The driver wove the growling vehicle toward the center of the compound and the Crary Science and Engineering Center, the largest facility on Ross Island. Laid out as a series of three prefabricated buildings linked by a long shaftlike corridor, the CSEC’s interconnected phases totaled 46,500 square feet of workspace.

Major Gazen parked at the top of the hill in front of the entrance to the first and largest of the CSEC’s three rectangular buildings—a two-story structure elevated on pilings five feet above its rocky foundation. “Welcome to the Crary Center. This building is Phase I. Your briefing will take place in forty minutes in the conference room of Phase II; just follow the long ramp into the next building. Make yourselves at home, gentlemen, there’s coffee and sandwiches set up for you in the library upstairs. Oh, one last thing: Because of the dry windy conditions, there’s no smoking, candle lighting, or incense burning allowed anywhere on McMurdo Station. See you after the briefing.”

“Major, wait. Where can I find the woman from the Omega team?”

“Hell if I know. Try the women’s room.”

I slammed the truck door, muting Gazen’s laughter. Hustling after my uncle, I followed him up a concrete ramp leading to the Crary Center’s air-locked double doors.

The interior of Phase I resembled a modern hospital without the smell of sick people. Its corridor was white tiled, its doorjambs trimmed in pink. There were labs and equipment rooms and offices, everything open—but no one to be found.

“Like a ghost town,” I muttered.

“The sun may be up, but we’re still four months away from the Ross Sea opening to ships,” my uncle explained. “I bet there’s less than a hundred people on this entire outpost. I need to find a bathroom.”

“I need to find Andria.”

Leaving my uncle, I followed the main corridor until it connected to a long sloping ramp that led into the building known as Phase II. The structure was divided into an Earth Sciences pod and an Atmospheric Sciences pod. Entering the latter, I hurried through a maze of offices, quickly lost my bearings, and found myself in a short hall that dead-ended at closed double doors.

A nameplate identified the interior as TELESCOPE. I could hear someone speaking inside and entered.

The chamber was dark, save for the fluorescent glow emanating from four computer monitors mounted in a staggered formation above a sophisticated GPS station. A silver-haired man who looked to be in his late seventies was working at the terminal, conversing with another party on a landline.

“… according to the last set of images, Arthur, the absolute magnitude of 1997 XF11 has changed. Either the asteroid’s a lot bigger than we thought, or its trajectory was altered when it passed Jupiter. Either way, I want you and Carol to recalculate the error eclipse for the pass on October twenty-sixth.”