Whiteout!

Chapter 10

We all have our neuroses; everybody's a little nuts in some direction or another. But I've always liked to think of myself as reasonably sane. I don't feel uncontrollable urges to murder people who step in front of me in bus queues and I don't turn into Frankenstein's monster once I get behind a car wheel; by and large I sleep undisturbed by conscience. But after a few days at Hundred I was beginning to entertain some doubts about myself. Walking away from the mess hall after my talk with Captain Vale, I was feeling more or less reassured. I remember telling myself inside my head to stop trying to make patterns out of random events and concentrate on the TK4 and the urgent need to sell the damn thing to the American gentlemen. Little nod of determination for my own benefit; conscious setting of jaw. And then the conversation with Master Sergeant Allen came back, with all its doubts, hesitations and possible overtones, and I realized that my mental state was changing by the second like a well-shaken kaleidoscope. Every time I talked to anybody, damn it, I took on a new viewpoint. One man said, don't worry, and I told myself not to worry. Another was mildly enigmatic and I started looking for the puzzle inside the enigma. Barney Smales was polite but withdrawn and I imagined . . . The hell with it, I decided. It was their business, not mine. If the United States Army was having its troubles, at least it was equipped to handle them ; I had a job of my own to do and at the moment there seemed no likelihood of its getting done. The weather was lousy up top and apparently relentless. I'd been told before I left England that there should be a few days within the following four weeks when the TK4 could give performance demonstrations. Past experience and weather records said so. But apart from the fast runs to and from Camp Belvoir there'd been no opportunity at all for me to demonstrate what she could do. Agreed that she'd done all that had been asked of her; the trouble was that nobody had seen her in action, and performance demonstrations, by definition, need witnesses; more important, they need witnesses who are going to influence the great decision to buy or not to buy. I'd set off intending to give the TK.4 a swift once-over-lightly, but the weather office was on the way. I decided I might as well go there first.

The weather office was Sergeant Vernon's home ground and I smiled to myself as I went in. Like the sergeants' club, this was old-soldier territory; it smelled of floor polish and pine and on a wall was a window framing one of the big, blown-up colour pictures, this time of a picnic site beside a lake somewhere. An electric coffee percolator gurgled contentedly on a side bench and the ashtrays were many and wiped clean.

Vernon returned my smile. 'Something I can do for you, sir?'

'I take it,' I said, 'that you'll have all the records here.'

'We try to calculate it every which way. If it's not in the form you want, sir, we can work it out.'

'Fine. Look, I'm wondering whether there's going to be a break soon. I realize you can't forecast with any great accuracy, but maybe past records will give some kind of indication.'

'Be a pleasure,' Vernon said. He crossed to a filing cabinet and began hefting folders. 'We got anemometers going round and round. We got mercury and alcohol thermometers going up and down. We got barometric readings, snowfall records, you name it. But - ' the corners of his mouth turned down sympathetically -'it's gonna be a statistical answer you get.'

'I know,' 1 said. 'But I can cling on to a hope if you'll give me one.'

'So okay. Here's the plots for the last five years.' He unfolded the charts and spread them on the bench.

'Temperature right here. Wind velocity. This one's humidity. We plotted wind and temperature into a windchill factor on this one. Here's snowfall. Now . . .'

Twenty minutes poring over the charts gave the statistical answer. Some time within the next twenty-eight days it was reasonable to expect there'd be four when the wind was down to thirty miles an hour or less. Two more with wind under twenty.

I said, 'Well, it's encouraging.'

'Just so you don't get too encouraged,' Vernon said. 'A lot of that's gonna break down into short slots. Two, three, four hours maybe as a front goes through.'

'How much warning ?'

'Do what I can, sir. When the radio's open, I can get the satellite picture up from Thule. That can tell us a little more.'

'And pressure?'

Vernon shook his head. 'Highs and lows, they fill and empty too damn fast. You just gotta make a personal judgment here; data won't do it.'

I said, 'Do me a favour, Mr Vernon. Exercise your best judgment for me? An hour's notice, if I can get it, of a two-hour break. I need that to give any kind of demonstration.'

'Minimum?'

I nodded. 'The problem is that your people have to see what she can do. We've got to have time for a bulldozer to roughen the snow surface and build a few steps for the TK4 to climb. Once everybody's sold on that, we can take a few rides in rougher conditions, but I can't get to stage two before stage one's over.'

'Sure,' Vernon said. 'Coffee?'

We drank coffee while I answered his questions about the TK4. It struck me that Vernon was more open-minded about the potential of air-cushion vehicles than Barney Smales, not that his approval was much use. All the same, it was a comfort, and his promise to give me as much warning as possible of any potential weather break could be valuable.

I left him then and went to tidy up the TK4. I'd simply left her at the end of the trip back from Belvoir and I wanted her cleaned out, ship-shape and shiny, for demonstration time. The sergeant syndrome isn't far below the surface in me ; a coating of dirt on the outside of an engine casing doesn't make the engine any less efficient, but for me at least it removes some of the enjoyment. I looked her over carefully and the TK4 was in pretty good nick. In the rear hold a few drops of oil had dripped off the generator, but a handful of waste and a couple of brisk rubs soon shifted that. Otherwise the hold was like a new pin. The cabin wasn't bad, either, though it smelled a little of sweat and old tobacco smoke. I got a hand brush and cleaned the cabin floor of cigarette ash and spent matches, emptied the ashtrays and put a discarded matchbook on the screen sill for future use. Then I leathered the windows. Forty minutes' mindless work, satisfying in its way, and the job was finished, except for a routine check on oil and fuel levels, both of which were fine.

Reilly, the maintenance chief, wandered over as I was admiring her. The inevitable unlit cigar was clamped in the side of his mouth and he spoke round it as he offered the equally inevitable coffee. I was awash with coffee, and had been so virtually since my arrival at Hundred, but the game has rules and one of them is that it pays to be nice to maintenance crews. Reilly was still reading the manuals and hadn't been round the TK4 on hands and knees yet, but he reckoned there weren't nothin' he couldn't handle. I sensed, too, that he was impressed by the hovercraft's swiftness and efficiency on the Belvoir trip.

'Tell you what,' I said. 'First chance I get, we'll take a spin in her.'

He nodded brusquely, but under that matter-of-fact manner an enthusiast lurked. 'If I'm a-goin' in that thing,' he said, 'I'd sure better look after her. That right?'

'Right,' I said, grinning.

'You psychin' me, mister ?'

'I hope so.'

He walked away, then, tough and hard. But he patted the steel side of the TK.4 as he passed. It was the last good moment of that day.

On my bed, when I got back to my room, lay an envelope. Even before I opened it, I sensed somehow that it was ticking like a time bomb. Inside was a note from Master Sergeant Allen to the effect that Barney Smales wished to see me, and the word immediately was underlined. In the outer office Allen gave me a wry look thatcontained a trace of sympathy, and pointed to the door. I knocked, entered as bidden, and found Barney's eyes directed at me like a pair of shotguns. He gave me two or three minutes of level, low-voiced, furious abuse. It was what I'd expected that morning and hadn't collected - my come-uppance for : a) smoking in bed and carelessly; b) blundering out alone on to the icecap; c) failing to tell anybody I was going; d) behaving in general like a goddam cross between Sherlock Holmes and Captain Oates. My degenerate parents, apart from not enjoying benefit of clergy, had also passed on to me various congenital mental conditions. About thirty seconds into the tirade, I found myself surprisingly unimpressed. After a minute, it would have become almost funny, if the whole TK4 deal hadn't rested in large measure on Barney Smales's assessment. Finally, I said, with deliberate rudeness, 'Why wait ? What was wrong with this morning?'

'What in hell do you mean ?'

'All that jazz,' I said, 'about the beauties of bloody ballpoint pens.'

He blinked. 'Now listen, mister, I don't know - '

I said, 'It's got real functional beauty, that's what you told me.' I grabbed the pen off the desk-top and held it up. 'You liked the pretty colours, remember.'

He snatched it from my hand. 'Now listen - '

By now I was almost as angry as he was, but as our eyes met I saw something in his gaze that had no right to be there .. . Fear? Puzzlement? I said, 'You don't remember, do you?'

'You can forget this morning.'

I said, 'Why? Were you drunk?'

I really thought he'd go off pop. His face flushed with rage and his eyes seemed to bulge.

'Drunk!'he roared. Then he paused and there was one of those abrupt shifts so characteristic of him. 'I looked drunk, eh?' He spoke, for him, gently, interested in the answer.

'Something like it.'

He rubbed his temples. 'Woke up this morning with a goddam migraine. White lights, the whole deal. Sick as a dog. Used to have 'em as a kid, but I haven't had one in years.'

'Has it gone?'

'Almost.'

Tm sorry. Sorry about last night, too. It won't happen again. But at the time, the logic seemed compelling.'

He stood up and bent his brows at me. 'This time, Englishman, we'll forget about it.' His tone was deep and measured, the accent British, and some trick of memory dragged recognition out of the dusty attics of my brain.

'Say it again.'

He grinned. 'Remember this, Englishman . . .'

I said, 'Colonel Sapt. The Prisoner of Zenda. C. Aubrey Smith talking to Ronald Colman a long time ago.'

'Great movie.'

'I saw it,' I said, 'the third time round.' And then, since the opportunity was at hand, grabbed at it: 'Why do you object to hovercraft?'

He blinked. 'Who said I objected?'

'You did.'

'Was that this morning, too?'

'Two hours ago.'

'Jesus,' he said. 'I woke with this damn migraine. Head was in a vice. I went to the hospital and helped myself to pills. Wonder what in hell I took?'

'Obviously not aspirin,' I said. 'But it seems to have done the trick, if in a roundabout way. About the hovercraft. . . ?'

He shrugged. 'Not enough weight, that's what I feel.'

That was hardly news, but it was a salesman's opportunity. Flat statements often are. I said, 'Who did you vote for in I960?'

Barney Smales cocked an eye at me. 'Kennedy,' he said warily.

'You a Catholic?'

'No.'

"The first Catholic candidate?'

He laughed. 'Oh, you bastard! Listen, Kennedy had it all turned round. He was cunning, too. The way he set it out, you didn't vote for a Catholic, you were the bigot.'

"That's right. He had to make the breakthrough.'

'Okay, okay. You'll get your chance.' He paused and added, 'Englishman.'

As I closed the door of Barney's office, Allen gave me an interrogative look. Or perhaps I only thought he did, but in any case I answered the unasked question.

'Nasty thing, a migraine,' I said. 'But it seems to be improving.'

I was crossing to the hut door when the phone rang. Allen said, 'Hullo,' and listened. Then he said, 'Jesus Christ!' He put the phone down quietly.

I said, 'What's the bad news?'

Allen didn't answer me. But he wrenched open Barney Smales's door. 'Sir,' Allen said, 'we got bad trouble in the reactor trench. They just told me Mr Kelleher's gone berserk.'

We came to the reactor trench at a dead run. Carson, the engineer captain in charge, was waiting inside, face very pale and with an angry red mark on his cheek.

'Where is he?' Smales demanded.

'In the office.'

Smales strode in. Kelleher lay on the camp bed used by the duty man. He, too, was very pale, but sweat shone on his face as he wrestled with heavy strappings that bound him to the bed. Smales dropped to his knees beside the bed. 'Can you talk, Kelleher?'

Kelleher's head moved. He looked at Barney, then away again, his face showing no recognition. His muscles strained more violently against the straps.

'What happened?' Smales rose and turned to Carson.

'I never saw anything like it,' Carson said. 'My God, the way he-'

'I said, "What happened?" '

'Sorry, sir. He'd been resting. Right here in this office. We have the lid off the reactor, sir, as you can see. Suddenly the door opened and he came out into the vault and . . , goddammit, he tried to climb into the reactor kettle!'

'To climb - V

'I grabbed at him, sir. So did two of the men. He tried to fight us off. He did, too, for a second, then we got him again. Jesus, he's strong!'

'He say anything?' Smales demanded.

'Not a word.'

I looked down at Kelleher, dumbly and desperately fighting to free himself; his eyes were wide open and he stared straight up at the ceiling as his body writhed.

Smales said crisply, 'Mr Allen, find me the medical orderly. Tell him Mr Kelleher's got to have a strong sedative injection.’

'Right, sir.'

As we waited, Barney again knelt beside Kelleher, talking gently, soothingly - and pointlessly, because it was clear not a word was getting through. The big nuclear engineer thrashed dementedly in the narrow bed, wrenching and straining at the webbing straps. I felt sick at the sight. I turned away and looked at Carson, who was absently fingering his bruised cheekbone, then through the door at the reactor. Kelleher was a nuclear engineer. Nobody knew the dangers better. So what crazy malfunction of his excellent brain had driven him to try to climb inside? Behind me there was a sudden exclamation from Carson, a scuffle of sound, and I turned to see Smales reeling back and Kelleher's fist raised for another blow. Carson and I flung ourselves at him more or less simultaneously, trying to hold down the arm that Kelleher had somehow wrenched free. Quick as we'd been, Kelleher had been quicker. He'd already wrested the other arm free and the strength of the man was unbelievable. I'd got hold of his right arm and was struggling to force it downwards, but he succeeded in lifting me bodily for a moment, then pulling the arm away, and the next second he'd smashed his forearm against my mouth. I heard myself whimpering with pain, but some defensive reflex snapped my hands to his wrist and I heaved my whole weight across his shoulder, and levered his arm downwards into immobility. I could feel my lips swelling like balloons and blood running from cuts in my mouth. And all the time not a sound from Kelleher beyond small grunts of exertion. I concentrated on gripping the arm I held; hoped like hell that Carson was holding on to the other one. If he wasn't... Kelleher's body heaved and pounded .., where the devil was the medic ? This couldn't go on. Kelleher would do himself serious injury. Or do the same for one of us. My hands were sweating, my grip consequently weakening. It seemed absurd to say it, but his one arm felt, and was in those long moments, far stronger than my two. I turned my head towards the door, waiting for the running footsteps - and in doing so, must have lowered my head. There was a sudden, fearful pain on my cheek and I felt his breath, and he'd got his teeth into my cheek and was tearing at my flesh like a terrier, a bloody powerful terrier! I shouted aloud at the pain and then somebody was rearing over us and I heard a thud behind me and the terrible grip was suddenly loosened. I jerked my head clear and hung on desperately, and moments later the medic rushed in and injected something into the back of Kelleher's outflung hand. Then he began to count. I could feel the tension going from Kelleher's arm by the time the count had reached ten. At twenty it was limp and I made to rise. 'Ten seconds more, sir,' the orderly said cautiously. Then I was up and the orderly was dabbing at my cheek and stripping the backing from a big plaster. Barney Smales watched him, then slapped my shoulder. 'A few more seconds, boy, and he'd have torn your cheek away.'

'I know. What stopped him?'

'A smack in the puss,' Barney said.

'You?'

'Me. Jesus, will you look at him!'

I looked. Carson was clambering awkwardly off the bed, sweating but apparently unhurt. Kelleher lay slumped, unconscious, a trickle of blood coming from one nostril. The orderly said, 'Major Smales, sir?'

Barney turned to him. 'Okay, I know. The answer's yes. If we've got a straitjacket, he goes in it. We got one?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Goddam planners sure think of everything,' Barney said bitterly. 'What about his legs?'

'We're - er - sir, the hospital is fully equipped.'

'And that stuff you pumped in. How long will it hold him?'

'Eight hours or so. But we can continue sedation - '

Barney said, 'You're not a doctor, boy.'

'No, sir. But I've been trained - '

'Wait a minute, wait a minute.' He thought for a moment. 'Okay, now listen. You, Carson, you tell your boys this thing's Private, right? And I mean it. Anybody talks, I'll have his skin. We move Mr Kelleher to the hospital and we keep the poor bastard immobilized. You - ' he turned to the orderly - 'you get on the radio to Thule and talk to the doctors. I know diagnosis by radio is a bad substitute, but it's all we've got. And tell the radio room no talking. Okay, son? So get the jacket, then get busy.'

As the medic departed, Smales closed the door behind him. 'Now listen. There's no ducking this. We got real bad news here. We're under strain, and that goes for every man in the place. If the strain can get to Kelleher, it can get to any man here. So, as far as we can, we keep it real quiet. Sooner or later it will get out, a few hours maybe, it'll be right round Camp Hundred. But those hours could be important. The maintenance crews have two of the three generators stripped right down. The third's not gonna work at all. We're cannibalizing it now. And we're running this whole place on that one machine you, Mr Bowes, brought up from Belvoir. And that little piece of information is secret, too. Not totally secret, and not for long, just like Kelleher. But, with luck, we'll have the big generators back on line tonight, one if not two, and with both generators on line, we don't have to worry too much about the reactor. But those hours are important. So what I want is I want Kelleher in that hospital and two men with him, plus the medic. You, Bowes, and you, Allen. Right? If it's safe, the medic continues sedation. If Kelleher breaks loose again, three of you ought to be able to handle him. Okay?'

Half an hour later Master Sergeant Allen and I sat staring moodily at each other across the doctor's desk. Kelleher had been brought along from the reactor trench in a sled, his face hidden, and was now in the little hospital's ward, straitjacketed, canvas-covered from neck to feet, strapped to the steel cot. The anaesthetic held him deep under. I had been unhappily aware, as we moved him and fastened him down, of how corpse-like he was.

Allen lit a cigarette and rose. 'One of us better be in there.'

I said, 'Both.'

Allen shook his head. 'No. Better he's quiet. Two of us, we're gonna talk.'

'All right.'

'When the medic comes, send him right in.'

The medic didn't come for a long time, and when he did it was with bad news. There was no radio contact with either Belvoir or Thule. He looked in on Kelleher, then spent an hour searching through the little library of medical books Kirton had kept, his face growing longer and more puzzled. Unable to help, I was careful not to watch him and kept my head bent over a paperback novel I'd found. Suddenly he swore aloud, and as I looked up he banged a book back on to the shelf. To my surprise, his eyes were wet.

He spread his arms, and let them fall weakly to his sides. 'Jesus, what do I do?’’

'First,' I said, 'you have some coffee. And a cigarette, if you smoke.’

'I don't.'

'Coffee then. And sit down.'

As he poured the coffee, his hand shook.

I said quietly, 'It's not your fault. You're not a psychiatrist. So let's forget about what you don't know and concentrate on what you do. You said that injection would hold Mr Kelleher for eight hours. Can you repeat it then ?'

He shook his head. 'Not that. I gave him a full operative shot of a general anaesthetic'

'So what next. In - ' I glanced at my watch - 'in six hours or so.'

'A sedative,' he said.

'And after that?'

His eyes closed tightly and a drop of moisture shone on his cheek. He wiped it away angrily. 'For Christ's sake, sir, I don't know what's wrong with the guy! Could be he's physically ill, too. Maybe he's incubating pneumonia or something. Then what I'm doing is - '

I interrupted. 'What you're doing is your best. With luck we'll have radio contact long before you need to decide.'

'Yeah, with luck ! But what do I say, sir? The guy just cracked, that's all. Something went inside his head. And me, I didn't even see it. Nobody can diagnose from that.'

'You can take his blood pressure, temperature, pulse rate. And the psychiatrist at Thule will prescribe the drugs - '

The medic looked at me. There was fear in his eyes, almost despair. Then he said, 'What happens when the next one goes?'