"May I ask where you got these numbers?"

"The log of the Paloverde, a whaling ship that found the East Indiaman a long time ago. Unfortunately, there is no guaranteeing how accurate they are."

"You know," Gillespie said wistfully, "I'll bet you that old whaling ship skipper could put his ship on a dime, whereas I would be hard pressed to put mine on a quarter."

The Polar Storm entered the pack and plunged against the floating mantle of ice like a fullback running through a team of opposing linemen. For the first mile, the ice was no more than a foot thick and the massive reinforced bow pushed aside the frigid blanket with ease, but closer to shore, the pack began to gradually swell, reaching three to four feet thick. Then the ship would slow to a stop, move astern, and then plow into the ice again, forcing a crack and a fifty-foot path until the ice closed in and stopped her forward progress again. The performance was repeated, the bow thrusting against the resisting ice time and time again.

Gillespie was not watching the effects of the ice-ramming. He was sitting in a tall swivel chair studying the screen of the ship's depth sounder, which sent sonic signals to the seabed. The signals were bounced back and indicated the distance in feet between the ship's keel and the bottom. These were unsurveyed waters, and the bottom was unmarked on the nautical charts.

Pitt stood a few feet away, staring through Gillespie's tinted-lens binoculars, which reduced the glare of the ice. The ice cliffs just back of the shoreline soared two hundred feet high before flattening into a broad plateau. He swept the glasses along the base of the cliffs, attempting to spot some hint of the ice-locked Madras. No telltale sign was obvious, no stern frozen in the ice, no masts thrusting above the top of the cliffs.

"Mr. Pitt?"

He turned and faced a smiling stubby man who was a few years on the low side of forty. His face was pink and cherubic, with twinkling green eyes and a wide mouth that smiled crookedly. A small, almost delicate hand was thrust out.

"Yes" was all Pitt replied, surprised at the firmness of the hand that gripped his.

"I'm Ed Northrop, chief scientist and glaciologist. I don't think I've had the pleasure."

"Dr. Northrop. I've often heard Admiral Sandecker speak of you," said Pitt pleasantly.

"In glowing terms, I hope," Northrop said, laughing.

"As a matter of fact, he never forgave you for filling his boots with ice during an expedition north of the Bering Sea."

"Jim certainly holds a grudge. That was fifteen years ago."

"You've spent quite a number of years in the Arctic and Antarctic."

"Been studying sea ice for eighteen years. By the way, I volunteered to go with you."

"Don't think me ungrateful, but I'd rather go it alone."

Northrop nodded and held his ample stomach with both hands.

"Won't hurt to have a good man along who can read the ice, and I'm more durable than I look."

"You make a good point."

"Bottom coming up," Gillespie announced. Then he called down to the engine room. "All stop, Chief. This is as far as we go." He glanced in Pitt's direction. "We're sitting on top of the latitude and longitude you gave me."

"Thank you, Dan. Good work. This should be the approximate spot where the Paloverde was frozen in the ice during the Antarctic winter of 1858"

Northrop stared through the bridge windows at the ice spreading from the ship to shore. "I make it about two miles. A short hike in the brisk air will do us good."

"You have no snowmobiles on board?"

"Sorry, our work takes place within a hundred yards of the ship. We saw no need to add luxuries to the project budget."

"What temperature do you consider brisk air?"

"Five to ten degrees below zero. Relatively warm in these parts."

"I can't wait," Pitt said laconically.

"Consider yourself lucky it's autumn down here. It's much colder in spring."

"I prefer the tropics, with warm trade winds and lovely girls in sarongs swaying to the beat of a drum under the setting sun."

His eyes traveled to an attractive Asian lady who walked straight up to him. She smiled and said, `Aren't you being overdramatic?"

"It's my nature."

"I'm told you're Dirk Pitt."

He smiled cordially. "I do hope so. And you must be Evie Tan. Dan Gillespie has told me you're doing a photo story about the ice expedition."

"I read a great deal about your exploits. May I interview you when you return from whatever it is you're looking for?"

Pitt instinctively threw a questioning look at Gillespie, who shook his head. "I haven't told a soul about your target."

Pitt pressed her hand. "I'll be happy to give you an interview, but the nature of our project must be off the record."

"Does it have to do with the military?" she asked, with an innocent face.

Pitt caught her sneaky probe instantly. "Nothing to do with classified military activities, or Spanish treasure galleons, or abominable snowmen. In fact, the story is so dull, I doubt any self-respecting journalist would be interested in it" Then he addressed Gillespie. "Looks like we left the submarine at the edge of the ice floe."

"Either that," said the captain, "or else they followed us under the ice."

"They're ready for you," said First Officer Bushey to Pitt.

"On my way."

The crew lowered the gangway and brought down three sleds to the ice, one with a box of ice-cutting tools covered by a tarpaulin. The other two carried only tie-down rope to secure any artifacts they might find. Pitt stood in the feathery foot-deep snow and looked at Gillespie, who had motioned to a man who was about the size and shape of a Kodiak bear. "I'm sending my third officer with you and Doc Northrop. This is Ira Cox."

"Glad to meet y'all," said Cox, through a beard that came down to his chest. The voice seemed to rise from somewhere deep below the Mason-Dixon line. He didn't offer a hand. His immense paws were covered by equally immense Arctic gloves.

"Another volunteer?"

"My idea," offered Gillespie. "I can't allow one of Admiral Sandecker's chief directors to traipse through a field of unpredictable ice alone. I won't take the responsibility. This way, if you encounter any problems, you'll have a better chance of surviving. If you should run into a polar bear, Cox will wrestle it to death."

"There are no polar bears in the Antarctic."

Gillespie looked at Pitt and shrugged. "Why take chances?"

Pitt did not make a formal or indignant protest. Down deep, he knew that if worse came to worst, one or both of those men just might save his life.

As autumn takes over the Antarctic, the stormy seas surround the continent, but as winter arrives and temperatures drop, the water thickens into oily-appearing slicks. Then the ice fragments form floating saucers called pancake ice, which enlarge and merge together before eventually forming ice floes covered by snow. Because the ice came early this year, Pitt, Northrop, and Cox moved without incident across the uneven but fairly smooth surface. They detoured around several ice ridges and two icebergs that had drifted offshore before being frozen in the pack ice. To Pitt, the floe looked like an unkempt, lumpy bed with a white quilt thrown over it.

Trudging through a foot of feathery snow did not hinder their motion. Their pace never slackened. Northrop went first, studying the ice as he went, watchful for any deviation or crack. He walked without the burden of a sled, insisting that he required more freedom of movement to test the ice. Harnessed to a sled, Pitt followed Northrop, easily moving on cross-country skis that he had shipped from his father's lodge in Breckenridge, Colorado. Cox brought up the rear, wearing showshoes and pulling two sleds as effortlessly as if they were toys.