Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

When I made it back to the bunkhouse, the two patients were still breathing. That was about all I could say for myself, too, I was shaking with the cold and even clamping my teeth together couldn’t keep them from chattering. I thawed out under the big electric heaters until I was only half-frozen, picked up my torch and moved out again into the wind and the cold and the dark. I was a sucker for punishment, that was for sure.

In the next twenty minutes I made a dozen complete circuits of the camp, moving a few yards farther out with each circuit. I must have walked over a mile altogether and that was all I had for it, just the walk and a slight touch of frostbite high up on the cheekbones, the only part of my face, other than the eyes, exposed to that bitter cold. I knew I had frostbite for the skin had suddenly ceased to feel cold any more and was quite dead to the touch. Enough was enough and I had a hunch that I was wasting my time anyway. I headed back to the camp.

I passed between the meteorological hut and the lab and was just level with the eastern end of the bunkhouse when I sensed as much as saw something odd out of the corner of my eye. I steadied the torch-beam on the east wall and peered closely at the sheath of ice that had been deposited there over the days by the ice-storm. Most of the encrustation was of a homogeneous greyish-white, very smooth and polished, but it wasn’t all grey-white: it was speckled here and there with dozens of black flecks of odd shapes and sizes, none of them more than an inch square. I tried to touch them but they were deeply imbedded in and showing through the gleaming ice. I went to examine the east wall of the meteorological hut, but it was quite innocent of any such black flecking. So was the east wall of the lab.

A short search inside the meteorological hut turned up a hammer and screwdriver. I chipped away a section of the black-flecked ice, brought it into the bunkhouse and laid it on the floor in front of one of the big electrical heaters. Ten minutes later I had a small pool of water and, lying in it, the sodden remains of what had once been fragments of burnt paper. This was very curious indeed. It meant that there were scores of pieces of burnt paper imbedded in the east wall of the bunkhouse. Just there: nowhere else. The explanation, of course, could be completely innocuous: or not, as the case might be.

I had another look at the two unconscious men. They were warm enough and comfortable enough but that was about all you could say for them. I couldn’t see them as fit enough to be moved inside the next twenty-four hours. I lifted the phone and asked for someone to relieve me and when two seamen arrived, I made my way back to the Dolphin.

There was an unusual atmosphere aboard ship that afternoon, quiet and dull and almost funereal. It was hardly to be wondered at. As far as the crew of the Dolphin had been concerned, the men manning Drift Ice Station Zebra had been just so many ciphers, not even names, just unknowns. But now the burnt, frostbitten, emaciated survivors had come aboard ship, sick and suffering men each with a life and individuality of his own, and the sight of those wasted men still mourning the deaths of their eight comrades had suddenly brought home to every man on the submarine the full horror of what had happened on Zebra. And, of course less than seven hours had elapsed since their own torpedo officer, Lieutenant Mills, had been killed. Now, even although the mission had been successful, there seemed little enough reason for celebration. Down in the crew’s mess the hi-fi and the juke-box were stilled. The ship was like a tomb.

I found Hansen in his cabin. He was sitting on the edge of his Pullman bunk, still wearing his fur trousers, his face bleak and hard and cold. He watched me in silence as I stripped off my parka, undid the empty holster tied round my chest, hung it up and stuck inside it the automatic I’d pulled from my caribou pants. Then he said suddenly: ‘I wouldn’t take them off, Doc. Not if you want to come with us, that is.’ He looked at his own furs and his mouth was bitter. ‘Hardly the rig of the day for a funeral, is it?’

‘You mean–’

‘Skipper’s in his cabin. Boning up on the burial service. George Mills and that assistant radio operator – Grant, wasn’t it – who died out there today. A double funeral. Out on the ice. There’s some men there already, chipping a place with crowbars and sledges at the base of a hummock.’

‘I saw no one.’

‘Port side. To the west.’

‘I thought Swanson would have taken young Mills back to the States. Or Scotland.’

‘Too far. And there’s the psychological angle. You could hardly dent the morale of this bunch we have aboard here far less shoot it to pieces, but carrying a dead man as a shipmate is an unhappy thing. He’s had permission from Washington . . .’ He broke off uncertainly, looked quietly up at me and then away again. I didn’t have any need of telepathy to know what was in his mind.

‘The seven men on Zebra?’ I shook my head. ‘No, no funeral service for them. How could you? I’ll pay my respects some other way.’

His eyes flickered up at the Mannlicher-Schoenauer hanging in its holster, then away again. He said in a quiet savage voice: ‘Goddam his black murderous soul. That devil’s aboard here, Carpenter. Here. On our ship.’ He smacked a bunched fist hard against the palm of his other hand. ‘Have you no idea what’s behind this, Doc? No idea who’s responsible?’

‘If I had, I wouldn’t be standing here. Any idea how Benson is getting along with the sick and injured?’

‘He’s all through. I’ve just left him.’

I nodded, reached up for the automatic and stuck it in the pocket of my caribou pants. Hansen said quietly: ‘Even aboard here?’

‘Especially aboard here.’ I left him and went along to the surgery. Benson was sitting at his table, his back to his art gallery of Technicolor cartoons, making entries in a book. He looked up as I closed the door behind me.

‘Find anything?’ I asked.

‘Nothing that I would regard as interesting. Hansen did most of the sorting. You may find something.’ He pointed to neatly folded piles of clothing on the deck, several small attache-cases and a few polythene bags, each labelled. ‘Look for yourself. How about the two men left out on Zebra?’

‘Holding their own. I think they’ll be O.K., but it’s too early to say yet.’ I squatted on the floor, went carefully through all the pockets in the clothes and found, as I had expected, nothing. Hansen wasn’t the man to miss anything. I felt every square inch of the lining areas and came up with the same results. I went through the small cases and the polythene bags, small items of clothing and personal gear, shaving kits, letters, photographs, two or three cameras. I broke open the cameras and they were all empty. I said to Benson: ‘Dr Jolly brought his medical case aboard with him?’

‘Wouldn’t even trust one of your own colleagues, would you?’

‘No.’

‘Neither would I.’ He smiled with his mouth only. ‘You’re an evil influence. I went through every item in it. Not a thing. I even measured the thickness of the bottom of the case. Nothing there.’

‘Good enough for me. How are the patients?’

‘Nine of them,’ Benson said. ‘The psychological effect of knowing that they’re safe has done them more good than any medication ever could.’ He consulted cards on his desk. ‘Captain Folsom is the worst. No danger, of course, but his facial burns are pretty savage. We’ve arranged to have a plastic surgeon standing by in Glasgow when we return. The Harrington twins, both met. officers, are rather less badly burnt, but very weak, from both cold and hunger. Food, warmth and rest will have them on their feet in a couple of days again. Hassard, another met officer, and Jeremy, a lab technician, moderate burns, moderate frostbite, fittest of the lot otherwise – it’s queer how different people react so differently to hunger and cold. The other four – Kinnaird, the senior radio operator, Dr Jolly, Naseby, the cook, and Hewson, the tractor-driver and man who was in charge of the generator – are much of a muchness: they’re suffering most severely of all from frostbite, especially Kinnaird, all with moderate burns, weak, of course, but recovering fast. Only Folsom and the Harrington twins have consented to become bed-patients. The rest we’ve provided with rigouts of one sort or another. They’re all lying down, of course, but they won’t be lying down long. All of them are young, tough, and basically very fit – they don’t pick children or old men to man places like Drift Station Zebra.’