Saturday night was the fortieth.

Dr Odette Collis made her observation from the same position on the ridge above Dunvale where she has stood, or sat, or occasionally shivered, on every clear night since 3 February. Her notebook — the forty-fourth of her volunteer career at the Cartwright Observatory — records the time, the atmospheric conditions, and the photometric reading. The glow above the Greymoor Highlands is now approximately twenty-two per cent brighter than her first observation, and the rate of brightening has not slowed.

“I keep expecting a plateau,” Collis said on Friday. “Every week I think: this is where it levels off. Every week the numbers tell me otherwise. Something beneath this ridge is growing, and it has not finished growing.”

The spectral signature remains unchanged — ionised nitrogen and trace sulphur dioxide, consistent with superheated gases venting through fractured rock. Professor Elara Whitstone of the Royal Institute continues to describe the phenomenon as geothermal in origin, driven by a subsurface thermal source whose nature will not be understood until the deep geological survey begins.

That survey moved a step closer on Saturday, when equipment tenders for the permanent monitoring station closed at noon. Three firms submitted bids for the specialised instrumentation package: broadband seismometers capable of recording to fifteen metres’ depth, atmospheric gas sampling units, a meteorological mast, and a photometric array for continuous measurement of the glow’s brightness.

The Royal Institute will evaluate the bids over the coming week, with contract award expected by the end of March. Construction of the station itself — a wind-rated, insulated shelter on the ridge approximately eight hundred metres northwest of the old meteorological outpost — is scheduled to begin in April. The station is expected to be operational by mid-May, in time for the commencement of the deep geological survey.

The survey, funded at 1.65 million florins and mandated by the Copper Review Commission’s interim report, will bore to approximately 250 metres’ depth along the ridgeline. Its objectives are twofold: to assess the viability of expanded copper extraction from the Greymoor deposits, and to characterise the geothermal system that is producing the glow.

Gareth Penn, the sheep farmer at Highfield Farm three miles south of the central emission zone, has been watching from his kitchen window since February. On Friday evening he reported that the glow was visible earlier than usual — “before full dark, which is new.”

“The sheep still don’t care,” Penn said. “But I’ve noticed the starlings avoid the ridge now. They used to roost up there. Not any more.”

Collis noted Penn’s observation with interest. “Changes in animal behaviour near geothermal zones are well documented in the literature,” she said. “If Mr Penn’s starlings are telling us something, the instruments will confirm it.”

Nils Haversten, chairman of the Miners’ Cooperative of Greymoor, attended the tender closing at the Royal Institute on Saturday morning. He was characteristically measured. “We mine copper from this ridge. We have done so for a hundred years. If the earth is doing something new, we need to know what it is before we dig any deeper.”

The glow continues. Forty nights. Twenty-two per cent brighter. The instruments are coming.