Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

I did have a good look at the two sick men, both of whom seemed to me to be picking up steadily, then said good night to the two Dolphin crewmen who were watching over them. But I didn’t go straight back to the ship. First I went to the tractor shed and replaced the gun, magazines and broken knife in the tractor tank. Then I went back to the ship.

‘I’m sorry to have to bother you with all these questions,’ I said pleasantly. ‘But that’s the way it is with all government departments. A thousand questions in quadruplicate and each of them more pointlessly irritating than the rest. But I have this job to do and the report to be radioed off as soon as possible and I would appreciate all the information and co-operation you can give me. First off, has anyone any idea at all how this damnable fire started?’

I hoped I sounded like a Ministry of Supply official – which was what I’d told them I was – making a Ministry of Supply report. I’d further told them, just to nip any eyebrow-raising in the bud, that it was the Ministry of Supply’s policy to send a doctor to report on any accident where loss of life was involved. Maybe this was the case. I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

‘Well, I was the first to discover the fire, I think,’ Naseby, the Zebra cook, said hesitantly. His Yorkshire accent was very pronounced. He was still no picture of health and strength but for all that he was a hundred per cent improved on the man I had seen yesterday. Like the other eight survivors of Drift Ice Station Zebra who were present in the wardroom that morning, a long night’s warm sleep and good food had brought about a remarkable change for the better. More accurately, like seven others. Captain Folsom’s face had been so hideously burnt that it was difficult to say what progress he was making although he had certainly had a good enough breakfast, almost entirely liquid, less than half an hour previously.

‘It must have been about two o’clock in the morning,’ Naseby went on. ‘Well, near enough two. The place was already on fire. Burning like a torch, it was. I–’

‘What place?’ I interrupted. ‘Where were you sleeping?’

‘In the cookhouse. That was also our dining-hall. Farthest west hut in the north row.’

‘You slept there alone?’

‘No. Hewson, here, and Flanders and Bryce slept there also. Flanders and Bryce, they’re – they were – lab technicians. Hewson and I slept at the very back of the hut, then there were two big cupboards, one each side, that held all our food stores, then Flanders and Bryce slept in the dining-hall itself, by a corner of the galley.’

‘They were nearest the door?’

‘That’s right. I got up, coughing and choking with smoke, very groggy, and I could see flames already starting to eat through the east wall of the hut. I shook Hewson then ran for the fire extinguisher – it was kept by the door. It wouldn’t work. Jammed solid with the cold, I suppose. I don’t know. I ran back in again. I was blind by this time, you never saw smoke like it in your life. I shook Flanders and Bryce and shouted at them to get out then I bumped into Hewson and told him to run and wake Captain Folsom here.’

I looked at Hewson. ‘You woke Captain Folsom?’

‘I went to wake him. But not straight away. The whole camp was blazing like the biggest Fifth of November bonfire you ever saw and flames twenty feet high were sweeping down the lane between the two rows of huts. The air was full of flying oil, a lot of it burning. I had to make a long swing to the north to get clear of the oil and the flames.’

‘The wind was from the east?’

‘Not quite. Not that night. South-east, I would say. East-south-east would be more like it, rather. Anyway, I gave a very wide berth to the generator house – that was the one next the dining-hall in the north row – and reached the main bunkhouse. That was the one you found us in.’

‘Then you woke Captain Folsom?’

‘He was already gone. Shortly after I’d left the dining-hall the fuel drums in the fuel storage hut – that was the one directly south of the main bunkhouse – started exploding. Like bloody great bombs going off they were, the noise they made. They would have wakened the dead. Anyway, they woke Captain Folsom. He and Jeremy here–’ he nodded at a man sitting across the table from him ‘–had taken the fire extinguisher from the bunkhouse and tried to get close to Major Halliwell’s hut.’

‘That was the one directly west of the fuel store?’

‘That’s right. It was an inferno. Captain Folsom’s extinguisher worked well enough but he couldn’t get close enough to do any good. There was so much flying oil in the air that even the extinguisher foam seemed to burn.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘To get back to my original question. How did the fire start?’

‘We’ve discussed that a hundred times among ourselves,’ Dr Jolly said wearily. ‘The truth is, old boy, we haven’t a clue. We know where it started all right: match the huts destroyed against the wind direction that night and it could only have been in the fuel store. But how? It’s anybody’s guess. I don’t see that it matters a great deal now.’

‘I disagree. It matters very much. If we could find out how it started we might prevent another such tragedy later on. That’s why I’m here. Hewson, you were in charge of the fuel store and generator hut. Have you no opinion on this?’

‘None. It must have been electrical, but how I can’t guess. It’s possible that there was a leakage from one of the fuel drums and that oil vapour was present in the air. There were two black heaters in the fuel store, designed to keep the temperature up to zero Fahrenheit, so that the oil would always flow freely. Arcing across the make and break of the thermostats might have ignited the gas. But it’s only a wild guess, of course.’

‘No possibility of any smouldering rags or cigarette ends being the cause?’

Hewson’s face turned a dusky red.

‘Look, mister, I know my job. Burning rags, cigarette ends – I know how to keep a bloody fuel store–’

‘Keep your shirt on,’ I interrupted. ‘No offence. I’m only doing my job.’ I turned back to Naseby. ‘After you’d sent Hewson here to rouse up Captain Folsom, what then?’

‘I ran across to the radio room – that’s the hut due south of the cookhouse and west of Major Halliwell’s–’

‘But those two lab technicians – Flanders and Bryce, wasn’t it – surely you checked they were awake and out of it before you left the dining-hall?’

‘God help me, I didn’t.’ Naseby stared down at the deck, his shoulders hunched, his face bleak. ‘They’re dead. It’s my fault they’re dead. But you don’t know what it was like inside that dining-hall. Flames were breaking through the east wall, the place was full of choking smoke and oil, I couldn’t see, I could hardly breathe. I shook them both and shouted at them to get out. I shook them hard and I certainly shouted loud enough.’

‘I can bear him out on that,’ Hewson said quietly. ‘I was right beside him at the time.’

‘I didn’t wait,’ Naseby went on. ‘I wasn’t thinking of saving my own skin. I thought Flanders and Bryce were all right and that they would be out the door on my heels. I wanted to warn the others. It wasn’t – it wasn’t until minutes later that I realised that there was no sign of them. And then – well, then it was too late.’

‘You ran across to the radio room. That’s where you slept, Kinnaird, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s where I slept, yes.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Me and my mate Grant, the boy that died yesterday. And Dr Jolly slept in the partitioned-off east end of the hut. That’s where he had his surgery and the little cubby-hole where he carried out his tests on ice samples.’