“Sergeant Hillman,” he said in an irritated voice when I had identified myself and reported my position, ‘what are you doing there? According to the roster you went off duty six hours ago.”
“I know that, sir, but I couldn’t sleep tonight,” I told him, raising my wrist set to my mouth. “I decided to do an extra shift.”
“You decided to…’ Oliver sounded incredulous now, as well as irritated. Obviously the idea of a man choosing to walk the galleries at three in the morning when he could have been wrapped up warm in bed was hard for him to ingest. “Did you, by any chance, arrange to do Sergeant Dresch a favour and take over his shift for him?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why can’t I raise Dresch or anybody else in the duty room?”
“Don’t know, sir. He was there okay less than an hour ago when…” I stopped speaking as it dawned on me that it had been quite a long time since I had heard the elevator shuttling between any of the lower levels. Maddern and Katzen were the two men assigned to do the inspection rounds that night and neither was the type to use the stairs when there was any other option. I went to the rail and looked down into the well. The galleries below formed concentric circles, all of them beaded with lamps, surrounding the dimly-seen shapes of the wellhead equipment. A freezing mist drifted over everything, giving the most distant lamps the appearance of illuminated balls of lime-coloured candy-floss. The primary pump was beating steadily down there, transferring oil to the outer tanks, and I could hear the faint sound of ocean waves coming through the ice walls, but there was no sign of any human activity. There was no waving of flashlights or bellowing of supposed witticisms – two favourite pursuits of men on night inspection.
I eased the sling of the carbine off my shoulder and raised my eyes to scan the one gallery remaining above me. Saboteurs often came in over the top when they were mounting an all-out showpiece attack on a well, but I could see nothing up there apart from a circle of unblinking lights and a few stars barely piercing the greenish haze. Not comforted, I allowed the rifle to slide into my right hand.
“What are you doing, Sergeant? Are you still there?” Oliver was calling from Field Control, more than half-a-kilometre away at the opposite end of the island, and he was sounding increasingly annoyed. He didn’t seem unduly alarmed at that stage, but I was the one who had been living on nerves for three weeks. I was the one who was keyed up to see spectres of death in every swirl of mist.
“I’ve been looking around,” I said, keeping my voice low. “It all seems quiet.”
“It is quiet – that’s what this is all about. See if you can raise Dresch on your ops band.”
I pressed the priority-call button on my wrist set and got no reply. “He isn’t answering.”
“Damn! You’d better get yourself down to the duty room and see what he’s playing at. Tell him to contact me immediately. And Hillman?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Tell him he’d better have one hell of a good excuse for this.”
“Right!” I spoke crisply to conceal my deep uneasiness about the situation. The fact that it was three in the morning had something to do with it – three in the morning was a bad time, specially for somebody in my frame of mind – but, also, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Icewell 37 was under some form of attack. A mental scenario unfolded before me. International terrorist group… approach by submersible… take out guards by knife, silenced gun or gas… plant bombs… I could walk into anything down there, anything at all.
Even the thing that killed Sharly Railton.
The thought heaved itself into the full light of my consciousness like some leviathan breaking the surface of a prehistoric swamp, bringing about an instantaneous and profound change in my outlook. It happens that way sometimes. You can be alone in spooky circumstances, alone but perfectly at ease, then a change takes place. Not in your surroundings, but inside you. An unseen hand is laid on your shoulder and an unheard voice whispers a few words of warning, and suddenly you’re scared. And what makes it even more terrifying is that the silent voice is the voice of a friend. It is rueful, reproachful, concerned. Not only had you let your guard down, you had forgotten why we all need a guard in the first place – and that was oh so foolish…
“This is crazy,” I said, half-aloud, my gaze travelling on a circuit of Level Nine. The regularly spaced lights reflected off the back-drop of ice and from the prefabricated huts that housed an auxiliary power unit and some structural telemetry equipment. I knew that both huts were securely locked, and I had just come down from a tour of Level Ten, so the next logical step was to check out the gallery below and gradually work down to the duty room on Level Three. The elevator was only a short distance away, but it was a noisy, open-cage affair – a good way of advertising my exact movements to all and sundry.
I bolted a cartridge into the breech of the rifle, slipped the safety off and walked quietly to the nearest stair. The tower-like structure of the stairwell vibrated underfoot, and I cursed as I imagined it broadcasting messages about my position. I went down the four zigzagging flights that took me to Level Eight, then did a cautious circuit of the entire gallery. Everything was as it should have been, and it was the same story on Level Seven and the two below that. Icewell 37 appeared to be running itself with its usual efficiency and there was no real need for human beings to fuss around the place at all – which was the principal reason for the rather hefty consumption of strong liquor on the night shift.
Now that I thought of it, Bert Dresch had been somewhat red of face and pink of eye when I saw him an hour earlier. It was possible that he was out cold in the office – it had happened before – and that Maddern, Katzen and the others were labouring to get him fit enough to answer his calls. The idea perked me up considerably and I was in a more relaxed mood when I began the circuit of Level Four. I even considered leaning over the rail and bellowing a few choice obscenities in the general direction of the duty room, which was basically a square hole cut into the ice on a level with the gallery below.
That was when I began to find small pieces of Dave Maddern.
I didn’t even know what they were at first.
I was about a third of the way around Level Four when I saw that the metal floor of the gallery was badly cluttered up for a distance of about ten paces, as if somebody had spilled a couple of sacks of coal and had just let the pieces lie. Drawing closer, I saw that the fragments were deep red in colour, although it was difficult to be too certain in the artificial light. I disturbed several of them with my feet and found they were as hard as glass, and my next thought was that there had been an accident with some deep-frozen melons. Then I began to notice the whiteness of bone and a few seconds later saw three-quarters of Dave’s face lying on the metal deck, like a discarded fright mask.
The shock seemed to clear my perceptions, for in that instant I became aware of other kinds of fragments lying around. There were irregular pieces of clothing – not with ragged edges, but as cleanly snapped as candy. There even were pieces of Dave’s carbine, his helmet and his boots mingling with the glittering, dark-hued shards of what had been his flesh and internal organs.