Whiteout!

Chapter 1

It was cold, but at Thule they know how to handle cold, as they also know how to put the fear of God into newcomers. When the doors of the Galaxy freighter opened and the Arctic wind drove out in seconds the accumulated warmth of hours, they allowed that extra minute or so of delay before I could leave the plane. My teeth were already giving one or two preliminary and percussive chatters by the time I'd reached the foot of the aircraft stair, descending into a whipping crosswind that flicked ice particles stingingly against my face. By the stark airfield lights bulldozers were scraping at the runway. At the foot of the stair, a sergeant stood with his back to the wind. His green parka hood was up, with the fur rim drawn tight so that he looked at me through an aperture no more than four inches wide.

'Mr Bowes, sir?'

'Yes.' I was facing him and one opens one's mouth to speak. I closed it quickly as the wind picked at a tooth filling.

'Weasel's right here, sir,' the sergeant said. Twenty yards away a small tracked vehicle painted in day-glow orange sat with its diesel snarling and steam scudding from its exhaust. I ran across and slid inside gratefully, slamming the door. The cold slid in with me, but the roaring heater battled and won and soon it was like an oven inside. I opened my coat and took off my gloves.

'Sir.' The driver, also parka-clad, turned to look at me. 'Sir, don't take off those gloves.'

I was more than willing to learn. First I put the gloves on, then I asked why. He grinned. 'People forget, is all. No gloves, you get out, you grab the door handle, you leave half your hand right there on the metal.'

'Bad as that?'

'It's okay. Watch regulations, y'know, and it's okay. Just don't get careless. You fromEngland, sir?'

'Yes.'

'Know Bentwaters base in Suffolk ?'

'You were stationed there?'

'Sure was. Two years. That was great,I tell you. Two years in Suffolk , then wham, you're here.'

'Been here long?'

'Six months. Furlough next week.'

The door opened. The sergeant climbed in rapidly, but the cold was faster. In the time it took him to open the door and close it, the temperature must have dropped thirty degrees. I shivered. The heater roared on.

'Move it,' the sergeant ordered, and the Weasel clattered forward. Side and rear windows were opaque with snow crust, but through the windscreen I could see the dark bulk of a big hangar. As we came close, the driver hooted three times, a door rolled up and we passed into the bright interior.

'Office is right over there, Mr Bowes. We'll get your bag.'

I thanked him, climbed out and walked across the concrete floor towards the glass-windowed cabins in the corner. What happened next would depend on the weather. My TK4 Hovercraft, now sitting snugly in the belly of the Galaxy, would have to be taken a hundred or more miles up on to theGreenlandicecap. If the weather was anything less than severe, the idea was that I should drive it at least part of the way. In good conditions, and with luck, it would be no more than a three-hour trip and could be made with relative confidence, because the TK4 had already completed some snow and ice trials inCanada effectively and impressively. It was sturdy and reliable and could possibly prove very useful to the American engineers conducting their complex Polar research and development programme up here. If they bought the TK4, they'd buy three of them, which was an important order for the smallish company I work for." But they weren't sure yet; they wanted more trials, this time at altitude and in situ. It's one thing to watch the machine skating across smooth snowfields and another to try to operate it in eighty degrees of frost and hurricane winds; for a lot of the winter those are prevailing conditions seven thousand feet up on the icecap.

I opened the door and went in, and a man sitting in an easy chair reading Time magazine, glanced up, then rose. He was wearing khaki indoors and there were two silver bars on his collar. He held out his hand. 'You're Mr Bowes?'

‘I am.'

'Captain Fraser. How'd you like some hot coffee?'

'I'd like it.'

'Coming right up.' He opened a big vacuum flask and poured, then handed me the steaming cup. 'No problems?'

I sipped. 'Not yet. It's early days, though, isn't it?'

'Sure is. Getting up here's the easy stage. They'll tow the Galaxy right in here in just a minute, then you can unload.'

I nodded. 'What's the programme?'

He grinned. I was to learn that a grin was a curious commonplace up here; an unconscious and almost universal weapon in the battle to preserve psychological balance in a hostile environment. The words came through the grin. 'We had two rough weeks. Rougher still on the cap and it looks like it's, ah .., continuing uncooperative.'

'Forecast's bad, then?'

'Forecasts!' he said dismissively. 'Yeah, well, we wait and hope.' Then, visibly, he checked himself, and when he went on his tone was altogether more formal, as though there were a refuge in military crispness.

'This climate breaks all the rules, Mr Bowes. Forecasts aren't reliable. Okay here at Thule , maybe, but up there on the cap prognostications won't hold.'

'So?'

'They've been four days out of radio communication. Before that ten days. One radio schedule in two weeks and no planes in or out. Your chances of piloting up there aren't too good right now. Provisionally we figured to send your hovercraft up on the Swing -’

I interrupted. 'Swing?'

'Jargon. The snow train. You know about it?'

'I've heard something.'

'Basically it consists of big tractors hauling box cars. The box cars have runners instead of wheels. It just keeps going, day and night, till it gets up there. Kind of a train on sleds. We'll load the hovercraft on a wanigan.'

Igrinned this time. 'Wanigan?'

'Box car. You'll get used to the Newspeak. The trip up there on the Swing can take from four days to maybe four weeks, but it sure gets there.'

'And me?'

'Ride the Swing, too, huh?'

'For four weeks? What's the alternative?'

'Wait for a weather slot and fly.'

I said, 'I think I'll do that.'

When the Galaxy was in the hangar, I brought the TK4 down the ramps under its own power. Then it was back into the Weasel.

Camp Hundred, the research and development base on the icecap, had its own supply camp twenty miles away from the giant US Air Force field at Thule , and it was there I was heading. By now it was snowing again, not heavily but not gently, either. In the Weasel's bright headlights, the snowflakes blew across horizontally and the driver had to sit forward in his seat and concentrate hard as the road wound between high snowbanks. Inside the Weasel the temperature was uncomfortably high, fed by that noisy fan that discouraged conversation and almost drowned, too, the sound of radio traffic that emerged continuously from the little set above the driver's head. He'd explained the system to me earlier: the Weasel was safe and reliable, but. ., b ut if it broke down, he hollered for help and help came. There was a little stove to provide heat if the engine didn't. It sounded easy and simple; everything had been thought out; there was a system and the system worked. But sitting there in the roaring dark it was all too easy to think about breakdowns in twenty miles of icy emptiness, long miles of snow driven by freezing winds that would turn the warm security of the Weasel into a deep freeze cabinet in a matter of minutes. But I was excited, in a small boy kind of way, with a tune running unwanted through my head the way tunes sometimes do: From Greenland 's icy mountains to India 's coral strand. . . 

 After about an hour, the diesel's roar diminished suddenly and the view ahead changed. We were turning to a halt, and a big wooden hut, painted orange like the Weasel, showed through the snowblow. The driver said over his shoulder, 'Don't knock, sir. Walk right in. I'll get your bag.'