MICHAEL HAD SPOTTED the little red-haired guy getting off the plane at Santiago and knew he was a scientist right off the bat. There was something about scientists that gave them away, though he'd have been hard put to say exactly what. It wasn't something easy, like the smell of formaldehyde or protractors sticking out of their pockets. No, it was more a matter of their mien; with scientists-and Michael had been around plenty of them while photographing and writing about the natural world-there was something both detached and highly observant. They could be part of a group, and not part of a group, at the same time. And hard as some of them might try to fit in, they never really did. It was like that ma.s.sive school of sunfish that Michael had photographed underwater in the Bahamas; all of the fish, for safety's sake alone, tried to move toward the center of the swarm, but some of them, for whatever reason, were kept to the margins and never made it.

And of course they were the easiest for predators to pick off.

During the layover before he could catch the prop plane to Puerto Williams, Michael dragged his duffel bag into the crowded cafe area of the airport. The red-haired guy was sitting alone at a table in the corner, his head lowered toward his laptop. Michael got close enough to see that he was studying a complex chart littered with numbers and arrows and intersecting lines. To Michael, it looked vaguely topographic. He stood for only a second or two before the guy in the chair whipped around; he had a small, narrow face, and pale red eyebrows, too. The guy sized Michael up, then said, "This can't possibly be interesting to you."

"You'd be surprised," Michael said, approaching him. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm just waiting for my connection to Puerto Williams."

He was waiting to see if that worked, and it did. "Me, too," the guy said.

"Mind if I sit down?" Michael said, taking the empty chair at the table-the last empty chair in the whole place.

Dumping the duffel on the floor, with one foot through the strap (a habit he'd gotten into on lots of late-night travels in foreign locales), Michael extended his hand and introduced himself. "Michael Wilde."

"Darryl Hirsch."

"Puerto Williams, huh? Is that your last stop?"

Hirsch clicked the keyboard a few times, then folded up the laptop. He looked at Michael as if unsure what to make of him yet.

"You're not some kind of government intelligence agent or anything, are you? Because if you are, you're doing a terrible job."

Michael laughed. "Why would you think that?"

"Because I'm a scientist, and we live in an age of idiots. For all I know, you're tracking me to make sure that I don't prove the earth is getting warmer-even though it plainly is. The ice caps are melting, the polar bears are disappearing, and Intelligent Design is perfectly designed for dolts. So go ahead-you can arrest me now."

"Relax. You're sounding a little paranoid, if you don't mind my saying so."

"Just because you're paranoid," Darryl observed, "doesn't mean you're not being followed."

"True enough," Michael replied. "But I like to think I'm one of the good guys. I work for Eco-Travel Magazine, doing photos and text. I'm going down to the Antarctic to do a story on life at a research station there."

"Which research station? A dozen countries have planted stations there, just to stake their claim."

"Point Adelie. About as close to the Pole as you can get."

"Oh," Hirsch said, digesting the news. "Me, too. Huh." He sounded like he still hadn't given up on his conspiracy theory. "That's really something." His fingers tapped on the closed lid of his laptop. "So, you're a journalist."

Michael detected that first glimmer he had seen before, a million times. When people found out he was a writer, there was that first mild surprise, then acceptance, and then-a nanosecond later-the dawning realization that he could make them famous. Or at least write about them. It was like watching little lights go on in their heads.

"That's great," Hirsch said. "What a coincidence." With studied nonchalance, he opened his laptop again and started tapping at the keyboard. "Let me just show you something." He turned the screen so that Michael could see it. The same elaborate chart appeared. "This is the seafloor of the continental shelf, under the ice around Point Adelie. You can see here where the shelf extends, and here"-he put a nail-bitten finger to the screen-"where it drops off precipitously, into what we call the abyssal range. I'm planning to go down maybe a couple of hundred meters on this trip. I'm a marine biologist, by the way. Woods Hole Oceanographic. I'm particularly interested in the notothenioidei-Antarctic icefish-as well as sea snails, eel pouts, rat tails. You know what those are, right?"

Michael said yes, though, privately, he'd have to concede his knowledge was extremely sketchy.

"-and how their metabolisms function in this incredibly hostile environment. A lot of what I do, now that I think about it, would offer some great photo opportunities. These creatures are fantastically adapted to their ecological niches, and to me at least, they're phenomenally beautiful, though some people, I gather, have trouble seeing it. But that, I think, is just because they seem so foreign at first ..."

There was no stopping him. He didn't even need to take a breath. Michael glanced at the espresso cup next to the computer and wondered just how many of those his new travel pal had imbibed.

" ... and many of these animals, no matter how small or simple, carry a veritable world of parasites, in everything from their a.n.a.l glands to their eye ducts."

He said it as if he was describing the array of wonderful rides at an amus.e.m.e.nt park.

"And as I'm sure you know, the parasite's best bet, in order to ensure its own survival, is to make sure that the host it's devouring is in turn devoured by something else."

Michael wondered if this was the guy's usual small talk.

"Did you know, for instance, that the larval acanthocephalan deliberately drives its amphipod host crazy?"

"No," Michael admitted. "Why would it do that?"

"So that the host will leave its hiding place, usually under a rock, and wildly gyrate through open water where it will surely be eaten by a fish."

"You don't say."

"Don't worry, I'll show you a lot of this when we get there," Darryl said, consolingly. "It's thrilling to see."

Michael could see that he was just about to launch into another paean on the glories waiting to be discovered on the ocean floor when a tinny loudspeaker announced-first in Spanish, then in English-that those pa.s.sengers going on to Puerto Williams could board their plane.

Hirsch kept up his chatter all the way across the cold, windblown tarmac, and up the short flight of steps into the prop plane. He didn't even have to duck to enter, while Michael had to bend far forward to keep from getting bonked. The plane had just ten seats, five on each side, and with everyone wearing heavy coats and parkas, boots and gloves and hats, it was a very tight squeeze. All the others seemed to be rattling away in Spanish or Portuguese. Darryl Hirsch took the seat right across from Michael, but once the plane taxied down the windy runway, its props whirring and its engines growling, all attempts at conversation came to a halt. They'd have had to shout at the top of their lungs just to be heard across the narrow aisle.

Michael buckled in and stared out the small round window. The plane had some trouble lifting off, buffeted by strong headwinds, but once it did, it quickly veered away from the land, soared over a ridge of jagged cliffs, and turned south along the Pacific coastline. It was a minute or two before Michael's stomach caught up with the rest of him. Far below, he could see the white-topped waves rolling and cresting, chopped by fierce and incessant winds. He was heading, he knew, for the windiest-in addition to the driest, coldest, and most barren-place on Earth. It was early afternoon, but the light would last around the clock. It was the austral summer, and the sun would never go down. It appeared on the northern horizon like a sliver of dull coin, bathing everything in a muted luminescence, punctuated by pa.s.sages of either glaring brightness, or storm-covered shadow. Over the coming weeks and months, the sun would travel slowly across the sky, reaching its zenith on the solstice of December 21, before departing altogether in late March. Then, the moon would rule just as unequivocally as the sun did now.

Although Michael wanted to stay awake, to remember every moment of the journey, it became harder and harder to do so. He had been traveling for what felt like days, from Tacoma to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Santiago, and now from Santiago to Puerto Williams, the southernmost town in the world. He lowered the plastic shade on the window and closed his eyes. The plane was warm, too warm really, and his feet were sweltering in their hiking boots. But he was too tired even to reach down and try to unlace them. He settled back in his uncomfortable seat-he could feel the knees of the guy behind him prodding through the thin fabric cushion and into the small of his back-but dropped off into sleep anyway. The constant thrumming of the engines, the closeness of the cabin, the never-changing light ...

He started out dreaming, as he usually did, of Kristin-of some occasion when they were happy together, when they were kayaking in Oregon, or parasailing off the Yucatan-but the deeper he went, the darker and more troubling the dreams became. Too often, he found himself in this same weird state-asleep, but simultaneously, it seemed, aware of that fact-trying hard to marshal his thoughts and move them in another direction, but stuck all the same. Before he knew it, he was back on the barren ledge in the Cascades, huddling against the cold, with Kristin cradled in his arms. He was holding her so tight his arms ached, and pressing his feet against the rocky wall so hard that he lost all feeling below the ankles. He was talking to her, telling her how mad her dad would be, how her sister would claim she was being such a drama queen. But when he awoke, with the flight attendant shaking him to say he had to sit up for landing, he found that he was clutching his own backpack, and his long legs were entangled in the metal runners of the seat in front of him.

Darryl was wide awake-that's what a few espressos will do for you-and grinning. "Look out your window!" he shouted over the engines. "It's on your side!"

Michael sat up, rubbing the rough whiskers on his chin, and lifted the shade. Again, he was struck by that eerie light that made him want to close his eyes or look away. But far ahead and far below, he could see the very tip of the South American continent, tapering like the sharp tip of a shoe, winnowing itself down to almost nothing where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans merged. And on the very tip of the shoe, he saw a tiny, black smudge.

"Puerto Williams!" Darryl cried, exultantly. "Can you see it?"

Michael had to smile-he kind of liked this guy, but he was definitely going to take some getting used to. He gave him a thumbs-up.

The pilot issued some instructions in Spanish, which Michael a.s.sumed meant something like return your seats to their upright position, and the plane banked steeply toward a long, spiky line of brown mountains. When it was parallel to them, and presumably protected from the easterly winds, it swiftly dropped alt.i.tude-Michael's ears popped like corks-and the pilot cut back on the engines. For a moment, it felt like the plane was in a free fall, before Michael heard the rumbling of the landing gear coming down and felt the nose of the plane coming up a bit. The engine noise subsided considerably, and the plane seemed to glide, like a seabird, onto the gravel runway, touch down with a b.u.mp, then roll, unimpeded, toward a couple of rusted hangars, a ramshackle terminal, and a control tower that Michael could swear was tilting ten degrees.

Several of the pa.s.sengers applauded, and the pilot came on to say, "Muchas gracias, senoras y senores, y bienvenidos al fin de la tierra."

That much Michael didn't need a translator for. Welcome to the ends of the earth.

CHAPTER FIVE.

November 24, 4:15 p.m.

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN PURCELL, the Commanding Officer of the icebreaker Constellation, was getting impatient. From his cabin, he'd heard the arrival of the prop plane carrying his last two pa.s.sengers, but that had been well over an hour ago. Where the h.e.l.l were they? How long could it take to get from the airstrip to the port? It wasn't like Puerto Williams (pop. 2512 at last count) offered much in the way of sightseeing. Once you'd stopped to pay homage to the Proa del Escampavia Yelcho-the preserved prow of the cutter that had been used to rescue Ernest Shackleton's starving crew from Elephant Island in 1916-there wasn't a lot else to capture your interest. And Purcell should know-he'd been running his ship among the southernmost Chilean and Argentine ports for nearly ten years-and he still hadn't seen any more cooperation or amity between those two countries than when he'd started. To this day, there wasn't a reliable boat connection between Puerto Williams, on the northern sh.o.r.e of the Isla Navarino, and Ushuaia on the Argentine side of the channel.

He went up to the bridge, where Ensign Gallo had been placed on duty while they remained at dockside. Short of the aloft con tower, which rose another forty-five feet above the bridge and was used as a lookout post for oncoming bergs, the bridge afforded the best available view of the port and what pa.s.sed for the town just up the hill. A few hundred yards away, at the Muelle Guardian Brito, or main pier, a Norwegian cruise ship had berthed, and he could hear one of the old Abba hits-was it "Dancing Queen"?-blaring from its party room.

"Give me those," he said to the ensign, gesturing at the binoculars that were lodged beside the wheel. He trained them uphill, toward the Centro Comercial-not much more than a few crafts shops, a general store, and a post office-looking for anyone who might look like a photojournalist or a marine biologist. The few people he could see were elderly tourists, carefully framing pictures of each other with the towering granite needles, known as the Teeth of Navarino, in the distance behind them. But then, if you were going to take the trouble to travel to one of the most remote spots on the planet, you probably did want to have incontrovertible proof of that fact when you got back home.

"How's the doc settling in?" Purcell asked Ensign Gallo.

"Fine, sir. No complaints."

"Where'd you put her?"

"Petty Officer Klauber volunteered, sir, to give up her cabin to Dr. Barnes."

That was a lucky break, Purcell thought. Berths were hard to come by. The doc-one of the three NSF pa.s.sengers he was to transport to Point Adelie-was an African-American woman of considerable bulk (good padding, he thought, for the Antarctic) and strong demeanor. When she arrived the day before and shook his hand, he could feel his fingers crunch in her grip. She'd do well out there. It was no country for weaklings.

Purcell swept the town again, and this time, finally, saw two men looking down at the docks, and one of them-a little guy with red hair-asking a Chilean fisherman something. The fisherman nodded, then swung one arm, still holding a chum bucket, down toward the Constellation. The other guy was tall, with black hair that was whipping around his head (this was hat country, as he would soon learn) and carried a ma.s.sively overstuffed duffel bag. He also had on a blue nylon backpack that betrayed the outlines of a laptop computer case.

As the two men came down toward the harbor, Purcell saw that the little guy had also hired a local teenager to push a wheelbarrow loaded with his own gear.

"There they are," Purcell said. "Give 'em a kick in the a.s.s." The ensign obliged with a couple of short blasts on the ship's whistle.

"Single up all lines," the captain continued, "and prepare to get under way."

As Michael dragged his bag down the metal-and-concrete pier, he saw a crewman in navy whites descending the gangway. The boat was bigger than he'd expected-he'd have guessed maybe four hundred feet long-with what looked like a helicopter secured under an enormous tarp on the aft deck. The sides of the ship were painted red, except for a wide white diagonal stripe across the bow. At the stern, there were gigantic propeller-like screws. Break the ice with the hull, Michael figured, then chop it up with the screws. The boat, in short, was like a huge, floating ice-cube maker.

"Dr. Hirsch?" the sailor called out, "Mr. Wilde?"

"Yo," Darryl replied, and Michael lifted his chin in acknowledgment.

"Petty Officer Kazinski. Welcome aboard the Constellation."

Kazinski grabbed the bags out of the wheelbarrow and, while Hirsch dug out a few bills for the teenage porter, turned around on his heel and marched briskly up the ramp. "The CO-Commanding Officer," he said over his shoulder, "is Captain Purcell. He has requested your company at dinner tonight, in the Officers' Mess. Seven o'clock. Please dress appropriately."

What, Michael wondered, did that mean? He'd forgotten to pack a tux. (Not that he owned one, anyway.) Once up on deck, Michael looked around. The bridge, rising at least fifty feet above him, struck him as unusually high and wide, running virtually the entire width of the ship, and perched above that was a kind of crow's nest, mounted on what looked like a chimney stack. That must be some view. He should try to get some wide-angle shots from up there on the voyage to Point Adelie.

"You'll be sharing a cabin aft," Kazinski said. "Follow me, and I'll show you to your quarters."

As they headed for a narrow stairway several sailors hustled past them, and Michael heard a few others clattering down the stairs above their heads. He heard some shorthand comments about mooring lines, switching fuel tanks, and some crack about a sonar tech that made no sense to him but made the sailors laugh uproariously. The ship was clearly being readied for immediate departure.

"How many men do you have on board?" Michael asked.

"The crew consists of one hundred and two men and women, sir."

Michael stood corrected. He hadn't seen any females yet, but apparently some were around. As if to prove the point, a tall, thin woman with a clipboard tucked under one arm of her uniform suddenly emerged from a hatchway; Kazinski immediately stood at attention and saluted.

She acknowledged the salute, then extended her hand to Hirsch. "You must be Dr. Hirsch. I'm Lieutenant Commander Healey-Kathleen-the Operations officer on board." She had a crisp, no-nonsense att.i.tude about her; even the short brown hair peeking out from under her cap seemed cut for maximum efficiency. "And you're the journalist?" she said to Michael. "I'm sorry, I saw your name in the morning report, but I've forgotten it."

Michael introduced himself and said, "Glad to be aboard."

"Yes, we were waiting."

Michael began to get the impression that he and Hirsch had been holding up the works.

"You're the last of the NSF contingent," Healey said.

"There are others?" Hirsch asked.

"Only one. Dr. Charlotte Barnes. She arrived two days ago."

There was another long, blaring whistle from overhead. Three more sailors went flying by. The deck rumbled with the sound of the starboard engine coming online.

"If you'll excuse me ..."

Michael nodded, and as she strode off, he could hear her calling out orders right and left.

"This way," Kazinski said, disappearing into the hatchway. Michael waited for Hirsch to go through, then followed. The pa.s.sageway was so narrow it was tough to maneuver with the huge duffel-especially as it contained his camera equipment, painstakingly packed to protect against breakage; the camera and gear were in metal cases at the core, further insulated by all his clothing wrapped around them. But the bag was d.a.m.n heavy, as a result.

"The Constellation," Kazinski was saying, "is among the largest icebreakers in the Coast Guard fleet. She weighs just over thirteen thousand tons, and she runs on half a dozen diesel engines and three gas turbines. We're carrying over one million gallons of fuel. At full throttle, she can muster seventy-five thousand horsepower and travel through open water at seventeen knots. In high seas, she has a maximum roll of ninety degrees."

What, Michael wondered, would that feel like? He'd seen some heavy weather off Nova Scotia, and been caught in a squall in the Bahamas, but he'd never been on an icebreaker in an Antarctic storm.

"Any chance of that?" Hirsch asked. "Rolling ninety degrees, I mean?" He didn't sound like he'd be looking forward to it.

"You never can tell," Kazinski said, stepping over the threshold of another hatchway, then warning, "Watch your step there. Summer seas are not as bad as winter down here, but it's still Cape Horn. Anything can happen, at any time. Watch your step again."

He took them down another short flight of metal steps, and the portholes suddenly vanished: Michael figured that they had just descended to below water level. Even the air became closer and danker. Fluorescent tubes in the ceiling flickered, and as they continued to make their way toward the stern, the vibrations in the floor got stronger. So did the noise.

"And here we are," Kazinski said, ducking into a cabin door. "Home sweet home."

When Michael and Darryl followed him in, there was barely room for the three of them to stand. There were two narrow bunks attached to opposite walls, with striped woolen blankets pulled military tight; a flat metal tray was folded down from the wall between them. There was one overhead light fixture, burning brightly in a frosted globe, and a plywood door that led to the head; Michael could smell the mildew.

"Is this the deluxe cabin?" Michael joked, and Kazinski laughed.

"Yes, sir. We save this one for visiting dignitaries only."

"We'll take it."

"Good decision there. Last two berths on board, sir."

Darryl, fortunately, didn't seem to mind, either. As soon as Kazinski left, he unzipped one of his bags and started tossing some things onto the bunk on the right. "Say," he said to Michael, stopping for a second, "did you want that one?"

Michael shook his head. "It's all yours." He slung his backpack off his shoulder and onto the cot. "But if they leave us chocolates on our pillows at night, I want mine."

While Darryl unpacked, Michael dug out one of his digital cameras- the Canon S80, good for down-and-dirty wide-angle shots-and went up on deck. The Constellation had left the dock, and was pa.s.sing slowly southeast down the Beagle Channel, named after HMS Beagle, the very ship that had carried Charles Darwin into those waters in 1834. The air temperature wasn't bad, maybe thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees, and since the ship was still in a relatively protected waterway, the wind was mild. Michael was able to get off a few shots without worrying about gloves and without his fingers going numb. He probably wouldn't be using these for the piece anyway, but he always liked to have a few photos recording every important phase of his trip. He used them as memory aids when it came to the writing part, and it never failed to surprise him that something he remembered one way would show up quite differently when he looked at the photos. The mind could play a lot of tricks on you, he had learned.

The port had slipped into the distance, and the coastline was dusted with a pale green cover of moss and lichen. Patagonian Indians had once populated the wind-ravaged country, and when Ferdinand Magellan, searching for a sheltered westward route in 1520, had seen their burning campfires dotting the barren hills and sh.o.r.e, he had dubbed it Tierra del Fuego, or "The Land of Fire." There was nothing fiery, or warm, about it now, and certainly no sign of the original Patagonians; they had been decimated by disease and the usurpation of their home by the European explorers. The only signs of life that Michael could see onsh.o.r.e were flocks of snowy petrels, darting among the scoured cliffsides, tending their nests and feeding their young. When his fingers got too cold to handle the camera anymore, he tucked it back in his parka, zipped the pocket closed, and simply leaned over the rail.

The water below was a hard, dark blue, and broke from the sides of the ship in a constant curling motion. Michael had been reading up on the Antarctic ever since getting the a.s.signment from Gillespie, and he knew that this ice-free water wouldn't last long. As soon as they left the channel and entered the Drake Pa.s.sage-and Cape Horn-the sea would become the roughest on earth. Even now, in the southern hemisphere's summer, icebergs would pose a constant threat. He was actually looking forward to their appearance. Photographing bergs and glaciers, bringing out the delicate hues that ranged from a blinding white to a deep lavender, was an artistic and technical challenge of the first order. And Michael liked a challenge.

He'd been standing there for some time before he became aware of a fellow pa.s.senger also at the rail-a black woman with braided hair, bundled up in a long, green down coat. He wondered how long she'd been there. She was maybe twenty feet away, and fumbling with her own camera. From where he stood, Michael thought it looked like a Nikon 35 mm. She was aiming at the water-a couple of sea lions had just popped up, their sleek black heads glistening like bowling b.a.l.l.s-and Michael called out, "Not easy from a moving boat, is it?"

She looked over. She had a broad face with high cheekbones and arched brows. "It's never easy," she said. "I don't even know why I try."

With one hand on the rail for balance-the sea was fairly calm, but the boat still rolled on the swells-Michael strolled over.