The Winterover Job

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“Look, we know they died two hundred and sixty-one kilometers from here.”
“Poor bastards.”
The Antarctic darkness offered no grand view from the rise of Hut Point even at midday. To the west, the lights of McMurdo Station were the brightest thing between New Zealand and Johannesburg. Mountains blocked the northern sky—the tallest, Mount Erebus, named too appropriately for the guardian of ancient Hades. To either shoulder, the brief nautical twilight suggested the ghost of a horizon. It was June 21st, the winter solstice in Antarctica, and this was as bright as the day would ever become.
But McElroy and I weren’t facing north, all our dreams were to the south. Nothing there to see but The Ice all the way to the Pole and out the other side. This far inside the Antarctic Circle, it was easier to see the southern horizon than the hint of a northern one. South of the equator, the Milky Way became a bright stripe that appeared to slam into The Ice, or erupt from some deep crevasse in the unknowable distance.
We’d met at Discovery Hut at noon as it was a common enough outing from McMurdo Station—though perhaps not in mid-winter. Not unprecedented. During The Dark, winterover folks would take any excuse to get out of the station. Scott’s first hut stood beside us as an angular blackness punched out of the sky.
“Shoulda died ta home by a warm fire. Not stuck in some thirty-below winter gale in a for-crap canvas tent.” McElroy’s voice was low and thick with his Boston-Irish heritage.
I could more sense than see his shudder. The weather was an unseasonably warm minus five Celsius; it didn’t even hurt to breathe. Though the thirty-knot wind kept our hoods up and we had to shout a little to be heard.
“You be sure of your calculations, Emmet?” McElroy asked—again.
“Yes!” As sure as I could be.

Initial Publication: October 1, 2026
Print pages: 64