Alistair MacLean - Ice Station Zebra

"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 done 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 Mauser automatic — the halt and broken-off blade of a knife, and two rubber-wrapped packages that turned out to be spare magazines for the Mauser. He said: "I guess this was what you were looking for."

"Where did you find them?"

"The tractor. In the gas tank."

"What made you think of looking there?"

"Just luck. I got to thinking about your remark that the man 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 those sub-zero temperatures — alcohol and gasoline. 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?"

"Finger prints? Not after being in petrol. He was probably Wearing gloves, anyway."

"So why did you want it?"

"Serial number. May be able to trace it. It's even possible that the killer had a police permit for it. It's happened before, believe it or not. And you must remember that the killer believed there would be no suspicion of foul play, much less that a search would be carried out for the gun.

"Anyway, this knife explains the gun. Firing guns is a noisy business, and I'm surprised — I was surprised — that the killer risked it. He might have waked the whole camp. But he had to take the risk because he'd gone and snapped off the business end of this little sticker here. This is a very slender blade, the kind it's very easy to snap unless you know exactly what you're doing, especially when extreme cold makes the metal brittle. He probably struck a rib or broke the blade trying to haul it out: a knife slides in easily enough but it can jam against cartilage or bone when you try to remove it."

"You mean — you mean the killer murdered a «third» man?" Swanson asked carefully. "With this knife?"

"The third man but the first victim," I nodded. "The missing half of the blade will be stuck inside someone's chest. But I'm not going to look for it: it would be pointless and take far too long."

"I'm not sure that I don't agree with Hansen," Swanson said slowly. "I know it's impossible to explain away the sabotage on the boat — but, my God, this looks like the work of a maniac. All this — all this senseless killing."

"All this killing," I agreed. "But not senseless-not from the point of view of the killer. No, don't ask me, I don't know what his -point of view was — or is. I know — you know — why he started the fire: what we don't know is why he killed those men in the first place."

Swanson shook his head, then said: "Let's get back to the other hut. I'll phone for someone to keep a watch over those sick men. I don't know about you, but I'm frozen stiff. And you had no sleep last night."

"I'll watch — them meantime," I said. "For an hour or so. And I've some thinking to do, some very hard thinking."

"You haven't much to go on, have you?"

"That's what makes it so hard."

I'd said to Swanson that I didn't have much to go on, a less than accurate statement, for I didn't have anything to go on at all. So I didn't waste any time thinking. Instead I took a flashlight and went once again to the lab where the dead men lay. I was cold and tired and alone, and darkness was falling and I didn't very much fancy going there. Nobody would have fancied going there, a place of dreadful death which any sane person would have avoided like the plague. And that was why I was going there, not because I wasn't sane, but because it was a place that no man would ever voluntarily visit — unless he had an extremely powerful motivation, such as the intention of picking up some essential thing he had hidden there in the near certainty that no one else would ever go near the place. It sounded complicated, even to me. I was very tired. I made a fuzzy mental note to ask around, when I got back to the «Dolphin», to find out who had suggested shifting the dead men in there.

The walls of the lab were lined with shelves and cupboards containing jars and bottles and retorts and test tubes and such-like chemical junk, but I didn't give them more than a glance. I went to the corner of the hut where the dead men lay most closely together, shone my light along the side of the room, and found what I was looking for in a matter of seconds — a floorboard standing slightly proud of its neighbors. Two of the blackened, contorted lumps that had once been men lay across that board. I moved them just far enough, not liking the job at all, then lifted one end of the loose floorboard.

It looked as if someone had had it in mind to start up a supermarket. In the six-inch space between the floor and the base of the hut were stacked dozens of neatly arranged cans — soup, beef, fruit, vegetables, a fine varied diet with all the proteins and vitamins a man could want. Someone had had no intention of going hungry. There was even a small pressure stove and a couple of gallons of kerosene to thaw out the cans. And to one side, lying flat, two rows of gleaming Nife cells — there must have been about forty in all.

I replaced the board, left the lab, and went across to the meteorological hut again. I spent over an hour there, unbuttoning the backs of metal cabinets and peering into their innards, but I found nothing. Not what I had hoped to find, that is. But I did come across one very peculiar item, a small green metal box six inches by four by two, with a circular control that was both switch and tuner, and two glassed-in dials with neither figures nor marking on them. On one side of the box was a brass-rimmed hole.

I turned the switch and one of the dials glowed green, a magic-eye tuning device with the fans spread well apart. The other dial stayed dead. I twiddled the tuner control but nothing happened. Both the magic eye and the second dial required something to activate them — something like a preset radio signal. The hole in the side would accommodate the plug of any standard telephone receiver. Not many people would have known what this was, but I'd seen one betore — a transistorized homing device for locating the direction of a radio signal, such as emitted by the «Sarah» device on American space capsules which enables searchers to locate it once it has landed in the sea.

What legitimate purpose could be served by such a device in Drift Ice Station Zebra? When I'd told Swanson and Hansen of the existence of a console for monitoring rocket-firing signals from Siberia, that much of my story, anyway, had been true. But that had called for a giant aerial stretching far up into the sky: this comparative toy couldn't have ranged a twentieth of the distance to Siberia.