Alistair MacLean Arctic Chillers 4-Book Collection: Night Without End, Ice Station Zebra, Bear Island, Athabasca

When I got below, Jackstraw was on his feet, presiding over the coffee-pot. He smiled at me, and his face was as fresh and rested as if he’d had nine hours on a feather bed behind him. But then Jackstraw never showed fatigue or distress under any circumstances: his tolerance to sleeplessness and the most exhausting toil was phenomenal.

He was the only one on his feet, but far from the only one awake: of those in the bunks, only Senator Brewster was still asleep. The others were facing into the centre of the room, a few propped up on their elbows: all of them were shivering, and shivering violently, their faces blue and white and pinched with the cold. Some were looking at Jackstraw, wrinkling their noses in anticipation of the coffee, the pungent smell of which already filled the cabin; others were staring in fascination at the sight of the ice on the roof melting as the temperature rose, melting, dripping down to the floor in a dozen different places and there beginning to form tiny stalagmites of ice, building up perceptibly before their eyes: the temperature on the cabin floor must have been almost forty degrees lower than that at the roof.

‘Good morning, Dr Mason.’ Marie LeGarde tried to smile at me, but it was a pathetic effort, and she looked ten years older than she had on the previous night: she was one of the few with a sleeping-bag, but even so she must have passed a miserable six hours, and there is nothing so exhausting to the human body as uncontrollable night-long shivering, a vicious circle in which the more one shivers the more tired one becomes, and the more tired the less resistance to cold and hence the more shivering. For the first time, I knew that Marie LeGarde was an old woman.

‘Good morning,’ I smiled. ‘How did you enjoy your first night in your new home?’

‘First night!’ Even in the sleeping-bag her movements of clasping her arms together and huddling her head down between her shoulders were unmistakable. ‘I hope to heaven that it’s the last night. You run a very chilly establishment here, Dr Mason.’

‘I’m sorry. Next time we’ll keep watches and have the stove on all night.’ I pointed to the water splashing down to the floor. ‘The place is heating up already. You’ll feel better when you have some hot coffee inside you.’

‘I’ll never feel better again,’ she declared vigorously, but the twinkle was back in her eye. She turned to the young German girl in the next bunk. ‘And how do you feel this morning, my dear?’

‘Better, thank you, Miss LeGarde.’ She seemed absurdly grateful that anyone should even bother to ask. ‘I don’t feel a thing now.’

‘Means nothing,’ Miss LeGarde assured her cheerfully. ‘Neither do I. It’s just that we’re both frozen stiff … And how did you survive the night, Mrs Dansby-Gregg?’

‘As you say, I survived.’ Mrs Dansby-Gregg smiled thinly. ‘As Dr Mason observed last night, this is not the Ritz … That coffee smells delicious. Bring me a cup over, Fleming, will you?’

I picked up one of the cups Jackstraw had poured out and took it across to the young German girl who was struggling to unzip her sleeping-bag with her one good arm. Her embarrassment and discomfort were obvious, but I knew I’d no option, the time to stop this nonsense was before ever it had a chance to start.

‘You stay where you are, young lady, and drink this.’ She took the cup reluctantly, and I turned away. ‘You’ve surely forgotten, Mrs Dansby-Gregg, that Helene has a broken collar-bone?’

The expression on her face made it quite obvious that she hadn’t forgotten, but she was no fool. The gossip columnists would murder her for this, if they got hold of it. In her circle, an outward if meaningless conformity to the accepted mores and virtues of the day was a sine qua non: the knife between the ribs was permitted, but only to the accompaniment of the well-bred smile.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’d quite forgotten, of course.’ Her eyes were cold and hard, and I knew I had an enemy. That didn’t worry me, but I found the very triviality of the whole thing irritating beyond measure when there were so many other and vastly more important things to talk about. But less than thirty seconds later we had forgotten all about it, even, I am sure, Mrs Dansby-Gregg herself.

I was just handing Marie LeGarde a cup when someone screamed. It wasn’t really loud, I suppose, but in that confined space it had a peculiarly piercing and startling quality. Marie LeGarde’s arm jerked violently and the scalding contents of the coffee-cup were emptied over my bare hand.

I hardly noticed the pain. It was Margaret Ross, the young stewardess, who had screamed, and she was now kneeling, half in and half out of her sleeping-bag, one rigidly spread-fingered hand stretched out at arm’s length before her, the other clasped over her mouth as she stared down at the figure lying near her on the floor. I pushed her to one side and sank on to my own knees.

In that bitter cold it was impossible to be any way sure, but I felt reasonably certain that the young pilot had been dead for several hours. I knelt there for a long time, just looking down at him, and when I finally rose to my feet I did so like an old man, a defeated old man, and I felt as cold, almost, as the dead man lying there. Everyone was wide awake now, everyone staring at me, the eyes of nearly all of them reflecting the superstitious horror which the presence of sudden and unexpected death brings to those who are unaccustomed to it. It was Johnny Zagero who broke the silence.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he, Dr Mason?’ His low voice sounded a little husky. ‘That head injury—’ His voice trailed off.

‘Cerebral hæmorrhage,’ I said quietly, ‘as far as I can tell.’

I lied to him. There was no shadow of doubt in my mind as to the cause of death. Murder. The young boy had been ruthlessly, cold-bloodedly murdered: lying there unconscious, gravely injured and with his hands strapped helplessly to his sides, he had been smothered as easily, as surely, as one might smother a very little child.

We buried him out on the ice-cap, not fifty yards from the place where he had died. Bringing his stiffened body out of the hatch was a grisly job, but we managed it and laid him on the snow while we sawed out a shallow grave for him in the light of one of our torches. It was impossible to dig it out: that frozen ringing surface turned shovel blades as would a bar of iron: even at eighteen inches, the impacted névé of snow and ice defied the serrated spearpoints of our special snow saws. But it was deep enough and within a few hours the eternal ice-drift would have smoothed its blanket across the grave, and we would never be able to find it again. The Reverend Joseph Smallwood murmured some sort of burial service over the grave but his teeth chattered so violently in the cold and his voice was so low and indistinct and hurried that I could hardly catch a word of it. I thought wryly that heavenly forgiveness for this indecent haste was unlikely to be withheld: by all odds it must have been by far the coldest funeral service that Mr Smallwood had ever conducted.

Back in the cabin, breakfast was a sketchy and silent affair. Even in the steadily rising warmth, the melancholy gloom was an almost palpable blanket under the dripping ceiling. Hardly anybody said anything, hardly anybody ate anything. Margaret Ross ate nothing, and when she finally set down her coffee-cup, the contents had scarcely been touched.

You’re overdoing it, my dear, I thought viciously, you’re carrying the grief-stricken act just a little too far: a little longer, and even the others will start wondering – and they have no suspicions at all, you damned inhuman little murderess.

For I had no suspicions either – only certainty. There was no doubt in my mind at all but that she had smothered the young pilot. She was only slightly built – but then it would have required only slight strength. Lashed to the cot as he had been, he wouldn’t even have been able to drum his heels as he had died. I could feel my flesh crawl at the very thought.

She had killed him, just as she had broken the radio and doped the passengers. He had been killed, obviously, to keep him from talking – about what, I couldn’t even begin to guess, any more than I could guess the reason for the destruction of the radio, except that she clearly did not want the news of the crash broadcast to the outer world. But why in the world destroy the radio in the first place, surely she must have known how essential it was for survival? But then, after all, how was she even to have guessed that: she might well have thought that we had big fast tractors that could have whipped them down to the coast in a matter of a couple of days. For that matter, she might have thought she was a great deal nearer the coast than we really were – it was impossible, surely, that she had genuinely imagined that we were in Iceland. Or was it?

My thoughts were spinning now in an unbreakable circle. I knew I was getting nowhere, couldn’t possibly get anywhere without some fresh information. As it was, I was only confusing myself the more with the passing of every moment. I gave it up then, promising myself that from now on I would watch her every possible minute of the day. I looked at her again, covertly, and she was staring vacantly at one of the glowing embers of the stove. Planning her next move, no doubt, planning it as cleverly as the last: asking me last night about the pilot’s chances of survival, doubtless to decide whether he would have to be killed or could safely be left to die, had been clever enough, but insisting on sleeping next to the man she had meant to kill had been nothing short of brilliant. On that account alone no one would ever suspect her, even if the fact that it had been murder became known. And it wouldn’t: I intended keeping that to myself. Or did she suspect I suspected? Heaven only knew. All I knew was that she must be playing for tremendous stakes. Or that she was mad.

It was just after eleven o’clock. Joss and Jackstraw were in a corner by themselves, stripping down the smashed transmitter, while the rest were grouped in a large semi-circle round the stove. They looked wan and sickly and were sitting very still indeed. They looked unwell because the first greyness of the noon twilight was stealing through our rimed skylights and it did unflattering things to any complexion: and they sat so still because I had just explained to them in detail exactly what their situation was, and they didn’t like it one little bit. Neither did I.

‘Let’s get this quite straight, Dr Mason.’ Corazzini leant forward, his lean brown face intent and serious. He was worried all right, but he wasn’t scared. Corazzini didn’t look as if he would scare easily: I had the idea that he would be a pretty good man to have around. ‘The others left here three weeks ago in a big modern Sno-Cat, and aren’t expected back for another three weeks. You’ve overstayed your welcome on the ice-cap, you say, and things have been cut a trifle too fine – you had already started rationing yourselves to make your food spin out until they returned. With thirteen of us here we have food for less than five days. Therefore we may be a fortnight without food before they return.’ He smiled, but there was no humour in it. ‘My arithmetic is correct, Dr Mason?’

‘It is, unfortunately.’

‘How long would the tractor you have take to get to the coast?’

‘There’s no guarantee that it ever would. I told you, it’s falling to pieces. I’ll show you later. Maybe a week – given the right conditions. Any bad weather would stop it in its tracks.’

‘You doctors are all the same,’ Zagero drawled. ‘Always spreadin’ sweet cheerfulness and light. Why don’t we wait for the other machine to get back?’

‘Indeed?’ Senator Brewster said heavily. ‘And how do you propose to live in the meanwhile, Mr Zagero?’

‘People can live for longer than fourteen days without food, Senator,’ Zagero said cheerfully. ‘Think what it would do for that figure of yours. Tush, Senator, you surprise me. Too gloomy by half.’

‘Not in this case,’ I said flatly. ‘The Senator is right. Sure you can live a long time without food in normal conditions. You might even do it here – if you had proper day clothes and night coverings. You haven’t – and how many of you have stopped shivering since you came here? Cold burns up your energy and depletes your reserves at a fantastic pace. Do you want me to list all the Arctic and Antarctic explorers – and Himalayan climbers – who have died within forty-eight hours of their food running out? And don’t kid yourselves about the life-giving warmth of this cabin. The floor temperature is about zero now – and that’s as hot as it’s likely to get.’

‘You said there was a radio on your old tractor,’ Corazzini said abruptly. ‘What range does it have? Couldn’t you possibly reach your friends – or your Uplavnik base – with that?’

I nodded in Joss’s direction. ‘There’s the man to ask.’

‘I heard,’ Joss said without enthusiasm. ‘Do you think I’d be trying to salvage this wreckage, Mr Corazzini, if there was any chance? It’s an eight-watt transmitter with hand-cranked generator and battery receiver, it came out of the ark and was never meant for anything more than walkie-talkie use.’

‘But what is its range?’ Corazzini persisted.

‘Impossible to say.’ Joss shrugged. ‘You know how it is with transmission and reception. One day you can hardly pick up the BBC a hundred miles away, another you can pick up a taxi-cab at twice the distance, if you have the right receiver. All depends on conditions. This one? Hundred miles, maybe – hundred fifty in perfect conditions. In the present conditions, you’d be better with a megaphone. I’ll have a go with it this afternoon, perhaps. Might as well waste my time that way as any other.’ Joss turned away and it was obvious that, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

‘Perhaps your friends will move within transmission range?’ Corazzini suggested. ‘After all, you said they’re not much more than a couple of hundred miles away.’

‘And I said they’ll be staying there. They’ve set up their equipment and instruments and they won’t move until they have to. They’re too short of petrol for that.’

‘They can refuel here, of course?’

‘That’s no worry.’ I jerked a thumb towards the tunnel. ‘There’s eight hundred gallons out there.’

‘I see.’ Corazzini looked thoughtful for a moment, then went on. ‘Please don’t think I’m being annoyingly persistent. I just want to eliminate possibilities. I believe you have – or have had – a radio schedule with your friends. Won’t they worry if they fail to hear from you?’

‘Hillcrest – that’s the scientist in charge – never worries about anything. And unfortunately, their own radio, a big long-range job, is giving trouble – they said a couple of days ago that the generator brushes were beginning to give out – and the nearest spares are here. If they can’t raise us, they’ll probably blame themselves. Anyway, they know we’re safe as houses here. Why on earth should they worry?’

‘So what do we do?’ Solly Levin asked querulously. ‘Starve to death or start hikin’?’

‘Succinctly and admirably put,’ Senator Brewster boomed. ‘In a nutshell, one might say. I propose we set up a small committee to investigate the possibilities—’

‘This isn’t Washington, Senator,’ I said mildly. ‘Besides, we already have a committee – Mr London, Mr Nielsen and myself.’

‘Indeed?’ It seemed to be the Senator’s favourite word, and long years of practice had matched it perfectly to the lift of his eyebrows. ‘You will remember, perhaps, that we have rather a personal stake in this also?’