A “slot” was a crevasse formed when a glacier, moving over the underlying bedrock, cracks open from the top down to form a pie-shaped wedge. Being “slotted” is what happened to Ben’s Australian guide when the man stepped onto a bridge of wind-blown snow that collapsed into a twenty-foot-wide crevasse.

“It happened so fast,” Ben said. “One minute he was walking back to the sled to grab a pair of binoculars, the next he was gone. I heard him scream a full thirty seconds before his body slammed into a tight wedge a mile and a half down—a nightmare known as “corking in.” Poor bastard died down there, all busted up in the darkness while we tried to reach him. Slots scare the hell out of me. Everyone’s got to be roped in on the open ice. And don’t think you’re safer in a vehicle either; jeeps get slotted, too.”

Standing out on the frozen waters of Prydz Bay eliminated the risk of being slotted, but not the risk of freezing to death. Ben informed us that Antarctic seawater averaged twenty-seven degrees, a sub-freezing temperature made possible due to the high salt content, which lowered its freezing point several degrees. “The human body can withstand about thirty seconds of exposure in water that cold before the muscles seize and cease to function. You’ll survive fifteen minutes if you are bobbing in a life vest. Either way, your blood feels like it’s turning to lead.”

It was into these sub-freezing waters that Ben and I would be taking the Barracuda on its maiden voyage. With all the ways one could die in Antarctica, we were about to toss the dice on another—an untested machine.

Even so, the moment the tarp was removed from the submersible I couldn’t wait to get started.

Ben was right; the Barracuda was nothing like the three-man sub I had drowned and nearly died in two years ago. Sleek and torpedo-shaped, the watercraft reminded me of something you’d find on the Bonneville Salt Flats, only with a windshield that extended all the way to its front bumper. Inside this four-inch-thick acrylic pod were three rotatable seats, placed in tandem with their own command centers. I was assigned the forward position, Ben the center, and Ming in back, allowing her to control the sub’s collection tubes and grabbers. The two Valkyrie units were mounted along either side of the vessel like missiles, the collector arms and storage bins located aft of her wings, folded out of the way by her keel. The bow was reinforced, narrow, and hydrodynamic, the outer chassis surrounding the cockpit painted dark neon blue, rendering her invisible in the deep blue sea.