From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Usually the greatest logistical difficulty that science journalists face is persuading busy scientists to make time for interviews. Reporting this week's cover on Antarctica, though, presented a slightly different challenge: the lonely research teams who work there were more than happy to talk to a reporter, but the trick was to get to them. There are no commercial flights to the continent, and hitching a ride on a ship can take weeks. For associate editor Michael Lemonick, months of planning paid off last December, when he climbed aboard a military C-130 transport bound from New Zealand for McMurdo Station, a U.S. research base on Ross Island in Antarctica.

Lemonick's ten-day visit to the starkly beautiful continent gave new meaning to the phrase working round the clock. For one thing, the sun never sets there during the summer months, which in the southern hemisphere stretch from October to March. Says Lemonick: "At 3 a.m. it looked like high noon outside. I almost had to remind myself to sleep." Hopping helicopters carrying cargo to remote bases, Lemonick talked to dozens of biologists, geologists and other scientists. His most harrowing trip was a helicopter ride to the edge of an ice sheet 25 miles out in Ross Sound for a close look at the emperor penguins that nest there. "Before we landed, a crewman jumped out with a giant auger and drilled several feet to see if the sheet was thick enough to hold our weight," says Lemonick. "Even then, we had to walk very carefully, single file, watching for cracks."

From the spectacular mountain setting of McMurdo Station, Lemonick flew 800 miles to the South Pole, a featureless expanse of white that stretches to the horizon. "We arrived at 2 a.m. on a brilliantly sunny night," he recalls. "They were having a heat wave -- ten below zero, the record high for the year." Lemonick was relieved to return to the relatively mild climes of McMurdo Station, where the temperatures hovered in the 30s. He might have enjoyed McMurdo even more had he known what was waiting for him back in New York City: a cold snap, with temperatures dipping into the teens. For all its ; harsh splendor, Antarctica suddenly seemed as welcoming as a summer beach.