Whiteout! Read online

  '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 n
ews 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?'

  Chapter 11

  We were not talking only about Kelleher any more.

  I said, 'Are you guessing?'

  He took a swig of coffee, swallowed, shook his head. Then he sighed and his shoulders sank.

  'Yes, sir, I'm guessing. But - '

  I waited, but he didn't go on. 'But what?'

  'It's hard to describe. The men are low, sir. Low mentally, low physically. They're under pressure. Too many things have happened already. Now we have another.' He nodded towards the ward and Kelleher. 'Already one guy cracked.'

  'He's been working day and night,' I said, 'under far greater strain than - '

  'Sure he has, sir. And why? Because every goddam thing has broken down. The men know that. But why has everything gone crazy? They don't know that And I don't know, and you don't know, and Major Smales, he don't know.'

  I said, 'What are they saying?'

  He hesitated. 'Jinx, maybe.'

  'People always talk about jinxes when things go wrong,' I said. 'While we've been developing that hovercraft, there have been jinxes all along the line. When you get the right answer the jinx goes away.' As I listened to my own voice pouring out soothing syrup, I was vaguely ashamed of myself. He was articulating some of my own doubts, and I was treating him the way Barney Smales had treated me. I added lamely, conciliatorily, 'Most of the time, anyway.'

  'And when they don't go away, sir?'

  Bad trouble, I thought, but didn't say it. Instead I asked, 'What else are they saying, jinxes aside?'

  The medic looked at me, blinking.

  I said, 'Go on. What do they say?'

  He hesitated. 'Well, sir. One of the guys had one of those James Bond books.'

  I forced a grin. 'Well, he's not here.'

  'No, sir. Maybe I kinda wish he was.' He too forced a thin smile. 'Anyway, at the front there was this quote from Al Capone. What he said was , "Once is happenstance, second time coincidence. Third time it's enemy action." '

  I nodded. It was precisely what any group of men would be saying in these circumstances; I'd thought the same thoughts myself. But there were holes in the theory you could drive a tractor through. Kelleher was one such hole. I said, 'But who's the enemy? And why the action?'

  He shrugged. 'Who knows?'

  'All right,' I said. I was thinking: the medic was the first to share my own earlier suspicions, or, at least, the first to put them into words. And he knew Camp Hundred and its occupants a great deal better than I did. 'Let's take these things one at once. Start with the enemy. Who could it be?'

  Again the thin smile. 'It could be any man here.'

  'Me, included?'

  'Well, yes, sir!'

  'Or you?'

  'Sure.'

  I said, "The helicopter crash and the man who got lost on the surface were long before I got here. Does that let me out ? And you were here.'

  He said, 'Aw hell, it's not me.'

  'Then who? Have the men been speculating?'

  'Sure.'

  'And?'

  'There's three hundred men plus. Could be any one of them.'

  'No favourites?'

  'No, sir.'

  'Has it been narrowed down? Ten men, five, two?'

  'No, sir. Look - ' he exhaled noisily, in exasperation. 'A posting up here to Camp Hundred is .., well, it's not always popular. Some guys like it, or maybe they just like the idea, right? But when you're here, a month or so and all you want is out.'

  'So it's somebody who wants out ? And to get out, he's ready to sabotage the whole installation?'

  He nodded. 'Something like that. Who knows what happens in people's heads?'

  'Aren't you forgetting,' I said, 'that this nut of yours, whoever he is, is placing himself in exactly the same danger he's forcing on everybody else? If the whole place becomes inoperable and they have to get everybody out, he could be the last man to leave, not the first. And if it were to reach the point where people began to die, his chance of dying is the same as everybody else's.'

  'Sure I thought of it. But did he? Maybe we're talking about a psychotic. Maybe he just hates the place and everyone in it and he can't think beyond hitting at it.'

  I said, 'I like that theory a lot less even than the bad luck theory. And if you think about the things that have happened, one by
one, there are a lot that nobody could have manufactured.'

  'Like?'

  'Like Mr Kelleher. Like the polar bear that slashed the fuel tank. Like the helicopter crash.'

  He gave that thin smile again. 'Okay, sir, I got me a persecution complex. But there's things some guy could have done. Sabotaging engines, killing Doc Kirton - and, sir, that sure hasn't been explained. Not to me, not so I'd believe it.'

  'It hasn't been explained to anybody's satisfaction,' I said. 'But do you know something special ?'

  'Yes, sir] Since you ask me, I sure do.'

  'Go on.'

  'Put it this way. Captain Kirton's, body was by the main tunnel entrance, right ?'

  I nodded.

  'Okay. Well, the Doc never went near the tunnel entrances. He had a kind of a block about it. He commuted between the hospital, the mess hall and the officers' club, that's what he said. He'd never been on top and he wasn't going till the day he went back Stateside.'

  I said, 'It's a very thin story.'

  'He said it more than once.'

  'Even so, I can puncture that argument myself. The day the bear got in, he was with me, right beside the entrance. He went into the fuel storage tunnel to see what the bear had done.'

  The medic shrugged helplessly and gave a little grimace. 'It's just a feeling, sir. But to my certain knowledge .. . Well, he told me one time he hadn't been past the officers' club trench one side, and the reactor trench the other, in all the time he was here. He told me, sir. So one night - night, remember that, because the Doc spent all his nights in the club, you ask anyone - one night he goes along there and he dies. And snow buries his body and then the 'dozer turns him into ground beef. Story is he has a thrombosis, or something, right? He walks down there, where he never goes, and he has this thrombosis, and he falls down dead right where the snowblow'll cover him and the 'dozer'll mash him up.'

  The medic's voice had risen as he spoke; he was arguing his case intensely, and, to me at least, fairly convincingly.

  But I couldn't take his side; I couldn't say, that's right, I see it all now - and then spend another hour rooting with him through Camp Hundred's assorted troubles, because to do so would be to apply fuel to hot places. The medic felt strongly, and sooner or later, back with his mates, he'd talk it all over, and anything I'd said would be tossed into the eddies of speculation. Also it seemed to me that at the moment, with Kirton dead, the medic was pretty important to everybody at Hundred and the best thing I could do was to make some attempt to restore his morale. So I egged him on to talk about himself, his home town, his army career, his girl-friends and so on. It wasn't a particularly easy conversation, and it ended when Allen came out of the ward and said it was my turn to watch over the patient.