Hansen had got there before me and was shining his light, not on one prostrate figure, as I had expected, but on two. Benson and Jolly, both of them out cold.
I said to Hansen, “Did you see what happened?”
“No. Happened too quickly. All I know is that it was Benson that did the falling and Jolly that did the cushioning. Jolly was beside me only a few seconds before the fall.”
“If that’s the case, then Jolly probably saved your doctor’s life. We’ll need to strap them in stretchers and haul them up and inside. We can’t leave them out – here.”
“Stretchers? Well, yes, if you say so. But they might some around any minute.”
“One of them might. But one of them is not going to come around for a long time. You heard that crack when a head hit the ice, it was like someone being clouted over the head with a fence post. And 1 don’t know which it is yet.”
Hansen left. I stooped over Benson and eased back the hood of the duffel coat he was wearing. A fence post was just about right. The side of his head, an inch above the right ear, was a blood-smeared mess, a three-inch-long gash in the purpling flesh with the blood already coagulating in the bitter cold. Two inches further forward and he’d have been a dead man; the thin bone behind the temple would have shattered under such an impact. For Benson’s sake, I hoped the rest of his skull was pretty thick. No question but that this had been the sharp crack I’d heard.
Benson’s breathing was very shallow, the movement of his chest barely discernible. Jolly’s, on the other hand, was fairly deep and regular. I pulled back his anorak hood, probed carefully over his head, and encountered a slight puffiness far back, near the top on the left-hand side. The inference seemed obvious. I hadn’t been imagining things when I thought I had heard a second sound after the sharp crack caused by Benson’s head striking against the ice. Jolly must have been in the way of the falling Benson, not directly enough beneath him to break his fall in any way, but directly enough to be knocked backward on to the ice and bang the back of his head as he fell.
It took ten minutes to have them strapped in stretchers, taken inside, and placed in a couple of temporary cots in the sick bay. With Swanson waiting anxiously, I attended to Benson first, though there was little enough I could do. I had just started on Jolly when his eyes flickered and he slowly came back to consciousness, groaning a bit and trying to hold the back of his head. He made an effort to sit up in his cot, but I restrained him.
“Oh, Lord, my head.” Several times he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, opened them wide, focused with difficulty on the bulkhead riotous with the color of Benson’s cartoon characters, then looked away as if he didn’t believe it. “Oh, my word, that must have been a dilly. Who did it, old boy?”
“Did what?” Swanson asked.
“Walloped me on the old bean. Who? Eh?”
“You mean to say you don’t remember?”
“Remember?” Jolly said irritably. “How the devil should I–” fle broke off as his eye caught sight of Benson in the adjacent cot, a huddled figure under the blankets, with only the back of his head and a big gauze pack covering his wound showing. “Of course, of course. Yes, that’s it. He fell on top of me, didn’t he?” –
“He certainly did,” I said. “Did you try to catch him?”
“Catch him? No, I didn’t try to catch him. I didn’t try to get out of the way, either. It was all over in half a second. I just don’t remember a thing about it.” He groaned a bit more, then looked across at Benson. “Came a pretty nasty cropper, eh? Must have done.” –
“Looks like it. He’s very severely concussed. There’s Xray equipment here and I’ll have a look at his head shortly. Damned hard luck on you too, Jolly.”
“I’ll get over it,” he grunted. He pushed my hand away and sat up. “Can I help you?”
“You may not,” Swanson said quietly. “Early supper, then twelve hours solid for you and the other eight, Doctor, and those are _my_ doctor’s orders. You’ll find supper waiting in the wardroom now.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Jolly gave a ghost of a smile and pushed himself groggily to his feet. “That bit about the twelve hours sounds good to me.”
After a minute or two, when he was steady enough on his feet, he left. Swanson said, “What now?”
“You might inquire around to see who was closest or close to Benson when he slipped climbing over the edge of the bridge. But discreetly. It might do no harm if at the same time you hinted around that maybe Benson had just taken a turn.”
“What are _you_ hinting at?” Swanson asked slowly.
“Did he fall or was he pushed? That’s what I’m hinting at.”
“Did he fall or–” He broke off then went on warily: “Why should anyone want to push Dr. Benson?”
“Why should anyone want to kill seven–eight, now–men on Drift Ice Station Zebra?”
“You have a point,” Swanson acknowledged quietly. He left.
Making X-ray films wasn’t very much in my line, but apparently it hadn’t been very much in Dr. Benson’s line, either, for he’d written down, for his own benefit and guidance, a detailed list of instructions for the taking and developing of X-ray films. I wondered how he would have felt if he had known that the first beneficiary of his meticulous thoroughness was to be himself. The two finished negatives I came up with wouldn’t have caused any furor in the Royal Photo. graphic Society, but they were enough for my wants.
By and by, Commander Swanson returned, closing the door behind him. I said, “Ten gets one that you got nothing.”
“You won’t die a poor man,” he nodded. “Nothing is what it is. So chief torpedoman Patterson tells me, and you know what he’s like.”
I knew what he was like. Patterson was the man responsible for all discipline and organization among the enlisted men, and Swanson had said to me that he regarded Patterson, and not himself, as the most indispensable man on the ship.
“Patterson was the man who reached the bridge immediately before Benson,” Swanson said. “He said he heard Benson cry out, swung around and saw him already beginning to topple backward. He didn’t recognize who it was at the time, it was too dark and snowy for that. He said he had the impression that Benson had already had one hand and one knee on the bridge coaming when he fell backward.”
“A funny position in which to start falling backward,” I said. “Most of his body weight must already have been inboard. And even if he did topple outward, he would surely still have had plenty of time to grab the coaming with both hands.”
“Maybe he did take a turn,” Swanson suggested. “And don’t forget that the coaming is glass-slippery with its smooth coating of ice.”
“As soon as Benson disappeared, Patterson ran to the side to see what had happened to him?”
“He did,” Swanson said wearily. “And he said there wasn’t a person within ten feet of the top of the bridge when Benson fell.”
“And who _was_ ten feet below?”
“He couldn’t tell. Don’t forget how black it was out there on the ice cap and that the moment Patterson had dropped into the brightly lit bridge he’d lost whatever night sight he’d built up. Besides, he didn’t wait for more than a glance. He was off for a stretcher even before you or Hansen got to Benson. Patterson is not the sort of man who has to be told what to do.”
“So it’s a dead end there?”
“A dead end.”
I nodded, crossed to a cupboard, and brought back the two X-rays, still wet, held in their metal clips. I held them up to the light for Swanson’s inspection.
“Benson?” he asked, and when I nodded, he peered at them more closely and finally said, “That line there–a fracture?”
“A fracture. And not a hair-line one, either, as you can see. He really caught a wallop.”
“How bad is it? How long before he comes out of this coma– He _is_ in a coma?”
“He’s all that. How long? If I were a lad fresh out of medical school I’d let you have a pretty confident estimate. If I were a top-flight brain surgeon I’d say anything from half an hour to a year or two, because people who really know what they are talking about are only too aware that we know next to nothing about the brain. Being neither, I’d guess at two or three days–and my guess could be hopelessly wrong. There may be cerebral bleeding. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Blood pressure, respiration, and temperature show no evidence of organic damage. And now you know as much about it as I do.”