‘I love Mark’s curiosity, it’s so refreshing.’ Max laughs savagely and annoyed at the expeditioners who spend most of their time in the video lounge.

‘Some of them haven’t seen daylight since we left Hobart. They live in a world of virtual darkness. Maybe no-one has told them they’re going down in summer and they’re acclimatising themselves to the twenty-four hour darkness of winter. They put on a comedy about nuns on a Sunday morning and that’s their church service.’

Max has lost his faith. It went years ago. He’s embarrassed about his privileged Anglican school education. He lets slips a childhood of Sunday school and church fellowships and still devout parents. He tells me he doesn’t believe in it all. ‘I’m a scientist. I can’t.’ I tell him that I have a belief and he says he envies me. He says my belief will give me strength to get through very rough times and I’m lucky to have it. He says he feels so alive in all of this experience, that if he did believe, he reckons this’d be as close to God as he could get.

‘I look at the videoheads and they’re like icebergs, all under the surface. They’re not alive in this at all. They’re people without curiosity. They can’t be bothered going out on deck to look at whales and auroras. Why are they here?’

There’s a button on the control panel of the bridge. It’s marked X. Underneath it is a small, official looking plaque. It says in bold script, Only to be pressed in extreme emergencies. Max presses it.

‘Fin, I have to.’

It dims the lights.

Jack posts a new rule for seal captures. Only male seals. They’re tougher, and they won’t be pregnant.