For a few moments I busied myself clearing snow from round it, then I levered up the protecting lid and began to turn the handle. As the hatch cover came up, I prayed for a friendly gleam of light. The prayers, this time, drew no response; I was looking down into darkness. All the same, it was the way back and I climbed through the open hatch and down the stair, leaving the hatch open to admit any faint gleam of light it could. By the time I stood on the trench floor it was apparent that no light penetrated and I had to feel my way forward again. I stayed close to the trench wall, placing my feet carefully, with no idea what lay ahead. This could be a storage tunnel, there could be huts or machinery, packing cases, anything. Then my foot, instead of coming down on snow, bumped into some obstruction. I bent and felt it, trying to decide whether I could step over it, or would have to find a way round. Whatever it was was wrapped in cloth of some kind and my hands, in their thick felt mittens, told me nothing, except that there was also a steel frame round it.., and that it was about two yards long . . , a nd two feet wide. Jesus Christ, I was in with the corpses!
For a while it all happened, just the way people say it does: my scalp crawled, cold impulses fled over my back, my hair stood vertical, parka hood or no parka hood. And I trembled violently. The sudden panic may have been irrational, but it was there, great waves of it that went for my guts and my mind simultaneously, and set me blundering in the darkness just to get away, to get some distance between me and what lay on the trench floor. What lay there, inevitably, was another body, and I tripped and sprawled full-length on it, my grabbing hands gripping something hard as a drainpipe, and which was probably an arm. My senses didn't return to anything like normal, but fear induced a desire, if not a capacity to reason, and I sat there among all the hobgoblins and devils my imagination conjured into the air around me, frantically trying to think what to do.
Very little presented itself. I was completely disorientated and whichever way I moved I'd be falling over bodies, or crawling past them. How many were there? I couldn't even remember. Six, I thought. No, seven, because .., because Doc Kirton, what was left of him, was in here, too. And then I remembered something else. This trench, too, was locked.
I looked wildly around me. Far back at the end of the trench was the pale oval of the open hatch, leading back to the surface, and I laughed, I know I laughed once, loudly and hysterically, at the choice before me. I could stay there in the dark with seven dead bodies, or go back up into the blizzard and the gale and the unnervingly strong chance of joining these seven in whatever frozen Valhalla they might have found. I've wondered since, sitting comfortably, drink in hand, why I didn't stay, It would, after all, only have been for a few hours. The corpses couldn't have harmed me. But it's different, believe me, when you're saying it to yourself in a black snow tunnel and they're lying all round you, frozen hard as planks. Though one wasn't. When I started crawling on hands and knees towards that grey patch of dim light, somehow or other I contrived to put my knee into an indentation in the floor and roll sideways on to one of the bodies, and in recoiling, put my weight on it. Where the others were hard, this one gave sickeningly under pressure, and my stomach squirmed with the realization that this could only be Kirton, or what was left of him, carefully wrapped.
A few seconds later I was away from them and heading fast for the stair, and my feet were clanging as I stumbled upwards to look in sober, dry-mouthed fear out into the Arctic night. Even since I'd climbed down into the trench, conditions outside seemed to have worsened. What had been gale and blizzard and bad enough, for God's sake, was now turning into an Arctic storm, and the force of the wind that funnelled down through the open hatch had me hanging on grimly to the handrail. But I did it, I made myself climb out, pointed my shoulder at Main Street, and forced myself forward. Now, far from seeing five paces behind me, I could scarcely distinguish two, and by the time I'd covered fifteen careful yards I was already filled with the suspicion that I was lost. Even through the wadding of my cap and parka, I heard the whiplash crack of thunder roll across the sky above and the wind force was nearly bowling me over, forcing me along with awkward, involuntary, uncontrolled steps. I stopped after thirty paces, if they could be called paces. I was lost. I no longer knew with any certainty even where Main Street lay. I would certainly have died then, there can be no doubt about that. I'd have continued blundering, driven by that fearful wind, until I became part for ever of the Greenland icecap. And death would have come quickly, too, for the storm was worsening by the second. It was the storm, of all things, that saved me, for with one great, deafening smash of thunder, lightning suddenly flickered and God knows how many volts of electricity turned into a single wild flash of illumination. And there, ten yards from where I stood, was another hatch! I'd never have seen it but for the lightning. With normal visibility no more than six feet, I was thirty feet from it. But I saw it, and flung myself towards its safety and shelter, swearing to myself that whatever lay beneath, from invading hungry bears to Dracula himself, and even if the tunnel was locked, I was going to spend the rest of the night down there. I clawed open the lid, wound the escape hatch open and, slithering in like a rat down a rope, and with my feet safely on the steel rungs and my head ducked down away from the storm, I found I could see light. Light! Not a mirage, but real honest-to-God light. The bulk of two huts stood between me and the tunnel entrance, but the entrance was open, and beyond it lay the lights of Main Street. They were dim, running on a reduced voltage, I learned later, but to me at that moment they looked as bright as advertising signs.
I looked at my watch and discovered with surprise that it was still not four o'clock, less than an hour since the smoke had awakened me. But what a hell of an hour! Finding myself among corpses, and then wandering on the icecap, had made me forget my original purpose in escaping from my own keeping trench: to let somebody know there was a fire in there. Main Street was deserted. Who would be in charge of fire fighting? Who'd be the duty officer? I hadn't the slightest idea, and in hopes of finding out, crossed to the mess hall. Coffee was available there all night, I knew, so somebody ought to be around. In fact there was a solitary cook, staring wearily at some tattered comic, who didn't as much as raise his eyes until I spoke.
The words shifted, him though. At the mention of fire his eyebrows went up. 'You sound the warning?'
'Who do I tell?'
'Nobody,' he said. 'There's an alarm right there on the wall in Main Street. Man, you hit it!'
'I don't think it's serious,' I said. If nobody else had noticed a fire, an hour after it had started burning, it could scarcely be serious. 'I don't want to waken the whole camp. Where do I find the duty officer?'