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without… ’
    Bradley fell silent as a faint humming noise broke the otherwise endless silence of the Arctic around them. Cody looked around them in confusion, unprepared for the deep rumbling that suddenly seemed to reverberate through the ice.
    ‘What the hell is that?’
    The rumbling intensified into a deafening roar and Cody almost stumbled backwards as from out of the sky to the south a series of bright lights suddenly flared into view and bore down upon them. From behind the brilliant lights appeared wings and engines as a giant Hercules aircraft thundered overhead, streams of vapour trailing from its engines onto the brittle air.
    Cody instinctively ducked as the aircraft passed over their heads and thundered away toward Alert.
    Three more Hercules roared overhead in pursuit of the first. Cody and the team watched the aircraft fly away toward the tiny sprinkling of lights against the inky blackness of the Arctic to their north as the engine noise faded away.
    ‘What the hell do you suppose that’s all about?’ Charlotte asked.
    ‘Supply flights?’ Reece suggested.
    ‘Had one two days ago,’ Jake pointed out.
    Cody looked across at Bradley. ‘What’s going on then?’
    Bradley looked across at Sauri. ‘You ever see that many planes fly in at once?’
    Sauri shook his head.
    ‘They were in a damned hurry too,’ Jake pointed out, ‘straight in approaches, one after the other.’
    Jake looked at the instruments Reece was holding.
    ‘You sure you don’t want to leave that until tomorrow?’
    Reece shook his head. ‘Sooner they’re up, the sooner we’re recording data.’
    Jake turned to Bradley. ‘Stay with them until it’s done. We’ll head back to base and find out what’s going on.’
    ‘I don’t want to stay out here with these two goddamned mutes.’
    Jake took two paces across the ice and got into Bradley’s face.
    ‘There are polar bears in the area. You’re here to protect our people, so get to it. You don’t, I’ll bring Sauri back with us and leave you out here on your own with Cain. Your call.’
    Bradley scowled behind his mask and goggles and then stormed away across the ice to nowhere in particular.
    Cody followed Jake and Charlotte back to the snowmobiles. The engines shattered the silence as they were gunned, powerful lights flaring into life as they turned and aimed for the distant lights of Alert.
    The half-hour ride across the rough ice plains was every bit as hard as it had been coming out, the bitter cold seeping through even multiple layers of dense Arctic clothing. Cody dimly recalled how Alert got its name: from a British vessel named HMS Alert that wintered in nearby Cape Sheridan in 1875. How the crew of a wooden sloop, using technology over a century old, had survived this bleakest of places stunned him. Much of the surrounding terrain was named after members of HMS Alert’s crew as testimony to their hardiness.
    Cody glimpsed a couple of Arctic hares bound away from the snowmobiles and the glowing eyes of an Arctic fox glimmer briefly from out of the darkness as they passed by. The lights of Alert grew brighter as Cody’s hands grew colder. He could see floodlights out near the end of the runway and the huge Hercules aircraft parked beneath them.
    Jake led the way into a small compound outside the base and pulled up as Cody swung in alongside him and killed the engine on his snowmobile.
    ‘You see the aircraft?’ Jake called above the noise of Charlotte’s snowmobile. ‘Their engines were still running.’
    ‘Why would they do that? Some kind of exercise?’ Cody asked.
    Jake didn’t reply as he walked out of the compound. Cody hurried alongside him with Charlotte behind as they walked across the icy surface of the road outside and scrambled up the snow bank opposite.
    Cody reached the top first and looked out across the plains to the distant airfield.
    The four Hercules were sitting on a parking area on the far side of the airstrip, the huge ramps at the