winter in greenland

Because of August's arm injury, they stayed in place for three days to rest. By the time they set off, the polar night had completely fallen.

The sled dogs who had rested for a few days were full of energy, and the sled slid smoothly on the ice field.August stood on one side of the sled, his uninjured hand loosely holding the rein, and Dan was opposite him—and now he was in charge.The headlights on the hats of the two cast two white circles with blurred edges on the snow in front of them, giving people the illusion that they are underground.

Due to the poor visibility, their speed was not fast. When it was close to noon, August raised his hand to look at the GPS positioning of the watch, and turned his head to signal Dan: "There is a fixed scientific research site nearby. We There are missions in the past."

Dan handed him the reins, and August slowed down a bit, adjusting his direction against the GPS.

They were about a mile or so closer to the east coast, and a dark shadow appeared in front of them.

"Here we are." August jumped off the sled and led the sled dogs towards the shadow.

"Is this the scientific research station of the base?" Dan was a little curious.

"That's right. It was originally a site of the Royal Scientific Expedition Team. They used to have fixed staff on duty here, mainly to monitor the temperature changes in the nearby sea area. Later, the funds and labor costs were reduced, and the technology was updated. Here Only a few computers are left to record the data, and every year we patrol, we will send a small team to check the condition of the machines, and by the way, send the whole year's data back to their center."

It was a small, dusty house with a simple fence around the gate.August put the sled dogs in the open space inside the fence, turned to Dan and said, "Just bring something for the night, we'll rest here today."

After entering the door, there was a smell of dust, and August walked in front, frowning: "This smell... let's open the front door for a while."

The doorway is a narrow porch. A row of hooks are set on the wall to hang clothes. A light-colored rectangular outline can be seen under the hooks. There should have been a cabinet in this position before.

"Just look around first, I'll check the condition of the machine." August said and went inside. Dan agreed, put the backpack on the porch temporarily, and looked around.

The structure of the house is very simple. At the end of the porch is a spacious office. August is going in that direction. It should be the workshop of the previous scientific research station. There is a narrow corridor on the right hand side. There's a small door, one with a bathroom sign, and one with a lounge sign.

Dan pushed open the door of the lounge, and there were two iron canopy beds inside, only mattresses were spread, and a square table was placed against the wall on the left hand side of the door, without windows.

He whistled with satisfaction: Anyone who has slept on the hard snow for more than two months will feel a sense of happiness from the bottom of their hearts when they see the bed.

When he wandered into the outer office, August was hunched over a computer, his face illuminated by the screen's blue light.

"Are there no lights here?"

August didn't look up: "Originally, there was one. After the line got old, it broke without maintenance. Anyway, it only comes once a year, and the electricity is saved for these big guys."

There are four computers placed against the wall in the room, and the screens of two of them are on. The one in front of August is running yards, and the other one displays a topographic map. It can be seen that it is the coastline in this area. , 6 or 7 green light spots are sporadically distributed in different positions, flashing regularly.

In the center of the room are two rectangular desks joined together. There are still some empty file shelves left on them. A few chairs are scattered on both sides of the desk. The windows are all opened near the ceiling. Covered with a dirty gray.

"It looks good in here." Dan picked a random chair and sat down.

August tapped a few times quickly on the computer keyboard: "At that time, when the personnel evacuated, they almost took everything away. If the harsh climate and remote location were aside, it was a very comfortable place back then. place."

"I didn't expect to come here and have a bed to sleep in," Dan joked.

August also smiled: "You can sleep here enough, after all, the next time you will have to wait until the patrol is over and return to the base."

"Can you understand the data?" Dan turned his gaze to the topographic map on the nearby screen.

"I can only understand some basic information, such as fault reporting or... abnormal alarms in the monitoring area. In fact, the professional data here is triple-encrypted, including the entire process from recording to transmission. If someone tries to use an illegal path Copy the data, and all data will be automatically destroyed within ten seconds after the alarm system is activated."

"No backup?" Dan was surprised.

"When recording, the computer will synchronize a copy to the root directory of the system in case of such an emergency, but the content of the root directory is only saved for 12 months at most. This thing is mainly for monitoring the hydrological conditions of the nearby sea surface , probably no one would want to steal it. As for the siren, it has never sounded since I was on patrol anyway." As soon as August finished speaking, a green light spot on the computer screen next to him turned red There was a rapid "didi" sound.

Dan raised his eyebrows: "Is this—an alarm?"

August turned around in surprise, clicked on the cursor and frowned after scanning a few lines: "This warning... shows that an abnormal airflow is approaching the east coast."

"Storm?" Dan stood up.

August shook his head: "This only shows the abnormality. If we want to analyze it in detail, it is estimated that the data will be sent back to their headquarters. But anyway, we are indoors now. I will go out and have a look first."

While August was going out, Dan moved some fragile things into the porch, and the sled dogs seemed to have noticed something strange. Rogers didn't rest, and he was pacing up and down with a little agitation, and from time to time, he was pacing up and down his throat. There was a low growl.

About 10 minutes later, August came back, his brows were still frowned: "Visibility conditions are not good, but the location on the east coast near the sea is obviously much gloomy, there is probably a snowstorm, I will first put the data Upload, you bring all the dogs into the room."

After uploading the data, August still felt uneasy. It would take some time for the data to be packaged and uploaded, so he simply stared at the screen and stared blankly.

Dan went to rest first, and the room was quiet, except for the occasional movement of the sled dogs on the porch.The screens of the four computers in the corner were all on, and his gaze mainly fell on the map that recorded the real-time topography and hydrology.After the alarm information was uploaded, the little red dot was still flashing quietly, which always made people feel that something was about to happen.

At nearly 7 o'clock in the evening, Rogers ran in suddenly for some reason, and turned around anxiously at his feet.

"Hey, buddy, what's the matter?" August bent down and rubbed its head.

Rogers whimpered a few times from his throat, and then, as if remembering something, he raised his head and yelped in the direction of the window in the room.

August stopped it in time: "Hush, Dan is sleeping, what do you want to tell me? What's going on outside?"

Rogers understood what he meant, didn't yell again, turned around at his feet twice, picked up his trouser leg and pulled him out.

August followed it to the porch, and saw that the other sled dogs who were resting on the ground were also somewhat disturbed to varying degrees.Rogers led him straight to the door, trying to put his head on the doorknob.

"You... want me to go out and have a look?" August's voice hesitated.

Rogers lowered his voice and let out another "woof".

August frowned, and slowly turned the doorknob.

Immediately, the cold wind howled and poured into the door, and August squinted with some difficulty to look outside.

The snowstorm had started at some point, the cold wind swept across the snowflakes like knives, and the sight was completely white, but apart from the sound of the storm, something else could be vaguely heard, a low and intermittent roar, Mixed in the wind, can't hear clearly.

August carefully distinguished for a while, and his face became serious.He turned and closed the door, and stroked Roger's head soothingly: "Stay here."

Rogers followed him and took two steps inside, stopped after thinking about it, and stood by the door.

August returned to the computer screen and zoomed in on the topographic map of this area.I saw that next to the location marked in the data, the hut they were in had actually gone deep into the coastline of the Greenland Sea.Strictly speaking, this scientific research station is actually built on a protruding reef, about half a mile away from the real Greenland land.In this season, due to the freezing of the sea, the reef "blends" into the surrounding ice shelves, making it less obtrusive and easier for people to ignore its own position.

To the east of the yellow dot showing their location, two green cursors were floating and flashing. He clicked on the detailed information interface of one of them, which showed that the associated buoy was less than 10 miles away from their cabin.He was just about to take a closer look at the information on it, when the light spot flickered a few times tremblingly as if overwhelmed, and turned yellow.At the same time, a column of descriptions in the detailed information interface turned red, and a yellow warning symbol flashed next to it—that indicated an abnormal temperature change.

As if he suddenly remembered something, August called up the historical data of the cursor that had alarmed earlier, and compared it to the column of temperature. Sure enough, the normal data fluctuation would not exceed 3°C, but the temperature of the buoy area corresponding to the cursor, It dropped nearly 10° within two hours, especially in the second half hour, almost showing a general trend of a landslide.

However, the strange thing is that at this moment, the flashing yellow cursor indicates that the temperature is rising.

"Drip——" a sharp buzz sounded, and the yellow light spot jumped and turned red.