by John Glasby
“Maybe they got us tagged for a trio of polar bears,” suggested Chuck. He was grinning faintly, but the smile was oddly strained. He lifted his arms and waved them emphatically. There was no sign of movement among the huts. Yet it had been from that direction that the gun had been fired.
“I reckon we’d better get in there before whoever it is decides to take another shot at us and makes a better job of it the next time,” Carradine said. Inwardly, he had the feeling that the bullet had been intended for him. It made little sense. If that was the case, then it would be only explainable on the assumption that there was at least one person here who knew his identity and why he was here.
It seemed impossible that Minden could have got away and given the alarm. The other did not know that he was coming out here. But he could think of no other explanation.
They moved across a smooth patch of ice and reached the nearest hut some ten minutes later. It was empty, but going on to the next they found three men manhandling large oil drums from one side to the other.
“Any of you three men been outside in the last fifteen minutes?” Chuck yelled.
The men turned, then shook their heads. One of them, with a sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve, stepped forward. “Nobody’s been outside here,” he said. His gaze switched to Carradine and for a moment there was a look of perplexity on his face. Then the inscrutable expression returned.
“Anybody else here?” Darren asked.
Again the other shook his head. “Lieutenant Venders was here half an hour ago, but he went back to the station.”
Darren looked around at Carradine. “You want to take a look through the other huts?”
Carradine considered that, then shook his head slowly. “I doubt if it would show us anything. Whoever it was fired that shot, he will be down in the station by now. He must’ve spotted us coming over the snow some distance away and when that first shot missed, rather than have another try, he slipped away so as not to be discovered.”
“A shot?” The look of amazement on the sergeant’s face was quite obviously genuine. “When was this?”
“About a quarter of an hour ago,” Carradine said. “Somebody fired a shot at us as we were coming in. Maybe it was a mistake. They could have thought we were something else.”
Chuck said harshly: “Until we discover something, I’d be glad if you and your men here keep this little incident under your hats. We don’t want it to be blown up into something out of all proportion to what it really is. No sense in getting everyone steamed up for nothing.”
“We understand perfectly, sir.”
They made their way slowly between the rows of huts. As far as Carradine could see, they were all deserted. Not until they were approaching the entrance to the tunnel leading down into the main base was there any sign of movement, any sound. The snowcat came rumbling up from the depths, treads sliding a little in the smooth hard-packed snow. Slowly, it nosed its way up into the open and Carradine was able to make out the man in the totally enclosed cabin, operating the controls.
The snowcat drew level with them, then stopped. The cabin opened as part of it slid to one side.
“Howdy,” said the man in the high seat. “Sorry I didn’t get over to meet you at the plane. Had a little trouble with the controls. First time it’s happened with this particular machine. Usually we have no bother with it.”
“What sort of trouble?” Chuck asked as they climbed inside.
“Electrical,” said the other tersely. “Can’t understand it myself. It was working perfectly this morning when I checked everything through.”
Carradine lifted his brows a little. “You think it may have been tampered with since you looked at it?”
The man turned to stare at him closely for a moment, then looked around at Chuck. “Who is this?” he asked. “I was told there would be three coming in, but they said nothing about who the civilian was.”
Chuck grinned. “I reckon it's all right to talk in front of the Commander,” he said quietly. “He’s been given clearance all the way from the top.”
“I see.” It was evident from the other’s expression that he did not see at all, but he was not going to admit that. He turned the snowcat adroitly and they moved slowly back into the looming tunnel in the ice. “Well,” he muttered at length, “if you want my opinion, then it could have been tampered with. There have been some funny things happen here while I’ve been on the station. Things that nobody has explained.”
“And have they been reported?” asked Carradine.
“Oh, sure, they have to be reported. You can’t hide murder for very long.” There was a note of bitterness in the man’s tone, which Carradine spotted at once. He stared at the other for long seconds, then swung his gaze back to the front, peering through the transparent Plexiglas of the observation dome of the snowcat. They were halfway down the smooth incline now, moving into the deep shadow cast by the rising wall of ice. But down below, there seemed to be plenty of light; it flooded on to the tunnel from the walls where they closed in overhead, lit the gleaming rails that ran the entire length of the tunnel, deep into the interior of the ice cap. Carradine felt lost in the wonder of it all, in a partial comprehension of the tremendous feat of engineering that he was witnessing every second that the snowcat ground its way forward. Then they were deep in the heart of the ice. For a moment the feeling of claustrophobia was almost unbearable. Then he had succeeded in shrugging it off and in its place there was a sense of wonder back again. Somewhere in the distance there was a soft, steady thudding of machinery, of giant turbines supplying the power to this tremendous hive beneath the Arctic snow.
“My orders are to take you straight to the Colonel,” said the driver, glancing obliquely at Carradine. “Chuck and Darren will go to their usual quarters.”
“We’ll be taking the plane back tomorrow,” Darren explained. “With the DC-3 there’s no chance at all of making the round trip in the one-day. We have to stop-over for the night.”
*
Colonel Brinson was a tall man. Carradine guessed that he was not far off six foot six and his grip was enough to make him wince as the other shook hands and then motioned him to a chair in the spacious, well-furnished office. For a moment, Carradine imagined that he must be somewhere back in America, that this place could surely not exist under those countless thousand tons of solid ice and snow. With an effort, he brought himself back to the present.
Brinson sat back in his own chair and regarded him closely for ten seconds before speaking. “That door, and the walls of this office are as near soundproof as it’s possible to make them. You can speak quite freely here.”
“Thank you.” Carradine said. “I am not sure how much you already know about this sordid business.”
“Very little, I assure you. Not that I haven’t suspected something for a very long time now. First the accident in the crevasse, then the fires. They all began to add up to something far more sinister than coincidence.”
Carradine nodded slowly. “These—incidents as you call them—they haven’t stopped. As we were making our way here, somebody hidden in one of the supply huts on the surface took a pot shot at me. Had the bullet been an inch or two to the right it would have been the end as far as I’m concerned.”
Brinson’s face tightened just a shade. “You’re sure that they were trying to kill you? It could have been an accident or a mistake. Several of my officers carry weapons and go hunting on the ice.”
“I had considered that, but it was what the driver of the snowcat told me that convinced me that it was an attempted murder. He said that the electrical system developed a fault just as he was on his way to pick us up. But he had it checked thoroughly only a little while before and everything had been working perfectly. Evidently someone sabotaged the snowcat so that I would have to walk from the plane and thereby present them with an excellent target.”
“God, what an unholy mess.” The other leaned forward on the table. “Where is it going to end an
d what’s just as important, who’s behind it al—the Russians?”
“Not this time.” Carradine shook his head slowly, then went on to briefly outline the known facts, beginning with the murder of Sen Yi in London and the smashing of the small Red Dragon cell in Socorro. The other said nothing until he had finished, but as the minutes passed, his face grew tighter and more sombre.
“No wonder that Washington are worried. If they manage to destroy the station, it would mean that we would lose our means of detecting any missile launchings in the Soviet Union, or China too for that matter, within a minute or so of them getting off the launching pad.”
“You can do that now?” Carradine asked.
Brinson nodded. “You’d really be surprised at the number of top-flight scientists we have stationed here, and also the full range of electronic equipment. There are three atomic reactors down here, which supply us with all of the energy we need. We could stay here indefinitely, almost, even if we were cut off from the outside world.”
“Just how far are you from the Russian frontier?”
“Just step across the ice, take a short boat trip and you could shake hands with them,” said the other with a dry humour. “Why does that interest you?”
“It just occurred to me that if they intended to destroy the station, then they would need something extremely powerful to do it.”
“A hydrogen bomb would finish us,” Brinson acknowledged, “if it were dropped in the right place.”
“Even a small nuclear weapon could put you out of action for some time.”
“Well...yes, that is so,” agreed the other, reluctantly. “But that’s out of the question, of course. There are thousands, if not millions, of tons of solid ice on top of us and the tunnel leading down here has been strengthened tremendously. It may surprise you, but at high pressures and low enough temperatures such as can be got here, ice becomes as strong and unyielding as the best grades of steel. They could drop a dozen small atomic weapons up there without troubling us in the least. They can even block the tunnel if they were fantastically lucky in their aim, but that wouldn’t put us out of action.”
“But just suppose that they were a little more clever than that,” suggested Carradine. “Suppose that they did succeed in getting their hands on a nuclear weapon and brought it across the Red frontier which, as you say, is only a short distance away. It may then be possible for them to place that weapon here, inside the station, where they could do the maximum amount of damage, as well as kill most of the men from radioactive fallout in this confined space.”
Brinson’s eyes measured Carradine slowly. “You may have a point there,” he conceded. “I must confess that the possibility had not occurred to me.”
“You can’t be expected to think of everything,” Carradine said with a faint smile. “It’s pretty far-fetched. I just put it forward to indicate how vulnerable one can be without being aware of it.”
“Don’t you think it strange, though, that our security people should have gone to all the trouble of importing you specially from England for this job?”
“Not really. If the agents of this organisation know most of your men by sight, it could be that a new face might get by. I seem to have done reasonably well so far."
“I must admit that,” said Brinson a trifle grudgingly. “You are to be given every facility while you are here unless it should endanger the station and the personnel. I’ll arrange for you to have living quarters here. At the moment, we are only about a quarter staffed, so we have plenty of room for an emergency such as this.”
“I’ll be grateful for that.”
Brinson pressed a button on his desk. “By the way,” he said, glancing up shrewdly. “I suppose that until you find out something definite, everyman, including me, will be a suspect?”
Carradine shrugged. “I’m afraid so. All we know is that this organisation is the most powerful and dangerous that we have ever come across. The Russians have had us worried on several occasions in the past, but they’ve been child’s play compared to these people. They seem to have had the ability to wait for an eternity for any act they wish to make. They’ve put their men into high places among the key positions of the Western world.” Carradine grinned. “There have been times during the past few weeks when I’ve even had my doubts about the President.”
Carradine got to his feet as the other pushed back his chair and stood up. The door behind them opened and a man stepped into the office.
“Carstairs,” said Brinson quietly. “I’ve arranged for Commander Carradine here to occupy Wellerby’s quarters for the time being. Take him along, will you, and see that he’s settled in all right.”
“Very good, sir.” Carstairs saluted, turned on his heel and stood on one side for Carradine to precede him. Outside in the corridor, he said with a warm, friendly smile: “You seem to have merited the VIP treatment for some reason. You going to be staying here long, Commander?”
“I only wish I knew,” Carradine said easily. He found himself forming an instinctive liking for the other. “I must say, though, that it’s quite an experience being here. I never thought it possible that anything on this scale could be constructed out here. The work on it must have been tremendous.”
“It was.” The other led the way along two corridors, past several closed doors, finally pausing in front of one that bore the name Captain Ronald C. Wellerby. “This is it,” he said. “I hope you find it comfortable.”
“I’m sure I will. Where are the other men who usually work here?”
“Back in the States, most of them.” The other’s cheerful face was sober. “And, of course, we’ve lost some men in accidents.”
“You think they were accidents?”
“No one seems to know anything for sure. Maybe if we did it might remove a little of the uncertainty that seems to be hanging over the base.”
“I think I understand how it must feel.”
The other nodded, then said briskly: “Dinner is at eight o’clock sharp. I understand you’ll be dining with the Colonel. You’ll doubtless meet most of the other officers then.”
*
There had been an unusual atmosphere at dinner that evening, sombre, dull and almost funereal. Carradine guessed that most of it stemmed from his presence there. These men at the station were not fools. Many of them had guessed by now why he was there, or had formed their own ideas.
Sitting on the edge of his bunk, a little before midnight, Carradine ran over in his mind the names and faces of the men he had met during dinner. Lieutenant Venders had intrigued him particularly. Ever since that shot had been fired at him shortly after landing, he had wondered about this man. Those three men in the hut had stated that Venders had been there only a little while before, but had ostensibly returned to the base. He, though, Carradine reflected, had the best opportunity for being in a position to fire that shot. What he had seen of him at dinner had heightened, rather than diminished his suspicions.
He was tall, well over 6 feet, and thin almost to the point of gauntness. The nose long, aquiline, and his mouth seemed grotesquely small behind it, the thin, bristle moustache doing little to hide it. His eyes were dark, flecked with red, brooding beneath the craggy, bushy brows that had a habit of drawing together into a straight line, wrinkling the brow above them.
His manner seemed taciturn and saturnine. He spoke seldom, replying in terse monosyllables whenever a remark was addressed to him. Yet all the time, he seemed to be watching Carradine closely from beneath the lowered lids.
Carstairs was a different story. A brilliant career at Yale before coming here; he had come out to Station K with a reputation. He was, if anything, genius material. Here, he thought, was a man who made his own breaks as far as his career was concerned, an opportunist, a thinker, too, if his record was anything to go by.
Stretching himself out on the bunk, he clasped his hands at the back of his neck and stared up thoughtfully at the ceiling. The air inside the small room was constantly w
arm and he could hear the faint sighing of the air conditioner somewhere out of sight. It was fantastic, this whole set-up, he thought inwardly. Set down here, a couple of hundred feet beneath the surface of the polar ice cap. Had he not seen that great, cavernous tunnel down which they had driven, he could not have imagined it. An entire city was here, hidden away from any prying eyes on the surface. Yet at any moment, it could be destroyed. Somewhere among the complement of the station was one man, perhaps more than one, highly dangerous because they were not suspected, who was working for the Red Dragon. How long to discover which man it was?
The logical thing to do would be to begin snooping around the next day, trying not to make himself too obvious, but to leave no doubt in the minds of any enemies, just why he was there. Sooner or later, there would be another attempt on his life. This time, he hoped he would be ready for it.
*
The next day, Carradine made a complete circuit of station K. Until then, he had not appreciated just how large the place was. There seemed to be everything there that a civilised community needed. Shops, cinemas, workshops, places for relaxation, storerooms large enough to keep enough food to feed an army for several months. And here, in the Arctic, there was little need for refrigeration. One merely arranged that no heating reached these rooms and any food kept virtually indefinitely.
On his way back to the main quarters, he met Venders. The other gave him a brief nod. “Seen everything, Commander?” he asked. There was nothing friendly in his tone.
Carradine shrugged. “Most of it,” he agreed. “Naturally nobody will let me take a look at the heart of the place.”
“The atomic reactors, you mean?” There was a faint quirk around the corners of the other’s mouth. “If you really wish to see them—not that there’s much you can actually see—I’ll take you down.”
“Why—thanks.” Carradine fell into step beside the other. In his pocket, the comforting weight of the Luger rested snugly against his body. He kept his right hand there.
