“I’m still baffled,” Maria persisted. “You’ve still got to get close up to the ice to drill a core.”
“All will be revealed.” Macleod beamed at her and started towards the door, nodding his thanks to the assembled group and turning to Jack. “Follow me.”
Seaquest II was marginally smaller than her predecessor, more economical on space to maximise fuel efficiency and endurance, but with a displacement of a little over seven thousand tons she was still one of the largest research vessels afloat, and it took them a good five minutes to reach the upper accommodation deck. Without stopping Macleod pointed at a line of cabins with their names pinned on the doors, their bags already visible inside. At the end of the corridor they walked into a room that occupied the entire forward end of the accommodation block, directly below the navigation room and wheelhouse. The layout had been Jack’s idea, providing a dedicated control and observation room for project staff, avoiding the problems of sharing bridge space with crew which they had recently experienced on Sea Venture in the Golden Horn. The room had a director’s chair set on a dais in the centre, a duplicate of the bridge radar screen, four computer workstations arranged in an arc radiating from the dais and viewing seats with high-powered scopes set up against the window, a continuous sloping screen that wrapped around the front and sides of the room. With the mist now lifted completely it gave them a dazzling view of the sea to the west, a deep blue expanse dotted with fragments of white, the low form of Disko Island just visible off the starboard bow and the Canadian shore of the Davis Strait somewhere beyond the horizon.
They had been followed from the lower deck by the shambling form of Lanowksi and by one of the Greenlander scientists, an Inuit woman of striking appearance who pointed to the coffee machine as they entered the room. Macleod grunted, then nodded and proceeded to pour them each a drink and hand round steaming mugs. Jack shook hands with the captain, a former Canadian navy officer who had spent a lifetime carrying out maritime patrols from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, who had bounded down the stairs from the bridge to greet them. Jack would have time later to do the full rounds of the crew, many of them old friends and veterans of the first Seaquest, people with whom he shared a special bond.
The Greenlander woman sat down beside Lanowski at the computer workstation on the right-hand side of the room, positioning her laptop on the available corner of the desk and stacking her papers and books neatly on the floor to give the others space to stand. From the body language it was clearly an uneasy alliance, with Lanowski hunched directly in front of the main workstation screen surrounded by his papers, making no concession for her.
“I knew I should have brought my own hardware,” Lanowski grumbled. “Someone should have given these things a trial run before they installed them. I may as well crunch the numbers by hand.”
Jack raised his eyes at the woman and she forced a smile. “I’m interested in seabed biology; Lanowski does the simulations,” she said. “James paired us at the beginning of the project.”
She cast Macleod a malevolent glare, and he quickly turned to the others. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced you. This is Dr. Inuva Nannansuit, with the Geological Survey. She’s a native of Ilulissat, the town on the headland, so she grew up with the glacier in her backyard. She’s been a fantastic addition to the team.”
“So what have we got?” Jack said.
“It’s behind the stern, but the captain’s swinging the ship round to give us a broadside view to starboard. It’ll be a few minutes yet. We’re using the dynamic positioning system, as we don’t want water movement from the main screws to disturb what you’re about to see.”
“That berg out by the island, dead ahead of us now,” Maria said, pointing towards the ship’s bow. “It’s got a streak of black on the top. Is that ancient sediment from the glacier?”
“Well spotted, but no,” Macleod said. “If you look at the berg, it’s smooth and rounded, like a sculpture, quite different from the jagged and fissured bergs we saw when we flew over the fjord.”
“It must have rolled,” Costas said.
“Correct. We watched it happen last night. One of the most awesome sights you can imagine, a quarter of a million tons of ice doing a somersault in the water. You don’t want to be anywhere near one of those babies when that happens.”
“Of course,” Maria exclaimed. “That smear is from the sea floor!”
“Exactly. When we arrived two weeks ago that berg was butted up against the threshold on the north side of the fjord, but we already knew from side-scan sonar that the submerged part had become eroded and lost much of its mass. It was only a matter of days before it would roll, and we kept well clear. Some of the bergs make it out that way, others get pushed upright over the sill. You can always tell from whether they look like Henry Moore sculptures or Disneyland ice castles.”
“You mean like that one,” Jack said.
They followed his gaze to starboard as a vast wall of ice came into view, about a quarter of a mile distant and clearly taller than the superstructure of the ship. It had the same contorted and jagged face as the front of the glacier, riven with veins of deep blue where meltwater had frozen inside crevasses, except for a wide flat area in the middle where it sloped down smoothly from the summit. The berg was immense, at least a quarter of a mile across, and blocked a large stretch of the entrance to the fjord along the line of the underwater threshold.
They stared in awe until Macleod broke the silence. “Remember, three-quarters of that thing’s underwater. You’re looking at a cubic kilometre and a half of frozen water, at least a million and a half tons.”
Costas let out a low whistle. “That’d keep all the bars in the world in ice well into the next century.”
“A single day’s outlet from this glacier would be enough to supply New York with water for a year. Twenty million tons a day. We’re talking global impact here.”
“Tabular bergs of this size are pretty rare in the Arctic,” Inuva said. “We think it’s atmospheric warming again, resulting in the glacier receding to a point where larger fractures occur. It’s the biggest berg I’ve seen here in my lifetime.”
“Why hasn’t it broken up?” Costas said.
“It’s had one major calving event, where you can see that smooth face,” Macleod said. “But the core’s unusually compact, solid glacial ice you’d crack only with explosives. It’s ideal for us. That face calved back to the core ice, so it’s relatively safe to work under. If you look closely you’ll see the drilling team in a couple of Zodiac inflatable boats out there now.”
“I don’t understand it.” Jeremy had been quietly absorbing everything since arriving on the ship, but had now recovered his normal inquisitiveness. “What’s to stop that thing tumbling over and crushing them?”
“That’s where the conditions really work in our favour,” Macleod said enthusiastically. “Without the pressure of the ice tongue behind them, bergs trapped on the sill are a lot safer to work on. The glacier itself is way too dangerous for coring, especially now that it’s flowing at such a rate. Bergs floating down the fjord are out of the question because they’re moving, and once they’re beyond the fjord they’re not only moving but are more liable to tumble. So a relatively fresh berg trapped on the sill is ideal for us. It’s a unique opportunity, but the window is closing fast.”
“How long has it been there?” Jack said.
“About three months. Lanowski’s run a simulation that shows it processing down the fjord and jamming against the threshold. Any chance of seeing it?”
“You’ll be lucky.” Lanowski muttered irritably to himself as he tapped a sequence of keys, and then visibly relaxed. “Finally.”
The screen displayed a 3-D isometric simulation of the fjord, with the glacier at one end and the arc of the threshold at the other. The berg was shown perched perilously on the sill, its vast bulk underwater now visible but with the seabed dropping off to even greater depths on either side.