Desmond Bagley - The Snow Tiger / Night of Error

McGill walked to the witness chair and sat down. Harrison said, ‘Yesterday you referred to a meeting of the mine management at which you presented a report. What happened at that meeting?’

McGill tugged at his ear thoughtfully. ‘The problem was to explain the evidence and to get them to accept it. Mr Ballard had already accepted it. Mr Cameron wanted to go through the figures in detail, but he came around in the end. The others weren’t as convinced. It went like this …’

It was Cameron, the engineer, who saw the true significance of the cup crystals. ‘Could you draw a picture of one of those, Mike?’

‘Sure.’ McGill took a pencil from his pocket and made a drawing. ‘As I said, it’s conical in shape – like this – and it has this hollow in the blunt end. That’s why it’s called a cup crystal.’

‘I’m not worried about the hollow.’ Cameron stared at the drawing. ‘What you’ve sketched here is a pretty good picture of a tapered roller bearing. You say these are likely to form under that layer of hard hoar frost?’

‘Correct.’

‘That’s not good,’ said Cameron. ‘That’s not good at all. If you get a lot of weight on top pushing downwards vertically by gravity then there’ll be a resultant force sideways on the slope. The whole hillside could come down on ready-made bearings.’

Cameron passed the drawing to Dobbs who looked at it with Quentin, the union man, peering over his shoulder. ‘Any of those cup things there now?’

‘There are indications of them forming in one of the samples I took. I’d say the process is well under way.’

‘Let’s have a look at your stress figures.’ Cameron grimaced as he began to go through the equations. ‘I’m used to working with stronger stuff than snow.’

‘The principle is the same,’ said McGill.

Dobbs handed the drawing to Ballard. ‘Are you seriously telling us that there’ll be an avalanche which will fall on this mine?’

‘Not exactly,’ said McGill carefully. ‘What I’m saying, at this moment, is that there is a potential hazard that must be watched. I don’t think there is a present danger – it’s not going to come down in the next hour or even today. A lot depends on future events.’

‘Such as?’ asked Ballard.

‘The way the temperature goes. Future snow precipitation. An appreciable rise in wind speed wouldn’t help much, either.’

‘And the forecast is for more snow,’ said Ballard.

McGill said, ‘When you have a potential hazard like this you have to take precautions. Protecting the mine portal, for instance. There’s a steel construction called Wonder Arch which comes in useful. It was developed at Camp Century in Greenland specifically for this type of application. It’s used a lot in the Antarctic.’

‘Is it expensive?’ asked Dobbs. His voice was clouded with doubt.

McGill shrugged. ‘It depends on how much money you put against lives on the balance sheet.’ He turned to Cameron. ‘Joe, remember me asking if you’d heard of Granduc in British Columbia?’

Cameron looked up from the figures. ‘Yeah. I hadn’t.’

‘Granduc is remarkably like your mine here. They installed Wonder Arch – put in a covered way to the mine portal.’ He rubbed the side of his jaw. ‘It was like closing a stable door after the horse has gone; they put in the arch in 1966 after the avalanche of 1965 when twenty-six men died.’

There was a silence broken after a while by Cameron. ‘You make your point very clearly.’

Ballard said, ‘I’ll put it to the Board of Directors.’

‘That’s not all,’ said McGill. ‘You got to look at the situation in the long term. That slope is dangerous mostly because it’s been stripped of timber. It will have to be stabilized again, and that means building snow rakes. Good snow rakes cost sixty dollars a foot run – I doubt if you’d get away with under a million dollars.’

The sound of Dobbs’s suddenly indrawn breath was harsh.

‘Then there’s the snow deflection walls at the bottom,’ went on McGill inexorably. ‘That’s more – maybe even half a million. It’s going to cost a packet.’

‘The Board won’t stand for it,’ said Dobbs. He stared at Ballard. ‘You know we’re just paying our way now. They’re not going to put in all that extra capital for no increase in production. It just isn’t on.’

Quentin stirred. ‘Would you want to close down the mine?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ said Ballard. ‘But it’s not my decision.’

‘My people would have something to say about that. There’s a lot of jobs at stake.’ Quentin looked at McGill hostilely and threw out his hand. ‘And who’s to say he’s right? He comes busting in here with his tale of doom, but who the hell is he, anyway?’

Ballard straightened. ‘Let’s get one thing clear,’ he said. ‘As of yesterday Dr McGill became a professional consultant employed by this company to give us advice on certain problems. His qualifications satisfy me completely.’

‘You didn’t talk to me about this,’ said Dobbs.

Ballard gave him a level stare. ‘I wasn’t aware I had to, Mr Dobbs. You are so informed now.’

‘Does the Chairman know about this?’

‘He’ll know when I tell him, which will be very soon.’

Quentin was earnest. ‘Look, Mr Ballard; I’ve been listening carefully. There’s not been an avalanche, and your friend hasn’t said there’s going to be one. All he’s been talking about are potentials. I think the Board is going to need a lot more than that before they spend a million and a half dollars. I don’t think this mine is going to close – not on this kind of talk.’

‘What do you want?’ asked McGill. ‘Avalanche first – and protection later?’

‘I’m protecting the men’s jobs,’ said Quentin. ‘That’s what they put me in here for.’

‘Dead men don’t have jobs,’ said McGill brutally. ‘And while we’re at it, let’s get another thing quite clear. Mr Ballard has said that he has engaged me as a professional consultant, and that is quite true. But fundamentally I don’t give one good goddamn about the mine.’

‘The Chairman will be delighted to hear it,’ said Dobbs acidly. He looked at Ballard. ‘I don’t think we need carry on with this any more.’

‘Carry on, Mike,’ said Ballard quietly. ‘Tell them the rest. Tell them what’s really worrying you.’

McGill said, ‘I’m worried about the town.’

There was a silence for the space of ten heartbeats and then Cameron cleared his throat. ‘It’s snowing again,’ he said, not altogether inconsequentially.

‘That just about finished the meeting,’ said McGill. ‘It was decided that the mine management should consult with the town council that afternoon, if possible. Then Mr Ballard was to communicate by telephone with the Presi … Chairman of his company.’

Gunn had his hand up, and Harrison said, ‘Yes, Mr Gunn?’

‘May I question the witness, Mr Chairman?’ Harrison inclined his head, and Gunn proceeded. ‘Dr McGill, the meeting you have just described took place a long time ago, did it not?’

‘The meeting took place on the sixteenth of July. On the Friday morning.’

‘It is now December – nearly five months later. Would you say that you have a good memory, Dr McGill?’

‘About average.’

‘About average! I put it to you that you have a much better than average memory.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Indeed, I do say so. When I listened to your evidence – when you related the conversations of others ad verbatim – I was put in mind of a stage performance I saw quite recently in which a so-called memory man amazed an audience.’

‘Mr Gunn,’ interjected Harrison. ‘Irony and sarcasm may, or may not, have their place in a law court; they have certainly no place here. Please refrain.’