"Jed Lewis?" It was a shout, above the noise.
A nod, his own goggles giving the Pole a piss-yellow tint.
The man reached, not to shake hands but to shoulder the duffel. He turned to the others. "Let's move, people! Let's get this cargo off so you can all go home!" His goggles rotated across their rank, taking mental roll. "Where's Tyson?"
There was a long moment of silence, goggled heads turning, a few smiles of unease and amusement. In their cold weather gear everyone looked alike except for strips on their coats with block-letter name tags.
"Sulking!" someone finally called.
Lewis's greeter stiffened. There was another silence beneath the drum of the engines, someone shrugging, his guide sucking in unhappy breath. "Well, someone go the hell and find him and tell him to get the damn sled up here so we can get this plane off! He's got eight long months to sulk!"
The others shifted uncomfortably.
The man turned back to Lewis, not waiting to see if anyone followed his command. "This way!" They set off toward the central aluminum geodesic dome, half buried now by drifting snow, their pace briskly impatient. Lewis looked back, parts of the orange-clad group now breaking off to troop to the plane. Then ahead to the dome, an upended silver saucer, dramatic and odd, like surplused flotsam from a World's Fair. He'd read the dimensions: fifty-five feet high, a hundred and sixty-four feet in diameter. An American flag snapped at the top, its edge ragged, its gunshot stutter audible now above the idle of the plane. Streaks of snow dust curved across the top of the dome in neatly drawn parabolas.
Lewis's nose hairs had already frozen. The cold ached in his lungs. His goggles were fogging up and his cheeks felt numb. He'd only been outside a few minutes. It was worse than he'd expected.
They descended a snowy ramp to a dark, garage-sized entrance at the base of the dome, Lewis mincing in his Frankenstein-sized boots so he wouldn't fall and slide on his butt. His guide paused to wait for him and let their eyes adjust to the dimness inside the door. Two cavelike corrugated steel arches extended into gloom to his left and right. "BioMed and the fuel arch that way, generators and garage over here." Lewis had a shadowy impression of walls and doors of plywood and steel, unpainted and utilitarian. Before he could peek into the arched tunnels he was led straight ahead. "The dome where we're quartered is this way."
The overturned bowl shielded the core of the South Pole base like a military helmet, keeping warmth-sucking wind and blowing snow off the metal boxes where people lived. Three of these boxcar-shaped structures, colored orange, sat on short stilts under its shelter. Since the base was built on snow, the powder didn't stop at the entrance but formed the dome floor, drifting over wooden crates and mounding against the orange housing units. Dirt and grease had colored the snow tan, like sand.
"It never melts," his guide said, scuffing at it. "The ambient temperature in here is fifty-one below."
Lewis tilted his head back. There was a hole at the top of the dome that let in pale light from a remote sky. The entire underside of the uninsulated structure was covered with steel-gray icicles, pointing downward like a roof of nails. It was beautiful and forbidding at the same time.
"You didn't finish the roof."
"Ventilation."
Someone bumped Lewis and he staggered to one side. It was another winter-over, rushing a crate of fresh fruit to the galley before it could harden in the cold. "Sorry! Freshies are like gold!" They followed the hurrying man to a freezerlike door and opened it for him. To get inside you pulled a metal rod sideways and tugged at a slab like a wall. Lewis realized that the freezer wasn't inside here, it was the outside: Anything not carried into the orange housing modules would turn hard as a brick. They followed the fruit bearer. There was a vestibule hung with parkas and beyond it a galley of bright fluorescent light, warmth, and the excited chatter of more people saying goodbye. Their duffels were heaped like sandbags. People were packed to go.
His guide let Lewis's gear drop with a thud and pushed back his goggles and hood. "Rod Cameron. Station manager."
"Hi." Lewis tried to fix the face but the men in their parkas looked alike. He had an impression of beard, chapped skin, and red raccoon lines where the goggles cut. Lewis was wondering about the absentee at the plane. "Someone not show up for work?"
Cameron frowned. He had a look of rugged self-confidence that came from coping with cold and administration, and a hint of strain for the same reason. The Pole wore on you. "Egos in kindergarten." He shook his head. "My job is to herd cats. And I'm having a bad day. We had a little alarm last night."
"Alarm?"
"The heat went off."
"Oh."
"We got it back on."
"Oh."
The station manager studied the newcomer. Lewis still looked smooth, sandy-haired and tanned, with the easy tautness of the recreational athlete.
It would pass.
"You got your file?"
Lewis dug in his duffel and fished out a worn manila envelope with employment forms, medical records, dental X rays, and a list of the personal belongings he'd shipped to the Pole in advance of his own arrival. His new boss glanced inside, as if to confirm Lewis's presence with paper, and then put the folder under his arm. "I've got to go back outside to see this last plane off," Cameron said. "I'll show you around later but right now it's best to just sit and drink."
Lewis looked around the galley in confusion.
"I mean drink water. The altitude. You feel lousy, right? It's okay. Fingies are supposed to."
"Fingie?"
"F-N-G-I. Fucking New Guy on the Ice. That's you."
Lewis failed at a grin. "Latecomer."
"Just new. Everybody's a fingie at first. We know we're lucky to get you last minute like this. Jim Sparco e-mailed about you like the Second Coming."
"I needed a job."
"Yeah, he explained that. I think it's cool that you quit Big Oil." Cameron gave a nod of approval.
"That's me, man of principle." Lewis had a headache from the altitude.
"Course, we need their shit to keep from freezing down here."
"Not from a wildlife refuge, you don't."
"And you just walked out."
"They weren't about to give me a helicopter ride."
"That took some guts."
"It had to be done."
Cameron tried to assess the new man. Lewis looked tired, disoriented, chest rising and falling, half excited and half afraid. They all started like that. The station manager turned back to the door, impatient to get away, and considered whether to say anything else. "I've got to go get the plane off," he finally said again. "You know what that means, don't you?"
"What?"
"That you can't quit down here."
A stream of people followed Cameron out, some looking at Lewis curiously and others ignoring him: the winter-overs going to offload the supplies and the last from summer flying home. The Pole had a brief four-month window when weather permitted incoming flights, and then in February the last plane left, fleeing north like a migrating bird. In winter it was too dark to see, too windy to keep the ice runway clear, and too cold to risk a landing: Struts could snap, hydraulics fail, doors fail to open or close. The sun set on March 21, the equinox, and wouldn't rise again until September 21. From February to October the base was as remote as the moon. There were twenty-six winter-overs who retreated under the dome to maintain its functions and take astronomical and weather readings: eight women and eighteen men this year. It was like being on a submarine or space station. You had to commit.