"It's not so much how cold it is right now," Cook got out through chattering teeth as he kept a weather eye aft. "It's that we've been cold for . . . how long?" The pair of them, bundled from nose to tail, shivered in the slipstream as they stood on the buckled and torn deck. The trusses and cladding providing partial shelter had gone with the gun, leaving the small platform fully exposed to the elements. The coarse grid of a cargo net was strung across the opening and ropes tied their safety harnesses to exposed stanchions, but those jury-rigged measures did nothing to fend off the freezing wind.