The wide Siberian sky changes quickly. A dense salty fog can lower like a clamp, then clear in moments to blue. It might stay clear for hours, or clouds might blow in, twisting by in strips, massing together low on the horizon; breaks appear in the clouds and the yellow light tumbles through them. Beneath the Arctic sky, reflecting it, lie water and ice: the Bering Strait, the Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, and Barents Seas, stretching from the Chukotsky Peninsula in the east to the North Cape of Norway. Even in August these seas are clogged. Between the shifting sky and the frozen sea there isn't much: black, rocky islands with low-lying vegetation, walrus clumped on ice floes, maybe a polar bear, maybe an icebreaker, nuclear powered, flying the Russian flag.