him over to the Visiting Officers Quarters (VOQ) and walked him up to the desk. “Henry, take care of this young man. Give him a wakeup call for 1400 hours and then run him over to my office.”
Snyder was right. The flight was grueling. He’d been up since 0400 to get ready for the 0600 flight that morning. He took the key from the desk clerk, thanked Snyder and stumbled off to his room. He was surprised at how modern and nice the room was. He had envisioned something between an igloo and Quonset hut. Instead, this reminded him of any Ramada Inn in the States. He took his boots off, flopped on the bed and crashed.
Three hours later, the phone rang. Henry was on the line with his wakeup call and told him that his bags were outside his door. He guessed that they didn’t have to worry about someone running off with your luggage up here. Their getaway route would only be six miles long at the most. That was the longest road in Greenland that ran down to the port. Amazing, the amount of trivia he had already tucked away.
Henry told the Captain that transportation would be waiting in half an hour. He used the time to get cleaned up, put on a fresh uniform, and walk down to the lobby. He was met there by Master Sergeant Andy Caudill. “Good afternoon, Captain. I’m here to drive you to your 1400 meeting. We’ll be stopping by the Danish Hotel on the other side of the base to pick up Dr. Paul Rapp and Dr. Ralph Timken. These gentlemen are doing the ice core drilling out at the DYE-3 site.”
He hopped into the staff car and got the guided tour of the base on their way around the runway to the Danish side of the base. He was surprised by the number of buildings, and warehouses. He was even more surprised to see cabins and bungalows scattered on the sides of the hills. Sergeant Caudill explained that many Danes flew in from Copenhagen to spend the summers here. Also, several Inuits that worked at the base lived here, too.
The Danish Hotel was even more impressive than the VOQ. They walked into the lobby and met Dr. Rapp and Dr. Timken waiting for them. “Hello Captain Sheridan, nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Dr. Rapp said as he shook his hand. This surprised him. He didn’t know he had a reputation, let alone one that preceded him. “Thanks…I hope,” he quipped.
The sergeant interrupted politely and pointed out they were five minutes late for their 1400 meeting. They hopped in the staff car and drove back around to the Air Force side of the base. Along the way, he noticed a huge shaggy looking buffalo critter a hundred yards off the end of the runway. Dave asked, “Is that a musk ox?” The sergeant replied, “Yes, sir. It sure is. Those things are too stupid to know that they are supposed to be extinct. They are all over the place. Have to watch driving at night. And believe me; the nights can be really long up here.”
The car pulled up to the Base Headquarters building. All four men walked up to the front door. Every facility had a cable running between them strung between bollards every fifty feet or so. The sergeant smiled and said, “We use those to find our way home when the wind kicks up and puts us in a whiteout; nice to have around after a beer or two over at the Caribou Club.”
The sergeant led them into Colonel Snyder’s office. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Have a seat.” Dave sat down at the end of a huge black leather couch. “Captain, I know you haven’t had much time to get acquainted with our two distinguished professors here. So I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you up to speed.” Dave relaxed a bit and listened intently.
“Quite frankly, General Giffen at NORAD called me VFR direct and wants me to provide you all with any support, facilities, and resources you need to accomplish your mission here. This includes C-130 support to the icecap. I only know the basics of what you’re doing out there: some kind of ice-core drilling for gravitational mapping up here, and something about improving targeting for ICBMs and orbital station keeping for our spy satellites. I don’t need to know the details. I’ll just follow my orders to support you anyway I can.” Colonel Snyder called in the sergeant, “Andy, bring us a pot of coffee and have the club run over some sandwiches.”
Colonel Snyder continued, “Captain, we have an office set up for you. You will be acting as Quality Assurance Engineer up here watching over the contractors running the DYE sites here in Greenland. Also, the transition from Tactical Air Command to Space Command is going to take some time up here. We’ve got quite a few projects underway to support the Space Shuttle polar orbit operations when they start launching off of SLC-6 at Vandenberg. This cover will give you access to all the facilities and communications capabilities up here. Before you ask, this room has been cleared for TS discussions, no Russian bugs in here. We also have a secure conference room here for your use. Dr. Rapp and Dr. Timken have their lab and facilities located at DYE-3. Their cover, as I understand, is ice-core drilling for researching weather patterns and airborne pollutions. The ice out there is over a hundred thousand years old and over two miles thick. That should keep them busy for a while.”
Dr. Timken acknowledged this, but also made an interesting point. “Thank you, you are correct Colonel Snyder. Hopefully, we are going to kill about four birds with the same stone out here. We have funding and grants from several different organizations, so we will be doing other science as well as our gravitational experiments. As a matter of fact, gravitational experiments are not new. There is nothing super-secret about what we are investigating out here. We will be trying to delve into the universal gravitational constant. Scientists have attempted to do this all over the world. The trick is you need vast areas of constant density materials to conduct the experiments, such as salt mines. We’ve elected to come up here to the icecap because ice has predictable qualities and near constant density for over the twenty-five square miles that we require.”
Colonel Snyder interrupted, “Excuse me Dr. Timken, I’m a simple soldier that has a degree in Military History. What’s so special about this constant you are trying to figure out? I took enough science and physics to make me knowledgeable but dangerous. From what I understand g is not a constant. It varies with where you are on Earth. Isn’t it something like 9.8 meters per second²? It’s only about a sixth of this value on the Moon, so how can it be considered a constant?”
Rapp answered, “Forgive me, Colonel, but you are confusing the acceleration due to gravity known as little g with the Universal Gravitational constant big G.”
Snyder laughed and said, “That’s nothing new, my wife’s always telling me I can never find the correct G spot.” Everyone had to chuckle at this one.
“What we are doing up here is trying to prove that the big G is not a constant throughout the known universe. I’d like to take a few minutes to refresh your Physics 101, if I may?” Timken continued.
Snyder leaned back in his chair and threw his feet up on his desk. “Go right ahead. Continue with your explanation. It’s not like I have a tee time to make or anything. We’ve got all day…which up here can be six months long.” Dave had the sickening feeling that this fact would be stressed time after time.
Timken laughed and assured everyone that they would not be there anywhere near that long. He continued on with his history lesson. “A few flashes of inspiration and genius occur about every half century that fundamentally change the human race. One of these was the falling apple that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to formulate his findings on gravity.”
He stood up and walked over to the dry erase board. “Colonel, may I use this to humor my academic nature?” Snyder replied, “Sure, I’m left brained and you’ll need to draw me a picture anyway.”
“Thank you, sir,” Timken continued, “as you all know, Newton once saw an apple falling from a tree and had an inspirational thought. He observed that as the apple fell, it accelerated since its velocity changed from zero as it was hanging on the tree and then sped up as it moved toward the ground. Thus, Newton concluded that there must be a force that acted on the apple to cause this acceleration. He called this
