Whiteout! Read online

  'What makes Hundred unique in Cold Regions Research installations,' Veron said, 'is that we can turn on heat and water in real quantity. So we have comfort. Heat, as you know, comes from the reactor, and with plenty of it, we can have all the water we need. This is the system that supplies it.'

  'By melting snow, of course?'

  'That's right. When Hundred opened, this well was started.

  What happened was this: they used a jet of steam to bore a hole in the snow right here where we stand, and pumped the resulting water away. So there was this narrow circular hole running down. The melted snow was tested for pollution - radioactivity mainly -and then, when we were past the 1945 snow layer, Hiroshima and so on, they began to widen it.'

  'The atom bombs contaminated snow here?'

  'Oh yeah. They sure did. But below the 1945 layer, it's clean. Now, imagine the nozzle of a hose pipe, okay ? Well, that's what we got down there, only it's steam that's coming out. The steam melts snow, water gathers in the bottom, and a pump sucks it up. The nozzle rotates slowly, under the pressure of the steam -same principle as a lawn sprinkler, you know those things? - and that means you're cutting into the snow in a circle. You with me?'

  'Ingenious,' I said.

  'And simple. By regulating the steam pressure, you regulate how far into the snow you're cutting. Don't want to cut too far, for obvious reasons. So then, gradually, the nozzle has been lowered, to melt snow farther down, and what we have right under us here is a structure shaped like . . , well, like a giant onion maybe. Narrow neck, widening out gradually.'

  I looked at the two pipes, one plastic, one flexible steel, that dropped down, from where we stood, into a black circle in the base of the huge ice chamber below. 'I don't see the nozzle, or the pump.'

  Vernon smiled. 'This is only the top onion. One little problem we got with this well is that we can't cut the bulbs too wide, otherwise we might start undermining ourselves. So, to be safe, when the top one got down a hundred and fifty feet, we went through the whole process again, cutting a neck, then opening out another onion. So now we have a structure like three onions, one on top of the other, and the steam hose is turning four hundred and some feet down. Down there in the bottom of the third bulb there'll be around a hundred thousand gallons of water and the system's automatic. As the water's drawn up, the steam comes on and melts some more.'

  'Very clever,' I said, meaning it.

  He shrugged. 'Maybe a bit too clever. We don't want to sink too many wells at Hundred, because ice is plastic and who knows what might happen if it starts to fill its own empty spaces. So we stick with this one. But maintenance gets to be kind of tricky.'

  'What kind of maintenance does it need?'

  'Maybe I used the wrong word. Should have said inspection. We have to check that everything's okay; be sure the steam jet it cutting a circle and hasn't twisted so it's eating at the snow in one direction only.'

  I blinked. 'You mean somebody really has to go down there?'

  'Sure.'

  'Tricky is an understatement, then. What you mean is dangerous.' I looked down the hole again. 'Are those things icicles?' From under the lip of the entry hole, monster spears of ice hung deep into the chamber like dragon's teeth.

  'They're another little problem. Some of the steam floats up, and it either condenses or it melts snow on the way, and icicles form and keep growing.'

  'And if one of those fell on somebody ?'

  'We got to be careful, sure. In the second and third chambers they're even bigger, but we can't knock them down or they'd smash the equipment.'

  'So who goes down ?'

  Vernon said, 'A volunteer.'

  'I can see why. Have you done it ?'

  'Yeah, I have. Twice, as a matter of fact. I kind of liked it in a spooky sort of way. It's interesting. Down there you can see the layers of snow. Every year a new layer and the deeper you go, the more the layer's been compacted by pressure. You can read history down there. If you look real hard, you can see there's a thin black line in bulb two. That's when the volcano Krakatoa erupted.'

  'But that was in Java! Did ash really get as far as this?'

  He smiled. 'So the experts say. Must have been a hell of a bang, right ? Anyway, they reckon that around five hundred feet we'll be down to snow that fell in 1492 and the major says he's gonna bottle it and market Columbus water. Don't know if we'll make it, though. I reckon - personally, you understand - that it's gotten too deep. They'll have to start another well.'

  He switched off the wall lights, and I looked at him with a certain admiration. Nothing, I thought, would persuade me into the bosun's chair that hung from the well-head framework. 'Well, thanks,' I said. 'Where now?'

  I was taken to the reactor trench where, understandably, they were rather too busy to want to entertain guests. Kelleher was already back at work, frowning and preoccupied, visibly tired with only two hours quick sleep behind him and delicate and highly responsible work to do. He looked up briefly and said, 'Come tomorrow and we'll show you the whole deal.' Next we went to the huge tractor shed, cut deep into the snow, where half-a-dozen giant tractors and bulldozers stood, as well as assorted Weasels and Polecats and, incongruous among them, two tiny orange Ski-doos, fast little snow-scooters. There were laboratories, mainly full of electrical and electronic equipment, the sleeping quarters, all like my own, stuffy and sweaty and windowless. There was a separate club for the sergeants, another for the enlisted men, and each had its rows of bottles, its tables for ping-pong and pool. The kitchens were probably as good as any of Mr Hilton's. Vernon explained it all cheerfully, still as impressed by it all as I was. It was even more impressive, as he pointed out, when you realized that every item, from the reactor itself to the knives and forks, had been hauled on sleds across a hundred miles of the icecap.

  When we'd finished, he invited me into the sergeants' club for a drink and I went with him, knowing what to expect. Nor was I wrong. Sergeants, in any army, are the people who have their affairs properly organized. An officers' mess has a social pyramid and its members range from youth to late middle age, so the social mix isn't naturally comfortable and some strain always shows. Sergeants, on the other hand, give or take a little seniority, are of similar age range, all mature men, and there are no problems about who calls who what. More important, they're the men who make an army work. So, while the officers' club was comfortable and faintly scruffy, the sergeants' club gleamed. While the officers poured their own drinks, the sergeants had a white-jacketed barman, who'd clearly been drilled and drilled again and who, when he left the army, would undoubtedly get a job in some first-class hotel, because he was skilful and had style, and was kept steady to the mark by knowledgeable eyes. I was welcomed formally by the black master sergeant, who wore a collar and tie and well-pressed khaki, and who said it was his privilege to give me my first drink, sir, and what was its name.

  I smiled to myself and asked how the sergeants had solved the problem of stuffy bedrooms, and Master Sergeant Allen said it wasn't entirely solved but would I care to see ? He showed me his own room. The pièce de résistance was a mock window complete with curtains, and behind the glass was a huge blown-up photograph of treetops and blue sky. They had, he said, nearly a hundred such photographs, and the view was changed regularly. 'Why,' I asked, 'don't the officers have pictures, too ?'

  He smiled politely. 'Maybe they didn't think about it.'

  He also explained that they had discovered how much colour helped and had arranged to have kapok sleeping bags covered in bright material, to look like quilts. Then there was the matter of starched sheets, and a faint smell of pines and the humidifiers hanging on the central heating radiator. It was all, he said, mainly psychological.

  We went back to the bar then, and the steward made Martinis, with everything coming from a big freezer behind the bar : glasses, bottles, ice, shaker. The sergeants were impressive people. I asked Vernon how long he'd been at Hundred. He said it was his third tour of duty.

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p; 'Third?' I said. 'I thought people couldn't wait to get away.'

  'No, sir, it's not like that. I enjoy my duty here. I wanted to come back.'

  'And will you again ?'

  He frowned. 'I better explain, sir. A little over two weeks back, we lost a man. Only a kid really, but I reckon it was my fault. No, sir, I won't be coming back this time. I'm quitting the army.'

  The master sergeant said, 'Nobody blames him, excepting him. Major Smales told him that, I told him, everybody told him.'

  'These things happen,' I said uncomfortably. I liked Vernon. He seemed a solid citizen, dependable and strong. 'What will you do when you leave the army?'

  'Home to Wichita,' he said. 'Look around. Find some job. I'll be okay. But let's talk about something else, huh ? Tell us about that air-cushion vehicle of yours.'

  I did, and with some relief. The two of them were deeply aware of the need for faster transport over the icecap, knew the problems and gave me as much information as I gave them.

  After I left the sergeants' club I went over to the radio room to see if there was any news of the Swing's progress. There wasn't; the last contact had been at midnight and the radio operator suspected the snow train had run into a white-out, which would make contact unlikely and almost certainly stop the train.

  'I thought nothing stopped it.'

  'Just white-outs, sir. Bad one, you get just no visibility at all. Air's full of minute ice particles and it looks like milk. No sky, no horizon, no ground. You just have to wait till it goes away.'

  'How long does that take?'

  'Minutes, hours, days, who knows ? Then you get a wind and pfft, it's over.'

  I went in to lunch. Neither Kelleher nor Barney Smales was present, but the silent young officer I'd sat beside the previous day was there.

  'May I join you?'

  'Surely. Guess I owe you some kind of apology.'

  'No,' I said.

  He made an effort to be friendly, but his heart wasn't in it. He apologized again and said he couldn't seem to throw off the gloom.

  'Can't the doctor help?'

  'Happy pills ? Gets a whole lot worse when they wear off, so I stopped them. Sounds crazy, I know, but what I really want is a good long walk.'

  'Difficult.'

  'Impossible. But I guess it's kind of an idée fixe. Something in my head says if I can take the walk, it will be okay. But I can't, so round I go in circles.' He smiled faintly, embarrassed at the revelation.

  I said, 'It's claustrophobia, really.'

  'Yeah, I know.'

  'Everybody's got it, more or less.'

  'I know that, too. It's just. . , you know what happened?'

  I shook my head.

  'They were out at the seismology hut, that's around three hundred yards out on the cap. There was a sudden bad phase and they were trapped three days in there. When it cleared a little they started back and hit a white-out. Three hundred goddam yards and they hit a white-out ! Daylight, clear air, but it just fell on them. Didn't last but a few hours, either, but somehow Charlie got loose from the guide-line. Sergeant Vernon, he's a real good man, he stayed there an hour, damn near froze to death; he shouted and he damn well waited, but Charlie was gone! Just vanished right into the cap.'

  I said, 'Vernon feels badly. You know he's leaving the army?'

  'Yeah, I know.'

  When we'd finished eating, I said, 'Since you can't go for a walk, how about exercise of a different kind? Ping-pong.'

  He started to say no thanks, changed his mind and said, 'Why not ?' and we played for more than an hour, working up a sweat in the heated recreation hut. At first he seemed to have difficulty in keeping his mind on the game, but after a while the old American hatred of being beaten at any game began to assert itself, and he played a good deal better, the lines disappearing from his brow as healthy perspiration gathered on it. Ping-pong seems a pretty feeble palliative, but at least when we'd finished he wasn't any worse and may have been a fraction better.

  Afterwards I had a shower, then lay for a while on my bed, reading. I was bored, frustrated by inactivity and conscious of not belonging. Once my TK4 arrived, I'd have a purpose and things to do; meanwhile I was something of a nuisance, a spare body hanging around asking tourist-type questions and wasting time. And if inactivity could bore me so quickly, what must it be like for some of the others, Doc Kirton, for instance, who had to endure it for a whole six-month tour? I decided I'd go and alleviate his boredom and my own, and perhaps find out what kind of bacteria polar bears carried around, so I put on all the layers of clothing and walked round to the hospital. Kirton's outer office was empty, but there was a red light glowing on the door of the operating theatre. He must have heard me come in, though, because he called, 'Who is it ?'

  I told him and he called back, 'I got something to show you, but I'm busy right now. See you later.'

  So I left. It might have saved a lot of trouble if I'd just sat in his office and waited.

  Instead I went to the library and got a couple of books, then returned to my room to read. In fact I dozed off, awakening just in time for dinner, and after dinner there were a couple of quick drinks and then the evening's film, the Burton/Taylor Cleopatra, which seemed to go on for ever. Just before I finally went to sleep that night, I remember thinking that for the first time since my arrival, nothing unpleasant had happened that day. The damaged generator was apparently in working order again, the reactor was due to go critical tomorrow. It was a reassuring thought to sleep on.

  Unfortunately, it wasn't true.

  On the way to a late breakfast next morning, I called in at the radio room, hoping for news of the Swing, but there was none; they were still out of radio contact. The operator smiled at my anxiety. 'Don't worry about it; the Swing always makes it. Weather's good, they're quick. Weather's bad, they're slow. But they sure as hell get here.'

  I nodded, thanked him, and left. It looked like being another fragmented, tedious day and I really wasn't looking forward to it. The stuffiness in my room had given me a rough mouth and a dull headache and I decided that after I'd eaten, I'd go and get a couple of aspirins from Kirton. Everybody else must have breakfasted earlier. The result was that I ate alone and consequently quickly. I stayed at the table long enough to smoke a cigarette, then put on all the wrappings again and left for the hospital. Kirton wasn't there and I debated rummaging around for aspirin in his cupboards, but decided against it in case what I took turned out to be cascara, or something. So I went to the Officers' Club and drank coffee and read Time magazine while the headache got worse. An hour later, Kirton still hadn't shown up at the Officers' Club and, when I returned to the hospital, he wasn't there either. Hoping the cool air that blew along Main Street would clear my head, I took a stroll towards the command trench. But I never got there. At the far end of Main Street, where the tunnel led up on to the cap, a group of men were standing beside the bulldozer. I walked towards them and, as I came closer, saw they were looking at something on the ground. I couldn't see what it was, because there were too many people; I just kept walking until I reached them. About five seconds later, I was doubled over by the wall, vomiting my breakfast back, retching until I thought my boots would come up.

  A single glance had been enough to tell me what had happened : a man had been ground to pulp under the fifty-six-inch steel track of the bulldozer, and all that was left was a ghastly smear of blood, flesh and ripped clothing.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and Barney Smales's voice said, 'Get the hell out of here, Mr Bowes.' He spoke gently, but he meant it.

  I retched dryly once more, then straightened, and asked, 'Who?'

  Smales said, 'It's kinda hard to tell. We think it's Doc Kirton. Now go !'

  Chapter 5

  I went, not looking back. One look had been more than enough. In the officers' club I found a bottle of brandy and poured a large slug down my throat. Inevitably, it merely made me sick again. Apart from that it did nothing and my mind continued to prese
nt me with its snapshot of the scene, of Kirton, plastered in bloody fragments over the ice floor and the bulldozer's track. I shivered and tried the brandy again and this time, thankfully, it stayed down. Then I went to find the master sergeant and said, 'Give me some work. Manual work.'

  He looked at me sympathetically. 'You saw, huh?'

  'I saw.'

  'Shovelling snow is good,' he said, and actually ran with me to the other end of Main Street, where he gave me a spade and pointed to the ramp and said, 'You can't dig it all away, but you can try.'

  I worked like a dog until I was exhausted, until sweat streamed down my body, attacking the snow with deliberate fury to try to drive the other scene from my mind, until my body and mind were protesting not at memory but at strain. At last, still feeling foul but with some degree of self-control restored, I replaced the shovel on its wall bracket and staggered back along Main Street to the command trench and went in to see Barney Smales.

  He scowled at me and said, 'I told you to get the hell out!'

  'And sit twiddling my thumbs thinking about it!'

  'Nothing else you can do. Nothing any of us can do.'

  'You can tell me how it happened!'

  He said wearily, 'How can I? I don't know myself. 'Dozer went right over him. More than once. Driver didn't see him, so it looks like he was covered in snow.'

  I stared at him. 'You mean he was already dead?'

  Barney Smales sighed and his lips tightened.

  'Don't you think it's rather important to know?'

  His eyes snapped angrily. 'And don't you think, Mr Bowes, that you're being just a little bit insubordinate! You a morbid pathologist as well as a fan flyer?'