I replaced the board, left the lab, and went across to the meteorological hut again. I spent over an hour there, unbuttoning the backs of metal cabinets and peering into their innards, but I found nothing. Not what I had hoped to find, that is. But I did come across one very peculiar item, a small green metal box six inches by four by two, with a circular control that was both switch and tuner, and two glassed-in dials with neither figures nor marking on them. On one side of the box was a brass-rimmed hole.
I turned the switch and one of the dials glowed green, a magic-eye tuning device with the fans spread well apart. The other dial stayed dead. I twiddled the tuner control but nothing happened. Both the magic eye and the second dial required something to activate them–something like a preset radio signal. The hole in the side would accommodate the plug of any standard telephone receiver. Not many people would have known what this was, but I’d seen one betore– a transistorized homing device for locating the direction of a radio signal, such as emitted by the _Sarah_ device on American space capsules which enables searchers to locate it once it has landed in the sea.
What legitimate purpose could be served by such a device in Drift Ice Station Zebra? When I’d told Swanson and Hansen of the existence of a console for monitoring rocket-firing signals from Siberia, that much of my story, anyway, had been true. But that had called for a giant aerial stretching far up into the sky: this comparative toy couldn’t have ranged a twentieth of the distance to Siberia.
I had another look at the portable radio transmitter and the now exhausted Nife batteries that served them. The dialing counter was still tuned to the wave band on which the _Dolphin_ had picked up the distress signals. There was nothing for me there. I looked more closely at the nickel-cadmium cells and saw that they were joined to one another and to the radio set by wire-cored rubber leads with very powerful spring-loaded sawtooth clips on the terminals: those last ensured perfect electrical contact, as well as being very convenient to use. I undid two of the clips, held my flashlight high, and peered closely at the terminals. The indentations made by the sharpened steel saw teeth were faint but unniistakable.
I made my way back to the laboratory hut, lifted the loose floorboard again, and shone my light on the Nile cells lying there. At least half of the cells had the same characteristic markings. Cells that looked fresh and unused, yet had those same markings, and if anything was certain, it was that those cells had been brand new and unmarked when Drift Ice Station Zebra had been first set up. A few of the cells were tucked so far away under adjacent floorboards that I had to stretch my hand far in to reach them. I pulled out two, and in the space behind them, I seemed to see something dark and dull and metallic.
It was too dark to distinguish clearly what the object was but after I’d levered up another two floorboards, I could see without any trouble at all. It was a cylinder about thirty inches long and six in diameter with brass stopcock and mounted pressure gauge registering “Full,” close beside it was a package about eighteen inches square and four thick stenciled with the words “Radio Sonde Balloons.” Hydrogen, batteries, balloons, corned beef, and mulligatawny soup. A catholic enough assortment of stores by any standards: but there wouldn’t have been anything haphazard about the choice of that assortment.
When I made it back to the bunkhouse, the two patients were still breathing. That was about all I could say for myself, too, I was shaking with cold, and even clamping my teeth together couldn’t keep them from chattering. I thawed out under the big electric heaters until I was only half frozen; then I picked up my flashlight and moved out again into the wind and the cold and the dark. I was a sucker for punishment, that was for sure.
In the next twenty minutes I made half a dozen complete Circuits of the camp, moving a few yards farther out with each circuit. I must have walked over a mile altogether and that was all I had for it, just the walk and a slight touch of frostbite high up on my cheekbones, the only part of my face other than my eyes exposed to that bitter cold. I knew I had frostbite, for my skin had suddenly ceased to feel cold any more and was quite dead to the touch. Enough was enough, and I had a hunch that I was wasting my time, anyway. I headed back to the camp.
I passed between the meteorological hut and the lab and was just level with the eastern end of the bunkhouse when I sensed as much as saw something odd out of the corner of my eye. I steadied my flashlight beam on the east wall -and peered closely at the sheath of ice that had been deposited there over the days by the ice storm. Most of the encrustation was of a homogeneous grayish-white, very smooth and polished, but it wasn’t all gray-white; here and there it was speckled with dozens of black flecks of odd shapes and sizes, none of them more than an inch square. I tried to touch them, but they were deeply imbedded in and showing through the gleaming ice. I went to examine the east wall of the meteorological hut, but it was quite innocent of any such black flecking. So was the east wall of the lab.
A short search inside the meteorological hut turned up a hammer and screw-driver. I chipped away a section of the black-flecked ice, brought it into the bunkhouse, and laid it on the floor in front of one of the big electrical heaters. Ten minutes later I had a small pool of water and, lying in it, the sodden remains of what had once been fragments of burnt paper. This was very curious indeed. It meant that there were scores of pieces of burnt paper imbedded in the east wall of the bunkhouse. Just there: nowhere else. The explanation, of course, could be completely innocuous: or not, as the case might be.
I had another look at the two unconscious men. They were warm enough and comfortable enough, but that was about all you could say for them. I knew they weren’t well enough to be moved within the next twenty-four hours. I lifted the phone and asked for someone to relieve me, and when two seamen arrived I made my way back to the _Dolphin_.
There was an unusual atmosphere aboard ship that afternoon, quiet and dull and almost funereal. It was hardly surprising. As far as the crew of the _Dolphin_ had been concerned, the men manning Drift Ice Station Zebra had been just so many ciphers, not even names, just unknowns. But now the burnt, frost-bitten, emaciated survivors had come aboard ship, sick and suffering men each with a life and individuality of his own, and the sight of those wasted men still mourning the deaths of their eight comrades had suddenly brought home to every man on the submarine the full horror of what had happened on Zebra. And, of course, less than seven hours had elapsed since their own torpedo officer, Lieutenant Mills, had been killed. Now, even though the mission had been successful, there seemed little reason for celebration. Down in the crew’s mess the hi-fl and the juke box were stilled. The ship was like a tomb.
I found Hansen in his cabin. He was sitting on the edge of his Pullman bunk, still wearing his fur trousers, his face bleak and hard and cold. He watched me in silence as I stripped off my parka, undid the empty holster tied around my chest, hung it up, and stuck inside it the automatic I’d pulled from my caribou pants. Then he said suddenly, “I wouldn’t take them all off, Doc. Not if you want to come with us, that is.” He looked at his own furs, and his mouth was bitter. “Hardly the, uniform for a funeral, is it?”
“You mean–”
“Skipper’s in his cabin. Boning up on the burial service. Tom Mills and that assistant radio operator–Grant, wasn’t it?–who died out there today. A double funeral. Out on the ice. There’s some men there already, chipping a place with crow bars and sledges at the base of a hummock.”
“I saw no one.”
“Port side. To the west.”
“I thought Swanson would have taken young Mills back to the States. Or Scotland.”
“Too far. And there’s the psychological angle. You could hardly dent the morale of this bunch we have aboard here, much less shoot it to pieces, but carrying a dead man as a shipmate is an unhappy thing. He’s had permission from Washington.. .” He broke off uncertainly, looked up at me and then away again. I didn’t have any need of telepathy to know what was in his mind.