Ice Station Zebra (20 page)

      "Zabrinski, Dr. Jolly, Captain Folsom, and this man here," Benson said promptly.
      "Kinnaird, radio operator," Kinnaird identified himself. "We never thought you'd make it, mate." This to me. He dragged himself somehow to his feet and stood there swaying. "I can walk."
      "Don't argue," Swanson said curtly. "Rawlings, stop stirring that filthy mush and get to your feet. Go with them. How long would it take you to run a cable from the boat, fix up a couple of big electric heaters in here, some lights?"
      "Alone?"
      "All the help you want, man."
      "Fifteen minutes. I could rig a phone, sir."
      "That would be useful. When the stretcher bearers come back, bring blankets, sheets, hot water. Wrap the water containers in the blankets. Anything else, Dr. Benson?"
      "Not now, sir."
      "That's it, then. Away you go."
      Rawlings lifted the spoon from the pot, tasted it, smacked his lips in appreciation, and shook his head sadly. "It's a crying shame," he said mournfully. "It really is." He went out in the wake of the stretcher bearers.
      Of the eight men left lying on the floor, four were conscious. Hewson, the tractor driver, Naseby, the cook, and two others who introduced themselves as Harrington. Twins. They were as alike as two freshly minted pennies, they'd even been burnt and frost-bitten in the same places. The other four were either sleeping or in coma. Benson and I started looking them over, Benson much more carefully than myself, very busy with thermometer and stethoscope. Looking for signs of pneumonia. I didn't think he'd have to look very far. Commander Swanson looked speculatively around the cabin, occasionally throwing a very odd look in my direction, occasionally flailing his arms across his chest to keep the circulation going. He had to. He didn't have the fancy furs I had, and in spite of the solid-fuel stove, the place was like an icebox.
      The first man I looked at was lying on his side in the far right-hand corner of the room. He had half-open eyes, iust showing the lower arcs of his pupils, sunken temples, marblewhite forehead, and the only part of his face that wasn't bandaged was as cold as the marble in a winter graveyard. I said, "Who is this?"
      "Grant. John Grant." Hewson, the dark, quiet tractor driver, answered me. "Radio operator. Kinnaird's sidekick. How's it with him?"
      "He's dead. He's been dead quite some time."
      "Dead?" Swanson said sharply. "You sure?" I gave him my aloof professional look and said nothing. He said to Benson, "Anybody too ill to be moved?"
      "Those two here, I think," Benson said. He wasn't noticing the series of peculiar looks SWanson was letting me have, so he handed me his stethoscope. After a minute I straightened and nodded.
      "Third-degree burns," Benson said to Swanson. "What we can see of them, that is. Both high temperatures, both very fast, very weak, and erratic pulses, both with lung fluids."
      "They'd have a better chance inside the _Dolphin_," Swanson said.
      "You'd kill them getting there," I said. "Even if you could wrap them up warmly enough to take them back to the ship, hauling them up to the top of the sail and -then lowering them vertically through those hatchways would finish them off."
      "We can't stay out in that lead indefinitely," Swanson said. "I'll take the responsibility for moving them."
      "Sorry, Captain." Benson shook his head gravely. "I agree with Dr. Carpenter."
      Swanson shrugged and said nothing. Moments later the stretcher bearers were back, followed soon after by Rawlings and three other enlisted men carrying cables, heaters, lamps, and a telephone. It took only a few minutes to connect the heaters and lamps on to the cable. Rawlings cranked the callup generator of his field phone and spoke briefly into the mouthpiece. Bright lights came on and the heaters started to crackle and, after a few seconds, glow.
      Hewson, Naseby, and the Harrington twins left by stretcher. When they'd gone, I unhooked the Coleman lantern. "You won't be needing this now," I said. "I won't be long."
      "Where are you going?" Swanson's voice was quiet.
      "I won't be long," I repeated. "Just looking around."
      He hesitated, then stood to one side. I went out, moved around a corner of the hut, and stopped. I heard the whirr of the call-up bell, a voice on the telephone. It was only a murmur to me, I couldn't make out what was being said. But I'd expected this.
      The Coleman storm lantern flickered and faded in the wind but didn't- go out. Stray ice spicules struck against the glass, but it didn't crack or break; it must have been one of those specially toughened glasses immune to a couple of hundred degrees' temperature range between the inside and the outside.
      I made my way diagonally across to the only hut left on the south side. No trace of burning, charring, or even smokeblackening on the outside walls. The fuel store must have been the one next to it, on the same side and to the west, straight downwind; that almost certainly must have been its position judging by the destruction of all the other huts, and the grotesquely buckled shape of its remaining girders made this strong probability a certainty. Here had been the heart of the fire.
      Hard against the side of the undamaged hut was a lean-to shed, solidly built. Six feet high, six wide, eight long. The door opened easily. Wooden floor, gleaming aluminum for the sides and ceiling, big black heaters bolted to the inside and outside walls. Wires led from those, and it was no job for an Einstein to guess that they led--or had led--to the now destroyed generator house. This lean-to shed would have been warm night and day. The squat, low-slung tractor that took up nearly all the floor space inside would have started any time at the touch of a switch. It wouldn't start at the turn of a switch now; it would take three or four blowtorches and the same number of strong men even to turn the engine over once. I closed the door and went into the main hut.
      It was packed with metal tables, benches, machinery, and every modern device for the automatic recording and interpretation of every conceivable observed detail of the Arctic weather. I didn't know what the functions of most of the instruments were and I didn't care. This was the meteorological office and that was enough for me. I examined the hut carefully but quickly, and there didn't seem to be anything odd or out of place that I could see. In one corner, on an empty wooden packing case, was a portable radio transmitter with listening phones--"transeivers," they called them nowadays. Near it, in a box of heavy oiled wood, were fifteen Nife cells connected up in series. Hanging from a hook on the wall was a two-volt test lamp. I touched its bare leads to the outside terminals of the battery formed by the cells. Had those cells left in them even a fraction of their original power, that test lamp should have burnt out in a white flash. It didn't even begin to glow. I tore a piece of flex from a nearby lamp and touched its ends to .the terminals. Not even the minutest spark. Kinnaird hadn't been lying when he had said that his battery had been completely dead. But, then, I hadn't for a moment thought he'd been lying.
      I made niy way to the last hut--the hut that held the charred remnants of the seven men who had died in the fire. The stench of charred flesh and burnt diesel seemed stronger, more nauseating than ever. I stood in the doorway and the last thing I wanted to do was to approach even an inch closer. I peeled off fur and woollen mittens, set the lamp on a table, pulled out my flashlight, and knelt by the first dead man.
      Ten minutes passed and all I wanted was out of there. There are some things that doctors, even hardened pathologists, will go a long way to avoid. Bodies that have been too long in the sea is one; bodies that have been in the immediate vicinity of underwater explosion is another; and men who have literally been burned alive is another. I was beginning to feel more than slightly sick: but I wasn't going to leave there until I was finished.
      The door creaked open. I turned and watched Commander Swanson come in. He'd been a long time, I'd expected him before then. Lieutenant Hansen, his damaged left hand wrapped in some thick woollen material, came in after him. That was what the phone call had been about--the Commander calling up reinforcements. Swanson switched off his flashlight, pushed up his snow goggles, and pulled down his mask. His eyes narrowed at the scene before him, his nostrils wrinkled in involuntary disgust, and color drained swiftly from his ruddy cheeks. Both Hansen and I had told him what to expect, but he hadn't been prepared for this: not often can the imagination encompass the reality. For a moment I thought he was going to be sick, but then I saw a slight tinge of color touch his cheekbones and I knew he wasn't.
      "Dr. Carpenter," Swanson said in a voice in which the unsteady huskiness seemed only to emphasize the stilted formality, "I wish you to return at once to the ship, where you will remain confined to your quarters. I would prefer you went voluntarily, accompanied by Lieutenant Hansen here. I wish no trouble. I trust you don't, either. If you do, we can accommodate you. Rawlings and Murphy are waiting outside that door."
      "Those are fighting words, Commander," I said, "and very unfriendly. Rawlings and Murphy are going to get uncommonly cold out there." I put my right hand in my caribou pants pocket--the one with the gun in it--and surveyed him unhurriedly. "Have you had a brainstorm?"
      Swanson looked at Hansen and nodded in the direction of the door. Hansen half turned, then stopped as I said, "Very high-handed, aren't we. I'm not worth an explanation, is that it?"
      Hansen looked uncomfortable. He didn't like any part of this. I suspected Swanson didn't, either, but he was going to do what he had to do and let his feelings look elsewhere.
      "Unless you're a great deal less intelligent than I believe-- and I credit you with a high intelligence--you know exactly what the explanation is. When you came aboard the _Dolphin_ in the Holy Loch, both Admiral Garvie and myself were highly suspicious of you. You spun us a story about being an expert in Arctic conditions and of having helped set up this station here. When we wouldn't accept that as sufficient authority or reason to take you along with us, you told a highly convincing tale about this being an advanced missilewarning outpost, and even though it was peculiar that Admiral Garvie had never heard of it, we accepted it. The huge dish aerial you spoke of, the radar masts, the electronic computers--what's happened to them, Dr. Carpenter? A little insubstantial, weren't they? Like all figments of the imagination."
      I looked at him, considering, and let him go on.
      "There never were any of those things, were there? You're up to your neck in something very murky indeed, my friend. What it is I don't know, nor, for the moment, do I care. All I care for is the safety of the ship, the welfare of the crew, and bringing the Zebra survivors safely back home, and I'm taking no chances at all."
      "The wishes of the British Admiralty, the orders from your own Director of Underseas Warfare--those mean nothing to you?"
      "I'm beginning to have very strong reservations about the way those orders were obtained," Swanson said grimly. "You're altogether too mysterious for my liking, Dr. Carpenter--as well as being a fluent liar."
      "Those are harsh, harsh words, Commander."
      "The truth not infrequently sounds that way. Will you please come?"
      "Sorry. I'm not through here yet."
      "I see. John, will you--"
      "I can give you an explanation. I see I have to. Won't you listen?"
      "A third fairytale?" A head shake. "No."
      "And I'm not ready to leave. Impasse."
      Swanson looked at Hansen, who turned to go. I said, "Well, if you're too stiff-necked to listen to me, call up the bloodhounds. Isn't it just luck, now, that we have three fully qualified doctors here?"
      "What do you mean?"
      "I mean this." Guns have different characteristics in appearance. Some look relatively harmless, some ugly, some businesslike, some wicked. The Mannlicher-Schoenauer in my hand just looked plain downright wicked. Very wicked indeed. The white light from the Coleman glittered off the blued metal, menacing and sinister. It was a great gun to terrify people with.
      "You wouldn't use it," Swanson said flatly.
      "I'm through talking. I'm through asking for a hearing. Bring on the bailiffs, friend."
      "You're bluffing, mister," Hansen said savagely. "You don't dare."
      "There's too much at stake for me not to dare. Find out now. Don't be a coward. Don't hide behind your enlisted men's backs. Don't order them to get themselves shot." I snapped off the safety catch. "Come and take it from me yourself."
      "Stay right where you are, John," Swanson said sharply. "He means it. I suppose you have a whole armory in that combination-lock suitcase of yours," he added bitterly.
      "That's it. Automatic carbines, six-inch naval guns, the works. But for a small-size situation, a small-size gun. Do I get my hearing?"
      "You get your hearing."
      "Send Rawlings and Murphy away. I don't want anyone else to know anything about this. Anyway, they're probably freezing to death."
      Swanson nodded. Hansen went to the door, opened it, spoke briefly, and returned. I laid the gun on a table, picked up my flashlight, and moved some paces away. I said, "Come and have a look at this."
      They came. Both of them passed by the table with the gun lying there and didn't even look at it. I stopped before one of the grotesquely misshapen charred lumps lying on the floor. Swanson came close and stared down. His face bad lost whatever little color it had regained. He made a queer noise in his throat.
      "That ring, that gold ring--" he began, then stopped short.
      "I wasn't lying about that."
      "No. No, you weren't. I--I don't know what to say. I'm most--"
      "It doesn't matter," I said roughly. "Look here. At the back. I'm afraid I had to remove some of the carbon."
      "The neck," Swanson whispered. "It's broken." -
      "Is that what you think?"
      "Something heavy, I don't know, a beam from one of the huts, must have fallen--"
      "You've just seen one of those huts. They have no beams. There's an inch and a half of the vertebrae missing. If anything sufficiently heavy to smash off an inch and a half of the backbone had struck him, the broken piece would be imbedded in his neck. It's not. It was blown out. He was shot from the front, through the base of the throat. The bullet went out the back of the neck. A soft-nosed bullet--you can tell by the size of the exit hole-from a powerful gun, something like a thirty-eight Colt or Luger or Mauser."