Whiteout!

Chapter 9

It had to be done; I knew it, but still I hesitated. The last time, indeed the only time I had been out through an escape hatch on to the surface, there had been that bloodcurdling demonstration from Smales of how to deep-freeze a pork chop. This time, I could be the pork chop, as Lieutenant Foster's cousin had been. And Charlie Foster was still up there somewhere, frozen meat now, his body not recovered and by now probably so well entombed in snow it would never be found. While I hesitated, I tried to think. On the surface there would be a line of escape hatches, one at the end of most of the trenches, and the line would be parallel to Main Street. All right, but would I see them ? Hours earlier, when I had piloted TK4 into Hundred, the weather break was already ending, the wind rising. Now there was no way of knowing what was happening up there.

I remember the sound my throat gave as I swallowed, standing at the foot of the spiral stair, holding on to the handrail. One part of my mind was still telling me to wait until morning, until I was found, and the other, which had made the decision and should have been prepared to implement it, was wavering in face of what lay ahead. Then, in some extraordinary way, my feet began to climb and I was committed ; there was no deliberate order from brain to foot, it just happened, and I was climbing in the dark up that steel stair, feeling my way ahead, stopping when my up-stretched hand had touched the hatch cover to fumble for the winding wheel.

A few turns and it was open and at least there was a little light. Not much, for any moon or star there may have been was totally obscured, but where the world consists entirely of white snow, it is never-wholly dark. As I poked my head up through the hatch, that faint light was the only friendly thing. The Arctic wind scoured across the snowfield, whistling madly, driving hard snow crystals before it like a sand-blaster. And it was wickedly cold. I paused there to draw the parka close about my face, turning the back of my head to the wind, and once that was done, tried to find landmarks, or some way of guiding myself. I knew there were guide lines out there. Charlie Foster had died because he failed to keep hold of one. But no guide lines were visible; almost nothing was visible in the impenetrable screen of flying snow.

I made myself stand, pointed my right shoulder at where I believed Main Street to be, and took five careful paces, then glanced back. The open hatch was still visible, but my footmarks were already indistinct, blown away, or filling. I took five more, then another five. Now I could no longer see the hatch cover. Fifteen paces and already I was alone, without landmarks, with nothing to hang on to but a vague sense of direction. Five more paces, one foot placed carefully in front of the other, pause, and a glance back to see the snow flying off my footmarks. I swallowed again and forced myself to move. 1 had calculated that between thirty and forty yards should separate the hatches, but after fifty paces there was still no sign of one. Even that was proof of nothing. Not every trench had an escape hatch. Most had, but not all. So the distance between them might be sixty to eighty yards, even a hundred and twenty if I was bloody unlucky, and I was feeling bloody unlucky. I knew only one thing with certainty: that Main Street, far beneath the surface, lay somewhere to my right, and the knowledge was scant comfort because the ramp down to Main Street lay at least a quarter of a mile away and my chances of finding it were remote indeed. Long before I'd walked a quarter-mile, I'd have wandered, or been blown, far off course. Anxiously, five paces at a time, I edged forward, trying to line up the new five with the last five. Every step I counted, and at seventy the relief of seeing something sticking out of the snow was enough to make my whole body tremble. It was an escape hatch, all right, but even the way I found it was frightening, for it was to my right and very faint and I'd almost missed it. And if I had missed it .., well, then it would have been a long, despairing walk to death.

For a few moments I busied myself clearing snow from round it, then I levered up the protecting lid and began to turn the handle. As the hatch cover came up, I prayed for a friendly gleam of light. The prayers, this time, drew no response; I was looking down into darkness. All the same, it was the way back and I climbed through the open hatch and down the stair, leaving the hatch open to admit any faint gleam of light it could. By the time I stood on the trench floor it was apparent that no light penetrated and I had to feel my way forward again. I stayed close to the trench wall, placing my feet carefully, with no idea what lay ahead. This could be a storage tunnel, there could be huts or machinery, packing cases, anything. Then my foot, instead of coming down on snow, bumped into some obstruction. I bent and felt it, trying to decide whether I could step over it, or would have to find a way round. Whatever it was was wrapped in cloth of some kind and my hands, in their thick felt mittens, told me nothing, except that there was also a steel frame round it.., and that it was about two yards long . . , a nd two feet wide. Jesus Christ, I was in with the corpses!

For a while it all happened, just the way people say it does: my scalp crawled, cold impulses fled over my back, my hair stood vertical, parka hood or no parka hood. And I trembled violently. The sudden panic may have been irrational, but it was there, great waves of it that went for my guts and my mind simultaneously, and set me blundering in the darkness just to get away, to get some distance between me and what lay on the trench floor. What lay there, inevitably, was another body, and I tripped and sprawled full-length on it, my grabbing hands gripping something hard as a drainpipe, and which was probably an arm. My senses didn't return to anything like normal, but fear induced a desire, if not a capacity to reason, and I sat there among all the hobgoblins and devils my imagination conjured into the air around me, frantically trying to think what to do.

Very little presented itself. I was completely disorientated and whichever way I moved I'd be falling over bodies, or crawling past them. How many were there? I couldn't even remember. Six, I thought. No, seven, because .., because Doc Kirton, what was left of him, was in here, too. And then I remembered something else. This trench, too, was locked.

I looked wildly around me. Far back at the end of the trench was the pale oval of the open hatch, leading back to the surface, and I laughed, I know I laughed once, loudly and hysterically, at the choice before me. I could stay there in the dark with seven dead bodies, or go back up into the blizzard and the gale and the unnervingly strong chance of joining these seven in whatever frozen Valhalla they might have found. I've wondered since, sitting comfortably, drink in hand, why I didn't stay, It would, after all, only have been for a few hours. The corpses couldn't have harmed me. But it's different, believe me, when you're saying it to yourself in a black snow tunnel and they're lying all round you, frozen hard as planks. Though one wasn't. When I started crawling on hands and knees towards that grey patch of dim light, somehow or other I contrived to put my knee into an indentation in the floor and roll sideways on to one of the bodies, and in recoiling, put my weight on it. Where the others were hard, this one gave sickeningly under pressure, and my stomach squirmed with the realization that this could only be Kirton, or what was left of him, carefully wrapped.

A few seconds later I was away from them and heading fast for the stair, and my feet were clanging as I stumbled upwards to look in sober, dry-mouthed fear out into the Arctic night. Even since I'd climbed down into the trench, conditions outside seemed to have worsened. What had been gale and blizzard and bad enough, for God's sake, was now turning into an Arctic storm, and the force of the wind that funnelled down through the open hatch had me hanging on grimly to the handrail. But I did it, I made myself climb out, pointed my shoulder at Main Street, and forced myself forward. Now, far from seeing five paces behind me, I could scarcely distinguish two, and by the time I'd covered fifteen careful yards I was already filled with the suspicion that I was lost. Even through the wadding of my cap and parka, I heard the whiplash crack of thunder roll across the sky above and the wind force was nearly bowling me over, forcing me along with awkward, involuntary, uncontrolled steps. I stopped after thirty paces, if they could be called paces. I was lost. I no longer knew with any certainty even where Main Street lay. I would certainly have died then, there can be no doubt about that. I'd have continued blundering, driven by that fearful wind, until I became part for ever of the Greenland icecap. And death would have come quickly, too, for the storm was worsening by the second. It was the storm, of all things, that saved me, for with one great, deafening smash of thunder, lightning suddenly flickered and God knows how many volts of electricity turned into a single wild flash of illumination. And there, ten yards from where I stood, was another hatch! I'd never have seen it but for the lightning. With normal visibility no more than six feet, I was thirty feet from it. But I saw it, and flung myself towards its safety and shelter, swearing to myself that whatever lay beneath, from invading hungry bears to Dracula himself, and even if the tunnel was locked, I was going to spend the rest of the night down there. I clawed open the lid, wound the escape hatch open and, slithering in like a rat down a rope, and with my feet safely on the steel rungs and my head ducked down away from the storm, I found I could see light. Light! Not a mirage, but real honest-to-God light. The bulk of two huts stood between me and the tunnel entrance, but the entrance was open, and beyond it lay the lights of Main Street. They were dim, running on a reduced voltage, I learned later, but to me at that moment they looked as bright as advertising signs.

I looked at my watch and discovered with surprise that it was still not four o'clock, less than an hour since the smoke had awakened me. But what a hell of an hour! Finding myself among corpses, and then wandering on the icecap, had made me forget my original purpose in escaping from my own keeping trench: to let somebody know there was a fire in there. Main Street was deserted. Who would be in charge of fire fighting? Who'd be the duty officer? I hadn't the slightest idea, and in hopes of finding out, crossed to the mess hall. Coffee was available there all night, I knew, so somebody ought to be around. In fact there was a solitary cook, staring wearily at some tattered comic, who didn't as much as raise his eyes until I spoke.

The words shifted, him though. At the mention of fire his eyebrows went up. 'You sound the warning?'

'Who do I tell?'

'Nobody,' he said. 'There's an alarm right there on the wall in Main Street. Man, you hit it!'

'I don't think it's serious,' I said. If nobody else had noticed a fire, an hour after it had started burning, it could scarcely be serious. 'I don't want to waken the whole camp. Where do I find the duty officer?'

The cook said, 'I'm coming too,' and took me to the command trench, where a young lieutenant, probably just as bored but with slightly better literary taste, was yawning over Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China. His name was Westlake and he, too, was galvanized by the word 'fire', and his hand streaked out towards the wall Tannoy microphone.

'It was an hour ago,' I said. 'Don't you think we'd better have another look first?'

'Well . . .' He was doubtful, but he put on his parka and followed me; then, his four a.m, mind seizing on the nub of things after he'd had two minutes to digest it, said as we walked along Main Street, 'An hour\ Why in hell didn't you - '

'Because,' I said, 'the trench door was closed and locked.'

He grabbed my arm. 'No buddy. Not locked.'

'Locked,' I said.

'In that case, I need the goddam keys, right?'

He went back, got them, and joined me a few seconds later. When we reached the trench, the door wasn't even closed, let alone locked, and Westlake fixed me with a hard stare. He said, 'So show me the fire.'

I stood there, looking along the trench. Its lights were on, the door to the hut stood open. There was no smoke anywhere.

'Come on, show me,' Westlake said impatiently. I walked forward to join him, and we went into the hut, Westlake first. The hut lights were on, too, and Westlake took one look round the room and said dryly,

'You sure were right about not sounding the alarm. Oh, brother!'

Beside my bed stood a chair, and on it I'd kept cigarettes and matches. It was the chair cushion that had been burning and had now gone out. But neatly in the middle of the charred plastic foam lay a cylinder of grey ash, the remains of a cigarette.

I felt myself colouring in embarrassment, standing there, staring stupidly at a small, accidental burn in a seatcushion. Westlake said two things, one after the other. The first was that I ought to take more water with whatever I drank so much of, the second that if I undertook not to inform Major Smales in the morning, he damn sure wouldn't, no sir! He left me then to my embarrassment and presumably went back to Edgar Snow's account of Mao-Tse-tung in the Yenan caves. All things considered, it was, I thought, decent of him.

After a while I checked that the fire was, in fact, truly out, and went back to bed, hoping to sleep, but for the second time that night I found I couldn't. My mind kept going back over the whole bizarre business, and some of the time 1 was forced to unpalatable conclusions. I'd certainly panicked when the hut door wouldn't open at first, and only then realized I was trying to open it the wrong way. Was it possible the trench door hadn't been locked either, and that I had been so panicky I hadn't even tried properly? But no, that wasn't true. I'd spent a lot of time on that door, pulling, pushing, twisting and turning, and it was closed and locked. Of that I was sure. The other door, in the trench where the bodies lay, was certainly locked, I knew that, and was kept locked, too, on Barney Smales's firm orders. And what about the burn? Thinking back, I could remember ... I was sure I could remember it.., leaning over on my elbow to stub out that final cigarette in the ashtray, and stubbing it out, moreover, the way I always did, bending the tip over the burning end and pressing down hard. 1 had, hadn't I? I always did it that way, so I must have! Admittedly, though, I'd been damned tired, my eyelids closing. At that point they must have closed again, because I fell asleep with the lights on and didn't awaken until nine, and I only woke then because there was a tap on the door and Sergeant Vernon came in and said,

'Sorry, sir, but Major Smales would like to see you right now.'

In the cold light of morning, which is hardly a precise description of the low yellowish lighting in my hut, it was clear enough to me that Barney Smales must, by now, know that I'd been out on the surface, without permission, without telling anybody, and alone, during the night. Three of Smales's sacred and sensible rules lay in ruins and it was unreasonable to imagine that Lieutenant Westlake, despite what he'd said, had not entered it all in the log. He'd have had to enter it; not to do so would have been severe dereliction of duty. So I was prepared for a roasting as I hurried towards the command trench and went into Barney's hut. Master Sergeant Allen, in the outer office, gave me a brief 'Good morning' and pointed to the door.

I hesitated, knocked, and went in on the word 'Come'.

Then I waited for the blast. Barney sat behind his desk, smiling benignly. I looked at him warily; the last days had accustomed me to his psychological tricks. He looked up at me and said, 'Ah, the Englishman, ain't that right ?'

'Morning, sir,' I said neutrally.

He snapped his fingers. 'Something I wanted to say to you.'

'Oh.' I watched his face, waiting for the swift change of expression, the sudden rasp of anger.

'Yeah.' There was a pause. He reached for a ballpoint pen on his desk and looked at it. 'Kind of a neat piece of design, you agree?'

'The pen?' I said. I could feel myself being drawn into some kind of trap. Any second now, the world would fall on me.

'Sure,' Smales said. 'Real functional.' After a second, he added: 'Pretty colour, too.'

'Very.'

'Yeah.' He blinked.

I said, 'You sent for me.'

'That I did.' He held up the pen. 'I like things functional, things that do the job. Like your machine.'

He was talking, I realized with relief, about the TK4. Metamorphosis into salesman. 'Fine machine,' I said quickly. 'And she can do a lot more than that. I'm looking forward to demonstrating - '

He nodded. 'Functional,' he said. He was still holding the pen, looking at it, not at me. I wondered suddenly if he were drunk, then rejected the idea. The pattern of his words, the genial lassitude, were reminiscent of mild drunkenness, but the words themselves were spoken with clarity; there wasn't even the suspicion of a slur.

He said, 'It's my duty to tell you a thing like that. I'll also tell you - ' he paused again and it was a long pause - 'that I don't want air-cushion vehicles up here.'

I felt my scalp click back. I knew perfectly well that Barney Smales didn't approve of the hovercraft as Arctic transport; I knew also that he was the last man to say so before the trials had taken place. There was something wrong here and I'd better disengage myself before it became worse. I said, 'Well, thanks for telling me,' keeping my tone carefully cheerful, turning for the door. He didn't stop me. 'You ought to be told,' he said, as the door opened and closed behind me. I found myself looking into Master Sergeant Allen's eyes. He said, 'Okay, Mr Bowes ?'

I hesitated. Allen looked calm, competent . . , was there an enquiring look somewhere behind the formality? I said, 'I'm not sure.'

He regarded me steadily. 'Not sure?'

I thought about it, and Allen sat there, still and intelligent, watching me think. If I said anything, however mild, however delicate the hint, the meaning would be the same; I'd be saying, 'Your boss is going weird.'

The phrases ran through my mind: 'a little strange this morning; did you notice anything? He must be tired.' All meaning the same, and if spoken by this possibly paranoid stranger who'd been seeing spooks ever since he arrived, further proof of a perhaps dangerous instability. I searched for some lame phrase. Finally, I said, 'I wouldn't want to job!'

Unhelpfully, Allen said, 'Why's that, sir?'

'Not at a time like this. The strain . ..' Strain! The word hadslid out. Your boss is going weird. Allen lit a cigarette. He said slowly, 'The responsibility is very great.'

I thought about that. Was I reading more into all this than could possibly be there? Or was Allen coming to meet me? I looked at his face. It was calm, the dark brown skin uncreased, smooth on the planes and curves of his face. Allen was the senior non-commissioned officer, very senior, high-quality, but.., but non-commissioned. Experienced, though, and knowing the rule-book backwards. I realized suddenly that it was possible this conversation was even more difficult for him than for me. He was outranked by a lot of men at Camp Hundred and all of them would react with hostility at the merest suggestion . . . No, there had to be another approach, an oblique one. And it was up to me, the civilian, to make it. But what if I were mistaken ? What if Allen weren't moving to meet me, and all these supposed undertones were part of my paranoid imaginings ? In that case, I thought, he'd merely think I was a little nuttier than he'd thought in the first place.

But how to start? The atmosphere in the little office felt electric, but perhaps only I felt it. Allen still looked totally unruffled, except that there seemed to be something in his eyes, some gleam of - of what ? I said, 'What's tonight's movie, Mr Allen?'

'No decision yet, sir.'

'What,' I asked, 'do you have in stock ?'

He looked at me for a moment, then rose and went to a filing cabinet. 'I have a list. If you've got some kind of request, I'll do what I can.'

'I'm a Bogart fancier,' I said. 'Got any Bogey pictures?'

He looked at the list. 'African Queen, Casablanca.'

'I've seen them both too many times,' I said. I hesitated, knowing the hesitation would add emphasis when I spoke, but unable for a moment to force out the words. Then I made myself say, 'There's one performance I liked best of all.'

'What was that, sir?'

'Captain Queeg,' I said. 'In The Caine Mutiny.'

Allen gave me a glance. 'Guess we don't have that picture, sir.'

'You've seen it, though?'

'No.'

I pushed on quickly. 'Oddly enough,' I said, 'it's about what we were talking about. The responsibilities of command in dangerous situations.'

Did Allen's dark face soften a little? He said, 'I didn't see the movie, sir, but I did read the novel. As I recall, it was more about the responsibilities of subordinates.'

'None of whom,' I said, 'showed up very well atthe court martial.'

'Yeah, that's right.' He was non-committal again.

Well, I thought, it was early days. Barney was benign and it was perfectly possible nothing was wrong and that he was merely playing psychological games. We'd all know soon enough if anything was seriously wrong with him. And that would be time enough. I said, 'Breakfast time,' and left. I walked out of the command trench and into Main Street on my way to the mess hall. The lighting along the huge principal trench was down, the snow walls were grey rather than white, and the few men who moved along it looked dulled and depressed. In the mess hall, too, the atmosphere was heavy and voices low. On the night of my arrival - the only night, come to think of it, when things had been fairly normal at Hundred - there had been a kind of boisterous noise, a defiant good humour. There was none of that now. I sat at a table with one of the scientific officers, a captain named Vale, to whom I'd been introduced one night in the officers' club. Like most of the other scientists at Hundred, he worked for CRREL, the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of the United States Army Terrestrial Sciences Centre. Captain Vale was not pleased with me, he said.

'Why not?'

'You made it to Belvoir, so I hear?'

'In my little hovercraft,' I nodded.

'Wish I'd known you were going. I'd have hitched a ride out.'

'Your tour over?'

He smiled. 'No tour's ever over till you make it out. Don't worry, I'm used to it. I been stuck a few times before.'

'For long?'

'Six weeks up here, one time. But in the other place it can be longer.'

'What other place?'

'The Antarctic. I've done two tours on Deep Freeze down there. One time we were three months overdue.'

'Depressing,' I said.

'It's okay if you can work. If you can't, the Heebies get you.'

'The Heebies," I said, 'seem to be very much present.'

He glanced round the mess hall. A scattering of men were sitting over coffee or breakfast, some talking quietly, most silent. He said, 'I've known worse.'

'Here?'

'Hell, no. In huts in the Antarctic' He gave a rueful grin. 'These guys are too used to the good life. They're over-reacting.'

'I think,' I said, 'that I'm over-reacting too.'

'Sure you are. So am I, really. So's everybody. First time in the cold regions ?'

'Yes.'

'You'll find it grows on you. Two, three years, you won't want to be anywhere else.'

'You do,' I pointed out. 'You want to be at Belvoir.'

'I want,' he said, 'to be in Virginia. But when I get there, I'll want to be right back here.'

'So all this doesn't worry you ?'

'Nope. Can't say it does."

'Morale's low,' I said.

'It'll lift.'

'A chapter of accidents.'

'It'll end.'

I laughed. 'You're an optimistic fatalist?'

'I'm a glaciologist,' Vale said. 'In my game you get to take the long view.'

It was a reassuring little conversation. Vale was a quiet, competent man who'd seen it all. If he wasn't worried, why should I be worried? But the memory of Barney Smales nagged at me. I said, 'The Heebies

- how do they show?'

'I'm no psychologist.'

'Even so?'

'Well . . .' he hesitated. 'People start going flat. They get obsessive about little things and ignore the big ones. Then that stops and they sit and stare at their boots or something hours at a stretch. Like I say, I'm no psychologist, but I'd say it's close to classical depression.' He rose, slapped my shoulder, and added,

'Meantime, the coffee's hot, there's booze in the club, soft beds and movies. Don't worry about it. You'll live.'

I watched him go, conscious of my own confusion. Vale was so manifestly confident, his confidence based on long experience, that it was absurd to doubt him. Indeed I didn't doubt him. But along with all the reassurance, he'd handed me one disquieting thought. People, he'd said, became obsessive about little things. And a ballpoint pen was little enough.