Whiteout!

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 present 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 amorbid pathologist as well as a fan flyer?'

'Of course not. But if he was dead - '

He interrupted furiously. 'Don't say it!'

'I'll say it,' I said. 'It could be murder.'

'Sure it could. And it could have been a heart attack or a cerebral haemorrhage, too. You're so damn smart, you tell me how I can find out!' He broke off and sniffed. 'You've been drinking,' he said accusingly.

I said, 'Brandy.'

'In the morning? He'd done it well and the roles were changed; I was firmly on the defensive now, a morning drunk making trouble.

Still, I tried once more. Or began, anyway. I said, 'Kirton was - '

But Smales wasn't having it, dismissal and disgust combining in a single gesture of his hand as he said,

'Sleep it off.'

But I didn't sleep. I lay on my bunk and thought a lot and finished up with a conclusion or two. One was that Camp Hundred, with all its hazards, was now without a doctor. But it was Kirton I thought about most. If he'd had a stroke or a heart attack, as Smales had said, then perhaps I was being foolish. But Kirton had been no more than thirty, and a relaxed, strong-looking man at that and the odds, surely, were against it. There was perhaps a possibility that he'd been killed accidentally, blundering into a moving tractor or something like that, and an even more remote possibility of suicide, which I included in my mental list only to dismiss it. If he hadn't died of natural causes, an accident, or killed himself, then somebody else had done it.

There were also the nasty little coincidences. Kirton's body had been only yards away from the entrance to the Reserve Fuel Store, where the polar bear had slashed the tanks and eaten the emergency rations. And it had been the morning doorstep sweeper who'd first discovered both the bear's tracks and Kirton's body. The same man? I decided that was one of the things I ought to find out. I'd go into the tractor sheds and talk propulsion and ask questions. But first there was something else. The hospital was my first stop. It was unlocked and I went in, switched on the lights, and stood by the partition between the office and the theatre. What was it Kirton had shouted? That he had something to show me, or tell me; something like that. And that he'd see me later, because he was busy. Had he had a patient in there? If so who? An appointments book lay on the desk and I flipped it open. There weren't many entries anywhere, and only one for the previous day, at 3.30 p.m. It said, Pfc Hansen, nasal polyp.'

Well, I'd try to check on Pfc Hansen, too. But I was more concerned about the microscopic examination Kirton had promised to do on the food wrapping. His microscope was in a wooden box which stood on a side workbench, but there was no slide on the clips though there were plenty in a special rack beside it. However, they were only numbered, not labelled, so I'd neither any way of identifying the right one, nor the knowledge to understand it if I did.