Whiteout! Read online

  A hand slapped my arm. 'Move!' Barney Smales said. The rear ramp was already lowering and the freezing air had flooded in. I rose and followed him to the ramp, down the stairs and into the waiting Polecat. Kelleher followed, slamming the door. He slumped in his seat for a long moment, then summoned a grin. He said, 'Uncle Sam wants ten years of my life and the taxes.'

  We waited perhaps two minutes before Smales joined us. He looked angry and Kelleher asked why.

  'She's freezing down. Can't wait. Okay, let's go.' As the Polecat moved off I saw the Caribou through the windscreen, already taxiing.

  I said,’ Not that fast?'

  Smales said, 'She stood a minute and she was sticking. Three and the ski runners would be fast. There's never time. Never any damn time!'

  'So she's empty?' Kelleher asked.

  'Damn right.'

  I understood then. The bodies. The Caribou had to go without taking the bodies and they'd stay at Camp Hundred, radiating depression, until the next weather slot opened.

  The little Polecat scampered over the snow, moved on to a sudden downslope, and a second or two later had entered a long, brightly-lit tunnel whose snow walls were festooned with pipes and cables.

  Smales tapped the driver's shoulder. 'My trench.'

  When the Polecat stopped, Smales jumped out, and we followed him through an archway into another and smaller tunnel in which stood a big wooden hut decorated with the crest of the Corps of Engineers' Polar Research and Development group with the word Commander stencilled in orange on the door. Smales opened it and went inside, pausing to kick snow off his boots.

  A black man with a master sergeant's multitudinous stripes looked up and said quietly, 'Okay, sir?'

  Smales nodded. 'Sure. What's new?'

  'No problems, sir.'

  'You sure of that ?'

  'I'm sure.'

  'You put that can in the wall?'

  'Soon as I heard you were coming, sir, I put the can in.'

  'Good.' Smales jerked his head. 'Follow me, gentlemen.'

  We trooped after him, back into the main tunnel and then into another side trench. The hut there bore the words 'Officers' Club'. Instead of going directly in, Smales walked towards the tunnel wall. From a hole in the wall, a length of thin orange line hung down. He pulled on the line until a stainless steel bottle came out. Holding it reverently in mittened hands, he walked towards the hut. Kelleher, smiling, opened the door with a flourish and Smales marched in first. We entered a pleasant, comfortable bar and Smales put the bottle carefully on the counter, then went behind it and took three glasses from a shelf and, opening the cap of the bottle, poured an almost watery fluid into the glasses. Then the mittens came off as he handed us the glasses.

  He raised his own. 'The welcome you just had, gentlemen, was not in Camp Hundred's best traditions. We aim to start improving that right now. A votre santé! With the French toast he gave a little Germanic bow and poured half the contents of the glass down his throat.

  I wondered what it was, sipped it, and identified a dry Martini. I said, 'My God, it's cold!'

  'Among other things,' Smales said, 'we have perfected the art of Martooni here.' He poured the second half after the first. 'There are people in this club "who call it Martini University. Swallow it. You need one well down to appreciate the velvet texture of the second.' He bustled round producing olives and onions, peanuts and pretzels. 'When I retire from this man's army, I'm gonna open a bar and make a million. Make a better Martooni and sure as hell the world will beat a track to your door. Beats the hell out of the mousetrap. Now, gentlemen. Tonight we dine with class. State your requirements. Cookie's got a whole two hours.'

  The man's gaiety was remarkable and infectious. He'd walked in here, fresh from an experience that still had my scalp crawling, and had turned on the good cheer, had literally switched it on. But there was nothing spurious about it. He was back in his kingdom and happy about it, and his natural ebullience placed the experience squarely behind him and would doubtless keep it there. He was an intricate man.

  But I couldn't forget. It was all too recent and the mental scar tissue would stay with me. When I could, when a suitable moment occurred, I was going to ask what exactly had happened, but the moment refused to occur naturally; Kelleher was telling Irish jokes and Smales was telling Jewish jokes Cohen had told him down at Camp Belvoir. Finally I asked him about it as we stood side by side under the showers an hour or so later.

  He said, 'Arctic foxes.'

  By that time I was mildly befuddled with his treacherous Martinis and thought he was joking. I laughed politely and he said, 'They're not funny.'

  'AH right."

  He said, 'It happens this way. The foxes follow the Swings up along the trail, living off garbage. The Swing crews bury it, but the foxes dig it up and follow the source of supply. Here we bury our garbage deep, so those old foxes, they're goddam hungry.'

  'Hungry enough to eat electric cable?'

  'Not the cable, no. But they chew off the insulating material. We got the lights strung both sides of the runway, but one good bite in the right place and you got a dead fox and a lot of darkness !'

  'Can't you get rid of them?'

  He said, 'It's a sin of omission. Sure, we could put down poison bait, but Jesus, did you ever see an Arctic fox? They're beautiful, believe me. If I could shoot 'em clean, then sure. But poison, no sir.'

  'No matter how dangerous ?'

  He put on a heavy Southern accent. 'Ah see yo'all is a logician, sir.' Then switched it oft". 'The answer's no to poison.'

  That was the moment the lights went out.

  Chapter 3

  Barney Smales said, 'Stand still.'

  'I wasn't thinking of moving.'

  There were slopping noises as he moved round in the darkness and first one shower was turned off, then the other. 'Better hold on to my hand. You'll trip over something and break your limey neck.' He led me quietly across the wooden floor of the big hut and round a partition to where towels and clothes hung.

  'It must be nice,' I said, 'to be able to see in the dark. What's caused all this?'

  'Generator.'

  'Is it serious ?' I found the towel and began to rub myself dry.

  Smales said, 'It's one out of three. Plenty of back-up. But if the stand-by generator fails to come in, why, then we could be in a little trouble. Just move your limey ass, huh?'

  I stopped towelling, and began feeling for my clothes, and asked, 'How' long before it matters?'

  'Four minutes. Five maybe. No more. After that the water pipes start freezing. They freeze, they bust wide open and then, brother, we got to rebuild the whole damn structure.'

  The lights came on again. Smales was fully dressed and fastening his boots. I was still trying to button my shirt. He said, 'Okay now. Take your time. Reckon you can find your way to the club?'

  I nodded.

  'I want this little explanation about generator breakdown.'

  Fully-dressed, snow-booted and parka-ed, I closed the door of the shower hut, stepped out into the chill of the tunnel, and glanced at the pipes that hung up there on the snow wall. The hazard was obvious. The pipes were bound with insulating material, but they hung an inch away from snow so compacted that it was almost ice. There were heaters built in at intervals along the pipes. With the system working, you turned on a tap and hot water came out; after four minutes without power, the men at Hundred would find themselves melting snow in old buckets for drinking water. I shivered briefly in the icy air, stopped looking at the pipes, and hurried off to the club trench. To reach it, I had to go into the big, central tunnel, the one they called Main Street, and there I looked again at the long lines of pipes and electrical conduits suspended from the walls. Camp Hundred ate up a lot of power.

  With Smales away at the generators and Kelleher already busy at the reactor, there was nobody I knew in the club. I stood for a moment in the doorway, looking at the little scene of Polar domesticity. Over in a corner, four me
n sat at a card table, three concentrating hard, one leaning back, hands in pockets, watching his partner. The place was quiet and even the four or five men at the bar were turned towards the card players. Then one of them turned, saw me and came over. 'You're Mr Bowes, from England?'

  'Yes.'

  'Glad to have you here. I'm George Herschel, engineering.' He was a major, fiftyish, red hair greying, broad and cheerful.

  We shook hands and I nodded towards the card players. 'Something important?'

  Herschel grinned. 'See the guy in the corner? Well, he's got a kind of weakness for little slams. People listen to the bidding with half an ear and then when he has a slam going, we kinda make a bet or two.'

  I smiled. 'Will he make it?'

  'He better. They been redoubled. Drink?'

  'Thank you.'

  'Take your pick.' I looked along the lines of whisky bottles, then began counting. There were more than thirty brands: Scotch, Bourbon, Irish, Canadian.

  'Tomatin,' I said, 'since it's there.'

  He poured for me. 'Barney. He likes a bar to offer a choice. Ice?'

  I shook my head. 'Just water.'

  He passed the water jug and said, 'Now, let's see. Just what was happening in England around the middle of the seventeenth century ? Don't wonder why. Just answer.'

  I thought for a moment. 'Mayflower? The Pilgrim Fathers?'

  He nodded. 'The water you're drinking fell as snow right around that time. Water well's down to over four hundred feet. We melt the snow for water.'

  I poured water and raised my glass. 'To the Pilgrim Fathers?'

  'Right.' We drank. 'Now come meet some of the guys.'

  The little slam went down to mixed jeers and applause, money changed hands and after that I was made to feel very welcome, and also was sharply cross-questioned. I had, after all, been in the real world only a short time ago and they wanted reassurance that it was still there.

  'I do seem to recall,' the slam-loser said, 'that they used to have something called girls out there. That right?'

  'They used to be there,' I said. 'They've become extinct while you've been away.'

  The conversation wasn't exactly elevated, but it was fairly typical. The society was recognizable, and its patterns, or most of them, were familiar. Here was the atmosphere of all the places where men are thrown together, unassorted, in a group, and have to learn to live with it. There was the endless flow of bad jokes and badinage, the careful but occasional and elaborate courtesy, the wall pin-ups and the bar. Claustrophobia in comfort, but claustrophobia.

  The doctor saw me looking round and said, 'Not a sane man in the place. Nor a window.' His name was Kirton and he was a tall, dark, heavy-set New Yorker.

  'Not even you?'

  'Me least of all.'

  'What are you suffering from ?'

  'Me? Loneliness.'

  'No patients?'

  'You kidding? I'm a gynaecologist, in theory anyway. Play chess?'

  'Sorry.'

  He said mournfully, 'I'm in the wrong army. There was one chess player up here. Just one, then he went back. All they send up here is bridge players. Now if I was in the Red Army...'

  Herschel said, 'Be grateful, Doc. You'll be back home in three months. They do three years.'

  'But there's chess. The years go quickly. What's tonight's movie?'

  Herschel said, 'I dunno. Grapes of Wrath, maybe Gone with the Wind:

  Kirton winced. 'I keep begging them. If you're in the old movie business, I tell them, let's have Birth of a Nation or something. Keep me in touch with my specialty. You like music?'

  'Yes.'

  'Drop by tomorrow. I got an operating room, the acoustics are great. Good coffee too and beautiful blondes.'

  'The blondes are on the walls,' Herschel said.

  The door opened and closed. I glanced round. Barney Smales was hanging up his parka by the door and silence fell. For a moment I thought it was in deference to his rank, but when Kirton said, 'So who threw the switch, Barney?' all he got was little looks of irritation. The silence sprang from tension; they were waiting for Smales's news, anxious about it.

  He said, 'Fuel, they reckon. Fitters are stripping it right down.'

  Somebody behind me asked, 'How long?'

  Smales shrugged. 'All night maybe. Feed pipes may be clogged. Who knows? Hey, Doc, give those fitters something so they stay awake, huh?'

  'Sure,' Kirton said. He turned to me and winked. 'An opportunity, they said in the army literature, to practise real medicine in on-the-spot conditions. They really said that. Benzedrine for diesel fitters !'

  Smales said, 'Meanwhile, in honour of our British guest, we're having a change of movie tonight.' He looked at me with bright-eyed amusement. 'We're gonna run Scott of the Antarctic. And for those of you who are always complaining about too many dames, I'll tell you. After half-way through reel one, it's all men with beards. Great, great, great entertainment!' He came over and clapped me on the shoulder. 'Just want to make you popular.'

  At dinner, I found myself seated next to a young lieutenant named Foster, clean-cut, well-pressed and shiny. Also morose, or perhaps my choice of word is poor; but certainly I thought him morose at the time. Later I learned he was depressed with good reason : the man who'd been lost on the surface a couple of weeks earlier had been a young cousin of his. At any rate, he didn't much want to talk and I was beginning by now to feel tired. Seven thousand feet up on the icecap, weariness settles easily. Later, like the rest of them, I endured the Antarctic manfully, contrasting the appalling suffering of Scott's party with the thirty brands of whisky in the club. Everybody else, everybody, that is, who stayed awake, must have done the same. When the lights came up, Barney Smales was on his feet quickly, looking at faces, smiling a little to himself. Even his choice of films had psychological purpose.

  Then I went to bed. I switched off the light and lay in the darkness, eyes open, thinking about this weird place and the people I'd been put among. They were proud of Camp Hundred, yet it sat on them like lead weights. They tried so hard to create a tolerable environment where nature was deeply unwilling to tolerate life. They had beaten back nature, but not very far, and it lay outside, up above, all around, snarling and whistling and waiting. Above me was the ceiling, above that the tunnel roof, and above that forty-knot winds and forty-minus temperatures and a million or so square miles of snow. I snuggled lower in the warm bed and thought soberly that the TK4's trials would be trials indeed, and not just for the machine.

  Next morning the room was stuffy and sweaty. Too warm, too airless and four blank walls with only the outline of the door frame for relief. I dressed, walked to the shower hut, undressed, showered and shaved, dressed, went to the mess hall, took off two layers of clothing and saw Kelleher champing stolidly at a plateful of steak and eggs. Picking up a moulded plastic tray, 1 moved along the cafeteria line, making my selections. Corn flakes, milk that was cold and delicious and apparently fresh but which I later learned was reconstituted, ham and eggs and tomatoes, fresh bread rolls that were still warm from the oven, fruit juice, coffee. Then I joined Kelleher and said the logistics were impressive.

  He nodded, unimpressed, and said he thought the tomatoes were showing their age. I said it was miraculous they were there at all, since they'd had to travel umpteen thousand miles in conditions ill-tuned to the well-being of tomatoes.

  Kelleher said, 'Well, I'll tell you, bud. This is not a day you'll find me whistling in admiration of the miracles of technology.'

  'Trouble with the reactor?'

  'That's what that thing is ? You could have fooled me. It looks like a goddam junk yard.'

  I waited. He flicked a sour glance at me. 'You'd think, maybe, that a guy wouldn't carry money in a top pocket when he's working in clean environments. So what happens is this. We renew the uranium rods, we get the water in all nice and clean. No spillages, no bumps, no problems. We're all ready to start warming, right? Go critical in a few hours, right? So I take a last loo
k around first before we throw the switches, and what do I see?'

  I said I couldn't imagine.

  'Two quarters and a goddam nickel, that's what I see. Right there in the kettle. What do those guys think they're gonna do in there, dive for pennies?'

  'So what happens now ?'

  He forked egg into his mouth and washed it down with coffee. 'Sleep, that's what. Then we take the goddam thing apart again, then we work all night again, and then tomorrow maybe, if some idiot don't drop his knife and fork in there, we start thinking about going critical again.'

  I said, 'Tough luck.'

  Kelleher put down his fork. 'No,' he said. 'I can take tough luck. Buddy, I know all about the psychology problems they got. Sure they get tired. Concentration gets thin. Sure. But this is carelessness and, what's worse, it's dangerous carelessness. You get outside metallic contamination when that baby's critical and you really got problems.'

  Kirton joined us then, nursing a cup of coffee. Kelleher said, 'What you'll do, Doc, is you'll get pale and thin and die. Where's your two thousand calories ?'

  Kirton said, 'I'm not like you. I lie around all day getting fat. Sometimes I think I might as well take the ice-cream and the bread and apply them direct to my waistline here. That's where they finish up anyway and it would sure take a load off my digestive system. How's the steam engine?'

  Kelleher made a rude noise.

  'Oh yeah! And number one diesel?'

  'Who knows!' Kelleher looked round the mess hall, then pointed with his fork. 'Either they just finished, or they're still working on it. See over there? Those guys with the oil there are diesel fitters.'

  I looked across. Three men sat at a table in near silence, eating, and looking unhappy. I said, 'I don't think they've finished.'

  'Half systems go,' Kirton said.

  'Half?' I was conscious all the time of being the new boy, the one full of naive questions, the one who sat quietly and listened.

  Kelleher said, 'One reactor, three diesel generators. Belt, suspenders and two hands to hold the pants up, right ? So now the belt's broken and the suspenders have gone. Two diesel generators left and we're holding our own pants up.'