Duncan Kyle - Whiteout!

Allen looked at me. 'He seems lucid.'

'Yes,' I said, 'he was lucid all right.'

'Back to normal ?'

I said, 'What's normal?' and phoned the command hut to let Barney know. He was properly relieved and said he'd be along later to inspect the patient, but he sounded worried and distracted. After that, the vigil continued its silent way. I finished my two hours and Allen took over, then I was back at Kelleher's bedside, and so it went on except that Allen was relieved temporarily by Sergeant Vernon while he went off to handle some minor matter of administration. It was around eleven that night when Barney Smales finally came along in response to a message I'd phoned through to the effect that Kelleher was stirring again. He looked drawn and weary as he stood looking down at the cot.

Kelleher was moving drowsily, in so far as the canvas jacket and leg restraints would let him move at all.

'How was he before V Barney asked me.

'He wasn't awake long, and he was still half-way under,' I said, 'But within limits he was rational enough.'

Barney took off his parka and cap and sank sighing on to a chair. He said, 'Not enough, unfortunately. It's this way, and it's a bastard. The reactor we've got was a new design for operations up here. It's still experimental. It's not leased. We bought it. So it's the army's but under certain conditions. One of those conditions is that any major work on the reactor has to be done under the supervision of the civilian manufacturers. That means that when we shut down and refuel, and when we go critical, one of their guys is in complete control. Under the terms of the contract, we can't do it ourselves.'

'But surely,' I said, 'under circumstances like these - '

He cut me off. 'The contract says under no circumstances. It's absolutely clear and absolutely specific that in the event of sickness or incapacity of the supervising engineer, work will be discontinued until he can be given a clean bill of health by a doctor. Or until he can be replaced.'

'So even if Kelleher's okay ...'

'Even if I think he's okay, even if every man at Camp Hundred thinks he's all jim-dandy, that's no damn good. He's got to be seen by a doctor and certified okay. Or we got to get somebody else flown in here.'

'And the weather?'

'Stinks,' Barney said flatly. 'We got a phase three up there and a radio blackout. We're still on that one diesel generator you hauled up here and, boy, we're on the knife edge.' He rubbed his eyes wearily, then looked moodily at Kelleher. 'Thought you said he was coming to.'

'He was. He was stirring, anyway.' I rose and poured some coffee and handed the cup to Barney. 'That contract,' I said, 'doesn't sound very sensible to me. Not unless the Army's engineers are incompetent.'

'They're okay. Carson and his assistant both have masters' degrees in nuclear engineering. But Kelleher actually led the design team on this baby. That's the real point. Remember it's all still experimental.'

I said, 'What if you overrode the contract terms. As commander on the spot? Difficult decision, I know, but taken in the interests of the whole establishment ?'

Barney mustered a rueful grin. 'The only authority I have over the reactor operation is to order a shutdown. And then only on qualified advice. If I ordered those guys to heat her up to the critical phase, first of all they wouldn't do it, because they know the rules, too. After that, well, maybe it's not the most important thing in the world, but they'd log the order and log their refusal, and when their log goes back, guess who gets the fast chop?'

Kelleher, after the first twitches, had lapsed again into deep sleep and Barney decided against waiting. He rose, finished his coffee, and left.

About midnight, Carson came along and peered at the still-sleeping patient. He and one of his technicians were to take over the watch for a few hours while Allen and I got some sleep. Alone in my hut, I put on pyjamas and climbed into bed. I myself felt almost anaesthetized; bone weary and fuzzy-headed. But, as so often happens when sleep seems infinitely desirable, it becomes unattainable, and I lay in the dark, full of resentment, with my mind slowly gaining a clarity and energy I didn't damned well want. My need was for sleep, not for a quick mental canter round Camp Hundred and its assorted problems and mysteries. But whichever lobe of the brain controls inquisitiveness was now firmly in the saddle and digging in the spurs, and despite myself, I began to brood. I felt pretty sorry for myself, too; full of those wee-small-hours blues that can sometimes come close to despair. Lying there in the dark, I felt them crowding in, and to drive them back a bit, I put on the light and lit a cigarette, and that brought back thoughts of another cigarette I'd smoked in bed, twenty-four hours or so earlier; the one that had damn near been my last.

I got out of bed and looked at the badly-charred chair on which the ashtray had rested the previous night. It was a perfectly ordinary wooden chair, with the seat upholstered in foam-rubber or plastic foam and covered in some kind of charred plastic sheet, PVC or something. The hole in the sheeting was cigarette-shaped, a couple of inches long, and the cylinder of tobacco ash still lay along it. We've all seen dozens of similar burns, caused by careless handling of cigarette ends, and there was nothing unusual about this one. But still, it puzzled me. When you're a smoker, you tend to have a way of putting out a cigarette, and I always fold the butt over and press down hard, so that the lighted end is crushed out by the tip. That way there are no sparks. Ashtrays I've used tend to contain flattened, V-shaped butts. So why was this one straight? Because I hadn't put it out : that was the obvious answer. I must have left it burning in the ashtray and the damn thing had rolled out of it and on to the upholstery. Well, maybe. But I don't put cigarettes down and let them burn away. Never? Well .., no, I thought defensively, I don't do that. It's a thing I'm careful not to do. And in any case, there was a memory, almost distinct in my mind, of stubbing that cigarette out before I went to sleep.

The one I was smoking now had burned low, and I was putting it out automatically, when I caught myself in the act and examined what I'd done. It was in the middle of the ashtray, as always; bent over, as always. Hmm ...

I bent and blew away the ash so I could look more closely at the chair seat. Inside, beneath the two-inch hole, the plastic foam upholstery was badly charred. Pushing my finger through the hole I tried to guess at the size of the burned area. It wasn't big. The burn had cut through the PVC cover and smouldered steadily through quite a few cubic inches of the foam. As I pulled my fingers out again, they were covered in a dark, dusty smear. I tried to brush it off, and couldn't, because the ash was moist. Moist?

I rubbed my fingers together, the moisture and fine ash turning into a thin black paste on thumb and forefinger. How in hell had it become moist? Half-digested bits of long-ago chemistry lessons came back as I looked for the answer. Did carbon absorb moisture from the atmosphere? I thought so, but couldn't quite remember. Probably it did. On the other hand, this hut was heated. What effect would that have? The truth was that I simply didn't know, ill-educated lout that I am. But one thing I did know: water puts out fires!

Okay, I thought. Look at it that way. When I'd stumbled out of the hut, there had been smoke and fumes. The thing was smouldering hard enough then. But when I'd returned later with the duty officer, Westlake, it had been out. And now it was moist.

Also.., well, also the tunnel door had been locked, and wasn't when Westlake and I returned. Even allowing for my state of near-panic at the time, I was reasonably certain of that. So...?