Swirling Antarctic winds create a sound that you can find inside any decent sized Oyster.

Under Clive Donaldson’s jacket was a flask – it served two purposes.  The first it kept a small portion of his body warm – and the second I think you can guess for yourself.

Known for his grumpy and dismissive demeanour he wasn’t the guy you wanted to ride share with 20,000 miles from the nearest town.

Clive had been invited by a team of renowned MIT scientists to follow findings in a paper that purported that the Antarctic housed metallic properties that were rare and indeed undiscovered beyond supposition. Satellites and sonar equipment suggested that the undiscovered reaches of Earth were composed of very different new elements – some perhaps very useful, some not.

After 18 uncomfortably long nights and painfully short days Clive and the team on Adventurer One expedition were approaching ground zero, an elusive stretch of barren ice tucked away at the bottom of the Earth

He ran his finger over an unfolded picture of his wife and his son with the reflection of his yellow visor clearly visible on their faces. This was his last mission, he told Kate and David before he left for the first flight to New Zealand, where he joined the team.

Passing the photo to his colleague Jeaff, he explained, I told them I’d be home for Christmas.

Jeaff Nodded, its all he could do, the rapid pace of the vehicles over the snow created such a loud rumble.

Taking the photo back, he folded  it and pushed it into his top pocket – completed his customary double tap once secured.

The ski trucks pull up to watch a spectacular sun rise.  The team  stand beside their vehicles to witness a bright red ball of fire rise from beneath the shimmering white horizon – cascading purple and orange light flares at them like a slow-motion rock concert.

Soon the entourage moved on knowing they were entering the final stages of their journey.  AD4 (the lead car) was seen breaking hard in the short distance ahead, kicking up snow over steady break lights.

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Clive shouted Stop, stop! And he reached for a pair of binoculars to get a closer view of Ad4 and they ground to a halt. The three cars behind pulled up.

After several tense seconds passed Clive broke silence “oh no!” “their gone, their gone!”, he roared to the alarm of the team in his car

Intently focussed on the empty horizon ahead- desperately trying to regain sight of the vehicle, the chatter of his arguing team came to a sudden halt with the sound of a door slamming!!

“He’s gone”, one of his team muttered in the now quietened car.

As he made his first imprints in the snow, memories returned of a tender moment with David, he was soft  – a child anyone would wish for. “Why do you have to go Daddy?” – “It’s to help the planet David – he retorted aware of emptiness in his lazy excuse to this heartbroken 9 year old boy.

Clive plundered through the deep snow and was now 100 feet from the group when he lost his footing.

He was thankful he did.  As he gathered himself to his knees on what he would now see was a stony ridge.

He peered over slowly, his eyes struggling to inform his mind of the complexity unfolding.

Hundreds of feet below was a city, a city unlike any on earth.