Duncan Kyle - Whiteout!

'Don't you go neurotic on me! You play ping-pong?'

'It's been known.'

'Okay, so we'll have some healthy activity. Right after breakfast. You reckon that floating fan of yours will work up there?'

'It's pretty good.'

'It'll need to be.'

I said, 'Before I start, it'd be nice to know where people stand. Don't you like the idea?'

'I just like things proved, well proved, before I start loading lives aboard.'

'It's pretty well proved.'

He looked at me, eyes suddenly hard. 'So are diesels.'

'Things are bad, then ?*

'Fuel's contaminated. Some kind of build-up in the combustion chambers and feed lines.'

I was about to ask what the contamination was, when a soldier appeared at the table, breathing hard, face red with exertion. He saluted. 'Major Smales, sir.'

"What is it?'

'Sir, it's the bulldozer, the one that sweeps the doorstep.'

'Well?'

'They found tracks, sir. In the overnight snow. Big tracks. Looks like there may be - ' he hesitated, then found the nerve to continue - 'there could be a polar bear in the camp, sir.' He watched Smales with nervous .eyes.

'A polar bear?' Barney repeated softly, looking at his plate.

'They're big tracks, sir.'

Barney swivelled sweet eyes up to look at him. 'You got some kind of a bet on this?'

The soldier swallowed. 'No, sir.'

'Because if money's riding on this,' Barney said, 'you'll be shovelling snow till your ass falls off.'

'Yes, sir. But it's true, Major. Those tracks, they come right in the tunnel entrance.'

Barney nodded dismissively, pushed his plate away and said, 'Polar bears, yet!' in a stage Yiddish accent. Then he walked over to a wall installation and lifted off a microphone. A moment later his voice was booming out of a loudspeaker. 'Okay, now listen. This is the Commander. I got a report there's a polar bear down here.'

Subdued laughter erupted at several tables and Smales looked round balefully. 'A real bear, this one, with a white fur coat. All right. Nobody leaves the hut he's in. Any man not in a hut gets inside fast and stays there pending new orders. If the bear's here, he's hungry. He's walked a hundred miles and you'll taste real good to him. I want a Polecat from the vehicle bay outside the mess hall on the double. Await further instructions.' He hung up the mike, returned to the table and shrugged on his parka. I asked, 'What exactly do you do now?'

'You want to come, come.'

We waited at the mess hall door until the Polecat's engine snarled up outside, then opened the door and took rapid steps across to safety behind metal doors. Smales said, 'Bear can't be here, he'd make for the mess hall.'

'Has this happened before?'

He shook his head. 'They saw tracks once, in Chance's time, the last commander. But nobody ever saw a bear. Meanwhile, we aren't exactly equipped for polar bears.' He told the driver to take us to the command hut. 'But if he's here, he's trouble. If he's standing between us and the door of my office, there's no way.'

I said, 'Damn it, this is the army. You could shoot him.'

Smales shook his head. 'We're not a fighting army. We're on Danish territory here; there are agreements, terms of use. We've only one stick that spits fire and it's on my office wall. If we can't get it, somebody's got to do battle with fire axes. But not me.'

The driver turned. 'Trench entrance will be too narrow for the cat, sir.'

'Turn her round,' Smales ordered, 'so the lights shine down the trench. Main beams. Blind the bastard if he's in there.'

'Okay, sir.' The driver busied himself with the track levers, manoeuvring the little vehicle into position across Main Street. 'Can't see anything, sir.'

'Right.' Smales put his hand on the door handle. 'If he's in here, at least we got him blocked.'

The driver said, 'Want me to go, sir?'

'So you can read what's on my desk?' Smales said. 'Not in a million years.'

He slipped suddenly out of the cab and sprinted across the fifteen yards that separated us from the command hut, stood for a long few moments fumbling with the key, then slid inside, slamming the door. The driver and I both let our breath go at the same moment.

Smales reappeared quickly and again sprinted for the Polecat. Safely back inside, he patted the rifle, an old-fashioned .303 wooden-stocked army weapon and said, 'This is what the Danish Government allows us. It was captured from Sitting Bull. I'm the only guy here old enough to remember how to use it. Now, let's look at that doorstep.'

At the tunnel entrance one of the big, fifty-six-inch-track bulldozers stood snorting and thumping. As we got out, a corporal climbed down from the cab and pointed. Six deep prints, already partly filled, showed in the fresh snow that had blown in during the night beneath the shelter of the roof. Beyond the overhang, where there was more snow, no tracks were to be seen. The tunnel floor, where the snow had long ago been churned into dirty ice crystals, carried no tracks.

'Think it's a bear, sir?' the corporal asked Smales.

'How the hell do I know. I'm not an Eskimo tracker! But whatever made those tracks had big feet. So we've sure got to act like Mr Bear's inside here.'

He turned and looked back along the deserted length of Main Street.

'Perhaps,' I said, 'the bear came in here, went all the way along, and out the other end.'

Smales turned to the corporal. 'You swept the step up there yet?'

'No, sir.'

'Okay. What we'll do, we'll start at the far end. If there are tracks going out, that's all jim-dandy. If not, we work our way right back here, checking trenches as we go.'

'What do you want me to do, sir?'

'Get back in the 'dozer,' Smales said, 'and stay right here. If we flush him out and he comes this way, you put a scare in him with the dozer, a real scare. But don't try to kill him, polar bears are getting kinda rare.'

We climbed back into the Polecat and roared rapidly along Main Street to inspect the other ramp. No tracks showed in the smooth white slope of new snow. Smales and I looked at one another. Tracks leading into Camp Hundred, no tracks leading out; if a polar bear had made the tracks, he was in among us.

The search began. There were seventeen trenches to examine, most of them constructed in the same fashion. They had been cut originally with Peters snow-ploughs, the Swiss machines which throw snow out of a kind of chimney and pile it to one side. Each time the plough had made a pass, it had cut deeper and piled the snow higher. When the trenches were thirty feet deep, they had simply been roofed over with curved corrugated steel and snow heaped on top. Where each trench connected with Main Street, a wall of snow bricks had been built to narrow the entrance. Some of the walls had doors in them, others were merely arched openings, depending on the use made of the trench. Storage tunnels, by and large, could be locked. The ones holding living quarters, laboratory huts and recreation facilities remained open. Most trenches had one additional refinement, an escape stair at the far end so that in case of fire or some other disaster, the men could climb out through a hatch on to the icecap outside. If you could call that escape.

Where trench doors were locked, Smales didn't bother opening them. Where the entrances stood open, he'd repeat the process he had followed at the Command tunnel and wait until the Polecat's lights were glaring inside before peering cautiously round the corner of the snow wall. Then he'd go in. A minute later, maybe two minutes later, he'd reappear, shake his head, and wave the Polecat on to the next trench. The minutes he spent in the trenches were long minutes, even to me, secure, warm and safe inside the Polecat. What they must have seemed like to him, I can't imagine, but as an exhibition of cold courage, what Barney Smales was doing was impressive. Oh, he had the gun, right enough, but polar bears are white, and so were the tunnel walls, and there were shadows and bright reflections and piles of things the bear could have been behind, and the animal would have the faster reflexes. He worked his way doggedly along the length of Main Street, finding nothing. Each time he came out of a trench he'd shake his head and I'd sigh with relief and the driver would move the Polecat along. One tunnel he didn't even approach. It housed the six bodies and was locked. Finally we were back where we started, by the bulldozer. There was only one tunnel left now, a few yards in from the bottom of the ramp, with the words 'Reserve Fuel Store' in stencilled paint on the wooden door. I saw Smales glance at it, then glance again and finally walk over and push the door. It swung open and he looked inside, then came out and waved his arm. I climbed out of the Polecat and joined him. 'What do you make of that?'