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    LAT. 67°20'S, LONG. 180°16'W ROSS SEA—OFF THE ROSS ICE SHELF NEW ZEALAND ROSS DEPENDENCY
    Ralph Matheson felt nauseous. So much so, he’d just lost his breakfast, which was now a glistening yellow tiger-stripe frozen solid down the side of Red Osprey’s iron-oxide-colored hull.
    He had the shakes bad. Always did when he felt sick. He quickly wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve before gripping the rail tightly and heaving again. Frozen chunks hit the swell below, but the sound was lost in the roar of the storm.
    â€œHey, dickhead!” a crusty voice commented. “There’s a ten-thousand-dollar pollution fine for puking in the ocean.”
    Jack Bulger was a craggy old bastard. Fifty and solidly built. His voice sounded like throat cancer was paying a visit, while he wore his gray hair in a buzz-cut like a marine’s. A sharp contrast to Matheson’s curly nut-brown mop which he kept firmly tucked inside his hood. Matheson was sure Bulger had his head bare just for machismo. Not that Matheson could care less. He just wanted to stay warm. That was why he’d grown the beard to begin with.
    Bulger be damned. Matheson didn’t want to be out here anyway, checking main derrick uplinks. He’d avoided it all morning. Hid in the galley for a half hour, reading a printout of Reuters news reports off the Web and nursing a coffee and doughnut.
    As far as he could tell, the sensors attached to the base of the huge, battered drilling tower were fine. The intermittent signal dropout was down to a faulty connection which he’d fixed in seconds. There was no way that his equipment was going to jeopardize the drilling process. The weather, on the other hand, he had absolutely no control over.
    He eyed the mass of nine-foot sectioned steel drill pipe as it shot up and down, caged inside the derrick. Bad idea. He gripped the hand-rail again. Clenched his stomach.
    Bulger swiped his co-worker on the back. It seemed playful to outsiders, but Matheson knew better. Bulger was trying to make him spew his guts again.

    Matheson watched the smoke from Bulger’s cigar mix with his breath and drift his way. He shivered. Trying to keep his voice slow and even so he could hold his temper and the rest of his breakfast down all in one go, he said, “There are seven lows gathering—all within a fifty-mile radius. This is not typical Antarctic weather. I was told to expect four, maybe even five lows—ferocious weather conditions by anyone’s standards. But seven is unheard of! I do not relish the idea of being part of weather formation history!”
    Bulger puffed on his cigar. “Bracing, isn’t it?”
    â€œBracing is not a word I’d choose to use!” Matheson shrieked. “Hell on earth, maybe. Or the final Canto in Dante’s Inferno, if you knew what the hell that was! If you read anything other than Penthouse!”
    The weather fronts were moving in fast and deadly. Coming out of nowhere. Matheson was acutely aware that out here there was a good chance it might get him killed. And listening in on the scientific chatter from McMurdo Station hadn’t helped matters. The scientists had absolutely no explanation for such severe weather.
    Antarctic weather. The only certainty was, it was going to be bad. At approximately 60 degrees of latitude south, the winds thundered in from every major ocean with nothing to stop them. Not one island. Not one mountain. A ship could set a course to follow precisely LAT. 58°s, in effect circumnavigate the globe, and never once run into dry land. The Antarctic was the most forbidding place on earth and Matheson was certain of one thing: he wanted to go home.
    â€œWhat do you want, anyway?” he asked Bulger shakily, wiping at his mouth again. Bulger didn’t bother replying. Just braced himself as a small wall of water crashed across the bow and