Waylon came around from the driver’s side of the truck. He’d left the engine running.

“Storm’s really on the move now,” he said.

Nimec couldn’t make out his comment. It was difficult enough to hear through his hood and face mask without the wind batting the words off into space.

“What was that you said?” he almost shouted, moving closer.

Waylon pointed overhead to the south, his arm at ten o’clock. “Check out the space invaders.”

Nimec gazed up at a huge floating armada of vaporish flying saucers and took an involuntary breath of raw air. It ranked as one of the eeriest sights that he’d ever seen.

“They snow clouds?”

“More of an advance escort,” Waylon said. Steam puffed from his mouth and froze into little pearlets of ice on his mustache, causing it to droop further down the sides of his chin. “Those are lenticular hogbacks. If this storm fits the regular pattern, we’ll see some shreddy cirrus clouds made up of ice crystals stream in behind them and then get low and thick and cover the sky. That’s whiteout time, and it’s no fun. The cumulus clouds come last, bring the main front. You know them right away because they’ve got these ugly anvil tops. The higher their tops, the harder they slam down on you.”

Nimec looked at him. “Sounds like you know your stuff.”

Waylon shrugged. “A bug in the jungle better know when an elephant stampede’s on the way.”

“Your antennas tell you how long before it reaches us?”

“I’m guessing an hour till snow starts falling, four or five before we feel the real brunt. But don’t hold me to that,” he said. “The on-line sat voodoo says it’ll be closer to six, which just seems way outside the mark.”

Nimec stood looking at him in the face of the wind.

“I’ll go ahead and bet my money on you,” he said.

Waylon didn’t comment. After a moment he nodded his head toward the long, ribbed metal structure to their right, where a group of men had formed a human conveyor belt from the entrance to a Caterpillar parked outside, stacking its flatbed high with crates.

“Anyway, sir, I’ve got a couple of reasons for showing you this arch first,” he said. “One, it’s our outermost building, a warehouse where we store contingency provisions. I figured we’d start here and work our way back to the main compound.”

He paused, watching the big tracked vehicle get loaded up.

“And two?” Nimec said.

“What you see is a perfect example of a Sword operation, Antarctic style,” he said. “It’s obviously not very exciting. The crates are filled with canned food and bottled water. We’re shifting them to the utilidors in case of a pinch, which is SOP before any Class II storm.”