Ice Station Zebra (22 page)

      "Are you sure?" I asked. "Even if you brought it aboard yourself?"
      "What? Me? What the devil are you suggesting?"
      "I'm suggesting that something may have been shoved inside your medical kit, even your pockets, when you weren't looking."
      "Good Lord." He dug feverishly into his pockets. "The idea never even occurred to me."
      "You haven't the right type of nasty, suspicious mind," Swanson said dryly. "Off you go. You too, John."
      They left, and Swanson and I went inside. Once I'd checked that the two men really were unconscious, we went to work. It must have been many years since Swanson had policed a deck or parade ground, much less doubled as scavenger, but he took to it in the manner born. He was assiduous, painstaking and missed nothing. Neither did I. We cleared a corner of the hut and brought over there every single article that was either lying on the floor or attached to the still ice-covered walls. Nothing was missed. It was either shaken, turned over, opened or emptied according to what it was. Fifteen minutes and we were all through. If there was anything bigger than a match stick to be found in that room, we would have found it. But we found nothing. Then we scattered everything back over the floor again until the hut looked more or less as it had before our search. If either of the two unconscious men came to, I didn't want him knowing that we had been looking for anything.
      "We're no great shakes in the detecting business," Swanson said. He looked slightly discouraged.
      "We can't find what isn't here to be found. And it doesn't help that we don't know what we're looking for. Let's try for the gun now. May be anywhere, he may even have thrown it away on the ice cap, though I think that unlikely. A killer never likes to lose his means of killing--and he couldn't have been sure that he wouldn't require it again. There aren't so very many places to search. He wouldn't have left it here, for this is the main bunkhouse and in constant use. That leaves only the met office and the lab where the dead men are lying."
      "He could have hidden it among the ruins of one of the burnt-out huts," Swanson objected.
      "Not a chance. Our friend has been here for some months now, and he must know exactly the effect those ice storms have. The spicules silt up against any object that lies in their path. The metal frameworks at the bases of the destroyed buildings are still in position, and the floors of the huts--or where the wooden floors used to be--are covered with solid ice to a depth of from four to six inches. He would have done as well to bury his gun in quick-setting concrete."
      We started on the meteorological hut. We looked in every shelf, every box, every cupboard, and had just started ripping the backs off the metal cabinets that housed the meteorological equipment when Swanson said abruptly, "I have an idea. Back in a couple of minutes."
      He was better than his word. He was back in a minute flat, carrying in his hands four objects that glittered wetly in the lamplight and smelled strongly of petrol. A gun--a Mauser automatic--the halt and broken-off blade of a knife, and two rubber-wrapped packages that turned out to be spare magazines for the Mauser. He said: "I guess this was what you were looking for."
      "Where did you find them?"
      "The tractor. In the gas tank."
      "What made you think of looking there?"
      "Just luck. I got to thinking about your remark that the man who had used this gun might want to use it again. But if he was to hide it anywhere where it was exposed to the weather, it might have become jammed up with ice. Even if it didn't, he might have figured that the metal would contract, so that the shells wouldn't fit, or that the firing mechanism and lubricating oil would freeze solid. Only two things don't freeze solid in those sub-zero temperatures--alcohol and gasoline. You can't hide a gun in a bottle of gin."
      "It wouldn't have worked," I said. "Metal would still contract--the petrol is as cold as the surrounding air."
      "Maybe he didn't know that. Or if he did, maybe he just thought it was a good place to hide it, quick and handy." He looked consideringly at me as I broke the butt and looked at the empty magazine, then said sharply: "You're smearing that gun a little, aren't you?"
      "Finger prints? Not after being in petrol. He was probably Wearing gloves, anyway."
      "So why did you want it?"
      "Serial number. May be able to trace it. It's even possible that the killer had a police permit for it. It's happened before, believe it or not. And you must remember that the killer believed there would be no suspicion of foul play, much less that a search would be carried out for the gun.
      "Anyway, this knife explains the gun. Firing guns is a noisy business, and I'm surprised--I was surprised--that the killer risked it. He might have waked the whole camp. But he had to take the risk because he'd gone and snapped off the business end of this little sticker here. This is a very slender blade, the kind it's very easy to snap unless you know exactly what you're doing, especially when extreme cold makes the metal brittle. He probably struck a rib or broke the blade trying to haul it out: a knife slides in easily enough but it can jam against cartilage or bone when you try to remove it."
      "You mean--you mean the killer murdered a _third_ man?" Swanson asked carefully. "With this knife?"
      "The third man but the first victim," I nodded. "The missing half of the blade will be stuck inside someone's chest. But I'm not going to look for it: it would be pointless and take far too long."
      "I'm not sure that I don't agree with Hansen," Swanson said slowly. "I know it's impossible to explain away the sabotage on the boat--but, my God, this looks like the work of a maniac. All this--all this senseless killing."
      "All this killing," I agreed. "But not senseless-not from the point of view of the killer. No, don't ask me, I don't know what his -point of view was--or is. I know--you know--why he started the fire: what we don't know is why he killed those men in the first place."
      Swanson shook his head, then said: "Let's get back to the other hut. I'll phone for someone to keep a watch over those sick men. I don't know about you, but I'm frozen stiff. And you had no sleep last night."
      "I'll watch--them meantime," I said. "For an hour or so. And I've some thinking to do, some very hard thinking."
      "You haven't much to go on, have you?"
      "That's what makes it so hard."
      I'd said to Swanson that I didn't have much to go on, a less than accurate statement, for I didn't have anything to go on at all. So I didn't waste any time thinking. Instead I took a flashlight and went once again to the lab where the dead men lay. I was cold and tired and alone, and darkness was falling and I didn't very much fancy going there. Nobody would have fancied going there, a place of dreadful death which any sane person would have avoided like the plague. And that was why I was going there, not because I wasn't sane, but because it was a place that no man would ever voluntarily visit--unless he had an extremely powerful motivation, such as the intention of picking up some essential thing he had hidden there in the near certainty that no one else would ever go near the place. It sounded complicated, even to me. I was very tired. I made a fuzzy mental note to ask around, when I got back to the _Dolphin_, to find out who had suggested shifting the dead men in there.
      The walls of the lab were lined with shelves and cupboards containing jars and bottles and retorts and test tubes and such-like chemical junk, but I didn't give them more than a glance. I went to the corner of the hut where the dead men lay most closely together, shone my light along the side of the room, and found what I was looking for in a matter of seconds--a floorboard standing slightly proud of its neighbors. Two of the blackened, contorted lumps that had once been men lay across that board. I moved them just far enough, not liking the job at all, then lifted one end of the loose floorboard.
      It looked as if someone had had it in mind to start up a supermarket. In the six-inch space between the floor and the base of the hut were stacked dozens of neatly arranged cans--soup, beef, fruit, vegetables, a fine varied diet with all the proteins and vitamins a man could want. Someone had had no intention of going hungry. There was even a small pressure stove and a couple of gallons of kerosene to thaw out the cans. And to one side, lying flat, two rows of gleaming Nife cells--there must have been about forty in all.
      I replaced the board, left the lab, and went across to the meteorological hut again. I spent over an hour there, unbuttoning the backs of metal cabinets and peering into their innards, but I found nothing. Not what I had hoped to find, that is. But I did come across one very peculiar item, a small green metal box six inches by four by two, with a circular control that was both switch and tuner, and two glassed-in dials with neither figures nor marking on them. On one side of the box was a brass-rimmed hole.
      I turned the switch and one of the dials glowed green, a magic-eye tuning device with the fans spread well apart. The other dial stayed dead. I twiddled the tuner control but nothing happened. Both the magic eye and the second dial required something to activate them--something like a preset radio signal. The hole in the side would accommodate the plug of any standard telephone receiver. Not many people would have known what this was, but I'd seen one betore-- a transistorized homing device for locating the direction of a radio signal, such as emitted by the _Sarah_ device on American space capsules which enables searchers to locate it once it has landed in the sea.
      What legitimate purpose could be served by such a device in Drift Ice Station Zebra? When I'd told Swanson and Hansen of the existence of a console for monitoring rocket-firing signals from Siberia, that much of my story, anyway, had been true. But that had called for a giant aerial stretching far up into the sky: this comparative toy couldn't have ranged a twentieth of the distance to Siberia.
      I had another look at the portable radio transmitter and the now exhausted Nife batteries that served them. The dialing counter was still tuned to the wave band on which the _Dolphin_ had picked up the distress signals. There was nothing for me there. I looked more closely at the nickel-cadmium cells and saw that they were joined to one another and to the radio set by wire-cored rubber leads with very powerful spring-loaded sawtooth clips on the terminals: those last ensured perfect electrical contact, as well as being very convenient to use. I undid two of the clips, held my flashlight high, and peered closely at the terminals. The indentations made by the sharpened steel saw teeth were faint but unniistakable.
      I made my way back to the laboratory hut, lifted the loose floorboard again, and shone my light on the Nile cells lying there. At least half of the cells had the same characteristic markings. Cells that looked fresh and unused, yet had those same markings, and if anything was certain, it was that those cells had been brand new and unmarked when Drift Ice Station Zebra had been first set up. A few of the cells were tucked so far away under adjacent floorboards that I had to stretch my hand far in to reach them. I pulled out two, and in the space behind them, I seemed to see something dark and dull and metallic.
      It was too dark to distinguish clearly what the object was but after I'd levered up another two floorboards, I could see without any trouble at all. It was a cylinder about thirty inches long and six in diameter with brass stopcock and mounted pressure gauge registering "Full," close beside it was a package about eighteen inches square and four thick stenciled with the words "Radio Sonde Balloons." Hydrogen, batteries, balloons, corned beef, and mulligatawny soup. A catholic enough assortment of stores by any standards: but there wouldn't have been anything haphazard about the choice of that assortment.
      When I made it back to the bunkhouse, the two patients were still breathing. That was about all I could say for myself, too, I was shaking with cold, and even clamping my teeth together couldn't keep them from chattering. I thawed out under the big electric heaters until I was only half frozen; then I picked up my flashlight and moved out again into the wind and the cold and the dark. I was a sucker for punishment, that was for sure.
      In the next twenty minutes I made half a dozen complete Circuits of the camp, moving a few yards farther out with each circuit. I must have walked over a mile altogether and that was all I had for it, just the walk and a slight touch of frostbite high up on my cheekbones, the only part of my face other than my eyes exposed to that bitter cold. I knew I had frostbite, for my skin had suddenly ceased to feel cold any more and was quite dead to the touch. Enough was enough, and I had a hunch that I was wasting my time, anyway. I headed back to the camp.
      I passed between the meteorological hut and the lab and was just level with the eastern end of the bunkhouse when I sensed as much as saw something odd out of the corner of my eye. I steadied my flashlight beam on the east wall -and peered closely at the sheath of ice that had been deposited there over the days by the ice storm. Most of the encrustation was of a homogeneous grayish-white, very smooth and polished, but it wasn't all gray-white; here and there it was speckled with dozens of black flecks of odd shapes and sizes, none of them more than an inch square. I tried to touch them, but they were deeply imbedded in and showing through the gleaming ice. I went to examine the east wall of the meteorological hut, but it was quite innocent of any such black flecking. So was the east wall of the lab.
      A short search inside the meteorological hut turned up a hammer and screw-driver. I chipped away a section of the black-flecked ice, brought it into the bunkhouse, and laid it on the floor in front of one of the big electrical heaters. Ten minutes later I had a small pool of water and, lying in it, the sodden remains of what had once been fragments of burnt paper. This was very curious indeed. It meant that there were scores of pieces of burnt paper imbedded in the east wall of the bunkhouse. Just there: nowhere else. The explanation, of course, could be completely innocuous: or not, as the case might be.
      I had another look at the two unconscious men. They were warm enough and comfortable enough, but that was about all you could say for them. I knew they weren't well enough to be moved within the next twenty-four hours. I lifted the phone and asked for someone to relieve me, and when two seamen arrived I made my way back to the _Dolphin_.