Duncan Kyle - Whiteout!

A few seconds later I was away from them and heading fast for the stair, and my feet were clanging as I stumbled upwards to look in sober, dry-mouthed fear out into the Arctic night. Even since I'd climbed down into the trench, conditions outside seemed to have worsened. What had been gale and blizzard and bad enough, for God's sake, was now turning into an Arctic storm, and the force of the wind that funnelled down through the open hatch had me hanging on grimly to the handrail. But I did it, I made myself climb out, pointed my shoulder at Main Street, and forced myself forward. Now, far from seeing five paces behind me, I could scarcely distinguish two, and by the time I'd covered fifteen careful yards I was already filled with the suspicion that I was lost. Even through the wadding of my cap and parka, I heard the whiplash crack of thunder roll across the sky above and the wind force was nearly bowling me over, forcing me along with awkward, involuntary, uncontrolled steps. I stopped after thirty paces, if they could be called paces. I was lost. I no longer knew with any certainty even where Main Street lay. I would certainly have died then, there can be no doubt about that. I'd have continued blundering, driven by that fearful wind, until I became part for ever of the Greenland icecap. And death would have come quickly, too, for the storm was worsening by the second. It was the storm, of all things, that saved me, for with one great, deafening smash of thunder, lightning suddenly flickered and God knows how many volts of electricity turned into a single wild flash of illumination. And there, ten yards from where I stood, was another hatch! I'd never have seen it but for the lightning. With normal visibility no more than six feet, I was thirty feet from it. But I saw it, and flung myself towards its safety and shelter, swearing to myself that whatever lay beneath, from invading hungry bears to Dracula himself, and even if the tunnel was locked, I was going to spend the rest of the night down there. I clawed open the lid, wound the escape hatch open and, slithering in like a rat down a rope, and with my feet safely on the steel rungs and my head ducked down away from the storm, I found I could see light. Light! Not a mirage, but real honest-to-God light. The bulk of two huts stood between me and the tunnel entrance, but the entrance was open, and beyond it lay the lights of Main Street. They were dim, running on a reduced voltage, I learned later, but to me at that moment they looked as bright as advertising signs.

I looked at my watch and discovered with surprise that it was still not four o'clock, less than an hour since the smoke had awakened me. But what a hell of an hour! Finding myself among corpses, and then wandering on the icecap, had made me forget my original purpose in escaping from my own keeping trench: to let somebody know there was a fire in there. Main Street was deserted. Who would be in charge of fire fighting? Who'd be the duty officer? I hadn't the slightest idea, and in hopes of finding out, crossed to the mess hall. Coffee was available there all night, I knew, so somebody ought to be around. In fact there was a solitary cook, staring wearily at some tattered comic, who didn't as much as raise his eyes until I spoke.

The words shifted, him though. At the mention of fire his eyebrows went up. 'You sound the warning?'

'Who do I tell?'

'Nobody,' he said. 'There's an alarm right there on the wall in Main Street. Man, you hit it!'

'I don't think it's serious,' I said. If nobody else had noticed a fire, an hour after it had started burning, it could scarcely be serious. 'I don't want to waken the whole camp. Where do I find the duty officer?'

The cook said, 'I'm coming too,' and took me to the command trench, where a young lieutenant, probably just as bored but with slightly better literary taste, was yawning over Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China. His name was Westlake and he, too, was galvanized by the word 'fire', and his hand streaked out towards the wall Tannoy microphone.

'It was an hour ago,' I said. 'Don't you think we'd better have another look first?'

'Well . . .' He was doubtful, but he put on his parka and followed me; then, his four a.m, mind seizing on the nub of things after he'd had two minutes to digest it, said as we walked along Main Street, 'An hour\ Why in hell didn't you - '

'Because,' I said, 'the trench door was closed and locked.'

He grabbed my arm. 'No buddy. Not locked.'

'Locked,' I said.

'In that case, I need the goddam keys, right?'

He went back, got them, and joined me a few seconds later. When we reached the trench, the door wasn't even closed, let alone locked, and Westlake fixed me with a hard stare. He said, 'So show me the fire.'

I stood there, looking along the trench. Its lights were on, the door to the hut stood open. There was no smoke anywhere.

'Come on, show me,' Westlake said impatiently. I walked forward to join him, and we went into the hut, Westlake first. The hut lights were on, too, and Westlake took one look round the room and said dryly,

'You sure were right about not sounding the alarm. Oh, brother!'

Beside my bed stood a chair, and on it I'd kept cigarettes and matches. It was the chair cushion that had been burning and had now gone out. But neatly in the middle of the charred plastic foam lay a cylinder of grey ash, the remains of a cigarette.

I felt myself colouring in embarrassment, standing there, staring stupidly at a small, accidental burn in a seatcushion. Westlake said two things, one after the other. The first was that I ought to take more water with whatever I drank so much of, the second that if I undertook not to inform Major Smales in the morning, he damn sure wouldn't, no sir! He left me then to my embarrassment and presumably went back to Edgar Snow's account of Mao-Tse-tung in the Yenan caves. All things considered, it was, I thought, decent of him.

After a while I checked that the fire was, in fact, truly out, and went back to bed, hoping to sleep, but for the second time that night I found I couldn't. My mind kept going back over the whole bizarre business, and some of the time 1 was forced to unpalatable conclusions. I'd certainly panicked when the hut door wouldn't open at first, and only then realized I was trying to open it the wrong way. Was it possible the trench door hadn't been locked either, and that I had been so panicky I hadn't even tried properly? But no, that wasn't true. I'd spent a lot of time on that door, pulling, pushing, twisting and turning, and it was closed and locked. Of that I was sure. The other door, in the trench where the bodies lay, was certainly locked, I knew that, and was kept locked, too, on Barney Smales's firm orders. And what about the burn? Thinking back, I could remember ... I was sure I could remember it.., leaning over on my elbow to stub out that final cigarette in the ashtray, and stubbing it out, moreover, the way I always did, bending the tip over the burning end and pressing down hard. 1 had, hadn't I? I always did it that way, so I must have! Admittedly, though, I'd been damned tired, my eyelids closing. At that point they must have closed again, because I fell asleep with the lights on and didn't awaken until nine, and I only woke then because there was a tap on the door and Sergeant Vernon came in and said,

'Sorry, sir, but Major Smales would like to see you right now.'

In the cold light of morning, which is hardly a precise description of the low yellowish lighting in my hut, it was clear enough to me that Barney Smales must, by now, know that I'd been out on the surface, without permission, without telling anybody, and alone, during the night. Three of Smales's sacred and sensible rules lay in ruins and it was unreasonable to imagine that Lieutenant Westlake, despite what he'd said, had not entered it all in the log. He'd have had to enter it; not to do so would have been severe dereliction of duty. So I was prepared for a roasting as I hurried towards the command trench and went into Barney's hut. Master Sergeant Allen, in the outer office, gave me a brief 'Good morning' and pointed to the door.