Whiteout!

Chapter 15

I bent to strip the plaster from Kelleher's mouth, thought better of it, and instead unfastened the strappings of the jacket. Once his hands were free, he took off the plaster himself with a mixture of impatience and extreme care. He massaged stiff, sore skin carefully as he told me what had happened.

'Door opened and I heard Coveney's voice, just minutes after you'd gone. I climbed back in here just to avoid trouble, and turned away, pretending to be sleeping, damn it, so I didn't get the chance to see who did it.'

'Did what?'

'Listen. I'll tell you. Coveney looked at me; I know it - I could sense his septic aura - then he went out. When he'd gone, I started to sit up and somebody tried to bust my head. When I woke up, I was strapped in.'

'Somebody from the ward?'

Kelleher shrugged. 'Who knows? There were some guys with Coveney; it could have been one of them. Stayed behind a moment and - splat !' He shook his head and muttered at the pain.

'Can you stand?'

'Sure I can stand.'

'Good. We need the bed." I told him about Allen, and together we carried the master sergeant in, stripped him down to his underwear and tucked him up. As I up-ended his trousers to fold them and preserve the still immaculate creases, a bunch of keys fell out of one of the pockets, and as I bent to pick them up, a thought struck me. The camp had been searched for Carson, but had all of it been searched ? I said to Allen: 'Is there anywhere in this place that's out of bounds?'

'Sure,' he said. 'There's - ' I let him finish, but had the answer already. Why the hell hadn't I thought of it, or anybody else for that matter: Coveney, Smales, Allen himself, anybody?

'There's that trench where the bodies are,' Allen said.

'Who can get in?'

'Two keys to the door. One on that ring. Major Smales has the other.'

'Did you look inside?'

He shook his head.

Kelleher said, 'But Barney would, surely.'

'Why should he? It's been locked for days. There are only two keys and - '

'Locked it myself,' Allen said, 'right after we put Doc Kirton's body in there.'

I held up the key-ring. 'Which one?'

Allen pointed with a weary hand. 'Okay.' I turned to Kelleher. 'Let's go have a look.'

'We're gonna be spotted,' Kelleher said. 'Leastways I am.'

'We've got to risk it. Do what I did. Pinch a parka with somebody else's name on it. And carry something. Nobody looks twice at a beast of burden . . , take some sheets, you'll look like part of Coveney's clean-up.'

We grabbed another of the parkas the sick men wouldn't be needing and gathered some soiled sheets from the laundry baskets and left the medical block cautiously, ready to duck back if we encountered anybody. But Main Street was deserted. We hurried to the trench. A notice on the locked door read:

'No admittance under any circumstances' and we glanced at one another grimly. I turned the key, the lock slid smoothly back, and in a moment we were inside and locking the door. I had brought a handlamp from the hospital, but we didn't need it. The light switch clicked and the overhead strip lights flickered on.

There was no sign of Carson, but we went the length of the trench to make sure, sidestepping bodies as we walked. At the bottom of the escape hatch stair, Kelleher looked at me and gave a little shudder.

'C'mon, let's get out of here.'

I shared his keenness to leave, and we turned and walked back briskly towards the door. But something only half-remembered began to prickle in my mind and I stopped, looking down at the bodies.

'Just a minute.' Each of the bodies, blanket-shrouded, lay fastened to a steel-framed stretcher sled.

'You spotted something?'

'Hang on. Let me think.' I tried to remember the time I'd been in here before, in the darkness, when I'd blundered in a panic among these hard frozen remnants that had once been men. And there had been something odd about one of them. I'd assumed it had been Kirton, but. . . I said, 'How many men should be here?'

'Seven, I guess. Six from the helo crash, plus Doc Kirton. Why? And what in hell are you doing?'

I was on my knees, swallowing my revulsion and making myself run my hands over the shrouded forms. The fourth was the one that had lingered in my mind. I glanced at the identifying label tied to the sled, and said, 'Not much left of Private First Class Marvin K. Harrer.'

'He was in a helo crash!' Kelleher said impatiently. 'What do you expect? Leave the poor guy alone!'

Ignoring him, I began to unfasten the ties that held the shrouding blanket: as I pulled the material back from where the head should have been, I found myself looking down at a chunk of kapok wearing an Arctic-issue hat. 'I think,' I said, 'that we'd better see the rest of him.'

Kelleher said, 'Be your age. There's got to be something to bury. The army sometimes has to return the body to the family with the lid screwed tight.' But the conviction was going out of his voice, and by the time I'd peeled the blanket right back to reveal lengths of wood positioned where the arms and legs would have been, he had no protests left. 'Six bodies,' he said. 'And there should be seven. So where's the other one?'

We stared at one another and both of us shuddered.

'Wait. Wait a second,' Kelleher said. 'Let's just be damn sure this is right. We got - '

'It's right!' I said, and my voice sounded harsh in my own ears. 'Somebody has used a body for something, and faked this up to make it look as though they're all here.'

'What about the others?'

I examined them quickly, squeamishness suppressed. Therewas a corpse on each of the remaining sleds. I didn't linger; one glance at each of the pale, waxy, dead faces was more than enough, and when I came to the pulverized remnants of Kirton, my stomach threatened revolt. As I moved from sled to sled, Kelleher followed behind, in silence, replacing each cover. When we'd done, I rose and said, 'Why would he steal a corpse?'

'Because of what it would show?' Kelleher hazarded. 'Because the pathologist could prove something from it?'

I nodded. It seemed the likeliest explanation.

Then Kelleher said slowly, 'But it would have to be something obvious, that's for damn sure. Look, they fly these poor guys out to Thule first chance, okay? They unwrap the corpses, dress 'em up to ship 'em Stateside. But they know how they died. A helicopter crashed. So nobody's looking for anything suspicious.' He paused a moment. 'Listen. Thule's got the whole works, pathologists, morgues, even a mortician, for God's sake. The whole deal. It's a big place and people die, right? So .., this guy who steals a corpse, what's his reasoning ? I'll tell you. There's something about that corpse, about Pfc Harrer, that's gonna attract attention and fast ! When the bodies arrive, the pathologist takes a quick look because the book says look, then he gives the okay to the mortician for the screwed-down lid. Only he doesn't, not with Harrer, because that quick look's gonna ring alarm bells. So the body has to be stolen and got rid of.'

'Wrong,' I said.

'Why?'

'Because alarm bells ring anyway. Instead of a body there's a bundle of wood and kapok.'

Kelleher sighed. 'True enough. Maybe I did go nuts back there!'

'The minute that little bundle arrives,' I said, 'all sorts of things happen, and the first is a bloody great investigation of what's going on up here. Shipping this out draws attention.'

'Maybe the other thing was worse.'

'Perhaps.' But it didn't ring true. We stared at one another for a moment, bafflement complete. I said,

'Let's try Allen.'

As we slipped cautiously out of the trench, Coveney and a couple of others were moving purposefully along Main Streetabout fifty yards off, fortunately heading away from us. A glance would have been enough, but nobody seemed to turn and look. Kelleher carried his bundle of sheets at face level as we hurried back to the medical block.

Allen was sleeping, but Kelleher didn't hesitate. His forefinger was prodding the master sergeant awake as 1 closed the door into the ward. Rapidly we told him what had happened. He was physically very low, blinking with the need for sleep, but he listened with determined attention. Our account finished, we stood still, watching him try to think.

Finally he said, 'Nope. Can't see any reason.' He was sick and bone weary; it was an effort to stay awake and after a few moments his eyelids closed.

I was exasperatedly lighting a cigarette when he said, suddenly and clearly, 'What did you say the name was?'

'Harrer,' I said, 'Pfc Harrer."

Allen pursed his lips. 'We had this show a coupla months back. Stage show. Camp concert. Funny sketches and comic songs, you know the kind of thing.'

I thought for a second he'd begun to ramble. 'What about Harrer?'

'Harrer did a comedy routine about Doc Kirton. Best number in the show.'

I didn't see the point, but Kelleher suddenly snapped his fingers. 'You mean he looked like Doc Kirton?'

Allen gave a little nod. 'Enough for that kind of show. Big build. Dark hair. He wasn't a double, it wasn't even close, but on that stage with make-up and a stethoscope and a white coat...'

Kelleher interrupted him. 'So if that's not Kirton in there ...'

We talked, we thrashed at it, we speculated, we postulated, and at the end of it all, we still had only questions. Not an answer in sight. There was still somebody, malevolent, cunning, ruthless and inevitably insane, who was responsible for everything that had happened at Camp Hundred, but there was no clue to his identity or even to his thinking. There were plenty of insoluble mysteries, with a new one added: what possible use might have been made of Harrer's body and his resemblance to Kirton? It was Allen who finally said, 'Got to know whose body it is.'

The state of the body was still vivid in my mind. I said, 'It'll be very difficult to do. Whoever it is, he's in a terrible state. He was flattened by the tractor.'

'Fingerprints?' Kelleher said, impractically.

Nobody bothered to reply. Then Allen said, 'Boots.'

'What about them?'

Allen smiled faintly. 'Boot size is stamped into the leather binding inside the top of the boot.'

Kelleher opened the clothing locker. Inside were Kirton's various overalls, some sealed in sterile packs. On the floor of the locker were operating theatre footwear of green rubber. He picked one up and examined it. 'Eleven.'

I said, 'That's no use unless we know Harrer's size.'

'Well, we know Kirton's an eleven, regular fitting,' Kelleher said. He turned to Allen. 'How many fittings are there?'

'Three. Narrow, regular, wide.'

'Odds are two to one, then. And eleven's a big size.'

'Harrer was a big guy, too,' Allen muttered.

'We'll go look at the boots,' Kelleher said.

I grimaced, but it was obvious we had to return to the trench. Kelleher picked up his bundle of sheets and I collected a knife and some scissors, knowing we'd need them. There wasn't a soul moving in the whole length of Main Street. We hurried to the death trench, slipped inside and got to work. It was macabre and grisly and horrible. The felt boot was frozen to the crushed foot and I had to cut it away as best I could. The size was ten and a half, wide fitting.

'A difference,' I said, 'But it's not much to go .on.'

Kelleher thought for a moment. 'Dog tags. They should be round his neck, on a string.'

But they weren't.

Kelleher said, 'Rule is, they wear them the whole time. Maybe our friend took them off, before he . . .'

'Perhaps. But it's not enough, is it?'

'Rings? Watches?'

Together, sickened, we managed to get at a pocket, we proddeda nd probed, but it was empty. This had been a man; now it waslike a tangle of meat from a freezer. We found his left hand, badly mangled, and cut the glove away with difficulty. There was no ring, nor was there a watch on the wrist. Then, quite suddenly, 1 was staring at that broken hand, noting broad, practical fingers and nails which, though clean, were thickened and grainy. The third finger, the only one undamaged, had a ragged cuticle. I crouched there, thinking back, remembering Kirton as I'd sat drinking his coffee and listening to his music and how I'd noticed his precise, surgeon's hands. These weren't the fingers whose dexterity I'd envied.

As I lifted my head, my eyes met Kelleher's. 'That's not Kirton's hand!' I said. He nodded. 'Not in a million years.'

It led to a lot more talk, which I won't go over. We went back to the medical block for the benefit of Allen's advice, but by now he was sleeping deeply and this time even Kelleher hadn't the heart to awaken him. We stood beside his bed, talking softly, tracing and retracing the ground, trying to make sense of a situation that seemed to have no sense in it. It was unlikely and probably impossible that Kirton could still be alive, and we could see no reason why Harrer's body should have been dressed in Kirton's clothes and dumped where the tractor would run over it and thereby render it unidentifiable. There seemed no point in making one of the sleds look as though there was a body in it, when the deception would be discovered, and investigated with real determination, as soon as the bodies reached Thule. So?

So nothing.

So two men, Kirton and Carson, were now missing for totally unexplained reasons. And, presumably, were dead.

At last I said, a little wearily, 'Look, it's not your business and it's not mine. We have facts now. It's criminal not to tell Coveney. At least he can take action out in the open.'

Kelleher said 'No,' with sudden vehemence.

'Why not?'

'Because whoever the hell it is who's doing all this, he doesn't know what we got now. The minute we tell Coveney, the whole place finds out.'

'And maybe he gets caught?'

'Sure. More likely he doesn't. There's still no solid information.'

I stared at him in sudden anger. 'So we do nothing?'

Kelleher stretched. 'No. There's one little thing I'd like to try.'

'What?'

He hesitated, then bent to pick up the bundle of sheets. 'Leave it with me, Harry. I'll be in the reactor trench.'

'You're not going to tell me?'

He was already moving to the door. 'Sure I'll tell you. But later, okay? Give me a little time. And cover for me if Coveney comes in.'

I watched the door close behind him, annoyed at what I saw as wholly unnecessary secrecy. Allen slept peacefully in the bed Kelleher had occupied and I thought with irritation that if Coveney did arrive and saw a black face where he'd expected a white one, covering-up would be rather less easy than Kelleher had made it sound. Not that that there was much to be done about it ; there were no spare beds. For a while, I sat smoking in Kirton's comfortable chair, recovering my temper. The place was quiet now and I realized I was tired, and pulled out a desk drawer, put my feet up and let my eyes close. I'd no intention of sleeping, and didn't, because my brain, active if ineffectual, insisted on carrying out a review of events. Pointlessly, as ever, and destructive, too, because in my experience physical comfort demands mental comfort as a precondition and my futilely busy brain kept me shifting in the chair, so that the cycle of irritation and frustration completed itself and I couldn't relax at all. A couple of times I went over to look at Allen merely for the sake of something to do, and the third time I succeeded in barking my right shin on the open desk drawer and hopped about on one leg for a few seconds, swearing. As I slammed the drawer shut, it occurred to me that a search of Kirton's desk, if it achieved nothing else, would help to pass the time.

The loose-leaf notebook wasn't exactly hidden, but there were papers and folders on top of it. What struck me was the handwritten title on the front: Studies in Discomfort. When I opened it and began to read, I realized after a while that Kirton had begun it with the intention of producing a paper for some medical journal or other on the way men behaved within the difficult parameters of Camp Hundred. Then the content seemed to change style, becoming mildly humorous rather than gravely academic. Clearly he'd abandoned the serious project and was merely amusing himself. Later came another change. There were half a dozen small character sketches, none more than a single handwritten page in length. No names or ranks were mentioned, nor even specific jobs. All the same, the first one was inevitably and unmistakably Barney Smales, and though a note of Kirton's at the beginning of the notebook said he would avoid psychological jargon, a marginal note on Smales's profile said 'manic?' I continued reading, recognizing nobody else, until I'd finished the notes. But I didn't close the notebook; instead I turned back to profile four: Mr Chameleon Constant.

'It took me a long time,' Kirton had written, 'to realize that the man I encountered was not the man others saw. Most of us, in early life, make some kind of decision about the front we want to present to the world, and then simply go on developing it. Chameleon Constant goes one better, or perhaps six better. His game, and I'm certain it is a war game for him, lies in presenting marginally different pictures of himself to everybody he meets. He's Jekyll and Hyde and a few more, including traces of Einstein and Svengali, and there are times when I have to restrain myself from going to watch him at work. I believe he knows I know about him because very occasionally he'll give me a glance that's almost conspiratorial. Other people's opinions of him vary ludicrously, from "the worst bastard I ever met in my life", to "as near total decency as any man is likely to get". What's so strange is that he seems to get away with it all. In some extraordinary way he doesn't get talked about. He came to see me the first time about another man who seemed to be worried and depressed. Would I have a look at him? When I saw the man, he was certainly worried and depressed and said the reason was that Mr C.C, w as on his back. Specifically how ? Impossible to pin down. C.C, just radiated hatred and threat. I gave him some anti-depressants and when I saw C.C, again, told him what I'd done,but not the reason and that was the first time I saw the conspiratorial glance. I made a note to investigate. After that I mentioned his name to a few individuals, but never to groups, and the puzzling picture began to emerge. Everybody said something different. What it all comes down to, I suppose, is some notion he's got of total superiority. Trouble is, I suspect it's not unfounded. And I sometimes think that, given different circumstances, West Point or Harvard, C.C, might by now be either General of the Army or President of the United States. One of these days I'm going to get him interviewed, one at a time, by some high-grade psychiatrists, because he'll not only baffle the be-Jesus out of them ; he'll have them fighting in groups when they try to agree on what he is. Meanwhile, I keep quiet about it because I want to go on observing.'

I read it a third time, fascinated and wondering, and looking now for clues. Could this be a portrait of the killer? Certainly it could, but the damn thing was so worded it didn't even hint at Chameleon Constant's identity, or even his rank or age. And then there was that curious reference to Einstein. I had an impulse to awaken Allen and ask whether there were any mathematical geniuses around the place, but if Kirton had been right, Allen's impression of the man might well be something very different. Still, I could try it on Kelleher. I glanced at my watch. It was two o'clock in the morning and, with luck, few people would be about; so I ought to be able to get to the reactor trench unchallenged. There was a possibility - no, more than that, a probability - that Coveney would still be awake, and perhaps prowling, but I'd simply have to take a chance on that; the combination of my general itchiness, Kelleher's secrecy and Kirton's character sketch was too much to keep to myself.

Since I'd last been in Main Street, the power voltage had obviously been reduced, and some of the lights were out. I walked steadily along, grateful for the lower lighting. Even if I walked smack into Coveney, he'd be hard put to recognize me unless we were both directly beneath one of the roof lights. But I didn't walk into Coveney. What I walked into, with astonishing suddenness, was total darkness. Without warning,without even a preliminary flicker, all the lights went out. I stopped in mid-stride, thought about it, and moved to the snow wall, calculating that the fourth trench on the right housed the reactor and that I could feel my way along until I reached it. I'd gone about twenty yards and passed the first trench-opening, my mind full of what might have gone wrong with the diesel generators, when I heard the soft crunch of footsteps. I stood, listening. They were coming towards me, moving fast, and I could hear a man breathing, too, with the effort of running.

I made a decision quickly - and wrongly - and didn’t move out to tackle him, reasoning that it was somebody from the diesel shed on his way to get help. A few seconds later he was well beyond me and I knew how wrong the decision had been, because all of a sudden there was light again: but this time, it was the flickering glow of firelight, and it came from the diesel trench!

Briefly I contemplated turning and giving chase, but by then it was hopeless. Instead I ran towards the trench entrance, turned in, and stopped, appalled. The whole side of the hut was ablaze. I grabbed the fire axe and extinguisher from the trench wall and raced for the hut door, my feet splashing, for some strange reason, through water I Chapter 16

I flung open the wooden door and heat blasted at me. Already the fire had too strong a grip for any hope of saving the diesel shed and the air was full of choking wood smoke that stung water into my eyes and threatened my lungs. My eyes ran swiftly round the flame-lit scene; soon the smoke would be too dense to see anything. The three big permanent diesels, bolted to the steel-plated floor, were obviously immovable. I stepped quickly towards the portable generator I'd brought up in the TK.4 from Camp Belvoir and glanced at the switch panel. Off and the connections broken. But it was on wheels. I grabbed the tow handle and pulled, but the thing weighed two thousand pounds and my strength wasn't enough to move it. The axe handle then; as a lever. The fire was already eating fast at the far wall as I pushed the oak haft beneath the mounting and heaved upwards. I could feel the fire's heat through my parka. But at least the generator moved a few inches. Another heave and it moved again, but the heat was increasing rapidly and I could scarcely see through the tears forced from my eyes. A third heave -1 was gaining no more than six inches at a time - and behind me the heat was becoming intolerable. I snatched a second to grab the extinguisher, knock down the plunger, and stand it where the spurting foam could offer its limited protection to my back, and heaved and heaved again, frantically propelling the killing weight across the floor. Three walls were burning now and the roof had caught, but for the moment the floor remained sound, protected by its steel coating. But there was ten feet and more to go and the sheer effort involved was draining strength from already aching muscles in my arms and shoulders, my back and legs. And the heat was now intense. My chest burned from inhaled smoke. Another frantic lift at the lever, another small, slow forward movement, a few more inches gained. Again. And again. And each desperate heave was more panicky and less strong than the one before. Above me the roof rafters crackled and burned, now showering sparks down on me. The fire was spreading with astonishing speed. But now I'd manoeuvred the generator closer to the door. Only two or three feet remained. A burst of uncontrollable coughing halted me for long seconds, and grew worse as the spasms drew more choking smoke deep into my lungs. I wrenched at the handle, repositioned it and wrenched again, and then, behind me, part of the wooden wall crashed outwards and the roof lurched downwards. Two more heaves and the end of the generator was poised in the doorway. Three more and the wheels slumped down over the threshold

.., and jammed the mounting hard against the woodwork ! Another ... Oh God, it refused to move! With sweat pouring over me and my parka hood smouldering, I struggled to shift it the few extra inches that would tip the generator past the centre of balance and let it fall on to the saving snow of the trench floor. But the effort was beyond me now. I swore in fury and frustration, knowing that the generator's survival was Camp Hundred's survival; without the one, the other could not exist. As the flames roared nearer I wrestled despairingly to try to make those last inches of movement, but the heavy steel was anchored, its weight crunching down on the wooden threshold.

I knew I'd have to leave it; that or be burned to death, burned or suffocated. I staggered towards the door, and realized that in jamming the generator in the opening, I had almost blocked my own way out. But no, I could squeeze past. As I began to do so a head appeared dimly in the billowing smoke. I glanced behind me at the fast-encroaching flames, stepped back and beckoned, and the man hesitated, then forced himself past the generator into the hut.

There was no need to explain. I positioned the axe handle and together we grasped it and heaved upwards. The generator lifted briefly, then settled back.

I yelled, 'Again!' waited, nodded, and heaved upwards with all my remaining strength. Slowly it lifted, and all down my back and thighs the muscles strained and then trembled as the strength went out of me. Grunting under the strain, I struggled to hold it, to continue the lift . . , forcing every ounce of energy I could muster into one last upward burst. Slowly the monster began to tilt, to lean forward, to begin to balance itself, to move through the point of balance . . , and suddenly with a crash the axe handle rose free and weightless and the generator crashed out into the tunnel on its side. As I staggered after it, the far end of the hut began to disintegrate. I knew from the direct heat on my body that my parka was burning and hurled myself full length to the trench floor, rolling over and over so that the snow could douse the fire. It took only seconds, because the trench floor was water-covered. I'd forgotten that in the panic. Now, instantly, it soaked me, the water ice-chilled, and in no time at all I was shivering, my teeth chattering.

'You okay?' the other man shouted.

I nodded, coughing.

'I'm gonna get some help.'

I nodded again and heard him splashing away. Then my thought processes resumed some kind of function. Help meant, ultimately, the arrival of Coveney, and I'd better make myself scarce. I lurched to my feet and staggered off down the smoke-filled tunnel towards the darkness of Main Street, still coughing hard. I turned gratefully into the cold clean air that blew along that vast trench between the two entrances, and headed for the reactor trench, feeling better as the ache in my lungs began to subside a little, but shivering in the icy grip of my soaking clothes.

A couple of minutes later I was telling Kelleher what had happened. An emergency lantern burned on his desk. He listened, rummaging round for some clothing for me, and I stripped as I talked. When I told him about the water, he nodded grimly.

'Simple. He cut through the water lines. They'd just drain themselves into the tunnel. But, boy oh boy, we're in bad shape now. The water line'll have to be fixed before the power can come into use. And new electrical connections'll have to be improvised. Time margin's gonna be narrow.'

'Four hours, Barney told me, the first time the lights went.'

'Maybe a little less. Everything's been low-power. What heat there is will dissipate faster.'

'And he's free to strike again. And it'sdark.' I bent to lace the dry boots.

'Right. But maybe at last I got something now.'

My head jerked round. 'What?'

'A fluke. Christ knows what the odds were in parts per million ! I came back here and got going on the water samples again. Never did figure that contamination.'

'Go on.'

'Got nowhere in the beginning. Then there was a real flash on the spectrometer. Couldn't figure it at first. Not one hundred per cent sure even now. But when I got it isolated on a slide and used the microscope I reckoned I knew.'

'What was it?'

'Tissue.'

I blinked at him. 'Human tissue?'

'Christ, I'm no pathologist.' He watched me, waiting for me to come to the conclusion he'd reached. Nor was it difficult. 'Kirton,' I said.

His mouth tightened. 'Maybe Carson, too.'

'No,' I said. 'The well was out of use before Carson disappeared.'

'Sure, but it's a hell of a handy place to dispose of a body.'

'Doesn't tell us who he is, though,' I said bitterly. 'Nothing ever does that. He burns down the bloody diesel shed and actually goes by me in the dark and still we've no idea.' I reached for my soaking jacket top and felt in the pocket for the sheet I'd taken from Kirton's folder. 'Read this. It doesn't tell us anything either. But I've got a feeling in my water that this is him.'

Kelleher unfolded the wet paper carefully. The note had been written with a ball-pen and fortunately remained legible. He read it slowly. 'Where'd it come from?'

I told him. Then I said, 'Kirton knew who it was. Must have known. That has to be the reason he was killed.'

'Well, he sure can't tell us.' Kelleher gave a long sigh of irritation, a sigh that suddenly caught in his throat.

'Wait a minute,' he said slowly. 'Maybe he can at that.'

'Spirit writing or table-tapping?' I said sarcastically. 'Or maybe you're a medium?'

'Uh-uh,' Kelleher said. 'But Kirton kept a diary.'

'If he did, it'll be in his quarters. Or it will if our friend hasn't stolen it.'

'He kept it on him.'

'How do you know?'

'I do it, too. Have since I was a kid. We talked about it once.'

I stared at him in silence, not wanting to contemplate the consequences of this piece of information about Kirton and looking for sensible objections. I said, 'Diaries are paper. If it is Kirton down there, it'll be illegible by now. He's been down there for - '

Kelleher handed me the sheet of paper I'd given him. 'Look at it. It's wet, sure, but you can read it. The diary's in a pocket, held together. It'll be soaked, but it'll be readable.'

'Even so, there's no guarantee.'

He took the sheet from me. 'What's it say here? Listen: "I made a note at the time." That's what it says, and the diary's got to be where he made the note. I know, believe me. I know all the crazy mechanics of writing up a diary. And there's another little thing you've forgotten.'

'No,' I said. 'I haven't forgotten. But if Kirton was already down there then - '

He didn't wait for me to finish. 'If! Okay, but if he was dumped later, our friend has fingered his pigeon in the unlikely event that Kirton's found. Don't forget - a new well had to be started immediately.' He looked at me steadily.

I said defensively, 'It's not on! In any case, there's no power.'

Kelleher glanced round. 'You can feel it. It's a mite cooler already. It'll get a whole lot colder real fast. One more little accident and Hundred's finished. Maybe it's finished right now. But if the guy can be identified positively, at least there'll be no more sabotage, right ?'

'There's no power for the motor!'

'Wrong,' Kelleher said. 'There's power, muscle power on the winding handle.'

I opened my mouth to speak, but the words didn't come quickly enough and Kelleher went on grimly:

'We need one more guy and him I can get. Only question is, who goes down: you or me?'

The protesting words came, then, but they were only words, and they rolled off Kelleher's answers. Coveney, he said, wouldn't go for this theorizing. Coveney's hands were full and his antagonism plain; he wouldn't even listen. But the attempted cover-up in the death trench and a body in the well were proof enough of murder, and the diary, if it was there, might well be proof of guilt, powerful if not totally conclusive. Enough to force action. But I knew, and Kelleher knew too, why I was arguing so desperately: it was a matter of relative weight and strength. Kelleher was more than fifteen stone and strong as a horse whereas I, wet through, weighed less than eleven. But he was determined to play out the farce of random choice and pulled a quarter from his pocket.

'Call.'

Whatever I called, the answer would have to be the same, but I went along. As it happened, the forces of chance for once recognized the force of logic, and pointed to me. Suddenly the temperature seemed to drop violently, and I began to tremble.

Reaching the well trench was not difficult. As we slipped along Main Street there was no one to see us, though the glow of rigged emergency lights from the diesel tunnel cast a pool of light further along. Once inside, we closed and locked the door, and as I turned, the beam from my handlamp illuminated the circle of corrugated iron protecting the old well-head and the metal hoisting frame above. Kelleher fitted the handle quickly. I walked unsteadily towards the well and shone the handlamp down into the unimaginable depths and immediately began to shiver again. Not far below, giant icicles hung into the void like the waiting teeth of some implacably hostile giant, their tips pointing like signposts of death to the black, narrow neck which led through into the second chamber, and more icicles which I couldn't see but knew to be there. And below them . . . Bile climbed abruptly into my throat. I turned away quickly, and said,

'No'.

Kelleher's 'other guy', a sergeant from the reactor staff named Mulham, said, 'Can't say I blame you.'

There was a moment's heavy silence. Then Kelleher spoke. 'Okay, then, I'll do it. You turn the handle.'

He reached for the bosun's chair, swung it up and out. 'Let's have some light here,' he said, as he began to strap himself in.

'I'm sorry.'

'Christ, you're a limey, you're not even involved here! I sure don't blame you, brother. This is an American problem.' He bent his legs, letting the bosun's chair take the weight. 'Okay, let's have the hard hat and the rest of that gear.'

Numbly, guiltily, I took off the hard hat. It had been picked to fit me and on him it was ludicrously small, wobbling and liable to fall off. I thought about the extra four stones of Kelleher's weight, the other things to be carried, the back-breaking physical labour involved in the long lowering and raising, and suddenly heard myself say, 'I'll go.' To this day I don't know how I came to speak. It was some involuntary, impromptu impulse beyond either my control or understanding.

Kelleher's hands stopped moving and he turned to me.

'You sure?'

I nodded, committed now and resentful of it. 'Yes,' I said, and my voice caught on a rusty nail. I cleared my throat and said yes again.

'Think about it for a minute. Be sure.' He was all consideration and sympathy and somehow that enmeshed me further.

'I'll do it.'

He grunted and began to unfasten himself from the seat. Two minutes later 1 was poised over the well opening, swaying gently, with my heart in my mouth. I glanced back over my shoulder at the two of them, waiting at the handle. Kelleher reached across, stopped the swinging motion. 'Okay?'

I nodded and swallowed. 'Lower away.'

'Good luck.'

Looking upwards a few seconds later, I couldn't even see them, and the metallic click of the ratchet on the lowering mechanism was growing fainter. As I lowered my eyes, I realized that even the action of looking up had imparted a little swing to the cable, and concentrated on sitting very still and holding the equipment close to my body to minimize the possibility of contact with those fearful icicles that were now sliding slowly past me. We'd discussed and abandoned the idea of knocking them down before making the descent. The trip would have been safer, but the great falling masses of ice, ripping more off as they crashed down through three chambers, might well make it impossible to see what lay in the bottom. My left leg felt briefly uncomfortable. As I moved it I must have touched the chain saw, where it hung beneath the seat, because suddenly I was swinging again, and Kelleher's voice came sharply out of the little battery-powered walkie-talkie slung around my neck. 'Keep still, Harry, for Chrissake!'

My breath hissed out as I came within inches of a ton or more of sharp-pointed ice, and swung away again. I sat rigid, paralysed with fear, feeling the chill of the thing. Slowly the pendulum swing eased.

'You okay?'

'Okay.' Stiffening muscles would bloody well have to stiffen. The longer the length of cable above me, the wider the arc of swing and the greater the danger of tapping one of these monsters and tripping it from its seating.

The ticking of the ratchet grew fainter and vanished as I dropped deeper into the first chamber. The beam of my lamp, endlessly reflected from the ice surface all around me, miraculously gave illumination to the whole, immense, onion-shaped cavern. It was difficult now even to know if I were moving; the lowering was so slow, the distance so great and the time so endless that I seemed suspended immobile in the middle of that huge, cold space. But slowly the curving bottom came up to meet me, and every few feet Kelleher's voice asked softly if I was all right. When he wasn't speaking, I ached for the reassuring sound of his voice; as soon as he spoke I was terrified that some trick of reverberating sound would precipitate one of the vast ice-spears from high above to smash me down for ever into the depths of the icecap.

Below me, very slowly, the dark hole widened as I slid soundlessly down towards it. I whispered into the walkie-talkie, 'Entering the neck soon.'

'How far?'

'Four feet.'

'Try communication soon as you're through.'

'Right.'

The lowering continued, and soon I was no longer in an immense space, but in a tight, white bottleneck that inspired sudden, panicky claustrophobia. If an icicle had fallen earlier, it just might have gone by, giving me only a glancing blow as it passed; but here, the whole shape of the structure would guide any falling weight directly on to me.

Slowly the neck widened, the walls of the second chamber beginning to slope down and away from where I hung. 'Through the neck now,' I muttered softly.

'You okay ?'

'Yes. Keep lowering.'

I tried to envisage the two of them up there. This, for them, was the easy part, with the ratchet taking the strain. Coming up would be another matter, with muscles wearying through the long haul and the pressure of time always goading them to further effort.

All round me another crop of immense icicles hung like an inverted and petrified forest, gleaming and winking in the light of my lamp. They were, I thought soberly, even worse than those at the entrance to the upper chamber: longer, thinner, some distorted in shape like twisted fangs. Here the rising vapour from the steam hose would have been denser and warmer, its action stronger on the snow of centuries and adding drop by frozen drop to the tip of each rod of ice. I held my breath as the bosun's chair slipped past, concentrating on stillness. The need to tear my eyes away from their hypnotic menace was almost irresistible, but to look up or down seemed now to be to risk setting off a pendulum swing. If the icicles had been anchored to something solid, as the normal small icicle clings to a gutter, the danger would have been small. But they clung only to compacted snow.

Minutes passed and 1 moved beyond their threatening points, slowly down into the centre of the onion-shaped bulb, and again there came the feeling that I had ceased to move, that the world had stopped and that I would remain for ever strapped to my tiny seat in a bubble in the immensity of the icecap.

'You okay?'

'Yes.'

'How far?'

I glanced carefully downwards. Below me the walls were beginning to close a little towards the black eye of the third chamber. 'Forty feet.'

As I sat helplessly, inching downwards, anger welled up in me: anger at myself for embarking on this crazy descent; anger at the lunatic somewhere above me whose brilliant and implacable malevolence made it necessary; most of all, though, at Smales, who should long ago have closed off this death trap, and hadn't. It was a natural enough anger, born of danger and fear, but its intensity frightened me, constricting my throat, tensing my muscles, tripping a pulse in my temple that thumped in my head like a drum. Shutting my eyes tight, 1 tried to force the anger from me, but it had its effect. On a head full of blood the hard hat felt uncomfortably tight. I raised a hand to ease the pressure, took too deep a breath of icy air, and coughed. The hat tilted, slid quickly over my scalp, and fell. I made a grab for it, missed and began to swing a little as it fell.

I sat rigid, waiting for disaster. The hat bounced and bounced again, skittering round the sloping ice before it fell into the hole, and then a silence followed until, seconds later, it hit the bottom of the third bulb. I'd have expected a splash, but it bounced repeatedly. The water at the bottom of the well must have frozen again ! The clattering could only have lasted a few seconds, but it seemed to go on and on as the steel hat ricocheted from one ice surface to another and the ice-bulb below me magnified the sound and funnelled it upwards through the neck. Sweating, even in the icy cold, I waited for it to end, but when it did, another sound remained .., a high-pitched hum that seemed to have no source, but vibrated like a tuning-fork .., and then an icy breath swirled round me and I knew and cowered as, with a soft whoosh, a huge icicle fell past. A tiny movement of my hand would have let me touch it as the white, shining projectile dropped slowly past, its forty-foot length seeming to fall in slow motion, to go on for ever. Miraculously it didn't touch me, but I watched it continue its fall, down into the neck, and through it like an arrow, not even touching the sides, then disappearing into blackness until it landed with an immense crash in the icy base of the bulb.

Again noise crashed below me, reverberating upwards, and again the singing, tuning-fork sound began. I wrapped my arms around my unprotected head in an instinctive but futile gesture, and waited for death. For the next icicle wouldn't miss, and if the fall of the hat had been enough to unseat one of them, the monstrous impact of the ice-spear crashing down must surely loosen the others. The ringing tone seemed to last so long as to be a permanent part of the atmosphere, then slowly, it began to fade. And nothing had happened ! The forest of ice above had rung to the music of death, and yet had stilled! Slowly, disbelievingly, scarcely daring to move, I lowered my arms. The light of the lamp shone back at me from the great, shining walls; the silence was total. I let out a great, shuddering breath and cringed at the sound of it.

'Harry, Harry!' Kelleher's voice crackled urgently from the walkie-talkie on my chest. I said, 'I'm okay.'

'What happened?'

'Icicle,' I whispered.

'We'll bring you up.'

I heard the words with a vast sense of relief. More than anything in the world I wanted to be lifted out of that ghastly place, to stand once more on something firm, to be free of the interminable menace of that battery of deadly, pointed, hanging spears above me. I knew that, even though they had not fallen, they must have been loosened by the long vibration; that the chance of a fall had immeasurably increased. I sat trembling in the chair, my mind whirling with both fear and a resurgence of fury. Fury.

Fury that directed itself suddenly at the man who had done all this to me. The man who wanted Camp Hundred closed, and was on the edge of succeeding.

Damn him!

I gritted my teeth. 'Continue lowering.'