She led them out of the building and north along a gravel path.
The frozen ground crunched beneath their boots. Here and there, exposed rocks protruded from the soil, their surfaces coated in gray-white lichen.
"The signal source is at the edge of a glacier in northern Baffin Island, about ten kilometers from here," Kate said. "That area is on the southern edge of the Arctic Archipelago. The terrain is complex, with ice caps interspersed with frozen ground. The Technical Group's earlier data showed that the anomalous signal came from a bedrock formation beneath the ice cap."
After about two hours of walking, they reached the glacier's edge. A massive wall of ice spread out before them, its gray-white surface extending from the ground to the limits of their vision. Several meltwater streams flowed at its base, their gray-white water carrying fine sand ground down by the glacier.
Steam occasionally rose from geothermal fissures above the ice wall, condensing into clumps of white mist in the cold air.
Harry crouched on a moraine ridge at the foot of the ice wall, took off his gloves, and pressed his palm against the gravel.
Vibrations rose from deep beneath the gravel. Their frequency was slightly higher than at the North Pole, their cycles shorter, and their amplitude moderate but continuous.
Within the embedded high-frequency components was a pulse sequence whose encoding style resembled the North Pole's, but it was more complex, with shorter intervals, like an upgraded version of the code.
"The signal is beneath the ice cap," he said to Isabelle as he stood. "The frequency is higher than at the North Pole, the cycles are shorter, and the encoding is more complex. It seems like an upgraded version of the North Pole's code, or a later variant."
"How deep, roughly?"