Established in 1955, located on Ross Island’s Hut Point Peninsula, McMurdo Station was a research center shared by scientists throughout the world. Functioning like a small town, the southernmost community in the world featured four airport runways on hard ice, a harbor, and more than one hundred prefabricated buildings, including dormitories, a commissary, gymnasium, general store, post office, barbershop, a radio and television station, chapel, and an aquarium. Buildings were numbered based on the order in which they were built. During winter months, it was not unusual for these structures to outnumber McMurdo’s residents.

The Chinook shuddered violently as it landed on the helipad’s permanent ice. Our arrival summoned a four-wheel-drive military vehicle. Its rear axle sported triangular-shaped traction belts and the front tires had been replaced with skis. An electric heater, installed beneath the hood, kept the engine block from cracking.

Securing my jacket’s hood over my head, I climbed down from the chopper to chase after my uncle in the glacial cold.

There is cold, there is freezing cold, then there is bone-rattling, witch’s tit, get-me-the-fuck-outta-here cold. Three days ago, I had boarded a solar-powered train in Orlando. The dawn temperature that day had been a balmy 82°F. As I stepped out into the Antarctic dawn, the wind-chilled air was minus five. Overhead, a cobalt-blue sky was streaked with a neon lime-green ghost of color. The charged particles of the aurora australis appeared to slither a snake’s dance toward Mount Erebus, the twelve-thousand-foot-high active volcano looming to the east.

The wind howled across the compound, stinging my ears and crystallizing tears in my unprotected eyes. The truck’s warmth beckoned and I shoved my uncle inside the back of the vehicle, then slid in next to him. I slammed the door shut, silencing the continent’s retreating winter. My body was trembling.

The driver was dressed head to toe in an internally heated environmental suit. Removing his mask, he turned to greet us, revealing a mop of straw-colored hair and flushed cheeks. “Major Phillip Gazen. Welcome to the icebox, General. My instructions are to take you and your nephew to the CSEC for an oh-six-hundred briefing.”

“Where’s the rest of the Omega team?” I asked.

“Two of the team—a man and a woman—are doing prep work in the Crary labs. The others are already at the deployment site, thirty-seven miles to the northwest. The ice sheet’s a mile thick out there, blasted by a katabatic wind so cold it’ll quick-freeze your nut sack into ice cubes within two minutes. Enjoy the tropics of McMurdo while you can, gentlemen. You’ll soon be experiencing the true definition of Antarctic cold.”

Lovely …

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