The Elicon

by Rob Roth

  “Blimey, Dooley, I still don’t get this. Why did you add cubes to all those other cities?” Allison asked with a confused look on her face.

  “Hey guys, sorry to interrupt your fun,” Jace said, “but I just got a very interesting email from one of my geology contacts, Dr. Nils Jansen. He was responding to one of the notes I blasted out a few weeks ago. I thought you might be interested in this. Let me read it.

  “Dr. Larkin, so good to hear from you. It has been a couple years at least since we collaborated on the Cape York Meteorite project. That was a very interesting time for me, and I greatly enjoyed our days together at the American Museum of Natural History. Which brings me to my response regarding your question asking if anyone encountered ‘blue dust’ at or near any meteorite sites. Last year I was involved in a field expedition to the Hiawatha Glacier impact crater. As you may know, many think this is the main impact site of the Cape York meteor. While we were there, a sudden storm came upon us, and we sought shelter in a crevice, to protect us from the brunt of the storm. That crevice was actually the beginning of a cave system that seemed to head in a downward direction toward the crater. Fortunately, the storm abated, and we were able to escape unharmed. But when we crawled out of the crevice we noticed our white parkas were covered in blue powder.

  I will be publishing the journal of our travels, and our struggle to survive the storm, in six months or so, but thought I would give you the information about the mysterious blue powder now. How did you come to hear about 'blue dust', and how is it related to meteorites? It has me quite puzzled. Anyway, I am sending you the coordinates of the crevice, which we had captured via our GPS."

  "Based on Nils’ email, I’m afraid we may only have a limited time to find and eliminate that source until Heissman gets wind of it," Jace finished.

  “Isn’t that in Greenland?” asked Allison. “I seem to recall hearing something about the Hiawatha Glacier, and an impact site found below the ice.”

  “Yes, it is,” replied Jace. “About twelve thousand years ago, the Cape York asteroid slammed into our atmosphere, and broke up into meteorites that landed in northwestern Greenland. It’s quite a fascinating story. The Inuit in that region found three large iron meteoric rocks more than a thousand years ago. They named them ‘tent’, ‘dog’, and ‘woman’ based on a legend explaining where they came from.

  “Anyway, these three big rocks of iron are what ushered in the iron age in this region before the tenth century. They learned how to chip off pieces and cold forge them into tools just by impacting the iron with rocks and working the iron into knives and other utensils. Inuit were very protective of the site because of the benefit it brought them, but eventually Robert Peary located the three meteorites through Inuit guides. Since he could purchase and deliver iron to the Inuit whenever they wished, they were no longer as concerned about preserving those rocks. So, Peary negotiated with the Inuit and brought the meteorites to the American Museum of Natural History more than one hundred years ago.

  “The largest meteorite, ‘tent’, which Peary renamed ‘Ahnighito’ is the second largest meteorite ever recovered on Earth. Dr. Jansen and I were doing some composition analysis on it a couple years back. It weighs something like 68,000 pounds and is about nine feet long. But all these meteorites were lying on the ground. A few more were recovered too — for a total of eight I believe — but no impact crater was found.

  “Then, awhile back a team examining satellite photos noticed what appeared to be a crater underneath the Hiawatha Glacier, a remote area in northern Greenland a hundred miles or so from the meteorites, and about a half-mile underneath the ice. Scientists speculate the largest fragment from Cape York hit there twelve thousand years ago.”

  "That's fascinating information, Professor," Dooley said unconvincingly, "but I hope you aren't actually thinking we should go to freaking northern Greenland. Don't the Danes own Greenland? I think the U.S. tried to buy it from them a while back, and they were kind of pissed about that. And how's your Danish? Or your Inuit for that matter?"

  "No worries, Dooley," said Allison. "My father was Aussie, but my mother was Danish. I have dual citizenship and speak the language. I can probably get us the authority to enter, and I can use my Danish contacts to find an Inuit guide for us.”

  Jace was silent for a couple seconds with a thoughtful look on his face. "I’m not one to believe in fate, but it sure seems like circumstances just fell in our favor. What are the odds of that? Well, if that’s the case, we better take advantage of it. Allie, if you can arrange entry and a guide, I will contact Van Dyne and get the funding and equipment we will need. But we have to delay travelling until at least March, I'm afraid, since it is winter there and no sunlight whatsoever until March. At any rate, we can use the extra time to plan, and I can continue more testing with the blue stone. Since we still have no leads on Severs' whereabouts, that will have to be put on hold until we get a solid lead. We can only go with what we know. Greenland is a go!”

  Once again Jace was hovering over the beautiful green land filled with silver lakes. The pinkish-white tower was glistening ahead, and as soon as he saw it he moved on unseen wings over the water and toward it. He flew right up to the large center window, but he stopped right in front of it. Something was stopping him from flying inside. A barrier of some sort. He could see the beautiful woman inside the room sitting on the adorned chair and looking intently at him. She had a look of concern, or urgency on her face. Then, he saw her lips move, and in his mind he heard her sweet and winsome voice for the first time, a sound that filled him with pleasure and delight, despite her worried look. She said, ‘come to me, dreamer’.

  “I’ve been trying!” Jace thought back, “but I can’t open the portal enough to come through!” Before he could finish speaking the thought-words in his dream, he was awake. Jace had performed many different experiments over the course of the last couple months, but nothing seemed to enhance the portal beyond a faint insubstantial outline. The portal had been brightest in the Royal Botanical Gardens, but since then it had gone back to the dim outline it had been before. He would keep trying, Jace promised himself, but for now they needed to concentrate on the trip to Greenland.

  True to her word, Allison had secured entry papers and located an Inughuit, the preferred word for the natives in Greenland, who spoke both Danish and the native Kalaallisut to act as their guide. Jace had got Van Dyne to pay for a good amount of equipment, supplies, and the several flights required to get to their destination. The planning was now complete. They were ready to leave the next day.

  EIGHT

  “I’m freezing my ass off!” Dooley complained as he was rubbing his hands together.

  “Here, mate, pull your chair over closer to the fire, next to me. I promise I won’t bite you,” Allison said to Dooley. “It feels quite warm over here.”

  “Sure. Maybe we can warm up together,” Dooley teased.

  Allison was a little confused as Dooley was pulling his chair over. She thought he was flirting with her, but she didn’t know if he meant it that way or not. Since Melbourne they had restored their friendship, and she thought that was all Dooley wanted, even if a part of her perhaps wished for a little more.

  She had spent her career in the military proving a woman was just a capable as a man. Being a very attractive woman, at first she wasn’t taken seriously by the male soldiers and they flirted disrespectfully. After she outperformed them in most disciplines, she earned their respect. They assumed she was tough and hard, and treated her like another mate. She was out of practice opening herself up to romance and being treated like a woman.

  Dooley treated her like an equal as did many of her military friends. But now he was also treating her more like a woman. She wasn’t sure how to handle that, but she sort of enjoyed it. She decided she better assume he meant nothing by it rather than make of fool of herself.

  Ironically, as a young teen, Allie had been a sweet, open and innocent girl with plans to pursue fine
arts. That all changed the night she went on a date with the star soccer player. From then on she vowed she would never be a victim again and learned self-defense. That led to a career in the military and a life hiding a wounded past slow to heal.

  “This sure is quite a comfortable little home in spite of the weather,” Allison said. “But all the travel and cold has tired me out. Sorry mates if I end up falling asleep by the fire,” she said as she yawned.

  They were sitting in a little wooden house owned by their guide, Aput Ila, whose name ironically meant ‘snow companion’. It was considered quite a nice little home for the small village of Qaanaaq, in northwestern Greenland. Aput had a brother in Copenhagen who was a friend of one of Allison’s cousins. Through this connection Allison was able to arrange for Aput to take them to the crater.

  As they were all warming by the fire, Jace was thinking back over the various flights they had taken over the last few days to get here. They arrived in Qaanaaq via an Air Greenland flight that comes twice a week from the picturesque little harbor town of Ilulissat. Of course, to get to Ilulissat they had to fly Air Greenland from Kangerlussuaq, one of the main airports in Greenland, which they reached from Copenhagen. From Denver they flew to Heathrow in order to connect to Copenhagen. No wonder they were all tired. Not a good night’s rest in three days. Or was it four?

  “I think we may need to rest up here a day or two with Aput before we head out toward the Hiawatha Glacier,” Jace said. “It will be a pretty tough journey, so we need to make sure we have everything we think we will need. Let me know if I’ve missed something here. We will have two dog sleds to get us there. Snow pants, parkas, gloves, and boots to stay warm. Rations for ten days. Special burning logs for the fire at night. Sleeping bags. Two sat radios and two-way radios. Flashlights. Climbing gear. Shovels, knives, and utensils. Twenty empty bags for packing any blue dust. Have I forgotten anything?”

  Jace waited for a response, but not hearing one he glanced over and saw Dooley and Allison were already asleep, their heads on each other’s shoulder. Aput was asleep on his little bed in the other room.

  “Oh well, time enough for this tomorrow I guess.” Jace pulled his sleeping bag over to the fire, climbed in, and was out within a few seconds.

  Aput had the two dogsleds packed and ready to go two days later right at sunrise, which made it about eight o’clock in the morning in northern Greenland this time of year. Not that anyone bothered with watches out here. Days this far north seemed more like having an early morning that lasted for four hours, turning into a late afternoon for four hours, as the sun always stayed low on the horizon as it moved east to west. The nine-hour day would be increasing in length by about thirty minutes daily for the next two months, until sometime near the end of April the sun would forget to set altogether.

  Jace, Dooley and Allison were dressed in heavy white fur-lined boots, gloves, snow pants, parkas, and hoods which were currently down but their stocking caps were in place covering everything but their eyes. The temperature was about five degrees below zero, although with the sun rising it could climb ten or twenty degrees. Jace could see fog coming from their mouths as they spoke to one another, reminding him how cold it truly was. With Allison translating, Aput recommended the team pull their hoods up to avoid frostbite from the wind.

  The Greenland dogs were barking in excitement at the prospect of starting their run, until Aput quieted them down as he made last minute preparations, including getting Dooley and Allison positioned on one sled, and Jace, who would be riding in the front sled with Aput, in the other.

  “Allie, would you please tell our guide that I’ve never driven a dogsled before!” Dooley said as he was standing at the back holding the grips. Allison said something in Danish to Aput, who replied back to Allison.

  “Dooley, Aput says no worries. The dogs in our sled will follow the lead sled. You don’t need to do a thing but hold on,” said Allison.

  Aput smiled at her repeating his little joke, and then took the time to show Jace, Allison and Dooley how to steer the sled and use the brakes, answering questions through Allison until they felt comfortable heading out.

  “Is everyone ready?” Jace finally called out. When Dooley and Allison both voiced that they were as ready as they would ever be, Jace gave Aput a thumbs up, and Aput called for the dogs to start.

  Soon they could see they were pulling away from the icy bay and the pretty multi-colored barn-shaped houses of Qaanaaq. They were travelling on a narrow path of ice and snow that wound its way through the surrounding rocky terrain nearer the shoreline, and in less than an hour it brought them inland to the wide desolate white of the ice sheet. Once on the ice sheet the dogs picked up the pace a bit from around six miles per hour to around nine miles an hour. The two dog sleds were heading north by northwest, making pretty good time, and Jace was hoping to cover the one hundred and fifty miles to Hiawatha Crater in two days, if all went well.

  The sun was providing them favorable light for travelling until around noon, when it moved enough to the north that it was starting to glare in their eyes. They had brought sun goggles for this reason and so it was not terribly disruptive, but it gave them an excuse to stop for a quick lunch break. Aput fed the dogs their allotment, consisting of mostly fish. They needed to eat around 10,000 calories a day in order to maintain their performance. Jace, Dooley and Allison had special high-energy MRE’s which they gladly shared with Aput. He was not terribly impressed.

  The break was relatively short but gave them all a chance to move around and stretch their legs a bit and drink lots of water to avoid dehydration from the constant cold, sunny and dry wind whipping them throughout the trip. They switched positions with their fellow rider, so that those who had been standing were now sitting. Jace was concerned at first, but through Allison’s translation he understood that Aput could still control the dogs from a sitting position where he had a duplicate set of controls. So once again they were off across the ice.

  The afternoon sun had moved further toward the west reducing the glare, so the travelers continued with good light and few problems. Once, the sled carrying Dooley and Allison hit a snowbank and tossed them, requiring the team to stop and get everyone repositioned on the sled. Other than this one mishap, the afternoon passed quickly and soon dusk was approaching. Aput had them travel a few more minutes wanting to squeeze the most out of the daylight, but before too long he called the dogs to a halt and they began to set up camp for the evening, the primary activity being the building of the igloo.

  Aput pulled out a snow saw and began cutting blocks out of the hard-packed snow. After demonstrating the size that he wanted, Jake and Dooley took over the cutting of the blocks, while Aput set them in place and did final shaping. He had Allison collect snow and begin covering all the seams once he had several rows in place. It took them perhaps ninety minutes or so to get the dwelling built, but well worth the effort in order to have a reasonably warm, insulated place to sleep out of the wind's way. Aput told Allison once it was done he would build a small fire inside, which would quickly warm up the interior, causing the inside to melt slightly, and then after the fire went out later that night, refreeze to provide an even tighter seal.

  As they were all packing snow on the outside of the just completed structure shortly after dusk, using the light of the moon reflecting off the glacial ice, Dooley happened to glance to the southwest.

  “Hey, would you look at that!” he exclaimed, pointing so the others could see. “Those have got to be the northern lights!” he said looking in amazement at the colors flashing across the sky. The others stopped and stared as well, like children mesmerized at fireworks for the first time, watching in a silence that was punctuated with a few "Wow!" moments.

  “Blimey,” Allison said, “Aren’t those lights supposed to be over the north pole? We are looking southwest!" she just realized.

  “We are so far north,” said Jace, “that we are actually north of the magnetic north pole, so we have to l
ook south to see the lights from here.”

  That gave them all some pause, as they thought about how truly far away they were from everything familiar to them. This desolate land, as beautiful as it was in its own way, felt almost as alien to them as if they were on another planet.

  After the dogs were fed and had found a place to snuggle down into the snow close to one another for warmth, the four travelers crawled into the igloo pushing their sleeping bags in front of them. Aput built a small fire to warm them up a bit as they ate more MRE’s, with only a little light conversation, and after finishing they each crawled into their sleeping bags.

  They hadn’t noticed the sounds before, but lying quietly in the igloo, they could hear snapping and popping, and even occasional distant rumbles from the ice. However, the sounds did little to keep them awake and within a short time the exhaustion and cold of the day caught up with them. Giving in to the warmth of the igloo they soon fell asleep.

  Jace realized he was staring at a small burning fire, but it was not the one Aput had built in the igloo. It was nighttime, but the light of the flickering flames showed him he was in a small glade surrounded by woods on a warm summer’s eve. He could see a tent behind the fire, white with vertical red stripes, and a pennant on top perhaps indicating royalty. But of more interest to him was the beautiful face shining in the firelight immediately opposite him and looking into his face. Once again her hands were holding what he presumed was the blue stone she had been holding before. But this time she was dressed in what looked like war clothes — gold shimmering leggings, a similar colored hip-length tunic tighter at the waist, with leather ties, and brown leather boots. The face was beautiful but this time she had more of a desperate look. Then Jace heard her musical voice again. “Please delay no longer! The battle is upon us! I do not think I can win this on my own! Time is running out! You must come through the fire!”