Whiteout!

'Yes, sir.'

'Goddam planners sure think of everything,' Barney said bitterly. 'What about his legs?'

'We're - er - sir, the hospital is fully equipped.'

'And that stuff you pumped in. How long will it hold him?'

'Eight hours or so. But we can continue sedation - '

Barney said, 'You're not a doctor, boy.'

'No, sir. But I've been trained - '

'Wait a minute, wait a minute.' He thought for a moment. 'Okay, now listen. You, Carson, you tell your boys this thing's Private, right? And I mean it. Anybody talks, I'll have his skin. We move Mr Kelleher to the hospital and we keep the poor bastard immobilized. You - ' he turned to the orderly - 'you get on the radio to Thule and talk to the doctors. I know diagnosis by radio is a bad substitute, but it's all we've got. And tell the radio room no talking. Okay, son? So get the jacket, then get busy.'

As the medic departed, Smales closed the door behind him. 'Now listen. There's no ducking this. We got real bad news here. We're under strain, and that goes for every man in the place. If the strain can get to Kelleher, it can get to any man here. So, as far as we can, we keep it real quiet. Sooner or later it will get out, a few hours maybe, it'll be right round Camp Hundred. But those hours could be important. The maintenance crews have two of the three generators stripped right down. The third's not gonna work at all. We're cannibalizing it now. And we're running this whole place on that one machine you, Mr Bowes, brought up from Belvoir. And that little piece of information is secret, too. Not totally secret, and not for long, just like Kelleher. But, with luck, we'll have the big generators back on line tonight, one if not two, and with both generators on line, we don't have to worry too much about the reactor. But those hours are important. So what I want is I want Kelleher in that hospital and two men with him, plus the medic. You, Bowes, and you, Allen. Right? If it's safe, the medic continues sedation. If Kelleher breaks loose again, three of you ought to be able to handle him. Okay?'

Half an hour later Master Sergeant Allen and I sat staring moodily at each other across the doctor's desk. Kelleher had been brought along from the reactor trench in a sled, his face hidden, and was now in the little hospital's ward, straitjacketed, canvas-covered from neck to feet, strapped to the steel cot. The anaesthetic held him deep under. I had been unhappily aware, as we moved him and fastened him down, of how corpse-like he was.

Allen lit a cigarette and rose. 'One of us better be in there.'

I said, 'Both.'

Allen shook his head. 'No. Better he's quiet. Two of us, we're gonna talk.'

'All right.'

'When the medic comes, send him right in.'

The medic didn't come for a long time, and when he did it was with bad news. There was no radio contact with either Belvoir or Thule. He looked in on Kelleher, then spent an hour searching through the little library of medical books Kirton had kept, his face growing longer and more puzzled. Unable to help, I was careful not to watch him and kept my head bent over a paperback novel I'd found. Suddenly he swore aloud, and as I looked up he banged a book back on to the shelf. To my surprise, his eyes were wet.

He spread his arms, and let them fall weakly to his sides. 'Jesus, what do I do?’’

'First,' I said, 'you have some coffee. And a cigarette, if you smoke.’

'I don't.'

'Coffee then. And sit down.'

As he poured the coffee, his hand shook.

I said quietly, 'It's not your fault. You're not a psychiatrist. So let's forget about what you don't know and concentrate on what you do. You said that injection would hold Mr Kelleher for eight hours. Can you repeat it then ?'

He shook his head. 'Not that. I gave him a full operative shot of a general anaesthetic'

'So what next. In - ' I glanced at my watch - 'in six hours or so.'

'A sedative,' he said.

'And after that?'

His eyes closed tightly and a drop of moisture shone on his cheek. He wiped it away angrily. 'For Christ's sake, sir, I don't know what's wrong with the guy! Could be he's physically ill, too. Maybe he's incubating pneumonia or something. Then what I'm doing is - '

I interrupted. 'What you're doing is your best. With luck we'll have radio contact long before you need to decide.'

'Yeah, with luck ! But what do I say, sir? The guy just cracked, that's all. Something went inside his head. And me, I didn't even see it. Nobody can diagnose from that.'

'You can take his blood pressure, temperature, pulse rate. And the psychiatrist at Thule will prescribe the drugs - '

The medic looked at me. There was fear in his eyes, almost despair. Then he said, 'What happens when the next one goes?'

Chapter 11

We were not talking only about Kelleher any more.

I said, 'Are you guessing?'

He took a swig of coffee, swallowed, shook his head. Then he sighed and his shoulders sank.

'Yes, sir, I'm guessing. But - '

I waited, but he didn't go on.'But what?'

'It's hard to describe. The men are low, sir. Low mentally, low physically. They're under pressure. Too many things have happened already. Now we have another.' He nodded towards the ward and Kelleher.

'Already one guy cracked.'

'He's been working day and night,' I said, 'under far greater strain than - '

'Sure he has, sir. And why? Because every goddam thing has broken down. The men know that. But why has everything gone crazy? They don't know that\ And I don't know, and you don't know, and Major Smales, he don't know.'

I said, 'What are they saying?'

He hesitated. 'Jinx, maybe.'

'People always talk about jinxes when things go wrong,' I said. 'While we've been developing that hovercraft, there have been jinxes all along the line. When you get the right answer the jinx goes away.'

As I listened to my own voice pouring out soothing syrup, I was vaguely ashamed of myself. He was articulating some of my own doubts, and I was treating him the way Barney Smales had treated me. I added lamely, conciliatorily, 'Most of the time, anyway.'

'And when they don't go away, sir?'

Bad trouble, I thought, but didn't say it. Instead I asked, 'What else are they saying, jinxes aside?'

The medic looked at me, blinking.

I said, 'Go on. What do they say?'

He hesitated. 'Well, sir. One of the guys hadone ofthose James Bond books.'

I forced a grin. 'Well, he's not here.'

'No, sir. Maybe I kinda wish he was.' He too forced a thin smile. 'Anyway, at the front there was this quote from Al Capone. What he said was , "Once is happenstance, second time coincidence. Third time it's enemy action." '

I nodded. It was precisely what any group of men would be saying in these circumstances; I'd thought the same thoughts myself. But there were holes in the theory you could drive a tractor through. Kelleher was one such hole. I said, 'But who's the enemy? And why the action?'

He shrugged. 'Who knows?'

'All right,' I said. I was thinking: the medic was the first to share my own earlier suspicions, or, at least, the first to put them into words. And he knew Camp Hundred and its occupants a great deal better than I did. 'Let's take these things one at once. Start with the enemy. Who could it be?'

Again the thin smile. 'It could be any man here.'

'Me, included?'

'Well, yes, sir!'

'Or you?'

'Sure.'

I said, "The helicopter crash and the man who got lost on the surface were long before I got here. Does that let me out ? And you were here.'

He said, 'Aw hell, it's not me.'

'Then who? Have the men been speculating?'

'Sure.'