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snowmobile’s engine and revelled in a deep and frigid silence broken only by the sound of boots crunching on the ice as they dismounted.
    ‘He’s still building that?’ Charlotte asked, her voice muffled by the thick mask and goggles she wore.
    ‘Been too windy to finish it until now,’ Jake pointed out as they began walking toward the skeletal tower. ‘It’s too dangerous to risk a fall up here.’
    Cody hauled from the back of his snowmobile a plastic container some four feet long with a large disc at the end, as though the case contained a giant banjo. He hefted the container onto his shoulder and followed his companions out toward the tower.
    They were half way there when Bradley Trent slowed and crouched on the ice.
    ‘Wind wasn’t the only reason,’ the soldier said and gestured them to join him.
    Cody felt a ripple of consternation as he looked down at a series of huge paw prints tracking their way across the snow field. He glanced up at the prefabs a couple of dozen yards behind.
    ‘Size?’ Jake asked.
    Bradley looked up and down the tracks. ‘Big enough and it passed pretty close to the camp. Polar bears can smell a seal from a kilometre away even when it’s hiding under the snow. Reece and Sauri would have stunk like a madras curry.’ Bradley stood up. ‘It knows they’re here.’
    Charlotte looked down at the tracks and placed her boot down over one. The large, ragged print completely surrounded her boot.
    ‘Jesus,’ she uttered. ‘And Cain wants to stay out here?’
    Jake started walking again. ‘He hasn’t come screaming back yet.’
    They reached the tower, a rigid contraption of poles caked in frost and icicles. Reece Cain stood up on a narrow platform of aluminium plates coated in thick rubber as he yanked on a wrench, fastening the last of a series of bolts into the frame.
    ‘Afternoon,’ Jake said, raising a thickly gloved hand.
    Reece finished tightening the bolt and looked down at them. He nodded once and then glanced at Cody’s burden.
    ‘Just set them down there, thanks,’ he said, and pointed at the base of the tower.
    Cody slid the plastic container down onto the ice, then jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.
    ‘You guys have had visitors out here.’
    ‘They’re not a problem.’
    ‘They will be,’ Jake replied as Reece clambered down onto the ice. ‘Polar bears are fearless and inquisitive. Sooner or later it’ll be sniffing around the doors. Once these are set up you should probably come back to the base.’
    Reece slipped the wrench into a nearby holdall. ‘No thanks.’
    Jake glanced at Cody. Despite the mask and the goggles, Cody could see that Jake was looking for support. Cody sighed behind his mask. Thousands of miles from anywhere and yet Reece Cain was still not quite as far from human beings as he clearly wanted to be.
    ‘You’re missing out,’ Cody tried. ‘Super Bowl’s on, spread bets are being made, still good odds available if you’re in.’
    Reece looked at him, albeit with his head and face entirely in silhouette against the glow of the horizon.
    ‘I’m good.’
    Reece started unpacking the container that Cody had carried out to the tower. A series of disc shaped detectors on four-foot poles, designed to be fixed to the top of the tower that Reece had erected.
    Cody turned to Sauri, who was watching the exchange with his gloved hands clasped patiently before him, the rifle now slung across his shoulder.
    ‘What about you?’ Cody asked. ‘Feel lucky?’
    Sauri gazed at him and shrugged. ‘No money,’ came the muffled, shy response.
    ‘Jesus,’ Bradley Trent uttered with a laugh, his mask caked with droplets of pearlescent ice frozen from his breath. ‘If these guys are happy out here with the bears, why worry?’
    Charlotte Dennis turned her head to look at the soldier. ‘I’m worried for them. Perhaps you should stay out here too, just in case that bear comes back?’
    ‘Like hell,’ Bradley shot back. ‘I’m not going anywhere