FORTY-FIVE
Back at McMurdo, Jean was surprised to find how alien all the American accents sounded to him after so many weeks among Aussies.
"So, how was Heard Island? Did you get to meet the Penguin Weather Girl?" Heidi, one of the astrophysicists he remembered from last year, asked.
Jean's head hurt. "The what?"
Heidi laughed. "The Penguin Weather Girl. She's a meteorologist working down here, but her video channel makes Antarctica sound like paradise, instead of hell frozen over. In her last video, she said she was on the same team as a penguin researcher on Heard Island, so I thought of you. Do you know what happened to her?"
His blood turned to ice. "What happened to her?"
"Well, that's it, isn't it? None of us know, and she hasn't uploaded a new video. Talk about a cliffhanger!
