Sun at Midnight by Rosie Thomas

skidoo and ferry the French biologist to one of her penguin colonies. After that, the supply ship was due. Rooker was to take the Zodiac out through the loose ice to meet the new arrival and bring her ashore.
    ‘Roger,’ he said.
    He fired up the skidoo and the skua launched itself away in a long, confident glide. Rook nosed his way back along their outward ski tracks until he reached the point closest to the others, then dismounted and plodded across to tell them where he was going. His boots sank almost to the ankles in the soft snow cloaking the ice.
    ‘You are not leaving us out here the whole night with no more than one sandwich?’ Valentin laughed.
    ‘Don’t you fret, Val, we can walk home, no problem. It’s Rook who’ll have to worry when we do get in,’ Phil threatened.
    He left them to their flagging, uncoupled the sledge andraced the skidoo back to base. The outward journey had been slow because he and Phil had stopped to test the snow ahead with a long probe wherever there was a shadow or a dip. Too many dogs and sledges and even men had vanished from history into the bowels of the ice for it to be worth taking any risks. But now he drove at full speed, bouncing along with the cold stinging his cheeks and the front skis skimming in the safe tramlines of their exploratory journey. The trail stretched ahead, a thin smudge winding into the blank distance. Exhilaration curved his mouth into a wide grin.
    The base was six miles away. As he came over the last rise Rooker saw it lying ahead of him in a sheltered bay, two tiny carmine-red dots against a sweep of snow with the pack ice and a tongue of inky water as a backdrop. Escarpments of exposed rock rose on either side, and behind the base the sloping snowfield was crowned with a towering rock outcrop that marked the margin of the glacier. At the closed end of the bay another tongue of the glacier tumbled in vicious blocks and gashes down to sea level.
    He made a wide circuit round the jumbled mass of rock and roared down the slope towards the huts. He could see a little red-jacketed figure crossing the isthmus of snow between the living quarters and the lab hut.
    Rooker swept the skidoo in a circle and left it under a makeshift shelter at the rear of the huts. One of his extra assignments was to build a proper housing, using the wooden frame materials left by the supply ship at the beginning of the season. The sky had darkened to solid slate-grey and he noticed that the wind was rising now. Tiny eddies of snow chased around his feet.
    ‘Ah, there you are,’ Shoesmith said superfluously. He was sitting at the oilcloth-covered table in the middle of the living area with a mass of papers spread out in front of him. Theonly other work area at Kandahar was at the narrow benches in the chilly lab and most people preferred to do their less demanding work in the warmth of the communal area.
    At the far end of the room, where a pair of windows looked out on the snow hill, the base manager, Russell Amory, and Niki were crowded in the kitchen. Niki was peeling potatoes in a metal bowl and Russ was making bread. Rooker thought that one of the best features of life at Kandahar was Russ Amory’s bread.
    The two men looked like one another’s opposites. Niki was immensely tall and cadaverously thin. He had long, unkempt hair and a wispy beard that didn’t hide his hollow cheeks, and when he laughed his honking laugh the tight skin and thin lips pulled away from bad teeth that looked as if one more headshake would jerk them loose from the gums. Russell was short and suntanned and completely bald except for a band of fuzz above his ears. Today a white apron was stretched round his middle, emphasising his broad belly.
    Russ and Nikolai didn’t pause in their peeling and kneading. Niki twitched his wrist and sent a long coil of potato peel spiralling down into the bowl.
    ‘Where is Laure? Is she ready?’ Rooker asked from the doorway. He didn’t want to spend time