Dana Andrews are deciphering the atmosphere. Hiro and Alexi are trying to understand the aurora, which is one hell of a show. You do climate, Lena hydroponics… it doesn't get any purer than this."
The hood against Lewis's ears made everything like listening through a blanket. "So how do we tell direction down here?"
"We make our own grid. The Greenwich Meridian is grid north; the opposite way south. Mostly, though, we point. There's nowhere to go, so it's like being on a small island. Disneyland. Come on, let's go see where you'll work."
They trudged toward the Clean Air Facility, a brown metal box a half mile from the Pole. It was elevated on stilts and festooned with instruments and antennas. As they walked, Lewis felt as if he'd gained a hundred pounds. His feet felt hot and heavy and his lungs were unhappy with air that remained too thin, too dry, too cold. His neck gaiter had become a muffler of ice, scratchy and smothering. He swatted at it, breaking some bits loose, but more clung to the fabric. At the same time he realized he was sweating.
The snow squeaked as they walked, dry and powdery, a loose coverlet on harder blue-white ice. Wind blew this skin into small, shin-high drifts that Cameron called sastrugi. "Alexi says it's the Russian word for eyebrows." It was laborious to lumber over or through them.
"What's his story?"
"There's no money in Russia. He's one of the top aurora experts in the world. So we gave him a posting here."
"He said he liked that movie The Thing."
"I think there's something in that film that gets to our ex-Commie. The fact that no one can trust anyone. I think he was into some pretty heavy science politics in the old Soviet. Down deep he's pretty serious, you know, kind of quietly ambitious. He'd love to accomplish something down here to bring credit to Mother Russia. Point of pride to bring out something new. But he's also a lot of fun. So's Hiro."
"They the only foreigners?"
"Dana's a Kiwi and Lena emigrated from the Czech Republic, but nobody's a foreigner, not down here. Antarctica is the only place on earth where you don't need a passport and you don't go through customs. No single nation owns anything. That's pretty cool, too."
There was the distant chug of the generator but no other sound. No bird call, no rustling leaves, no distant shout of children, no drone of highway noise. Lewis pushed back his hood and pulled down his gaiter a moment to listen, ignoring the bite of cold, his exhalation a puff of steam.
There was a quiet whisper behind him.
He turned his head. No one there.
They kept walking, puffing over the drifts.
Again the whisper.
Lewis turned completely this time. Odd. The snow was empty. What the hell?
The station manager was watching him with amusement.
"I thought I heard something."
"It's your breath, fingie. The moisture freezes as you walk and crackles behind your ear as it sprinkles down. Weird, isn't it?"
"My breath?"
"The vapor cloud."
"Oh." He puffed and listened as his exhalation floated away like fairy dust, with an audible crinkle. "You notice the noise," he conceded. "There's nothing else to hear."
"Just the voices in your head."
***
An outside metal staircase led up to the Clean Air Facility, perched on its columns like a heavy bird. Inside were instruments he'd been briefed on at Boulder by NOAA. Windows looked out at the flat bleakness of the ice cap. The elevated structure was here because air at the South Pole was thousands of miles from human industry, and hence the most unpolluted on earth. Lewis's primary job was to sample that air for evidence of global warming. He actually had to keep track of thirty-five separate measurements, some of them automated and some requiring manual sampling of air, snow, sunlight, and atmospheric ozone: temperature, carbon dioxide concentrations, wind, snowfall, pollutants, barometric pressure. My job is important. If the planet was heating, it would perversely show up here first, just like
The hood against Lewis's ears made everything like listening through a blanket. "So how do we tell direction down here?"
"We make our own grid. The Greenwich Meridian is grid north; the opposite way south. Mostly, though, we point. There's nowhere to go, so it's like being on a small island. Disneyland. Come on, let's go see where you'll work."
They trudged toward the Clean Air Facility, a brown metal box a half mile from the Pole. It was elevated on stilts and festooned with instruments and antennas. As they walked, Lewis felt as if he'd gained a hundred pounds. His feet felt hot and heavy and his lungs were unhappy with air that remained too thin, too dry, too cold. His neck gaiter had become a muffler of ice, scratchy and smothering. He swatted at it, breaking some bits loose, but more clung to the fabric. At the same time he realized he was sweating.
The snow squeaked as they walked, dry and powdery, a loose coverlet on harder blue-white ice. Wind blew this skin into small, shin-high drifts that Cameron called sastrugi. "Alexi says it's the Russian word for eyebrows." It was laborious to lumber over or through them.
"What's his story?"
"There's no money in Russia. He's one of the top aurora experts in the world. So we gave him a posting here."
"He said he liked that movie The Thing."
"I think there's something in that film that gets to our ex-Commie. The fact that no one can trust anyone. I think he was into some pretty heavy science politics in the old Soviet. Down deep he's pretty serious, you know, kind of quietly ambitious. He'd love to accomplish something down here to bring credit to Mother Russia. Point of pride to bring out something new. But he's also a lot of fun. So's Hiro."
"They the only foreigners?"
"Dana's a Kiwi and Lena emigrated from the Czech Republic, but nobody's a foreigner, not down here. Antarctica is the only place on earth where you don't need a passport and you don't go through customs. No single nation owns anything. That's pretty cool, too."
There was the distant chug of the generator but no other sound. No bird call, no rustling leaves, no distant shout of children, no drone of highway noise. Lewis pushed back his hood and pulled down his gaiter a moment to listen, ignoring the bite of cold, his exhalation a puff of steam.
There was a quiet whisper behind him.
He turned his head. No one there.
They kept walking, puffing over the drifts.
Again the whisper.
Lewis turned completely this time. Odd. The snow was empty. What the hell?
The station manager was watching him with amusement.
"I thought I heard something."
"It's your breath, fingie. The moisture freezes as you walk and crackles behind your ear as it sprinkles down. Weird, isn't it?"
"My breath?"
"The vapor cloud."
"Oh." He puffed and listened as his exhalation floated away like fairy dust, with an audible crinkle. "You notice the noise," he conceded. "There's nothing else to hear."
"Just the voices in your head."
***
An outside metal staircase led up to the Clean Air Facility, perched on its columns like a heavy bird. Inside were instruments he'd been briefed on at Boulder by NOAA. Windows looked out at the flat bleakness of the ice cap. The elevated structure was here because air at the South Pole was thousands of miles from human industry, and hence the most unpolluted on earth. Lewis's primary job was to sample that air for evidence of global warming. He actually had to keep track of thirty-five separate measurements, some of them automated and some requiring manual sampling of air, snow, sunlight, and atmospheric ozone: temperature, carbon dioxide concentrations, wind, snowfall, pollutants, barometric pressure. My job is important. If the planet was heating, it would perversely show up here first, just like
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