Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

‘This time I believe your story.’

I was pleased about that, I almost believed it myself.

The hut where we’d found all the Zebra survivors huddled together was almost deserted when we got back to it – only Dr Benson and the two very sick men remained. The hut seemed bigger now, somehow, bigger and colder, and very shabby and untidy like the remnants of a church rummage sale where the housewives have trained for a couple of months before moving up to battle stations. Pieces of clothing, bedding, frayed and shredded blankets, gloves, plates, cutlery and dozens of odds and ends of personal possessions lay scattered all over the floor. The sick men had been too sick – and too glad to be on their way – to worry overmuch about taking too many of their various knick-knacks out of there. All they had wanted out of there was themselves. I didn’t blame them.

The two unconscious men had their scarred and frostbitten faces towards us. They were either sleeping or in a coma. But I took no chances. I beckoned Benson and he came and stood with us in the shelter of the west wall.

I told Benson what I’d told the commander and Hansen. He had to know. As the man who would be in the most constant and closest contact with the sick men, he had to know. I suppose he must have been pretty astonished and shaken, but he didn’t show it. Doctors’ faces behave as doctors tell them to, when they come across a patient in a pretty critical state of health they don’t beat their breasts and break into loud lamentations, as this tends to discourage the patient. This now made three men from the Dolphin’s crew who knew what the score was – well, half the score, anyway. Three was enough. I only hoped it wasn’t too much.

Thereafter Swanson did the talking: Benson would take it better from him than he would from me. Swanson said: ‘Where were you thinking of putting the sick men we’ve sent back aboard?’

‘In the most comfortable places I can find. Officers’ quarters, crew’s quarters, scattered all over so that no one is upset too much. Spread the load, so to speak.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t know of the latest – um – development at the time. Things are rather different now.’

‘They are. Half of them in the wardroom, the other half in the crew’s mess – no, the crew’s quarters. No reason why they shouldn’t be fixed up comfortably. If they wonder at this, you can say it’s for ease of medical treatment and that they can all be under constant medical watch, like heart patients in a ward. Get Dr Jolly behind you in this, he seems a co-operative type. And I’ve no doubt he’ll support you in your next move – that all patients are to be stripped, bathed and provided with clean pyjamas. If they’re too ill to move, bed-bath. Dr Carpenter here tells me that prevention of infection is of paramount importance in cases of severe burn injuries.’

‘And their clothes?’

‘You catch on more quickly than I did,’ Swanson grunted. ‘All their clothes to be taken away and labelled. All contents to be removed and labelled. The clothes, for anyone’s information, are to be disinfected and laundered.’

‘It might help if I am permitted to know just what we are looking for,’ Benson suggested.

Swanson looked at me.

‘God knows,’ I said. ‘Anything and everything. One thing certain – you won’t find a gun. Be especially careful in labelling gloves – when we get back to Britain we’ll have the experts test them for nitrates from the gun used.’

‘If anyone has brought aboard anything bigger than a postage stamp I’ll find it,’ Benson promised.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Even if you brought it aboard yourself?’

‘Eh? Me? What the devil are you suggesting?’

‘I’m suggesting that something may have been shoved inside your medical kit, even your pockets, when you weren’t looking.’

‘Good lord.’ He dug feverishly into his pockets. ‘The idea never occurred to me.’

‘You haven’t the right type of nasty suspicious mind,’ Swanson said dryly. ‘Off you go. You too, John.’

They left, and Swanson and I went inside. Once I’d checked that the two men really were unconscious, we went to work. It must have been many years since Swanson had policed a deck or parade-ground, far less doubled as scavenger, but he took to it in the manner born. He was assiduous, painstaking, and missed nothing. Neither did I. We cleared a corner of the hut and brought across there every single article that was either lying on the floor or attached to the still ice-covered walls. Nothing was missed. It was either shaken, turned over, opened or emptied according to what it was. Fifteen minutes and we were all through. If there was anything bigger than a matchstick to be found in that room then we would have found it. But we found nothing. Then we scattered everything back over the floor again until the hut looked more or less as it had been before our search. If either of the two unconscious men came to I didn’t want him knowing that we had been looking for anything.

‘We’re no great shakes in the detecting business,’ Swanson said. He looked slightly discouraged.

‘We can’t find what isn’t there to be found. And it doesn’t help that we don’t know what we’re looking for. Let’s try for the gun now. May be anywhere, he may even have thrown it away on the ice-cap, though I think that unlikely. A killer never likes to lose his means of killing – and he couldn’t have been sure that he wouldn’t require it again. There aren’t so very many places to search. He wouldn’t have left it here, for this is the main bunkhouse and in constant use. That leaves only the met. office and the lab where the dead are lying.’

‘He could have hidden it among the ruins of one of the burnt-out huts,’ Swanson objected.

‘Not a chance. Our friend has been here for some months now, and he must know exactly the effect those ice-storms have. The spicules silt up against any object that lies in their path. The metal frameworks at the bases of the destroyed buildings are still in position, and the floors of the huts – or where the wooden floors used to be – are covered with solid ice to a depth of from four to six inches. He would have been as well to bury his gun in quick-setting concrete.’

We started on the meteorological hut. We looked in every shelf, every box, every cupboard and had just started ripping the backs off the metal cabinets that housed the meteorological equipment when Swanson said abruptly: ‘I have an idea. Back in a couple of minutes.’

He was better than his word. He was back in a minute flat, carrying in his hands four objects that glittered wetly in the lamplight and smelled strongly of petrol. A gun – a Luger automatic – the haft and broken-off blade of a knife and two rubber-wrapped packages which turned out to be spare magazines for the Luger. He said: ‘I guess this was what you were looking for.’

‘Where did you find them?’

‘The tractor. In the petrol tank.’

‘What made you think of looking there?’

‘Just luck. I got to thinking about your remark that the guy who had used this gun might want to use it again. But if he was to hide it anywhere where it was exposed to the weather it might have become jammed up with ice. Even if it didn’t, he might have figured that the metal would contract so that the shells wouldn’t fit or that the firing mechanism and lubricating oil would freeze solid. Only two things don’t freeze solid in these subzero temperatures – alcohol and petrol. You can’t hide a gun in a bottle of gin.’

‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ I said. ‘Metal would still contract – the petrol is as cold as the surrounding air.’

‘Maybe he didn’t know that. Or if he did, maybe he just thought it was a good place to hide it, quick and handy.’ He looked consideringly at me as I broke the butt and looked at the empty magazine, then said sharply: ‘You’re smearing that gun a little, aren’t you?’