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The meeting site of the UNSF team.

Lisa exits the large storage facility at the edge of the white wastes. A couple of hundred meters to the north, a drop of 400 meters ends in the icy slush of the Antarctic ocean. She had picked up the radar signal loud and clear. ETA four minutes.

It´s time to look busy. The helipad had to be cleared from snow and the lights turned on. Outside! Really hi-tech this base. What genius places a switch outside for a landing platform?

Anyway the place has almost anything anyone could want. The only problem with that is that the channels for the satellite TV never lasts more than five minutes. Then, the recent problem with solar flares or energy mishaps, magnetic, power related or whatever.

At least the reserve power generator always kicks in and keeps the life support working.

Outside she sees the Hercules C-130, still without fuel, sit like an abandoned whale, next to the station.

On her last trip to the Tri-Plan oil rig, she had dropped off five guys from wherever, to do some repair work. They had not called for her services to take them back.

Guess they have worked something out with another contractor. Or they might still be working with the electrical issue, over there. This team, supposedly from UNSF, might be here to release her of this tour of service? Anyways, she´d agreed to take this team to the location and then return to base.

The perks with the job is that during November through March - the sun never sets. Work hours go on as long as you like. Or can muster. This shift has been going on for the good part of eleven hours. Most made up of researching stuff for a paper she´s about to publish.

She gets in to her arctic overall and faces the cold breeze outside.

Lisa saw at the white panorama and smile. She didn't have any reason to smile, but she was very happy for to the work she know and like - although that sound crazy. She began to walk, holding between her hands the radal signal as a amulet, and taking care of the cold breeze.

When she reached the building, she entered and saw around with curiosity, looking for something interesting or at least any trace for another person.   

Having switched on the red guide light at the helipad, they really stand out in the white-out, she gets comfortable inside the station again. The last she had seen of a companion or co-worker had left three weeks ago. That was Josephine Berloch, a 27 year old scientist from Norway. She had been studying microorganisms in ice pools. She had been traveling to the snow free patches of Antarctica and back. A Russian team had provided flight in and out of her destinations.

All that was left of her was a stack of Science magazines in Norwegian.

The station´s computer room has three stationary IBM computers as well as two laptops configured to monitor weather and geological statistics. However, there are some games and movies stored on the hard drives too.

All stations in this quadrant of the white wastes have radio contact, during normal conditions. A wireless radio also sits in one corner of the computer room, beside the radar monitor. So far no one has contacted her over the radio.

Until now.

"This is Tri-Plan 457, calling Station 10. Over! ETA one minute. I repeat ETA one minute."

At the radar screen she clearly saw a dot closing in on the station.

While checking the screen she sees she has an IM from Sharkboy at McMurdo. His avatar is blinking on the stationary Lisa uses to keep her social network sites up to speed.