A line of suits walks to the seats on the podium. There’s a hush from the new expeditioners. A man comes in late and sits in the empty seat next to me. The lights dim. A list of rules comes up brightly on an overhead projector. A woman from the Division’s legal department stands with a long pointer stick and explains. Her nervousness contradicts the crispness of her suit. I write down in my notepad what she says. Work, for me, has begun. The man who’s late places his arm on the rest beside me. The veins run close under the skin. They stand out like thick cords. I can’t help staring at them.

‘You can’t take rocks from the continent because if everyone took them, there’d be a problem.’

He’s wearing a green woollen jumper and it’s scrunched up above his elbows. It has a hole in it.

‘You can’t take polystyrene balls to the continent, because they don’t degrade and they get stuck in the throats of animals and birds and choke them.’

His wrist flops over the edge of the armrest. I think about Michelangelo wrists and how immensely erotic I find them. I imagine his hipbone. I find hipbones immensely erotic too. And feet. And throats.

The legal woman finds her stride and the tremor in her voice disappears. I focus on my notepad.

‘Now the big one.’ She smiles apologetically. ‘You can’t consume more than three cans of beer a day on the ship. It’s a safety issue. Last year someone got drunk and got their foot stuck in an automatically closing watertight door, and the foot was almost severed. If the three-can rule doesn’t work on this voyage, the next one’ll be dry. You lot won’t be very popular if you blow it for the voyages behind you. Think about it.’

It’ll be a good excuse to kick this drinking habit which I’m starting to like too much. I don’t drink beer anyway. The man bends over to tie up a shoelace on his walking boot. He smells, softly, of a wet garden. He smells of sweat. Not clammy, ugly, office polystyrene-shirt sweat. Sweat from working and walking outdoors.

‘And lastly, don’t leave anything of your presence in the field.’

He stops tying his laces.

‘Except footprints. Cigarette butts and faeces and everything human in terms of waste is to be removed, because it will never, ever rot.’

He sits up.

‘Urinating is allowed, but preferably down a crack in the ice.’