Selfridge says that if that is true, the Na'vi will never help them build factories and strip-mine their own planet. They are useless to us. And Giese knows he has said too much. He is trapped in his own argument. He tries to buy time, saying he can get the Na'vi to cooperate.
NEXT WE SEE Giese raking (human) Grace and Josh over the coals in her lab. Josh says he had to do something, that jarhead was going to blow Grace's avatar away. Giese holds his head in his hands. Would any court, anywhere, let him get away with equating a human life to that of a genetic construct... a living artifact created in a lab?
Giese says he knows what it feels like... he's spent enough hours in the bush, in avatar form. It's intoxicating, it's the greatest experience imaginable... but they have to remember what they are here for.
And what is that? Grace yells, challenging him. To get the Na'vi to trust us? So we can use them? So we can harness them to the yoke? So we can make them slaves, and teach them to participate in the rape of their own home planet? You're an anthropologist, Brantley! How did it turn into this? You're no better than Selfridge and his goon squad. Are you getting a nice fat payoff like Parrish?
Giese is furious. He tells them both he doesn't want them around the base for a while, until things cool down. He wants them to go out to SITE 26. They can spend a couple of weeks in the boonies collecting, up in the Hallelujah Mountains, while he tries to get things patched up.
He warns Grace that she is "going native" and dragging her assistant into it as well. And that way can lie madness. Look what happened to Hegner.
A SAMSON roars high above the rainforest, climbing into the mountains. Josh and Grace are sitting up front with the pilot, TRUDY CHACON. N'deh rides in the open back compartment with a single trooper, CORPORAL BILL ONOZUKI, and the unconscious avatars of Josh and his boss.
JOSH: So what happened to Hegner?
Grace tells him that Hegner's avatar was not just killed by a slinth. He let the slinth take him. Suicide. He was dying of a broken heart, and being in the avatar body without his loved one was just too painful. He managed to fall in love with a Na'vi girl, some say they were married... and she was killed. She was one of the five killed by the SECFOR troopers in the incident which caused the big rift between the two species. And Hegner went crazy. Her name was Li Na.
There are many dangers on Pandora, Grace says, and one of the subtlest is that you may come to love it too much.
JOSH: Not so far.
CUT TO SITE 26, a remote research station. It consists of a "shack"... a single air-lift module, about the size of a Winnebago, which is perched on the flank of a mountain, near the Montes Volans. Here the trees are gnarly and much shorter, their roots gripping the rocks like arthritic hands. In the clear space around the shack are packing cases and instrument packages left by previous research groups. The station is uninhabited.
A few of the nearer flying mountains are visible a few miles off, among the clouds.
A Samson lands near the shack. Grace and the pilot get out, wearing masks and rebreathers. They get Josh's chair out of the back, then help him out of the ship and into it. Their trooper escort does nothing to help unload, merely scans the area, his gun held at the ready.
N'deh stays in the back compartment of the aircraft with the unconscious avatars of Josh and Grace.
They enter the shack, which is dark and musty. Grace starts the genny and turns on the lights and equipment. There are bunkbeds, a cramped clutter of scientific gear, and two link chairs.
Trudy jokes about being alone in the mountains for a couple of weeks with two men in such cramped quarters. Josh says the only threat he poses is body odor, indicating his useless lower body.
Once Grace has checked out the link transmitters, she and Josh go straight to the chairs. Outside, at the ship, their avatars blink and sit up. They get out of the Samson and stand, breathing the cold mountain air. Streamers of cloud wreath the nearby mesa-tops, and partially obscure the floating mountains nearby.
They go out the next day to place instrument packages among the floating mountains. Josh and Grace go under the link in the shack at Site 26, while N'deh and the avatars ride out in the Samson. The reason a mobile controller station was set up in the first place is that the magnetic flux around the Montes Volans interferes with the link signal from Hell's Gate. They need to be closer.
The Samson is tiny moving among the vast floating islands of rock. Bansheerays and other smaller flying species circle next to the cliffs in the sunlit shafting between the clouds. Waterfalls plunge thousands of feet down the sheer walls, then dissolve into nothingness below the bottoms of the mountains.
Trudy pilots the Samson under one of the floating mountains, and we see the upside down forest of vines dangling from the underside. They pass between falling streams of water. It is dreamlike and surreal.
Josh, sitting in the wind in the open door of the Samson, sees a bansheeray cruising near them. It studies them a moment, beating its huge wing membranes to keep up. It lets out a piercing shriek (hence the name) and then banks away, diving like a jet fighter. Trooper Onozuki, wearing mask and armor, sits in the other doorway, leaning on the sling of the door-gun.
Grace names the floating mountains as they pass. Mons Veritatis... Truth Mountain. Mons Tiburon. Mons Damocles. Icarus. Daedalus. And finally, the biggest of the superconductor mountains, Mons Prometheus... The Big Rock-Candy Mountain. A hundred billion dollars worth of pure unobtanium.
They land on the mesa-top of the Big Rock-Candy Mountain. Trooper Onozuki deploys rapidly, scanning, his rifle ready. The others get out and go to work.
The mountaintop is shrouded in a blowing cloud bank. Occasional shafts of sunlight play across it, but it is mostly gray mist.
Josh carries his instrument package away from the ship. He sets it up at the edge of a cliff, per Grace's instructions. Below, through gaps in the clouds, he can see purple forested slopes, half a mile down.
Josh sees more bansheerays circling below. A couple pass nearby, giving him the eye. Like reef sharks they will size you up, but seldom attack something their own size unless it is in distress.
Mist closes around Josh as he walks back to the Samson. Visibility is only a few meters. Without warning, a curtain of what looks like slimy ropes emerges out of the mist. They are hanging down from above, their source unseen, and are dragging over the ground with a faint swish. Josh whirls in time to see them, but he is enveloped.
They are translucent tentacles, only a couple of inches in diameter. But they react instantly on contact with him, curling around his limbs and body, and zapping the hell out of him with electric shocks. Josh is entangled and dragged, struggling, across the mountaintop. He shouts, and the others run toward him. The trooper aims his gun up into the mist above Josh, hoping to hit the source of the tentacles, but Grace stops him from firing. We don't know why yet.
N'deh sprints toward him, drawing his machete. Josh sees the cliff edge approaching, beyond it nothing. N'deh won't reach Josh in time. Josh is swept off the edge, his feet dangling over space.
N'deh throws him the machete, and Josh catches it by the handle. N'deh almost falls, but Grace grabs him, pulling him back from the edge. They watch helplessly as Josh is carried away. Then Grace runs like hell toward the Samson, yelling to Trudy to fire it up.