open and he fell into the relatively warm interior of the Snow Cat’s camper-like back end. He raised himself up and tried to unzip his Gortex parka, but was having trouble. Other hands finished the job, pulled his soaking wet T-shirt over his head.

            “Ok. Lay down.”

            Garrett woke to find Grady half naked laying across his bare chest. He could see the curve of her jaw beneath her short bobbed strawberry blond hair. He could feel her breathing into his chest. They were on the heated floor under unzipped sleeping bags spread out like blankets. Every breath he took registered pain from his ribs. His head ached and a tentative movement brought pain from his arms and legs. Grady lifted her head from his chest and shoulder.

            Garrett spoke first, “You taking advantage of my weakened state?”

            “For a geo-phyzz-head, you’re a dumb son of a bitch.”

            “Hypothermia. How bad?”

            Grady laid her head back down on his chest, “Ninety-one point six.”

            Garrett pondered this. Almost third stage. Close to a metabolic shutdown of external cell structures. He would have to be careful with his exposure to cold the next few days.

            “Thanks. I owe you one.”

            “Probably more than one. Ya beat yourself all to hell, but you’re a tough geo-phyzz-head. I’ll give ya that. Ya know today’s date?”

            “Uh, yeah. June 20th.”

            “And ya know what happened to ya?”

            “Fell fifteen some odd feet into a puddle of slush; at least the first fall, and then you dumped me into an ice pool. And…”

            “Ya remember cutting your rope?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Do that again and I’ll kill ya.”

            Grady shifted her weight and Garrett could feel her body move on his. There was pleasure in the touch of her skin in spite of pain calling in from all over. 

“Yeah. You’re warm enough. Close your eyes.”

            Garrett closed them as Grady slid out from under the sleeping bags, stood, turned her bare back to him, and quickly dressed. It was cool enough for a sweater inside the Snow Cat’s back enclosure they called the “Backseat,” which served as a small mobile research lab and sleeping quarters.

            “Like I said, you’re a little beat up. I steri-stripped and glued some cuts together and the knife wounds to your cheek and your side. Really amazin’ how ya managed all that… and you’ve got ice cuts and abrasions on your face, arms and back. Your butt’s fine. Actually kind a nice. I took some pictures. Hope ya don’t mind, but let’s get you in a bunk. Ya can open your eyes.”

            Garrett ignored the ‘butt’ comment. He didn’t want to think about her getting his core temperature. Pictures? She was kidding. He was pretty sure she was. He got to his feet unassisted. Breathing hurt. Everything hurt, but there was no feeling of bone grating on bone. The ribs weren’t broken, just felt like it. 

“Seriously. Thanks for the help. You have a tough kind of courage to… I mean I love what… what you tried to do…“ Garrett fumbled for words, then finally blurted, “What’s happening to the ice?”

            Grady sat in one of the fixed chairs opposite the bunk bed as she slipped on sock liners and then socks, “Lots of calving, judging by the sounds, and more glacial quakes. If you can move, we should get a film study. It sounded really dramatic. There was all this thunderous crackin’ during twilight, guessing about two or three this morning. Couldn’t get to a laptop… ”

She stood and fished some black pants out of a translucent plastic bin, sat and slipped them on over her Hello Kitty long underwear,  “…since I was warmin’ up your cold ass.”

She stopped short of zipping up her pants, wagged her finger at him and smirked, “You know, you really need to make the first time far more excitin’. All you did was lay there and groan a little.”

            Garrett heard an undertone of rebuff. He tested his body flexing leg, abdomen and back muscles. Nothing eased the pain, but he could function.

 “Maybe you could find me aspirin… and some clothes.” He sat up slowly. Sudden pain stabbed through his head.

Grady shook her head and said, “No.”

            “Head trauma?”

            “Yep. Well maybe. Y’all didn’t lose consciousness. I think ya just slept, but we ain’t gonna risk it.”

And she handed him a nylon bag of clothes out of his backpack and slipped the lanyard with her glacier glasses over her head.

“From now on, when ya put on a rope, ya put on a helmet.” She finished buttoning up her outer shirt and reached for her parka. “I’m goin’ out and seein’ what kinda fix we’re in. Radio’s on.”

Grady stepped from the iron ladder and began her tour of the ice. She had a lot to think about. The changes to the topography couldn’t be more dramatic. What had been a half mile wide flat plain of ice between two mountain ridges was now a lake surrounded by ice cliffs. To her left, a mile or so beyond the lake, the ridge lines opened out onto the icy plain, still dotted with shallow ponds of blue water. In front of her, the edge of the chasm that swallowed the river yesterday was now much closer to the Snow Cat, but now the chasm had become a continuously expanding lake extending maybe a quarter mile into the open plain. She estimated a ninety foot drop from where she stood down to the lake’s surface.

“Yep. That drop would’ve killed us both.” A chill of acknowledgement ran up her spine.

And the plain beyond the lake hosted a thousand aqua blue, amoeba shaped ponds dotting the surface of blinding white ice as far as the eye could see.  As she watched, some of the ponds were merging into small surface lakes and some were joining streams that became rivers, disappearing into the ice. New moulins had formed. Several within eyesight. A cold chill ran through Grady. Why so much melt so quickly? Yes. New moulins formed, but not like this. White reflected sunlight. Blue ice and blackened, dirty ice absorbed sunlight. The radiant heat contributed to melt. It was the simplest of many feedback loops the research teams had been studying. But this was ridiculous.

This was her fifth summer in Greenland, and her third summer on the ice as the designated “ice bitch” – a title she took seriously. And she almost had her first fatality. First and second. If Garrett hadn’t cut her loose, she couldn’t have rigged the rope to the winch. But he couldn’t have known that. He didn’t cut the rope for his own damn survival, but for hers. She let that thought simmer awhile.  Her throat tightened. No man she’d ever known had even come close to that kind of thing. She had known a couple of them, and in the biblical sense, and they were all appetite and bullshit. Garrett? Well, he might be…. 

“Nope. Get that thought right outta your head, girl. We ain’t going back there. And besides, there’s a ring on his finger.”

But, would she even be alive to think about all this if he hadn’t? And with the only ice screw she could set compromised? Yeah. She wouldn’t let that happen again. Ever. That was close. Way, way too close. And the ice… the ice had seriously degenerated over the last two years. Earlier spring melts and later fall freezes. Accelerated calving along the coasts. Whole lakes disappearing overnight into the ice. But why had this deep lake formed, the one in which Garrett almost froze to death? A collapse like that almost never happens. But it did last summer and took a team of five.

Grady muttered to herself, “Things ain’t the same now. I got to think differently.”

 All the lakes forming on the ice were shallow, but this one appeared to have no bottom. The aqua blue at the edges fell into deep black that began at the median and seemed to extend nearly to the opposite shore. But it was hard to see through all the floating ice. She had heard of two others like this last summer. But when she led a team there, they were gone, just a deep blue valley where they had been.

She looked up beyond the Snow Cat to where the snowfield sloped up, gently rising into a pure white mountain whose distant summit was almost a thousand feet above their current position. Barely visible, two false summits lay between them and the ridgeline that connected to the main ice sheet extending to the very top of Greenland. Summit. The main research station with the unoriginal name “Summit” lay 243 miles in that direction. At “Summit,” the bedrock was some two and half miles below the surface of the ice field on which research station sat isolated like an island in a blinding white sea. The bedrock was pressed well below sea level by the weight of the glacier. Two and a half miles of solid ice. Old stable ice. Ice they’d been drilling into for more than three decades. Drilling sites now showed traces of free water in old ice. That discovery had everybody freaking out. She and Garrett and Kristine and Christopher had been sent out on this data collection tour because of it.

Summit had always maintained radio contact with the remote teams. Chris and Kristine had started back to Summit in the newly donated O’Hara SM 100, a tracked workhorse they called the “Crawler”. They’d left in the early hours of yesterday morning. Not that early hours meant anything up here. It troubled Grady that they hadn’t checked in since then. It was even more troubling that they hadn’t answered her distress calls to Summit. Ok. They were hooking up and could’ve been distracted when she called, but something was wrong, bad wrong.

“Grady.” Garret’s voice in her ear interrupted her contemplations.

“Yeah?”

“Just heard from Summit. They’re evacuating. We’re heading back. Now.”

“Excuse me?”

“There is a C 130 at Summit. We’re evacuating. They’re loading people and portable equipment. The Air Force found a sink in the landing strip. So the airstrip is becoming unusable, and once they take off in a few days, they won’t land again until the ice firms up. And, there are new data.”

“Somebody’s yankin’ your chain. There’s miles of ice under Summit.”

“Right. There are other instabilities. Stan’s group found two more cracks indicating movement. With a little drilling, they got a probe down the largest one. There’s water pressing up into the fissures and the indicators are that liquid water goes all the way to the bedrock. It’s indirect confirmation of Dr. K’s theory. It may be connected to what we’re seeing here. ”

“Right.” Grady tried to keep her sarcasm out of her voice, “so there’s geo-thermal activity down there. The volcano in the northeast quadrant been creatin’ localized melt for decades, ain’t no big thing! Why am I talking like this? This guy’s a world class scientist. What the hell do I know? Cuz I’m scared to death. That’s why.”

“The telemetry data have been crunched. After decades of losing mega tons of ice, the land is lifting. They think they’ve got confirmation of increasing geothermal activity. Like a Yellowstone Park sized super volcano under ice, or something like that. They’re going with the outside chance it’s big and it’s effecting the surface ice.”

“Uh uh. No. That can’t be…  Oh Lord in heaven!”

 “Hold on.”

Garrett stopped transmitting, and in the radio silence, Grady surveyed once again the panorama of white ice, aqua blue ponds, running streams, and the ominous blackness of the lake.  She couldn’t think, couldn’t feel it. A super volcano? Under the ice sheet? The thickest part of the ice cap softening?

“The geeks are no doubt excited as hell,” she thought.

All their talk came into her head.

“Not an erupting kind. More like a giant hot mud pit. Naw. It’ll explode. Freeze us all out. New ice age. Gaia’s cure for global warming.”

“Yeah. All that…”

She wondered if they are still all that excited, now that it’s looking real.

“Nope. The geeks are probably looking in storage for Pampers.   But, what a fix!”

 Suddenly, a crashing explosion thundered down the valley. The opposite cliff of ice calved all the way from the water below to the top of the cliff. Then the glacier she stood on shuddered. Down the valley toward the plain, massive cliffs of ice suddenly sheared and crumbled. The white monolithic solidarity of the plain fractured in waves and swallowed all the debris. Geysers of water and massive chunks of ice shot into the air. Massive hills of ice suddenly rose 600 feet above the chaos and disintegrated. More cracks radiated out from the impact zone. The distant scene was suddenly obscured by a thickening haze. She felt vibrations continue under her feet.

“Oh God! This glacier’s moving.”

Grady ran to the cab of the Snow Cat. Opening the door, she found Garrett already in the driver’s seat. He was shirtless and shivering. She climbed into the ‘Backseat’ to retrieve a sweater as she heard the diesel engine crackle to life, and felt the Snow Cat jerk into motion as it started backing up the slope toward the top of the ridge. As Grady made her way to the back to the cab, she heard Garrett talking to someone at Summit.

“…won’t wait. Something’s feeding the melt in the valley here. We need to know if the sub-glacial lake is expanding and what kind of communication it has with what’s occurring under Summit if any. If there’s a connection, we’re all in real trouble.”

A voice familiar to Grady was audible above the engine noise, “Garret. Look. I’m sure what you’re looking at is amazing, but we got to get through this drill with the safety council. The crack’s got everybody freaking out because Dr. K thinks it’s the geothermal thing he’s been theorizing about. He’s convinced everybody the ice here is destabilizing.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not making myself clear. Where we are, 384 clicks downhill from you, it’s just over three kilometers to bedrock. We have active ice movement everywhere. The whole valley and the plain beyond are collapsing. If the flow Dr. K is looking at feeds into this two hundred kilometer long valley, the only exit to the ocean is near…”

“Jakobshavn. Look. I got it. I’m just saying you’ve got to give us a few days till everybody up here calms down. We’ll evacuate. The Air Force will do its due diligence. We’ll come back when the thin clouds clear and everything freezes again. Maybe a week at the outside. Then we can…”

Grady threw herself into the passenger’s side of the bench seat and yelled, “Who the hell are you?”

“Hi Grady. It’s Jerrod. Great to hear your…”

“Shut up! You don’t got your ears on. The whole ice sheet is coming apart down here. I’m talking massive calving like it was in a fjord. Water geysering up through cracks a half mile away. And we have an upper valley that’s turned itself into a lake overnight. And the whole plain down here is disintegrating into soup. Hear this Jerrod! It looks like sea ice breaking up. I’ve been five years on this ice. Nothin’ we’ve ever seen looked this bad.”

“Grady. I know you’re excited. And really, I love it, but…”

“Hey Jerrod. Dr. Miller again. Just do a GPS sweep of our sensor stations. Let’s at least find out what’s moving and where. Look. We’ve been talking about sub-glacial lakes, ice dams, and their failures for a decade. We might be facing that kind of event now. And what we’re seeing here represents an unexpected amplification of all those threats. All this is consistent with the super volcano scenario. We know now there is a sub-glacial lake under Summit. And if it has room to migrate… well, we don’t have a week at the outside. We might have days if we’re lucky.”

“Sure. But the system is down for a couple of days. Maybe I can find a laptop… but what difference will that make? It’s going to take you a couple of days or so just to get back in. We’ll all be off the ice for a while. Maybe even get home. By that time…”

“I took a fall and I’m in more than a little pain. I may not be communicating well. Let me try again. If we’ve reached the tipping point, exponential progression means two days can make all the difference. And if we’re looking at the precursor to a massive fresh water pulse consistent with…”

“It’s Garret, right?”

“Yes. It’s Dr. Garrett Miller.”

“Umm. You’re kinda like the new kid in town, and it sounds like you’re a disciple of Dr. K’s work. Just to give you the heads up, Dr. K doesn’t have the dominant theoretical…”

Ear splitting concussion broke the conversation. The Snow Cat swayed on its treads. Garrett smashed down the accelerator. The whole slope of ice below them convulsed and miles of ice fractured along their side of the ridge, crashing toward the expanding inland sea below. A massive wave of water and ice rolled down toward the valley and broke out onto the plain. The death roar of rock and ice persisted and hammered at their ears as the Snow Cat tilted up and over the first ridge and into a small swale above the grinding wreckage below. What had been an ice sheet covered by shallow pools and aqua blue streams was now a seething inland sea choked with bobbing chunks of ice. The thought of the ice they drove on collapsing into the chaos below churned in Grady’s gut. She prayed for time. Garrett put the Snow Cat into a lower reverse gear and accelerated up the slope behind them.

“I’m thinkin’ of where we were yesterday. We’re damn lucky to be alive,” Grady said over the clanking of snow cat treads.

Garrett looked pale and addressed Jerrod, “Are you getting the video feed?”

“Ah, no. Like I said before. That system’s powered down till after the…”

Grady interrupted, “Jerrod! You got puddin’ for brains! Get someone in a chopper and find out what the hell we’re dealin’ with. Or at least come and get us. You don’t know what you’re sayin’ or who you’re talkin’ to.”

“Right. I’ll see what I can do to get a really expensive ride for you two. I’m gonna have to get that through channels, and I’ll radio you when I know something. Been nice talking to you two. Oh yeah. One more thing. Have you heard from the Chris squared team? As of late, they haven’t been good with their check-ins. It’s been almost 48 hours, and nobody’s got that kind of stamina.”

Garrett and Grady could hear Jerrod talking to someone else, “Yeah. Yeah. I know. Uh, hey kids, I’m getting the signal to wrap this up and.… Oh Holy….”

“Jerrod!” yelled Grady.

“Nope. He’s gone. Did he just pull the radio?”

Grady sat back and rubbed her face with both hands, “Probably. But there’s something else. He only says “Holy Mother of God” when he’s scared. Catholic. I’ve got a bad feelin’ about this. A really, really bad feelin’. Dr. Miller? Why are we still on this iceberg?”

“Hold on. I’m trying to get him back. Radio network still works even when everything else is powered down, right? We should be getting some radio noise. I’m not getting anything, or anyone on any channel. Any ideas?”

“None that I want to think about, but maybe somebody pulled the wrong cable, you know, shut down the radio network. I know. None of that makes sense. Just wouldn’t happen. Do we head up the hill and wait for a ride?”

“I think we make our way back to Summit and wait with everybody else. I just hope there is time.”

Below, the thunder of falling ice and rock echoed down the long valley toward Jakobshavn.