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sprayed the crew. He watched with a satisfied air as it caught Matheson off-guard.
    Matheson wiped his face down.
    They were both engineers. Matheson was usually a desk man, designing setups on a workstation and never going anywhere near the field. Bulger was the exact opposite. A real hands-on kind of guy who spent most days elbow deep in grease, fixing problems with common sense, guile and a wrench. They both knew their stuff, of course. Pressures per
square millimeter, per square inch. How to cause a stress fracture, and how not to. They both knew textbook stuff and more. But Bulger knew construction workers and roughnecks. He knew how their minds worked and how they liked to work. As far as he was concerned, Matheson knew shit. And Matheson knew this.
    Bulger climbed up to the upper deck, announcing, “There’s a problem with your node.”
    Matheson’s face fell. “What kind of problem?”
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    The drill ship lurched, bucking on another ferocious wave. They were getting bigger, Matheson thought. That one had to be at least 30 feet high. He felt his knees tremble as he watched the turquoise ocean race up to meet him, then dip away again. A thunderous blast of freezing blue water and ice crashed over the bow and swept up deck in a tidal wave. In the time it took him to turn his head to see, the vast yellow derrick, the mighty drilling tower, had already borne the brunt of the impact and the 50-knot winds were whipping the water back into a frenzy. Before he even knew what hit him, Matheson was knocked on his ass and smacked backward.
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    He jerked to a stop, his nylon safety line creaking with the strain. There was little he could do but stay put until the bitter salt water washed over him. He choked when he could finally take a breath, and shuddered from the cold despite the protection of his rubbery Day-Glo orange survival suit and layers of thermal underwear.
    Thank God he’d remembered to clip himself on. It wasn’t the sort of routine he was used to. After all, there wasn’t much chance of being swept overboard on the way to work in San Francisco. Trams were like that.
    Staggering to his feet, Matheson went to pull his cold and wet balaclava back into place but it stank of bile, so despite it being minus 80°C with the wind-chill factor, he removed it instead. As a result, he could feel his nose hairs freezing. Breathing through his mouth made him cough. Breathing through his nose wasn’t much better, but it was vital. He had to warm the air up despite his sinuses. People were known to die of shock breathing air that was too frigid.

    He had to get out of the cold. He could feel the seawater freezing on his face. What kind of a welcome would he get if he went home to Wendy and asked her to marry him with his skin hanging from his face?
    Bulger was watching him from the upper deck. “What sort of problem?” Matheson demanded, well aware that his voice was turning hoarse and feeble. “What’s wrong with the node?”
    â€œCheck it out for yourself,” Bulger snapped. “You couldn’t design a fucking vending machine for a parking lot.”
    Matheson wanted to yell after him, but Bulger was gone. Ralph was only out here in Antarctica because Bulger had insisted he come out and field test the thing. The man was going to make his ulcer worse, keep plugging away at him like this.
    He made a grab for the ladder, then changed direction. He jerked his head to the side rail again and hung over it. He could feel the freezing cold of wet metal through the thermal gloves. Already the seawater was starting to freeze around his hand and he had trouble pulling his fingers away. He retched, but there was nothing left to bring up.
    The roughnecks were watching. That was the most embarrassing part. Matheson tried to compose himself; he had his pride. He wanted to look them in the eye and exit gracefully, but of course he knew if he took his eye off the horizon