For the next third of a day, we slept and woke in our throttling, pitching funhouse of steel and humanity. I cursed my bladder, which forced me to inch my way through rows of dozing bodies only to enter a tilted toilet shed of sloshing urine and excrement, wedging myself in as I peeled away three layers of clothing just to free my organ and pee—all while the cargo hold rose and plunged beneath me like a bucking bronco.

Three times I repeated that journey, four hours I slept, and True punched me twice more before we mercifully landed at Davis Station on the eastern coast of Antarctica.

7

Davis Station, East Antarctica

Barely awake, I grabbed my gear and followed True down the rear exit ramp of the aircraft, only to have my unprotected eyes assaulted by a brilliant hazy-white wonderland of ice. Seconds later, a forty-mile-an-hour gust of minus twenty-seven-degree wind blasted us in the face with a flurry of frozen crystals and abominable cold.

True turned to me and I could read his thoughts: Welcome to East Antarctica—asshole.

The two of us struggled to position our goggles on our faces as the other passengers pushed by, shaking their cloaked heads at our lack of preparedness.

Once I could see through my tinted eyewear, I stepped down from the plane and onto the frozen runway to get my bearings. Prydz Bay was to my left. I knew it was the bay because there was a massive tanker frozen in its icy grip. Beyond the ship were jagged hills that I learned were actually the tops of icebergs. Had the vessel not been there, the alabaster geology would have looked no different than the rest of our surroundings, and I wondered if any rookie expeditioners had ever taken a wrong turn off the base and simply walked out to sea.

To my right was the plane’s exodus—sixty-plus passengers making their way to a series of lime-green-colored metal buildings connected by an enclosed walkway.

I followed True, using his girth to shield me from the wind.

Waiting for us inside, checking names off of his clipboard list, was the Davis Station flag officer, a senior geologist named Kyle Trunk.

“Names?”

“Zachary Wallace and True MacDonald.”

The scientist’s hazel eyes took their inventory. “Well, well, so the hotshot marine biologist and his Scottish lackey have finally—”

The flag officer never got out the word arrived. Having spent most of the last seventy-two hours cramped on planes while he was forced to remain sober, True was in no mood for a fraternal tongue-lashing.

Smiling, he grabbed a fistful of the man’s crotch and squeezed hard. “Now, who are ye callin’ a lackey, laddie? Don’t ye ken who I am? I’m the prince of Scotland, and it would be best for your future kin if ye bloody well treated me as such.”

The scientist’s face flushed purple as he gurgled a frightened, “Sorry.”