Whiteout!

'And?'

'There's three hundred men plus. Could be any one of them.'

'No favourites?'

'No, sir.'

'Has it been narrowed down? Ten men, five, two?'

'No, sir. Look - ' he exhaled noisily, in exasperation. 'A posting up here to Camp Hundred is .., well, it's not always popular. Some guys like it, or maybe they just like the idea, right? But when you're here, a month or so and all you want is out.'

'So it's somebody who wants out ? And to get out, he's ready to sabotage the whole installation?'

He nodded. 'Something like that. Who knows what happens in people's heads?'

'Aren't you forgetting,' I said, 'that this nut of yours, whoever he is, is placing himself in exactly the same danger he's forcing on everybody else? If the whole place becomes inoperable and they have to get everybody out, he could be the last man to leave, not the first. And if it were to reach the point where people began to die, his chance of dying is the same as everybody else's.'

'Sure I thought of it. But did he? Maybe we're talking about a psychotic. Maybe he just hates the place and everyone in it and he can't think beyond hitting at it.'

I said, 'I like that theory a lot less even than the bad luck theory. And if you think about the things that have happened, one by one, there are a lot that nobody could have manufactured.'

'Like?'

'Like Mr Kelleher. Like the polar bear that slashed the fuel tank. Like the helicopter crash.'

He gave that thin smile again. 'Okay, sir, I got me a persecution complex. But there's things some guy could have done. Sabotaging engines, killing Doc Kirton - and, sir, that sure hasn't been explained. Not to me, not so I'd believe it.'

'It hasn't been explained to anybody's satisfaction,' I said. 'But do you know something special ?'

'Yes, sir] Since you ask me, I sure do.'

'Go on.'

'Put it this way. Captain Kirton's, body was by the main tunnel entrance, right ?'

I nodded.

'Okay. Well, the Doc never went near the tunnel entrances. He had a kind of a block about it. He commuted between the hospital, the mess hall and the officers' club, that's what he said. He'd never been on top and he wasn't going till the day he went back Stateside.'

I said, 'It's a very thin story.'

'He said it more than once.'

'Even so, I can puncture that argument myself. The day the bear got in, he was with me, right beside the entrance. He went into the fuel storage tunnel to see what the bear had done.'

The medic shrugged helplessly and gave a little grimace. 'It's just a feeling, sir. But to my certain knowledge .. . Well, he told me one time he hadn't been past the officers' club trench one side, and the reactor trench the other, in all the time he was here. He told me, sir. So one night - night, remember that, because the Doc spent all his nights in the club, you ask anyone - one night he goes along there and he dies. And snow buries his body and then the 'dozer turns him into ground beef. Story is he has a thrombosis, or something, right? He walks down there, where he never goes, and he has this thrombosis, and he falls down dead right where the snowblow'll cover him and the 'dozer'll mash him up.'

The medic's voice had risen as he spoke; he was arguing his case intensely, and, to me at least, fairly convincingly.

But I couldn't take his side; I couldn't say, that's right, I see it all now - and then spend another hour rooting with him through Camp Hundred's assorted troubles, because to do so would be to apply fuel to hot places. The medic felt strongly, and sooner or later, back with his mates, he'd talk it all over, and anything I'd said would be tossed into the eddies of speculation. Also it seemed to me that at the moment, with Kirton dead, the medic was pretty important to everybody at Hundred and the best thing I could do was to make some attempt to restore his morale. So I egged him on to talk about himself, his home town, his army career, his girl-friends and so on. It wasn't a particularly easy conversation, and it ended when Allen came out of the ward and said it was my turn to watch over the patient. I took my book with me into the ward and sat beside Kelleher's steel cot. His mouth hung agape and he breathed noisily and wetly under the imposed relaxation of the anaesthetic. But at least he seemed peaceful. Looking at him now, it was hard to imagine Kelleher as he'd been a few short hours earlier, mouth distorted in that rictus grin, grunting and snarling like an animal. My cheek still ached painfully from his bite and I remembered the astounding strength in the man as he flailed on the cot in the reactor hut's office. The hold of mind upon body, I reflected, was a thing one took entirely for granted ; a thing most of us maintain throughout our lives. But Kelleher that morning had demonstrated how tenuous the grip is, and how a mental trip-switch, once released, triggers off things we cannot conceive of. I'm no psychologist. I'm not now and wasn't then, and even in the light of later events, I still find it hard to understand the suicidal compulsion that drove Kelleher when he actually tried to climb into the reactor kettle.

My first spell on watch in there was uneventful. So was Allen's second. But I'd only been sitting there for a few minutes of my own second spell, reading quietly, when Kelleher muttered something. I looked at him, all at once tense and alert. His eyes were closed and he was frowning a little, but the big body lay still under its restraining heavy canvas. I reached for the telephone, unsure whether he was muttering in his sleep or awakening, but anxious for support if the latter were the case. He spoke again, before I'd lifted the receiver, and this time the word was clear. 'Jesus,' he said. Something - perhaps a feeling that a crowd would upset him -kept my hand off the phone. I said gently, 'How do you feel ?'

He repeated the word, still far away, surfacing very slowly. 'Feel?’ he said. 'Feel?'

I waited. Perhaps a minute went by. Then, 'Oh, boy, those . ..'

He was quite calm, as yet barely conscious. I lit a cigarette, deliberately injecting an everyday sound into the stillness.The cigarette was finished before he spoke again, but by now there were small movements of his legs and arms. Quite suddenly, he opened his eyes wide, blinked at the light and turned his head towards me. He said, 'I can't move.'

'Don't worry. You're all right.'

He blinked several times more, fighting his way up to consciousness, and said at the end, 'I had an accident?'

'In a way.' I was watching him carefully for any signs of incipient violence.

'Radiation?' he said sharply. 'Did I get a blast of radiation?'

I shook my head. 'No.' I was thinking that at least his mind was clear. He was aware he'd been unconscious, aware of one possible reason for it. I smiled and said, 'It was a kind of collapse. You've been working too hard.'

He looked suddenly worried. 'Heart? I had a coronary?'

'No.'

He relaxed. 'Thank God. I was warned once to get some of this weight off... Why can't I move? He frowned again, fear in his face, and I cursed myself for allowing the delay. I reached for the phone, told Allen he was awake, and stood back while the medic came in and gave him a sedative injection. Kelleher watched, too, as the canvas flap of the straitjacket was peeled back and the hypodermic went into his arm. He said, in brief horror, 'Christ, I'm in a .., in a .., in ...' and he was asleep again before the word could come out.

Allen looked at me. 'He seems lucid.'

'Yes,' I said, 'he was lucid all right.'

'Back to normal ?'

I said, 'What's normal?' and phoned the command hut to let Barney know. He was properly relieved and said he'd be along later to inspect the patient, but he sounded worried and distracted. After that, the vigil continued its silent way. I finished my two hours and Allen took over, then I was back at Kelleher's bedside, and so it went on except that Allen was relieved temporarily by Sergeant Vernon while he went off to handle some minor matter of administration. It was around eleven that night when Barney Smales finally came along in response to a message I'd phoned through to the effect that Kelleher was stirring again. He looked drawn and weary as he stood looking down at the cot.