Tugging the hood of his parka tighter, he turned away from the stinging winds and surveyed his home of the last few weeks. Ice Research Lab 7 wouldn’t rate many stars in the Mobil Travel Guide for luxury or comfort. A half dozen prefabricated buildings made up the camp, huddled in a semicircle with their entrances facing south. Three tiny bunkhouses were jammed together on one side next to the largest building, a combination galley, mess hall, and meeting area. A squat structure just opposite housed a joint lab and radio room, while a snow-covered storage shed rounded out the camp at the far end.

The research lab was one of several Canadian Fisheries and Oceans Department temporary ice camps established as floating research labs to track and study the movements of the Arctic ice pack. Since the time Ice Research Lab 7 had been set up a year earlier, the camp had moved nearly two hundred miles, riding a mammoth sheet of polar ice south across the Beaufort Sea. Now positioned one hundred and fifty miles from the North American coastline, the camp sat on the edge of the ice shelf almost due north of the Yukon Territory. The camp faced a short life, however. The approaching summer meant the breakup of the pack ice where the camp now found itself. Daily measurements of the ice beneath their feet revealed a steady melting already, which had reduced the pack thickness from three feet to fourteen inches. Bue figured they had maybe two more weeks before he and his four-man team would be forced to disassemble the camp and wait for evacuation by Twin Otter ski-plane.

The Arctic oceanographer trudged through ankle-deep snow toward the radio shack. Over the blowing rustle of ice particles bounding across the ground, he heard the whine of a diesel engine revving up and down. Looking past the camp’s structures, he spotted a yellow front-end track loader racing back and forth, its blunt blade piling up high mounds of drifted snow. The plow was keeping clear a fi ve-hundred-foot ice runway that stretched along the back of the camp. The crude landing strip was the camp’s lifeline, allowing Twin Otters to bring in food and supplies on a weekly basis. Bue made sure that the makeshift runway was kept clear at all times.

Ignoring the roving track loader, Bue entered the joint lab and radio hut, shaking the snow off his feet in an inner doorway before entering the main structure. Making his way past several cramped bays full of scientific journals and equipment, he turned into the closet-sized cubby that housed the satellite radio station. A wild-eyed man with sandy hair and a mirthful grin looked up from the radio set. Scott Case was a brilliant physicist who specialized in studying solar radiation at the poles. Like everyone else in the camp, Case wore multiple hats, including that of chief communications operator.