The Silence Begins

The sun touches the horizon and stays there, bleeding a thin copper light across the ice. You stand at the frost-rimed window of Vostok-9 and watch it sink, knowing you will not see it again for one hundred and eighty days.

The supply plane should have come Tuesday. It is Friday. The radio, when you key it, returns only the long white breath of static — no carrier, no chatter from McMurdo, not even the lonely automated beacon from Mirny that has kept you company since March.

Behind you, the generator coughs and steadies. The thermometer reads minus forty-one. On the desk, your half-finished log entry waits, the cursor blinking like something patient. Day 1 of dark, you type, and then your fingers hover. Somewhere outside, the wind shifts, and the antenna guy-wires sing a note you have never heard them sing before.