Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

‘We are beginning to understand indeed.’ It was Jeremy who spoke, his voice very soft. ‘The satellite took up a different orbit.’

‘That’s what happened. The rockets firing on one side didn’t slow her up any that mattered, they just knocked her far off course. A new and wobbly orbit that passed through Alaska, south over the Pacific, across Grahamland in Antarctica and directly south of South America, up over Africa and Western Europe, then round the North Pole in a shallow curve, maybe two hundred miles distant from it at the nearest point.

‘Now, the only way the Russians could get the films was by ejecting the capsule, for with retro-rockets firing on one side only they knew that even if they did manage to slow up the satellite sufficiently for it to leave orbit, they had no idea where it would go. But the damnably awkward part of it from the Russians’ viewpoint was that nowhere in its orbit of the earth did the satellite pass over the Soviet Union or any sphere of Communist influence whatsoever. Worse, ninety per cent of its travel was over open sea and if they brought it down there they would never see their films again as the capsule is so heavily coated with aluminium and Pyroceram to withstand the heat of re-entry into the atmosphere that it was much heavier than water. And as I said, they had never developed the American know-how of snatching falling capsules out of the air – and you will appreciate that they couldn’t very well ask the Americans to do the job for them.

‘So they decided to bring it down in the only safe place open to them – either the polar ice-cap in the north or the Antarctic in the south. You will remember, Captain, that I told you that I had just returned from the Antarctic. The Russians have a couple of geophysical stations there and, up until a few days ago, we thought that there was a fifty-fifty chance that the capsule might be brought down there. But we were wrong. Their nearest station in the Antarctic was 300 miles from the path of orbit – and no field parties were stirring from home.’

‘So they decided to bring it down in the vicinity of Drift Ice Station Zebra?’ Jolly asked quietly. It was a sign of his perturbation that he didn’t even call me ‘old boy‘.

‘Drift Ice Station Zebra wasn’t even in existence at the time the satellite went haywire, although all preparations were complete. We had arranged for Canada to lend us a St Lawrence ice-breaker to set up the station but the Russians in a burst of friendly goodwill and international co-operation offered us the atomic-powered Lenin, the finest ice-breaker in the world. They wanted to make good and sure that Zebra was set up and set up in good time. It was. The east-west drift of the ice-cap was unusually slow this year and almost eight weeks elapsed after the setting up of the station until it was directly beneath the flight trajectory of the satellite.

‘You knew what the Russians had in mind?’ Hansen asked.

‘We knew. But the Russians had no idea whatsoever that we were on to them. They had no idea that one of the pieces of equipment which was landed at Zebra was a satellite monitor which would tell Major Halliwell when the satellite received the radio signal to eject the capsule.’ I looked slowly round the Zebra survivors. ‘I’ll wager none of you knew that. But Major Halliwell did – and the three other men who slept in his hut where this machine was located.

‘What we did not know was the identity of the member of Zebra’s company that had been suborned by the Russians. We were certain someone must have been but had no idea who it was. Every one of you had first-class security clearances. But someone was suborned – and that someone, when he arrived back in Britain, would have been a wealthy man for the rest of his days. In addition to leaving what was in effect an enemy agent planted in Zebra, the Soviets also left a portable monitor – an electronic device for tuning in on a particular radio signal which would be activated inside the capsule at the moment of its ejection from the satellite. A capsule can be so accurately ejected 300 miles up that it will land within a mile of its target, but the ice-cap is pretty rough territory and dark most of the time, so this monitor would enable our friend to locate the capsule which would keep on emitting its signal for at least, I suppose, twenty-four hours after landing. Our friend took the monitor and went out looking for the capsule. He found it, released it from its drogue and brought it back to the station. You are still with me, gentlemen? Especially one particular gentleman?’

‘I think we are all with you, Dr Carpenter,’ Commander Swanson said softly. ‘Every last one of us.’

‘Fine. Well, unfortunately, Major Halliwell and his three companions also knew that the satellite had ejected its capsule – don’t forget that they were monitoring this satellite twenty-four hours a day. They knew that someone was going to go looking for it pretty soon, but who that someone would be they had no idea. Anyway, Major Halliwell posted one of his men to keep watch. It was a wild night, bitterly cold, with a gale blowing an ice-storm before it, but he kept a pretty good watch all the same. He either bumped into our friend returning with the capsule or, more probably, saw a light in a cabin, investigated, found our friend stripping the film from the capsule and, instead of going quietly away and reporting to Major Halliwell, he went in and challenged this man. If that was the way of it, it was a bad mistake, the last he ever made. He got a knife between the ribs.’ I gazed at all the Zebra survivors in turn. ‘I wonder which one of you did it? Whoever it was, he wasn’t very expert. He broke off the blade inside the chest. I found it there.’ I was looking at Swanson and he didn’t bat an eyelid. He knew I hadn’t found the blade there: he had found the haft in the petrol tank. But there was time enough to tell them that.

‘When the man he had posted didn’t turn up, Major Halliwell got worried. It must have been something like that. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Our friend with the broken knife was on the alert now, he knew someone was on to him – it must have come as a pretty severe shock, he’d thought himself completely unsuspected – and when the second man the Major sent turned up he was ready for him. He had to kill him – for the first man was lying dead in his cabin. Apart from his broken knife he’d also a gun. He used it.

‘Both those men had come from Halliwell’s cabin, the killer knew that Halliwell must have sent them and that he and the other man still in the major’s cabin would be around in double quick time if the second watcher didn’t report back immediately. He decided not to wait for that, he’d burnt his boats anyway. He took his gun, went into Major Halliwell’s cabin and shot him and the other man as they lay on their beds. I know that because the bullets in their heads entered low from the front and emerged high at the back – the angle the bullets would naturally take if the killer was standing at the foot of their beds and fired at them as they were lying down. I suppose this is as good a time as any to say that my name is not really Carpenter. It’s Halliwell. Major Halliwell was my elder brother.’

‘Good God!’ Dr Jolly whispered. ‘Good God above!’

‘One thing the killer knew it was essential to do right away – to conceal the traces of his crime. There was only one way – burn the bodies out of all recognition. So he dragged a couple of drums of oil out of the fuel store, poured them against the walls of Major Halliwell’s hut he’d already pulled in there the first two men he’d killed – and set fire to it. For good measure he also set fire to the fuel store. A thorough type, my friends, a man who never did anything by halves.’