Whiteout!

I said, 'As far as we can tell, it was the ham they had at breakfast. Some of them were feeling queasy before lunch. Nobody seems to think it was the lunch food. How do you feel, anyway?'

'Hungry as hell, but I can sure resist it now.'

'Otherwise?'

'Fine. No problems. Head's clear. Whatever it was, LSD or what, it's all worn off.' He gave me a lopsided grin. 'But either you let me out of this goddam thing or you make like a nurse with bottles and bedpans.'

I was too tired to argue. I bent over the bed and began to undo strappings. A few minutes later he was on his feet, stretching cramped muscles and I turned my back on him. If he was going to attack, I thought wearily, it might as well be now. I counted to ten slowly, then turned to face him. He was holding on to the bedrail slowly doing leg-bending exercises.

'Tell you how it could be done,' Kelleher said. 'You've seen the food trenches?'

I nodded.

'Food, meat in particular, comes up on the Swing, stays frozen clear across the cap. When it gets here it's hung in a trench, still frozen. Keeps forever, almost, courtesy of Mother Nature. Now, we got a bad outbreak of food poisoning, right? Okay, so somebody maybe got himself a coupla sides of ham.'

'Go on.'

'Anyway, they're frozen. He takes them, hangs 'em some place warm for a while, puts 'em back; maybe he even does it again. Then he puts 'em right at the front of the rack of ham, okay? Then along comes the guy from the cookhouse. Ham for break fast again, there's ham for breakfast every day. He takes the first couple of sides, slices it into strips and there you got it!'

I didn't answer; I was thinking about the dreadful suffering of eighty men. And even though I'd no doubts in my own mind that somebody was sabotaging Camp Hundred, it was hard to believe anyone would set out deliberately to poison so many.

'It fits,' Kelleher said.

'Yes,' I said slowly. 'It fits. Do you believe it ?'

'I'll believe anything of the man who'd slip acid to a guy working on a reactor!'

I went and washed my hands and face in cold water. I felt sluggish and sleepy and dared not give in to it. If Kelleher was right, and if the homicidal idiot at Camp Hundred was now prepared to go to any lengths to wreck the whole establishment, nobody could afford the luxury of rest. The cold water made me feel a little fresher, but not much. I wasn't at even the fifty-per-cent efficiency promised for life at Hundred; five per cent was more like it.

Kelleher, however, was like an Airedale terrier with a newly-discovered bone. 'I thought about all this. I can see maybe how it's all happened. What I don't see is why?' I shrugged. 'Somebody wants Camp Hundred out of action.'

'Okay. Why?'

'Difficult to see. Hates the army perhaps.'

'Everybody hates the army. A little or a lot, but everybody.'

I said, 'We're talking about a madman. Death and destruction in bloody great bucketsful.'

'He's a smart madman!'

'That's not uncommon. Look, perhaps he hates the army and this is a way of striking back. Or, perhaps he hates Camp Hundred, and ditto. Or, he hates Barney, or you, or me even. What it is doesn't matter. He's hitting as hard as he can at everything and everybody in the place.'

Kelleher considered it. 'I don't go for that blind hate.'

'Give me an alternative.'

'Guy's got something to hide.'

'Like what ? If anybody wants to hide anything, this is probably the best place in the world. Seventeen feet of snow every winter.

It'll cover anything.'

'No. Not an object. Some offence or other. Something that's got to be kept quiet.'

'All right. In that case we have another theory, but it's no more than that. If Camp Hundred were a normal army camp, somebody might be organizing a fiddle, flogging rations or petrol or something. But not here.'

Kelleher looked up at me. 'So we got to find out.'

'Yes.'

'Question is how.'

'Yes.' I wasn't being unhelpful. I'd been over this ground so many times in my mind that I knew every bump and hollow. My own brain wasn't going to dig out bright new thoughts. Kelieher's might. He said, 'Okay, we start somewhere.'

'Like?'

'I'll tell you - ' but he didn't. Not then, anyway, because we were interrupted. The door opened and a less-than-young lieutenant entered and announced that until his seniors were recovered, he was in temporary command. His name was Coveney and I'd met him, exchanged a word or two in the officers'

club. He'd struck me as dull and a bit taciturn.

Kelleher said, 'How's Barney?' His tone was flat. I got the impression he didn't like Coveney.

'Major Smales is very sick,' Coveney said. 'Conscious only in patches. However, I managed to speak to him briefly and he agrees to my assumption of temporary command.' He looked from Kelleher to me and back again. 'I understood you, Mr Kelleher, were under restraint.'

'That's right.'

'Under whose orders were you released ?'

I said. 'I released him. There's nothing wrong with him now.'

'You're a qualified psychiatrist, Mr er - ?'

'Bowes,' I said, 'and even a hovercraft pilot can see he's okay now.'

He looked at me along his narrow nose. 'The restraint was ordered by the commander and has not been rescinded. A man who only yesterday was totally unbalanced can hardly be - '

I said, 'So rescind it.'

'On the contrary, I insist that Major Smales's orders be carried out.'

Kelleher said incredulously, 'You want me back in the strait-jacket?'

'That was the prescribed restraint.'

I said, 'Don't be bloody stupid!'

Coveney said, 'If necessary, I will call for assistance. I have no wish to use force, but if it should prove necessary, it will be used.'

'One problem,' Kelleher said with heavy sarcasm. 'Those jackets aren't made like raincoats; the guy who's wearing it can't fasten it up.'

'Mr Bowes will fasten it. He will also be responsible for you until further notice. Furthermore, Major Smales's orders concerning Mr Bowes continue in force. He is not to leave this medical block without the permission of the commander.'

'You?'

'That's right, Mr Bowes. Until Major Smales is recovered you answer to me. Now please put the jacket on to Mr Kelleher.'

I was going to refuse, tell him to shove off, be as corrosively rude as I wanted to be. What stopped me was the realization that Coveney had the power. If I didn't truss Kelleher, somebody else would. If I indulged my splenetic instincts, Coveney could simply separate us, and lock me up somewhere. So I went back to the ward, got the straitjacket and buckled the visibly-fuming Kelleher into it. Nor was that the end. Coveney insisted that Kelleher's jacket be secured to the steel bed and he watched while I fastened the straps.

I'd felt it necessary to restrain my reactions. Kelleher obviously didn't. As I worked on the fastening, he said scathingly, 'They get like this after they've been passed over for promotion a few times.'

Coveney looked at him. 'In the current crisis situation here I feel it necessary to take every sensible precaution. I regret having to order this, naturally, and I will say so in my report. But in view of Mr Kelleher's recent mental history there is no option. Good night.'

Kelleher was shouting, 'I'll be making reports, too, and don't you forget it.' The door's closing click punctuated the sentence; no doubt Coveney heard the first relevant words, but it was beneath him either to return or reply.

I bent over Kelleher, unfastened all the strappings and asked, 'Why does he love you ?'

He gave a little grin. 'Playing bad bridge keeps him poor. Maybe it keeps him a lieutenant, too.'

'You've taken a lot of his money?'

'Let's just say I don't earn all my bread making contracts. I just reckon I could. I was gonna tell you where we start, right ?'