Alistair MacLean - Ice Station Zebra

I fell half sideways, half backward, pulling the hatch cover with me. My head struck against the hatch coaming. Desperately I ducked my head forward — if it had been crushed between the coaming and the falling cover, the two sides of my skull would just about have met in the middle — and tried to snatch my left arm back inside. I was more or less successful with my head — I had it clear of the coaming and was ducking so quickly that the impact of the cover was no more than enough to give me a slight headache afterward — but my left arm was a different matter altogether. I almost got it clear — but only almost. If my left hand and wrist had been strapped to a steel block and a gorilla had had a go at it with a sledge hammer, the effect couldn't have been more agonizing. For a moment or two I hung there, trapped, dangling by my left wrist; then the weight of my body tore the mangled wrist and hand through the gap and I crashed down to the deck beneath. Then the gorilla seemed to have another go with the sledge hammer, and consciousness went.

"I won't beat about the bush, old lad," Jolly said. "No point in it with a fellow pill roller. Your wrist is a mess. I had to dig half your watch out of it. The middle and little fingers are broken, the middle in two places. But the permanent danger, I'm afraid, is to the back of your hand. The little and ring-finger tendons have been sliced."

"What does that mean?" Swanson asked.

"It means that in his left hand he'll have to get by with two fingers and a thumb for the rest of his life," Jolly said bluntly.

Swanson swore softly and turned to Henry. "How in God's name could you have been so damned careless? An experienced submariner like you? You know perfectly well that you're required to make a visual check every time a hatch cover engages in a standing latch. Why didn't you?"

"I didn't need to, sir." Henry was looking more dyspeptic and forlorn than ever. "I heard it click and I gave a tug. It was engaged, all right. I can swear to it, sir."

"How could it have been engaged? Look at Dr. Carpenter's hand. Just a hair-line engagement and the slightest extra pressure — My God, why can't you people obey regulations?"

Henry stared at the desk in silence. Jolly, who was understandably looking about as washed-out as I felt, packed away the tools of his trade, advised me to take a couple of days off, gave me a handful of pills to take, said a weary good night, and climbed up the ladder leading from the electronics space, where he had been fixing my hand. Swanson said to Henry: "You can go now, Baker" — the first time I'd ever heard anyone address Henry by his surname, a sufficient enough token of what Swanson regarded as the enormity of his crime. "I'll decide what to do about this in the morning."

"I don't know about the morning," I said after Henry was gone. "Maybe the next morning. Or the one after that. Then you can apologize to him. You and me both. That cover was locked on its standing latch. «I» checked it visually, Commander Swanson."

Swanson gave me his cool, impassive look. After a moment he said quietly, "Are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?"

"Someone took a risk," I said. "Not all that much of a risk, though. Most of the men are asleep now, and the control room was deserted at the moment that mattered. Someone in the wardroom tonight heard me ask your permission to go down to the medical store and heard you giving your okay. Shortly after that, nearly everyone turned in. One man didn't — he kept awake and hung around patiently until I came back from the drift station. He followed me down below — he was lucky — Lieutenant Sims, your officer on deck, was taking star sights up on the bridge and the control room was empty — and he unhooked the latch but left the hatch cover in a standing position. There was a slight element of gambling as to whether I would come up first, but not all that much, it would have been a matter of elementary courtesy, he would have thought, for Henry to see me up first. Anyway, he won his gamble, slight though it was. After that, our unknown friend wasn't quite so lucky — I think he expected the damage to be a bit more permanent."

"I'll get inquiries under way immediately," Swanson said. "Whoever was responsible, someone must have seen him, Someone must have heard him leaving his cot — "

"Don't waste your time, Commander. We're up against a highly intelligent character who doesn't overlook the obvious. Not only that, but word of your inquiries is bound to get around, and you'd scare him under cover where I'd never get at him."

"Then I'll just keep the whole damned bunch under lock and key until we get back to Scotland," Swanson said grimly. "«That» way there'll be no more trouble."

"That way we'll «never» find out who the murderer of my brother and the six — seven now — others are. Whoever it is has to be given sufficient rope to trip himself up."

"Good God, man, we can't just sit back and let things be done to us." There was a hint of testiness in the commander's voice, and I couldn't blame him. "What do we — what do «you» — propose to do now?"

"Start at the beginning. Tomorrow morning we'll hold a court of inquiry among the survivors. Let's find out all we can about that fire. Just an innocent, above-board, fact-finding inquiry, for the Ministry of Supply, let us say. I've an idea we might turn up something very interesting indeed."

"You think so?" Swanson shook his head. "I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a moment. Look what's happened to you. It's obvious, man, that someone knows or suspects that you're on to them. They'll take damned good care to give nothing away."

"You think that's why I was clouted tonight?"

"What other reason could there be?"

"Was that why Benson was hurt?"

"We don't know that he was. Deliberately, I mean. May have been pure coincidence."

"Maybe it was," I agreed. "And then again, maybe it wasn't. My guess, for what it's worth, is that the accident or accidents have nothing at all to do with any suspicions the killer may have that we're on to him. Anyway, let's see what tomorrow brings."

It was midnight when I got back to my cabin. The engineer officer was on watch and Hansen was asleep, so I didn't put on any light lest I disturb him. I didn't undress, just removed my shoes, lay down on the cot, and pulled a cover over me.

I didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. My left arm from the elbow down still felt as if it were caught in a bear trap. Twice I pulled from my pocket the pain killers and sleeping tablets that Jolly had given me and twice I put them away.

Instead I just lay there and thought, and the first and most obvious conclusion I came up with was that there was someone aboard the «Dolphin» who didn't care any too much for the members of the medical profession. Then I got to wondering why the profession was so unpopular, and after half an hour of beating my weary brain cells around, I got silently to my feet and made my way in my socks to the sick bay.

I passed inside and closed the door softly behind me. A red night light burnt dully in one corner, just enough to let me see Benson's huddled form on the cot. I switched on the overhead light, blinked in the sudden fierce wash of light, and looked at the curtain at the other end of the bay. Nothing stirred behind it. I said, "Just kind of take your itching fingers away from that pipe wrench, Rawlings. It's me, Carpenter."

The curtain was pulled to one side and Rawlings appeared, the pipe wrench, with its bandage-wrapped head, dangling from one hand. He had a disappointed look on his face.

"I was expecting someone else," he said reproachfully. "I was kinda hoping — My God, Doc, what's happened to your arm?"

"Well may you ask, Rawlings. Our little pal had a go at me tonight. I think he wanted me out of the way. Whether he wanted me out of the way permanently or not I don't know but he near as a toucher succeeded." I told him what had happened, then asked, "Is there any man aboard you can trust absolutely?" I knew the answer before I had asked the question.