Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

Zabrinski was eased down into a sitting position against a wall. Rawlings unslung the heavy load he was carrying on his back, unwrapped the stove, pulled off his mittens and started fumbling around for the fuel tablets. Hansen pulled the door to behind him, slipped the buckles of his rucksack and wearily let his load of tinned food drop to the floor of the shack.

For some reason, the voice of the storm outside and the hissing of the Coleman inside served only to heighten the deathly stillness in the hut, and the unexpected metallic clatter of the falling cans made me jump. It made one of the dead men jump, too. The man nearest to me by the left-hand wall suddenly moved, rolled over and sat up, bloodshot faded eyes staring out unbelievingly from a frostbitten, haggard and cruelly burnt face, the burns patchily covered by a long dark stubble of beard. For long seconds he looked at us unblinkingly, then, some obscure feeling of pride making him ignore the offer of my outstretched arm, he pushed himself shakily and with obvious pain to his feet. Then the cracked and peeling lips broke into a grin.

‘You’ve been a bleedin’ long time getting here.’ The voice was hoarse and weak and cockney as the Bow Bells themselves. ‘My name’s Kinnaird. Radio operator.’

‘Whisky?’ I asked.

He grinned again, tried to lick his cracked lips, and nodded. The stiff tot of whisky went down his throat like a man in a barrel going over the Niagara Falls, one moment there, the next gone for ever. He bent over, coughing harshly until the tears came to his eyes, but when he straightened life was coming back into those same lacklustre eyes and colour touching the pale emaciated cheeks.

‘If you go through life saying “Hallo” in this fashion, mate,’ he observed, ‘then you’ll never lack for friends.’ He bent and shook the shoulder of the man beside whom he had been lying. ‘C’mon, Jolly, old boy, where’s your bleedin’ manners? We got company.’

It took quite a few shakes to get Jolly, old boy, awake, but when he did come to he was completely conscious and on his feet with remarkable speed in the one case and with remarkable nimbleness in the other. He was a short, chubby character with china-blue eyes, and although he was as much in need of a shave as Kinnaird, there was still colour in his face and the round good-humoured face was far from emaciated: but frostbite had made a bad mess of both mouth and nose. The china-blue eyes, flecked with red and momentarily wide in surprise, crinkled into a grin of welcome. Jolly, old boy, I guess, would always adjust fast to circumstances.

‘Visitors, eh?’ His deep voice held a rich Irish brogue. ‘And damned glad we are to see you, too. Do the honours, Jeff.’

‘We haven’t introduced ourselves,’ I said. I’m Dr Carpenter and this–’

‘Regular meeting of the B.M.A., old boy,’ Jolly said. I was to find out later that he used the phrase ‘old boy’ in every second or third sentence, a mannerism which went strangely with his Irish accent.

‘Dr Jolly?’

‘The same. Resident medical officer, old boy.’

‘I see. This is Lieutenant Hansen of the United States Navy submarine Dolphin–’

‘Submarine?’ Jolly and Kinnard stared at each other, then at us. ‘You said “submarine,” old top?’

‘Explanations can wait. Torpedoman Rawlings. Radioman Zabrinski.’ I glanced down at the huddled men on the floor, some of them already stirring at the sound of voices, one or two propping themselves up on their elbows. ‘How are they?’

‘Two or three pretty bad burn cases,’ Jolly said. ‘Two or three far gone with cold and exhaustion, but not so far gone that food and warmth wouldn’t have them right as rain in a few days. I made them all huddle together like this for mutual warmth.’

I counted them. Including Jolly and Kinnaird, there were twelve all told. I said: ‘Where are the others?’

‘The others?’ Kinnaird looked at me in momentary surprise, then his face went bleak and cold. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘In the next hut, mate.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ He rubbed a weary forearm across bloodshot eyes. ‘Because we don’t fancy sleeping with a roomful of corpses, that’s why.’

‘Because you don’t–’ I broke off and stared down at the men at my feet. Seven of them were awake now, three of them propped on elbows, four still lying down, all seven registering various degrees of dazed bewilderment: the three who were still asleep – or unconscious – had their faces covered by blankets. I said slowly. ‘There were nineteen of you.’

‘Nineteen of us,’ Kinnaird echoed emptily. ‘The others – well, they never had a chance.’

I said nothing. I looked carefully at the faces of the conscious men, hoping to find among them the one face I wanted to see, hoping perhaps that I had not immediately recognised it because frostbite or hunger or burns had made it temporarily unrecognisable. I looked very carefully indeed and I knew that I had never seen any of those faces before.

I moved over to the first of the three still sleeping figures and lifted the blanket covering the face. The face of a stranger. I let the blanket drop. Jolly said in puzzlement: ‘What’s wrong? What do you want?’

I didn’t answer him. I picked my way round recumbent men, all staring uncomprehendingly at me, and lifted the blanket from the face of the second sleeping man. Again I let the blanket drop and I could feel my mouth go dry, the slow heavy pounding of my heart. I crossed to the third man, then stood there hesitating, knowing I must find out, dreading what I must find. Then I stooped quickly and lifted the blanket. A man with a heavily bandaged face. A man with a broken nose and a thick blond beard. A man I had never seen in my life before. Gently I spread the blanket back over his face and straightened up. Rawlings, I saw, already had the solid-fuel stove going.

‘That should bring the temperature up to close to freezing,’ I said to Dr Jolly. ‘We’ve plenty of fuel. We’ve also brought food, alcohol, a complete medical kit. If you and Kinnaird want to start in on those things now I’ll give you a hand in a minute. Lieutenant, that was a polynya, that smooth stretch we crossed just before we got here? A frozen lead?’

‘Couldn’t be anything else.’ Hansen was looking at me peculiarly, a wondering expression on his face. ‘These people are obviously in no fit state to travel a couple of hundred yards, far less four or five miles. Besides, the skipper said he was going to be squeezed down pretty soon. So we whistle up the Dolphin and have them surface at the back door?’

‘Can he find that polynya – without the ice-machine, I mean?’

‘Nothing simpler. I’ll take Zabrinski’s radio, move a measured two hundred yards to the north, send a bearing signal, move two hundred yards to the south and do the same. They’ll have our range to a yard. Take a couple of hundred yards off that and the Dolphin will find itself smack in the middle of the polynya.’

‘But still under it. I wonder how thick that ice is. You had an open lead to the west of the camp some time ago, Dr Jolly. How long ago?’

‘A month. Maybe five weeks. I can’t be sure.’

‘How thick?’ I asked Hansen.

‘Five feet, maybe six. Couldn’t possibly break through it. But the captain’s always had a hankering to have a go with his torpedoes.’ He turned to Zabrinski. ‘Still fit to operate that radio of yours?’

I left them to it. I’d hardly been aware of what I’d been saying, anyway. I felt sick and old and empty and sad, and deathly tired. I had my answer now. I’d come 12,000 miles to find it, I’d have gone a million to avoid it. But the inescapable fact was there and now nothing could ever change it. Mary, my sister-in-law and her three wonderful children – she would never see her husband again, they would never see their father again. My brother was dead and no one was ever going to see him again. Except me. I was going to see him now.