Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

‘They’d have a better chance inside the Dolphin,’ Swanson said.

‘You’ll kill them getting there,’ I said. ‘Even if you could wrap them up warmly enough to take them back to the ship, hauling them up to the top of the sail and then lowering them vertically through those hatchways would finish them off.’

‘We can’t stay out in that lead indefinitely,’ Swanson said. ‘I’ll take the responsibility for moving them.’

‘Sorry, Captain.’ Benson shook his head gravely. ‘I agree with Dr Carpenter.’

Swanson shrugged and said nothing. Moments later the stretcher bearers were back, followed soon after by Rawlings and three other enlisted men carrying cables, heaters, lamps and a telephone. It took only a few minutes to button the heaters and lamps on to the cable. Rawlings cranked the call-up generator of his field-phone and spoke briefly into the mouthpiece. Bright lights came on and the heaters started to crackle and after a few seconds glow.

Hewson, Naseby and the Harrington twins left by stretcher. When they’d gone I unhooked the Coleman lamp. ‘You won’t be needing this now,’ I said. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘Where are you going?’ Swanson’s voice was quiet.

‘I won’t be long,’ I repeated. ‘Just looking around.’

He hesitated, then stood to one side. I went out, moved round a corner of the hut and stopped. I heard the whirr of the call-up bell, a voice on the telephone. It was only a murmur to me, I couldn’t make out what was being said. But I’d expected this.

The Coleman storm lantern flickered and faded in the wind, but didn’t go out. Stray ice-spicules struck against the glass, but it didn’t crack or break, it must have been one of those specially toughened glasses immune to a couple of hundred degrees’ temperature range between the inside and the outside.

I made my way diagonally across to the only hut left on the south side. No trace of burning, charring or even smoke-blackening on the outside walls. The fuel store must have been the one next to it, on the same side and to the west, straight downwind: that almost certainly must have been its position to account for the destruction of all the other huts, and the grotesquely buckled shape of its remaining girders made this strong probability a certainty. Here had been the heart of the fire.

Hard against the side of the undamaged hut was a lean-to shed, solidly built. Six feet high, six wide, eight long. The door opened easily. Wooden floor, gleaming aluminium for the sides and ceiling, big black heaters bolted to the inside and outside walls. Wires led from those and it was no job for an Einstein to guess that they led – or had led – to the now destroyed generator house. This lean-to shed would have been warm night and day. The squat low-slung tractor that took up nearly all the floor space inside would have started any time at the touch of a switch. It wouldn’t start at the turn of a switch now, it would take three or four blowtorches and the same number of strong men even to turn the engine over once. I closed the door and went into the main hut.

It was packed with metal tables, benches, machinery and every modern device for the automatic recording and interpretation of every conceivable observed detail of the Arctic weather. I didn’t know what the functions of most of the instruments were and I didn’t care. This was the meteorological office and that was enough for me. I examined the hut carefully but quickly and there didn’t seem to be anything odd or out of place that I could see. In one corner, perched on an empty wooden packing-case, was a portable radio transmitter with listening phones – transceivers, they called them nowadays. Near it, in a box of heavy oiled wood, were fifteen Nife cells connected up in series. Hanging from a hook on the wall was a two-volt test lamp. I touched its bare leads to the outside terminals of the battery formed by the cells. Had those cells left in them even a fraction of their original power that test lamp should have burnt out in a white flash. It didn’t even begin to glow. I tore a piece of flex from a nearby lamp and touched its ends to the terminals. Not even the minutest spark. Kinnaird hadn’t been lying when he had said that his battery had been completely dead. But, then, I hadn’t for a moment thought he’d been lying.

I made my way to the last hut – the hut that held the charred remnants of the seven men who had died in the fire. The stench of charred flesh and burnt diesel seemed stronger, more nauseating than ever. I stood in the doorway and the last thing I wanted to do was to approach even an inch closer. I peeled off fur and woollen mittens, set the lamp on a table, pulled out my torch and knelt by the first dead man.

Ten minutes passed and all I wanted was out of there. There are some things that doctors, even hardened pathologists, will go a long way to avoid. Bodies that have been too long in the sea is one: bodies that have been in the immediate vicinity of underwater explosion is another; and men who have literally been burned alive is another. I was beginning to feel more than slightly sick; but I wasn’t going to leave there until I was finished.

The door creaked open. I turned and watched Commander Swanson come in. He’d been a long time, I’d expected him before then. Lieutenant Hansen, his damaged left hand wrapped in some thick woollen material, came in after him. That was what the phone call had been about, the Commander calling up reinforcements. Swanson switched off his torch, pushed up his snow-goggles and pulled down his mask. His eyes narrowed at the scene before him, his nostrils wrinkled in involuntary disgust, and the colour drained swiftly from his ruddy cheeks. Both Hansen and I had told him what to expect, but he hadn’t been prepared for this: not often can the imagination encompass the reality. For a moment I thought he was going to be sick, but then I saw a slight tinge of colour touch the cheekbones and I knew he wasn’t.

‘Dr Carpenter,’ he said in a voice in which the unsteady huskiness seemed only to emphasise the stilted formality, ‘I wish you to return at once to the ship where you will remain confined to your quarters. I would prefer you went voluntarily, accompanied by Lieutenant Hansen here. I wish no trouble. I trust you don’t either. If you do, we can accommodate you. Rawlings and Murphy are waiting outside that door.’

‘Those are fighting words, Commander,’ I said, ‘and very unfriendly. Rawlings and Murphy are going to get uncommon cold out there.’ I put my right hand in my caribou pants pocket – the one with the gun in it – and surveyed him unhurriedly. ‘Have you had a brainstorm?’

Swanson looked at Hansen and nodded in the direction of the door. Hansen half-turned, then stopped as I said: ‘Very highhanded, aren’t we? I’m not worth an explanation, is that it?’

Hansen looked uncomfortable. He didn’t like any part of this. I suspected Swanson didn’t either, but he was going to do what he had to do and let his feelings look elsewhere.

‘Unless you’re a great deal less intelligent than I believe – and I credit you with a high intelligence – you know exactly what the explanation is. When you came aboard the Dolphin in the Holy Loch both Admiral Garvie and myself were highly suspicious of you. You spun us a story about being an expert in Arctic conditions and of having helped set up this station here. When we wouldn’t accept that as sufficient authority or reason to take you along with us you told a highly convincing tale about this being an advanced missile-warning outpost and even although it was peculiar that Admiral Garvie had never heard of it, we accepted it. The huge dish aerial you spoke of, the radar masts, the electronic computers – what’s happened to them, Dr Carpenter? A bit insubstantial, weren’t they? Like all figments of the imagination.’