Ice Station Zebra

8

The hut where we'd found all the Zebra survivors huddled together was almost deserted when we got back to it; only Dr. Benson and the two very sick men remained. The hut seemed bigger now, somehow, bigger and colder, and very shabby and untidy, like the remnants of a church rummage sale where the housewives have trained for a couple of months before moving up to battle stations. Pieces of clothing, bedding, frayed and shredded blankets, gloves, plates, cutlery, and dozens of odds and ends of personal possessions lay scattered all over the floor. The sick men had been too sick — and too glad to be on their way — to worry much about taking too many of their various knickknacks out of there. All they had wanted out of there was themselves. I didn't blame them.

The two unconscious men had their scarred and frost-bitten faces toward us. They were either sleeping or in a coma. But I took no chances. I beckoned to Benson and he came and stood with us in the shelter of the west wall.

I told Benson what I'd told the commander and Hansen. He had to know. As the man who would be in the most constant and closest contact with the sick men, he had to know. I suppose he must have been pretty astonished and shaken, but he didn't show it. Doctors' faces behave as doctors tell them to; when they come across a patient in a pretty critical state of health, they don't beat their breasts and break into loud lamentations, as this tends to discourage the patient. This now made three men from the «Dolphin's» crew who knew what the score was — well, half the score, anyway. Three was enough. I only hoped it wasn't too much.

Thereafter Swanson did the talking; Benson would take it better from him than he would from me. Swanson said, "Where were you thinking of putting the sick men we've sent back aboard?"

"In the most comfortable places I can find. Officers' quarters, crew's quarters, scattered all over so that no one is upset too much. Spread the load, so to speak." He paused. "I didn't know of the latest — um — development at the time. Things are somewhat different now."

"They are. Half of them in the wardroom, the other half in the crew's mess — No, the crew's quarters. No reason why they shouldn't be made comfortable. If they wonder at this, you can say it's for ease of medical treatment and that they can all be under constant medical watch, like heart patients in a ward. Get Dr. Jolly behind you in this. He seems a co-operative type. And I've no doubt he'll support you in your next move — that all patients are to be stripped, bathed and provided with clean pajamas. If they're too ill to move, a bed bath. Dr. Carpenter here tells me that prevention of infection is of paramount importance in cases of severe burn injuries."

"And their clothes?"

"You catch on more quickly than I did," Swanson grunted. "All their clothes to be taken away and labeled. All contents to be removed and labeled. The clothes, for anyone's information, are to be disinfected and laundered."

"It might help if I am permitted to know just what we are looking for," Benson suggested.

Swanson looked at me.

"God knows," I said. "Anything and everything. One thing certain — you won't find a gun. Be especially careful in labeling gloves — when we get back to Britain, we'll have the experts test them for nitrates from the gun used."

"If anyone has brought aboard anything bigger than a postage stamp, I'll find it," Benson promised.

"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».

There was an unusual atmosphere aboard ship that afternoon, quiet and dull and almost funereal. It was hardly surprising. As far as the crew of the «Dolphin» had been concerned, the men manning Drift Ice Station Zebra had been just so many ciphers, not even names, just unknowns. But now the burnt, frost-bitten, emaciated survivors had come aboard ship, sick and suffering men each with a life and individuality of his own, and the sight of those wasted men still mourning the deaths of their eight comrades had suddenly brought home to every man on the submarine the full horror of what had happened on Zebra. And, of course, less than seven hours had elapsed since their own torpedo officer, Lieutenant Mills, had been killed. Now, even though the mission had been successful, there seemed little reason for celebration. Down in the crew's mess the hi-fl and the juke box were stilled. The ship was like a tomb.

I found Hansen in his cabin. He was sitting on the edge of his Pullman bunk, still wearing his fur trousers, his face bleak and hard and cold. He watched me in silence as I stripped off my parka, undid the empty holster tied around my chest, hung it up, and stuck inside it the automatic I'd pulled from my caribou pants. Then he said suddenly, "I wouldn't take them all off, Doc. Not if you want to come with us, that is." He looked at his own furs, and his mouth was bitter. "Hardly the, uniform for a funeral, is it?"

"You mean — "

"Skipper's in his cabin. Boning up on the burial service. Tom Mills and that assistant radio operator — Grant, wasn't it? — who died out there today. A double funeral. Out on the ice. There's some men there already, chipping a place with crow bars and sledges at the base of a hummock."

"I saw no one."

"Port side. To the west."

"I thought Swanson would have taken young Mills back to the States. Or Scotland."

"Too far. And there's the psychological angle. You could hardly dent the morale of this bunch we have aboard here, much less shoot it to pieces, but carrying a dead man as a shipmate is an unhappy thing. He's had permission from Washington…" He broke off uncertainly, looked up at me and then away again. I didn't have any need of telepathy to know what was in his mind.

"The seven men on Zebra?" I shook my head. "No, no funeral service for them. How could you? I'll pay my respects some other way."

His eyes flickered up at the Mannlicher-Schoenauer hanging in its holster, then away again. He said in a quiet, savage voice, "Goddamn his black, murderous soul. That devil's aboard, Carpenter. Here. On our ship." He smacked a bunched fist hard against the palm of his other hand. "Have you no idea what's behind this, Doc? No idea who's responsible?"

"If I had, I wouldn't be standing here. Any idea how Benson is getting along with the sick and injured?"

"He's all through. I've just left him."

I nodded, reached up for the automatic, and stuck it in the pocket of my caribou pants. Hansen said quietly: "Even here?"

"Especially here."

I left him and went along to the surgery. Benson was sitting at his table, his back to his art gallery of technicolor cartoons, making entries in a book. He looked up as I closed the door behind me.

"Find anything?" I asked.

"Nothing I'd consider interesting. Hansen did most of the sorting. You may find something." He pointed to neatly folded piles of clothing on the deck, several small attach? cases, and a few polythene bags, each labeled. "Look for yourself. How about the two men left out on Zebra?"

"Holding their own. I think they'll be okay, but it's too early to say yet." I squatted on the floor, went carefully through all the pockets in the clothes, and found, as I had expected, nothing. Hansen wasn't the man to miss anything. I felt every square inch of the lining areas and came up with the same results. I went through the small cases and the polythene bags, small items of clothing and personal gear, shaving kits, letters, photographs, two or three cameras. I broke open the cameras and they were all empty. I said to Benson: "Dr. Jolly brought his medical case aboard with him?"

"Wouldn't even trust one of your own colleagues, would you?"

"No."

"Neither would I." He smiled with his mouth only. "Your evil influence. I went through every item in it. Not a thing. I even measured the thickness of the bottom of the case. Nothing there."

"Good enough for me. How are the patients?"

"Nine of them," Benson said. "The psychological effect of knowing that they're safe has done them more good than any medication ever could." He consulted cards on his desk. "Captain Folsom is the worst. No danger, of course, but his facial burns are pretty savage. We've arranged to have a plastic surgeon standing by in Glasgow when we return. The Harrington twins, both met officers, aren't so badly burned but they're very weak from cold and hunger. Food, warmth, and rest will have them on their feet in a couple of days again. Hassard, another met officer, and Jeremy, a lab technician, moderate burns, moderate frostbite, in the best shape of all otherwise. It's queer how different people react so differently to hunger and cold. The other four — Kinnaird, the senior radio operator, Dr. Jolly, Naseby, the cook, and Hewson, the tractor driver and man who was in charge of the generator — are much of a muchness: they're suffering most severely of all from frostbite, especially Kinnaird, all with moderate burns, weak, of course, but recovering fast. Only Folsom and the Harrington twins have consented to become bed patients. The rest we've provided with clothes of one sort or another. They're all lying down, of course, but they won't be lying down long. All of them are young, tough, and basically healthy. They don't pick children or old men to man places like Drift Station Zebra."

There was a knock on the door and Swanson's head appeared. He said "Hello, back again" to me, then turned to Benson. "A small problem of medical discipline here, Doctor." He stood aside to let us see Naseby, the Zebra cook, standing close behind him, dressed in a U. S. Navy's petty officer's uniform. "It seems that your patients have heard about the funeral service. They want to go along — those who are able, that is — to pay their last respects to their colleagues. I understand and sympathize, of course, but their state of health — "

"I would advise against it, sir," Benson said. "Strongly."

"You can advise what you like, mate." The voice came from behind Naseby. It was Kinnaird, the cockney radio operator. who was also dressed in blue. "No offense. Don't want to be rude or ungrateful. But I'm going. Jimmy Grant was my mate."

"I know how you feel," Benson said. "I also know how «I» feel about it — your condition, I mean. You're in no state to do anything except lie down. You're making things very difficult for me."

"I'm the captain of this ship," Swanson put in mildly. "I can forbid it, you know. I can say no and make it stick."

"And you are making things difficult for us, sir," Kinnaird said. "I don't reckon it would advance the cause of AngloAmerican unity very much if we started hauling off at our rescuers an hour or two after they'd saved us from certain death." He smiled faintly. "Besides, look at what it might do to our wounds and burns."

Swanson cocked an eyebrow at me. "Well, they're your countrymen."

"Dr. Benson is perfectly correct," I said. "But it's not worth a civil war. If they could survive five or six days on that damned ice cap, I don't suppose a few minutes more is going to finish them off."

"Well, if it does," Swanson said heavily, "we'll blame you."

If I ever had any doubt about it, I didn't have then, not after ten minutes out in the open. The Arctic ice cap was no place for a funeral; but I couldn't have imagined a more promising set-up for a funeral director who wanted to drum up some trade. After the warmth of the «Dolphin», the cold seemed intense and within five minutes we were all shivering violently. The darkness was as nearly absolute as it ever becomes on the ice cap, the wind was lifting again, and thin flurries of snow came gusting through the night. The solitary floodlight served only to emphasize the ghostly unreality of it all: the huddled circle of mourners with bent heads, the two shapeless, canvas-wrapped forms lying huddled at the base of an ice hummock, Commander Swanson bent over his book, the wind and the snow snatching the half-heard mumble from his lips as he hurried through the burial service. I caught barely one word in ten of the committal and then it was all over: no meaningless rifle salutes, no empty blowing of bugles, just the service and the silence and the dark shapes of stumbling men hurriedly placing fragments of broken ice over the canvas-sheeted forms. And within twentyfour hours the eternally drifting spicules and blowing snow would have sealed them forever in their icy tomb, and there they might remain forever, drifting in endless circles about the North Pole; or someday, perhaps a thousand years from then, an ice lead might open up and drop them down to the uncaring floor of the Arctic, their bodies as perfectly preserved as if they had died only that day. It was a macabre thought.

Heads bent against the snow and ice, we hurried back to the shelter of the «Dolphin». From the ice cap to the top of the sail it was a climb of over twenty feet up the almost vertically inclined huge slabs of ice that the submarine had pushed upward and sideways as she had forced her way through. Hand lines had been rigged from the top of the sail, but even then it was a fairly tricky climb. It was a set-up where, with the icy slope, the frozen slippery ropes, the darkness and the blinding effect of the snow and ice, an accident could all too easily happen. And happen it did.

I was about six feet up, giving a hand to Jeremy, the lab technician from Zebra, whose burnt hands made it almost impossible for him to climb alone, when I heard a muffled cry above me. I glanced up and had a darkly blurred impression of someone teetering on top of the sail, fighting for his balance, then jerked Jeremy violently toward me to save him from being swept away as that same someone lost his footing, toppled over backward, and hurtled down past us to the ice below. I winced at the sound of the impact — two sounds, rather: a heavy, muffled thud followed immediately by a sharper, crisper crack. First the body, then the head. I half imagined that I heard another sound afterward, but I couldn't be sure. I handed Jeremy over to the care of someone else and slithered down an ice-coated rope, not looking forward very much to what I must see. The fall had been the equivalent of a twenty-foot drop on to a concrete floor.

Hansen had got there before me and was shining his light, not on one prostrate figure, as I had expected, but on two. Benson and Jolly, both of them out cold.

I said to Hansen, "Did you see what happened?"

"No. Happened too quickly. All I know is that it was Benson that did the falling and Jolly that did the cushioning. Jolly was beside me only a few seconds before the fall."

"If that's the case, then Jolly probably saved your doctor's life. We'll need to strap them in stretchers and haul them up and inside. We can't leave them out — here."

"Stretchers? Well, yes, if you say so. But they might some around any minute."

"One of them might. But one of them is not going to come around for a long time. You heard that crack when a head hit the ice, it was like someone being clouted over the head with a fence post. And 1 don't know which it is yet."

Hansen left. I stooped over Benson and eased back the hood of the duffel coat he was wearing. A fence post was just about right. The side of his head, an inch above the right ear, was a blood-smeared mess, a three-inch-long gash in the purpling flesh with the blood already coagulating in the bitter cold. Two inches further forward and he'd have been a dead man; the thin bone behind the temple would have shattered under such an impact. For Benson's sake, I hoped the rest of his skull was pretty thick. No question but that this had been the sharp crack I'd heard.

Benson's breathing was very shallow, the movement of his chest barely discernible. Jolly's, on the other hand, was fairly deep and regular. I pulled back his anorak hood, probed carefully over his head, and encountered a slight puffiness far back, near the top on the left-hand side. The inference seemed obvious. I hadn't been imagining things when I thought I had heard a second sound after the sharp crack caused by Benson's head striking against the ice. Jolly must have been in the way of the falling Benson, not directly enough beneath him to break his fall in any way, but directly enough to be knocked backward on to the ice and bang the back of his head as he fell.

It took ten minutes to have them strapped in stretchers, taken inside, and placed in a couple of temporary cots in the sick bay. With Swanson waiting anxiously, I attended to Benson first, though there was little enough I could do. I had just started on Jolly when his eyes flickered and he slowly came back to consciousness, groaning a bit and trying to hold the back of his head. He made an effort to sit up in his cot, but I restrained him.

"Oh, Lord, my head." Several times he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, opened them wide, focused with difficulty on the bulkhead riotous with the color of Benson's cartoon characters, then looked away as if he didn't believe it. "Oh, my word, that must have been a dilly. Who did it, old boy?"

"Did what?" Swanson asked.

"Walloped me on the old bean. Who? Eh?"

"You mean to say you don't remember?"

"Remember?" Jolly said irritably. "How the devil should I — " fle broke off as his eye caught sight of Benson in the adjacent cot, a huddled figure under the blankets, with only the back of his head and a big gauze pack covering his wound showing. "Of course, of course. Yes, that's it. He fell on top of me, didn't he?" -

"He certainly did," I said. "Did you try to catch him?"

"Catch him? No, I didn't try to catch him. I didn't try to get out of the way, either. It was all over in half a second. I just don't remember a thing about it." He groaned a bit more, then looked across at Benson. "Came a pretty nasty cropper, eh? Must have done." -

"Looks like it. He's very severely concussed. There's Xray equipment here and I'll have a look at his head shortly. Damned hard luck on you too, Jolly."

"I'll get over it," he grunted. He pushed my hand away and sat up. "Can I help you?"

"You may not," Swanson said quietly. "Early supper, then twelve hours solid for you and the other eight, Doctor, and those are «my» doctor's orders. You'll find supper waiting in the wardroom now."

"Aye-aye, sir." Jolly gave a ghost of a smile and pushed himself groggily to his feet. "That bit about the twelve hours sounds good to me."

After a minute or two, when he was steady enough on his feet, he left. Swanson said, "What now?"

"You might inquire around to see who was closest or close to Benson when he slipped climbing over the edge of the bridge. But discreetly. It might do no harm if at the same time you hinted around that maybe Benson had just taken a turn."

"What are «you» hinting at?" Swanson asked slowly.

"Did he fall or was he pushed? That's what I'm hinting at."

"Did he fall or — " He broke off then went on warily: "Why should anyone want to push Dr. Benson?"

"Why should anyone want to kill seven — eight, now — men on Drift Ice Station Zebra?"

"You have a point," Swanson acknowledged quietly. He left.

Making X-ray films wasn't very much in my line, but apparently it hadn't been very much in Dr. Benson's line, either, for he'd written down, for his own benefit and guidance, a detailed list of instructions for the taking and developing of X-ray films. I wondered how he would have felt if he had known that the first beneficiary of his meticulous thoroughness was to be himself. The two finished negatives I came up with wouldn't have caused any furor in the Royal Photo. graphic Society, but they were enough for my wants.

By and by, Commander Swanson returned, closing the door behind him. I said, "Ten gets one that you got nothing."

"You won't die a poor man," he nodded. "Nothing is what it is. So chief torpedoman Patterson tells me, and you know what he's like."

I knew what he was like. Patterson was the man responsible for all discipline and organization among the enlisted men, and Swanson had said to me that he regarded Patterson, and not himself, as the most indispensable man on the ship.

"Patterson was the man who reached the bridge immediately before Benson," Swanson said. "He said he heard Benson cry out, swung around and saw him already beginning to topple backward. He didn't recognize who it was at the time, it was too dark and snowy for that. He said he had the impression that Benson had already had one hand and one knee on the bridge coaming when he fell backward."

"A funny position in which to start falling backward," I said. "Most of his body weight must already have been inboard. And even if he did topple outward, he would surely still have had plenty of time to grab the coaming with both hands."

"Maybe he did take a turn," Swanson suggested. "And don't forget that the coaming is glass-slippery with its smooth coating of ice."

"As soon as Benson disappeared, Patterson ran to the side to see what had happened to him?"

"He did," Swanson said wearily. "And he said there wasn't a person within ten feet of the top of the bridge when Benson fell."

"And who «was» ten feet below?"

"He couldn't tell. Don't forget how black it was out there on the ice cap and that the moment Patterson had dropped into the brightly lit bridge he'd lost whatever night sight he'd built up. Besides, he didn't wait for more than a glance. He was off for a stretcher even before you or Hansen got to Benson. Patterson is not the sort of man who has to be told what to do."

"So it's a dead end there?"

"A dead end."

I nodded, crossed to a cupboard, and brought back the two X-rays, still wet, held in their metal clips. I held them up to the light for Swanson's inspection.

"Benson?" he asked, and when I nodded, he peered at them more closely and finally said, "That line there — a fracture?"

"A fracture. And not a hair-line one, either, as you can see. He really caught a wallop."

"How bad is it? How long before he comes out of this coma — He «is» in a coma?"

"He's all that. How long? If I were a lad fresh out of medical school I'd let you have a pretty confident estimate. If I were a top-flight brain surgeon I'd say anything from half an hour to a year or two, because people who really know what they are talking about are only too aware that we know next to nothing about the brain. Being neither, I'd guess at two or three days — and my guess could be hopelessly wrong. There may be cerebral bleeding. I don't know. I don't think so. Blood pressure, respiration, and temperature show no evidence of organic damage. And now you know as much about it as I do."

"Your colleagues wouldn't like that." Swanson smiled faintly. "This cheerful confession of ignorance does nothing to enhance the mystique of your profession. How about your other patients — the two men still out in Zebra?"

"I'll see them after supper. Maybe they'll be well enough to be brought here tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'd like to ask a favor of you. Could you lend me the services of your torpedoman Rawlings? And would you have any objections to his being taken into our confidence?"

"Rawlings? I don't know why you want him, but why Rawlings? The officers and petty officers aboard this ship are the pick of the U. S. Navy. Why not one of them? Besides, I'm not sure that I like the idea of passing on to an enlisted man secrets denied to my officers."

"They're strictly non-naval secrets. The question of hierarchy doesn't enter into it. Rawlings is the man I want. He's got a quick mind, quick reflexes, and a dead-pan, give-awaynothing expression that is invaluable in a game like this. Besides, in the event — the unlikely event, I hope — of the killer suspecting that we're on to him, he wouldn't look for any danger from one of your enlisted men because he'd be certain that we wouldn't let them in on it."

"What do you want him for?"

"To keep a night guard on Benson here."

"On Benson?" A fractional narrowing of the eyes that could have been as imagined as real was the only change in Swanson's impassive face. "So you don't think it was an accident, do you?"

"I don't honestly know. But I'm like you when you carry out a hundred and one different checks, most of which you know to be unnecessary, before you take your ship to sea: I'm taking no chances. If it wasn't an accident, then someone might have an interest in doing a really permanent job next time."

"But how can Benson represent a danger to anyone?" Swanson argued. "I'll bet anything, Carpenter, that Benson doesn't — or didn't — know a thing that could point a fingerat anyone. If he did, he'd have told me right away. He's like that."

"Maybe he saw or heard something the significance of which he didn't then realize. Maybe the killer is frightened that if Benson has time enough to think about it, the significance will dawn on him. Or maybe it's all a figment of my overheated imagination: maybe he just fell. But I'd still like to have Rawlings."

"You'll have him." Swanson rose to his feet and smiled. "I don't want you quoting that Washington directive at me again."

Two minutes later Rawlings arrived. He was dressed in a light-brown shirt and overalls, obviously his own conception of what constituted the well-dressed submariner's uniform, and for the first time in our acquaintance he didn't smile a greeting. He didn't even glance at Benson on his cot. His face was still and composed, without any expression.

"You sent for me, sir?" «Sir», not «Doc».

"Take a seat, Rawlings." He sat, and as he did, I noticed the heavy bulge in the twelve-inch thigh pocket on the side of his overall pants. I nodded and said, "What have you got there? Doesn't do much for the cut of your natty suiting, does it?"

He didn't smile. He said: "I always carry one or two tools around with me. That's what the pocket is for."

"Let's see this particular tool," I said.

He hesitated briefly, shrugged and, not without some difficulty, pulled a heavy, gleaming drop-forged steel pipe wrench from the pocket. I hefted it in my hand.

"I'm surprised at you, Rawlings," I said. "What do you think the average human skull is made of — concrete? One little tap with this thing and you're up on a murder or manslaughter charge." I picked up a roll of bandage. "Ten yards of this wrapped around the business end will automatically reduce the charge to one of assault and battery."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said mechanically.

"I'm talking about the fact that when Commander Swanson, Lieutenant Hansen and I were inside the laboratory this afternoon and you and Murphy were outside, you must have kind of leaned your ear against the door and heard more than was good for you. You know there's something wrong, and though you don't know what, your motto is 'Be prepared.' Hence the cosh. Correct?"

"Correct."

"Does Murphy know?"

"No."

"I'm a naval-intelligence officer. Washington knows all about me. Want the captain to vouch for me?"

"Well, no." The first faint signs of a grin. "I heard you pull a gun on the skipper, but you're still walking around loose. You must be in the clear."

"You heard me threaten the captain and Lieutenant Hansen with a gun. But then you were sent away. You heard nothing after that?"

"Nothing."

"Three men have been murdered on Zebra. Two shot, one knifed. Their bodies were burned to conceal traces of the crime. Four others died in the fire. The killer is aboard this ship."

Rawlings said nothing. His eyes were wide, his face pale and shocked. I told him everything I'd told Swanson and Hansen and emphasized that he was to keep it all to himself. Then I finished, "Dr. Benson here has been seriously hurt. A deliberate attempt, God knows for what reason, may have been made on his life. We don't know. But if it was a deliberate attempt, then it's failed — so far."

Rawlings had brought himself under control. He said, his voice as empty of expression as his face: "Our little pal might come calling again?"

"He may. No member of the crew except the captain, the executive officer or I will come here. Anyone else — well, you can start asking him questions when he recovers consciousness."

"You recommended ten yards of this bandage, Doe?"

"It should be enough. And only a gentle tap, for God's sake. Above and behind the ear. You might sit behind that curtain there where no one can see you."

"I'm feeling lonesome tonight," Rawlings murmured. He broke open the bandage, started winding it around the head of the wrench, and glanced at the cartoon-decorated bulkhead beside him. "Even old Yogi Bear ain't no fit companion for me tonight. I hope I have some other company calling."

I left him there. I felt vaguely sorry for anyone who should come calling, killer or not. I felt, too, that I had taken every possible precaution. But when I left Rawlings there guarding Benson, I did make one little mistake. Just one. I left him guarding the wrong man.

The second accident of the day happened so quickly, so easily, so inevitably that it might almost have been just that — an accident.

At supper that evening I suggested that, with Commander Swanson's permission, I'd have a surgery at nine the next morning; because of enforced neglect, most of the burn wounds were suppurating pretty badly, requiring constant cleaning and changing of coverings. I also thought it about time that an X-ray inspection be made of Zabrinski's broken ankle. Medical supplies in the sick bay were running short: where did Benson keep his main supplies? Swanson told me and detailed Henry, the steward, to show me where it was.

About ten that night, after I'd returned from seeing the two men out on Zebra, Henry led me through the now deserted control room and down the ladder that led to the inertial-navigation room and the electronics space, which abutted on it. He undid the strong-back clamp on the square, heavy steel hatch in a corner of the electronics room and, with an assist from me — the hatch must have weighed about 150 pounds — swung it up and back until the hatch clicked home on its standing latch.

Three rungs welded onto the inside of the hatch cover led onto the vertical steel ladder that reached down to the deck below. Henry went down first, snapping on the light as he went, and I followed.

The medical storage room, though tiny, was equipped on the same superbly lavish scale as was everything else on the Dolphin. Benson, as thoroughly meticulous in this as he had been in his outlining of X-ray procedure, had everything neatly and logically labeled, so that it took me less than three minutes to find everything I wanted. I went up the ladder first, stopped near the top, stretched down, and took the bag of supplies from Henry, swung it up on the deck above, then reached up quickly with my free hand to grab the middle of the three rungs welded on the lower side of the hatch cover to haul myself up onto the deck of the electronics space. But I didn't haul myself up. What happened was that I hauled the hatch cover down. The retaining latch had become disengaged, and the 150-pound deadweight of that massive cover was swinging down on top of me before I could even begin to realize what was happening.

I fell half sideways, half backward, pulling the hatch cover with me. My head struck against the hatch coaming. Desperately I ducked my head forward — if it had been crushed between the coaming and the falling cover, the two sides of my skull would just about have met in the middle — and tried to snatch my left arm back inside. I was more or less successful with my head — I had it clear of the coaming and was ducking so quickly that the impact of the cover was no more than enough to give me a slight headache afterward — but my left arm was a different matter altogether. I almost got it clear — but only almost. If my left hand and wrist had been strapped to a steel block and a gorilla had had a go at it with a sledge hammer, the effect couldn't have been more agonizing. For a moment or two I hung there, trapped, dangling by my left wrist; then the weight of my body tore the mangled wrist and hand through the gap and I crashed down to the deck beneath. Then the gorilla seemed to have another go with the sledge hammer, and consciousness went.

"I won't beat about the bush, old lad," Jolly said. "No point in it with a fellow pill roller. Your wrist is a mess. I had to dig half your watch out of it. The middle and little fingers are broken, the middle in two places. But the permanent danger, I'm afraid, is to the back of your hand. The little and ring-finger tendons have been sliced."

"What does that mean?" Swanson asked.

"It means that in his left hand he'll have to get by with two fingers and a thumb for the rest of his life," Jolly said bluntly.

Swanson swore softly and turned to Henry. "How in God's name could you have been so damned careless? An experienced submariner like you? You know perfectly well that you're required to make a visual check every time a hatch cover engages in a standing latch. Why didn't you?"

"I didn't need to, sir." Henry was looking more dyspeptic and forlorn than ever. "I heard it click and I gave a tug. It was engaged, all right. I can swear to it, sir."

"How could it have been engaged? Look at Dr. Carpenter's hand. Just a hair-line engagement and the slightest extra pressure — My God, why can't you people obey regulations?"

Henry stared at the desk in silence. Jolly, who was understandably looking about as washed-out as I felt, packed away the tools of his trade, advised me to take a couple of days off, gave me a handful of pills to take, said a weary good night, and climbed up the ladder leading from the electronics space, where he had been fixing my hand. Swanson said to Henry: "You can go now, Baker" — the first time I'd ever heard anyone address Henry by his surname, a sufficient enough token of what Swanson regarded as the enormity of his crime. "I'll decide what to do about this in the morning."

"I don't know about the morning," I said after Henry was gone. "Maybe the next morning. Or the one after that. Then you can apologize to him. You and me both. That cover was locked on its standing latch. «I» checked it visually, Commander Swanson."

Swanson gave me his cool, impassive look. After a moment he said quietly, "Are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?"

"Someone took a risk," I said. "Not all that much of a risk, though. Most of the men are asleep now, and the control room was deserted at the moment that mattered. Someone in the wardroom tonight heard me ask your permission to go down to the medical store and heard you giving your okay. Shortly after that, nearly everyone turned in. One man didn't — he kept awake and hung around patiently until I came back from the drift station. He followed me down below — he was lucky — Lieutenant Sims, your officer on deck, was taking star sights up on the bridge and the control room was empty — and he unhooked the latch but left the hatch cover in a standing position. There was a slight element of gambling as to whether I would come up first, but not all that much, it would have been a matter of elementary courtesy, he would have thought, for Henry to see me up first. Anyway, he won his gamble, slight though it was. After that, our unknown friend wasn't quite so lucky — I think he expected the damage to be a bit more permanent."

"I'll get inquiries under way immediately," Swanson said. "Whoever was responsible, someone must have seen him, Someone must have heard him leaving his cot — "

"Don't waste your time, Commander. We're up against a highly intelligent character who doesn't overlook the obvious. Not only that, but word of your inquiries is bound to get around, and you'd scare him under cover where I'd never get at him."

"Then I'll just keep the whole damned bunch under lock and key until we get back to Scotland," Swanson said grimly. "«That» way there'll be no more trouble."

"That way we'll «never» find out who the murderer of my brother and the six — seven now — others are. Whoever it is has to be given sufficient rope to trip himself up."

"Good God, man, we can't just sit back and let things be done to us." There was a hint of testiness in the commander's voice, and I couldn't blame him. "What do we — what do «you» — propose to do now?"

"Start at the beginning. Tomorrow morning we'll hold a court of inquiry among the survivors. Let's find out all we can about that fire. Just an innocent, above-board, fact-finding inquiry, for the Ministry of Supply, let us say. I've an idea we might turn up something very interesting indeed."

"You think so?" Swanson shook his head. "I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a moment. Look what's happened to you. It's obvious, man, that someone knows or suspects that you're on to them. They'll take damned good care to give nothing away."

"You think that's why I was clouted tonight?"

"What other reason could there be?"

"Was that why Benson was hurt?"

"We don't know that he was. Deliberately, I mean. May have been pure coincidence."

"Maybe it was," I agreed. "And then again, maybe it wasn't. My guess, for what it's worth, is that the accident or accidents have nothing at all to do with any suspicions the killer may have that we're on to him. Anyway, let's see what tomorrow brings."

It was midnight when I got back to my cabin. The engineer officer was on watch and Hansen was asleep, so I didn't put on any light lest I disturb him. I didn't undress, just removed my shoes, lay down on the cot, and pulled a cover over me.

I didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. My left arm from the elbow down still felt as if it were caught in a bear trap. Twice I pulled from my pocket the pain killers and sleeping tablets that Jolly had given me and twice I put them away.

Instead I just lay there and thought, and the first and most obvious conclusion I came up with was that there was someone aboard the «Dolphin» who didn't care any too much for the members of the medical profession. Then I got to wondering why the profession was so unpopular, and after half an hour of beating my weary brain cells around, I got silently to my feet and made my way in my socks to the sick bay.

I passed inside and closed the door softly behind me. A red night light burnt dully in one corner, just enough to let me see Benson's huddled form on the cot. I switched on the overhead light, blinked in the sudden fierce wash of light, and looked at the curtain at the other end of the bay. Nothing stirred behind it. I said, "Just kind of take your itching fingers away from that pipe wrench, Rawlings. It's me, Carpenter."

The curtain was pulled to one side and Rawlings appeared, the pipe wrench, with its bandage-wrapped head, dangling from one hand. He had a disappointed look on his face.

"I was expecting someone else," he said reproachfully. "I was kinda hoping — My God, Doc, what's happened to your arm?"

"Well may you ask, Rawlings. Our little pal had a go at me tonight. I think he wanted me out of the way. Whether he wanted me out of the way permanently or not I don't know but he near as a toucher succeeded." I told him what had happened, then asked, "Is there any man aboard you can trust absolutely?" I knew the answer before I had asked the question.

"Zabrinski," he said unhesitatingly.

"Do you think you could pussy-foot along to wherever it is that he's sleeping and bring him here without waking up anyone?"

He didn't ask any questions. He said, "He can't walk, Doc, you know that."

"Carry him. You're big enough."

He grinned and left. He was back with Zabrinski inside three minutes. Three quarters of an hour later, after telling Rawlings he could call off his watch, I was back in my cabin.

Hansen was still asleep. He didn't wake even when I switched on a side light. Slowly, clumsily, painfully, I dressed myself in my furs, unlocked my case, and drew out the Mauser, the two rubber-covered magazines and the broken knife that Commander Swanson had found in the tractor's gas tank. I put them in my pocket and left. On my way through the control room, I told the officer on deck that I was going out to check on the two patients still left out in the camp. As I had pulled a fur mitten over my injured hand, he didn't raise an eyebrow, doctors were a law unto themselves, and I was just the good healer en route to give aid and comfort to the sick. -

I did have a good look at the two sick men, both of whom seemed to me to be picking up steadily, then said good night to the two «Dolphin» crewmen who were watching over them. But I didn't go straight back to the ship. First I went to the tractor shed and replaced the gun, magazines and broken knife in the tractor tank. Then I went back to the ship.