Rattling footsteps on the deck alerted Jenny to another presence, and she turned to see Gellan had appeared, and was climbing up the steps to the deck. The rest of the group on the ship rarely saw him, given he spent most of his time inside his own separate quarters connected to a giant laboratory that took up the bulk of the midship. As far as Jenny knew, no one else had ever been inside there.

Despite an environmental temperature of -10C, the ship itself was relatively temperate on account of the underdeck heating, radiating warmth upwards and remaining comfortable to a height of around two metres, with windbreakers mounted all around the accessible decks. The dissipated heating of the deck was preferable to the stuffy cabins and narrow hallways, heated to excess by the same mechanism, and all somehow more cramped than the interior office she shared with two other postdoctoral researchers in Cambridge. It was, therefore, not unusual for the ship's inhabitants to spend their time there, Gellan usually discluded.

Gellan was a visitor, as was plain to Jenny and any other earthbound. The shuffling, heavy footsteps, the pallor and visible discomfort, the slightly shallow and rapid breathing, were clear giveaways to any earthbound of a constitution unused to the Earth environment. Visitors were mostly either tourists who came to stay for a week or two, and were shepherded around the painted remains of the few urban centres or anthropological sites. Otherwise, they were assigned to Earth for work assignments of a few months duration, usually the extraction of some resource or another for which a space-side source was not yet feasible, and usually on account of a perceived slight towards a company superior. Sometimes, this was a first step to barring some inconvenient person from returning to the colonies at all. Jenny expected that Gellan had been so punitively assigned, given his brusque nature and unwillingness to interact with the others on the ship.

He stepped further forward on the deck towards captain Sequil, shielding his narrow eyes with his hand as if they were unused to daylight, which Jenny supposed they were. He started speaking to the captain, standing to his left as he continued to face out. His words were initially too quiet for Jenny to hear beyond the occasional plosive edge, though they quickly grew to fill out into a shout, joint then by animated gesticulation, presumably when the stoic captain did not immediately respond. "We need to go! We've been here for three weeks and you're not doing anything, do you want to be paid? do you want to be barred?"

Though by convention, the captain held authority over the ship and bore ultimate responsibility for the souls on board, Gellan being the Bartok representative made him the de facto leader of the mission, and gave him an ill-defined kind of superceding authority. This was especially apparent given Bartok in particular had a reputation for refusing to pay when they decided certain criteria had not been filled. You would not know it, given the captain's unwillingness to bend to his exhortations and orders. When Gellan had made an appearance over the last few stranded weeks, it was usually to harass Sequil, quizzing him on timelines and actions he could be taking to get them unstuck and on their way. His latest tirade finally elicited a reaction from the Sequil, who turned to Gellan and smiled abstractedly.

She stood up and approached the pair, propelled primarily by a need for gossip, filtered though it was through a justification that she might be able to help de-escalate the situation. Jenny noted that Gellan's ill-temper and rush was another decidedly visitorly quality. For the earthbound, the pace of life had grown more languid. They were willing to wait, had disengaged from the kind of self-imposed stress that had characterised humanity for so long, and that the colonists seemed to have taken with them when they left. Her and Soren often made light of Gellan, and Soren in particular had been using his free time to perfect an impression, exaggerating his expressive motions into ridiculous flailing dances, while Jenny played the role of the aloof captain, responding to his simulated tirades with a slow "OK."

She came within earshot just in time to hear the captain respond, plainly, "The weather and skirt heaters are melting the ice, we will be floating again soon." Gellan's face turned red and he stabbed his finger at the captain's chest, "You've been saying that for three weeks!" The captain didn't respond, continued to smile, seemingly even more amused now by Gellan's aggression. Jenny noticed that his eyes remained glassy, as if he were still looking out over the ice.

Gellan, finally registering Jenny, turned to her and said, "Won't you tell him? Why are we just sitting here?" Jenny cringed slightly as his anger, though now slightly subdued, was directed towards her. She was taller than Gellan, and did not find him especially physically imposing. However she was so unused to the kind of unpredictable masculine anger particular to the visitors, that it set alarm bells ringing.

She responded flatly, "I don't see what choice we have."

"We can go to the cliff by land. It's only a few hundred metres. Collect your dust and then we can go. Perhaps the captain will be capable of moving his ship by the time we return," he responded, calmer now.

Jenny considered this, and ultimately didn't see why not. The going was always hard over ice, a mile being more like five. But it wasn't too cold at the moment, and the wind forecast for the next days was unseasonably still. They would have to carry their equipment and samples, but she supposed that was what PhD students were for.

"Sure," she said.

"Tomorrow, 6AM, we'll meet here," Gellan responded. He shot a final disgusted look at the captain, and shuffled off angrily, presumably back to his quarters.

Jenny did not like to wake up so early, and she was pre-occupied by premonitions of tomorrow's brain fog. Though she was not in any rush to reach the cliff, she was becoming a little bored here on the ship, and she knew that Colin would be thrilled.

Taken up by these thoughts as well as planning the trip, it took her a while to realise that Gellan himself had implied he was joining them for the trip to the shelf. This was surprising to her, because Colin had been required to pay both the captain and Gellan off handsomely to have them agree to take them there at all. She had supposed a large part of Gellan's negative aspect towards them derived from their stranding having been caused by the need to approach the cliff at all. Ill-tempered though he was, she didn't blame him for wanting to get off the ship for a little while.

She nodded towards the captain, who had long since returned to his reverie, and took off down into the ship.