the damage to be a bit more permanent.'
'I'll get inquiries under way immediately,' Swanson said. 'Whoever was responsible, someone must have seen him, Someone must have heard him leaving his cot — '
'Don't waste your time, Commander. We're up against a highly intelligent character who doesn't overlook the obvious. Not only that, but word of your inquiries is bound to get around, and you'd scare him under cover where I'd never get at him.'
'Then I'll just keep the whole damned bunch under lock and key until we get back to Scotland,' Swanson said grimly. '«That» way there'll be no more trouble.'
'That way we'll «never» find out who the murderer of my brother and the six — seven now — others are. Whoever it is has to be given sufficient rope to trip himself up.'
'Good God, man, we can't just sit back and let things be done to us.' There was a hint of testiness in the commander's voice, and I couldn't blame him. 'What do we — what do «you» — propose to do now?'
'Start at the beginning. Tomorrow morning we'll hold a court of inquiry among the survivors. Let's find out all we can about that fire. Just an innocent, above-board, fact-finding inquiry, for the Ministry of Supply, let us say. I've an idea we might turn up something very interesting indeed.'
'You think so?' Swanson shook his head. 'I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a moment. Look what's happened to you. It's obvious, man, that someone knows or suspects that you're on to them. They'll take damned good care to give nothing away.'
'You think that's why I was clouted tonight?'
'What other reason could there be?'
'Was that why Benson was hurt?'
'We don't know that he was. Deliberately, I mean. May have been pure coincidence.'
'Maybe it was,' I agreed. 'And then again, maybe it wasn't. My guess, for what it's worth, is that the accident or accidents have nothing at all to do with any suspicions the killer may have that we're on to him. Anyway, let's see what tomorrow brings.'
It was midnight when I got back to my cabin. The engineer officer was on watch and Hansen was asleep, so I didn't put on any light lest I disturb him. I didn't undress, just removed my shoes, lay down on the cot, and pulled a cover over me.
I didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. My left arm from the elbow down still felt as if it were caught in a bear trap. Twice I pulled from my pocket the pain killers and sleeping tablets that Jolly had given me and twice I put them away.
Instead I just lay there and thought, and the first and most obvious conclusion I came up with was that there was someone aboard the «Dolphin» who didn't care any too much for the members of the medical profession. Then I got to wondering why the profession was so unpopular, and after half an hour of beating my weary brain cells around, I got silently to my feet and made my way in my socks to the sick bay.
I passed inside and closed the door softly behind me. A red night light burnt dully in one corner, just enough to let me see Benson's huddled form on the cot. I switched on the overhead light, blinked in the sudden fierce wash of light, and looked at the curtain at the other end of the bay. Nothing stirred behind it. I said, 'Just kind of take your itching fingers away from that pipe wrench, Rawlings. It's me, Carpenter.'
The curtain was pulled to one side and Rawlings appeared, the pipe wrench, with its bandage-wrapped head, dangling from one hand. He had a disappointed look on his face.
'I was expecting someone else,' he said reproachfully. 'I was kinda hoping — My God, Doc, what's happened to your arm?'
'Well may you ask, Rawlings. Our little pal had a go at me tonight. I think he wanted me out of the way. Whether he wanted me out of the way permanently or not I don't know but he near as a toucher succeeded.' I told him what had happened, then asked, 'Is there any man aboard you can trust absolutely?' I knew the answer before I had asked the question.
'Zabrinski,' he said unhesitatingly.
'Do you think you could pussy-foot along to wherever it is that he's sleeping and bring him here without waking up anyone?'
He didn't ask any questions. He said, 'He can't walk, Doc, you know that.'
'Carry him. You're big enough.'
He grinned and left. He was back with Zabrinski inside three minutes. Three quarters of an hour later, after telling Rawlings he could call off his watch, I was back in my cabin.
Hansen was still asleep. He didn't wake even when I switched on a side light. Slowly, clumsily, painfully, I dressed myself in my furs, unlocked my case, and drew out the Mauser, the two rubber-covered magazines and the broken knife that Commander Swanson had found in the tractor's gas tank. I put them in my pocket and left. On my way through the control room, I told the officer on deck that I was going out to check on the two patients still left out in the camp. As I had pulled a fur mitten over my injured hand, he didn't raise an eyebrow, doctors were a law unto themselves, and I was just the good healer en route to give aid and comfort to the sick. -
I did have a good look at the two sick men, both of whom seemed to me to be picking up steadily, then said good night to the two «Dolphin» crewmen who were watching over them. But I didn't go straight back to the ship. First I went to the tractor shed and replaced the gun, magazines and broken knife in the tractor tank. Then I went back to the ship.
9
'I'm sorry to have to bother you with all these questions,' I said pleasantly. 'But that's the way it is with all government departments. A thousand questions in quadruplicate and each of them more pointlessly irritating than the rest. But I have this job to do and the report to be radioed off as soon as possible, and I would appreciate all the information and cooperation you can give me. First of all, has anyone any idea at all how this damned fire started?'
I hoped I sounded like a Ministry of Supply official, which was what I'd told them I was, making a Ministry of Supply report. I'd further told them, just to nip any eyebrow-raising in the bud, that it was the Ministry of Supply's policy to send a doctor to report on any accident where loss of life was involved. Maybe this was the case. I didn't know and I didn't care.
'Well, I was the first to discover the fire, I think,' Naseby, the Zebra cook, said hesitantly. His Yorkshire accent was very pronounced. He was still no picture of health and strength, but, for all that, he was a hundred per cent improved on the man I had seen yesterday. Like the other eight survivors of Drift Ice Station Zebra who were present in the wardroom that morning, a long night's warm sleep and good food had brought about a remarkable change for the better. More accurately, like seven others. Captain Folsom's face had been so hideously burned that it was difficult to say what progress he was making, though he had certainly bad a good enough breakfast, almost entirely liquid, less than half an hour previously.
'It must have been about two o'clock in the morning,' Naseby went on. 'Well, near enough two. The place was already on fire. Burning like a torch, it was. I — '
'What place?' I interrupted. 'Where were you sleeping?'
'In the cookhouse. That was also our dining hail. Furthestwest hut in the north row.'
'You slept there alone?'
'No. Hewson, here, and Flanders and Bryce slept there also. Flanders and Bryce, they're-they were-lab technicians. Hewson and I slept at the very back of the hut, then there were two big cupboards, one on each side, that held all our food stores, then Flanders and Bryce slept in the dining hail itself, by a corner of the galley.'
'They were nearest the door?'
'That's right. I got up, coughing and choking with smoke, very groggy, and I could see flames already starting to eat through the east wall of the hut. I shook Hewson, then ran for the fire extinguisher: it was kept by the door. It wouldn't work. Jammed solid with the cold, I suppose. I don't know. I ran back in again. I was blind by this time. You never saw smoke like it in your life. I shook Flanders and Bryce and shouted at them to get out; then I bumped into Hewson and told him to run and wake Captain Folsom here.'
