Zodiac Station

by Tom Harper

  A gust of wind lifted the paper. I snatched for it, but my fingers were clumsy with cold. It blew out of the notebook and fluttered across the glacier, white against white. In a split second, I could hardly see it.

  I wasn’t going to lose it before I knew what it meant. I scrambled out of the pit and ran after it, floundering through the snow, skidding where the wind had scoured out patches of ice. Behind me, Annabel was shouting something, but with my hood up and the wind roaring around me, I didn’t make out the words.

  The paper blew up against a rocky outcrop and stopped. I grabbed it, but my fingers wouldn’t move. I clapped it between my hands to lift it, then just about managed to stuff it into my coat pocket. I had to get my mittens back on.

  Annabel was still shouting. I looked around to see what she wanted, and realised how far I’d come. Well beyond the safe area. Perhaps that’s what she was trying to tell me.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I called, and stepped forward.

  Something cracked. The ground gave way under me. I felt a sickening emptiness as I fell. I remember thinking, This is how a snowflake feels.

  Snow lands soft as a feather. I didn’t. I hit my head, and the white world went black.

  Eleven

  USCGC Terra Nova

  The vibrating pager skittered across the tabletop like a beetle. The captain’s hand trapped it right before it went over the edge. He read the screen and stood.

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  Anderson, half buried under the pink blanket, gave a lean smile. ‘I just reached the most exciting part.’

  ‘Yeah. But the helicopter’s coming in.’

  The smile vanished. ‘Any survivors?’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’

  Franklin closed the door behind him. Santiago was waiting in the corridor.

  ‘You get anything, boss?’

  ‘Long story. What’s the word from the boarding party?’

  ‘ETA five minutes. They said to have a couple of stretchers ready. And to open up the cold locker.’

  They climbed the stairs towards the wheelhouse. There were ten decks on the Terra Nova, and wherever you happened to be, the chances were that what you wanted would be on a different deck. A floating StairMaster. The crew were the fittest in the Coast Guard.

  Santiago’s voice dropped. ‘We’ve been doing some checking up on this guy. There’s a few wrinkles.’

  ‘Like?’ They went past the wipe board where the science schedule was written up. Sailing in the Arctic, things changed so often the geeks called it the Board of Lies.

  ‘For starters, he doesn’t have a PhD like he claimed. He got kicked out of school before he finished – some big scandal. An experiment went wrong, he’d faked the paperwork, they cut him loose.’

  ‘You figure all that out yourself, Ops?’

  Santiago grinned. ‘I got one of the geeks to help me out.’

  They came out on the bridge. Franklin crossed to the rear windows and looked down on the flight deck. Snow was blowing over the side, covering the deck as quickly as the crew could sweep it back. He scanned for the helicopter. Couldn’t even find the sky.

  ‘There, sir.’

  Santiago pointed. A dim light had appeared, blinking in the fog like a distant lighthouse. It grew brighter. Rotor blades chopped a hole in the fog.

  ‘“At length did cross an Albatross,”’ Franklin murmured. ‘“Through the fog it came.”’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘Poetry, Commander. You wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Is it gonna be on the test?’

  The helicopter swam out of the fog and towards the deck. In the Navy, they’d drop a wire to the deck and winch the helicopter in. But everyone knew the Navy were pussies. The Coast Guard liked to keep their birds free-range. As it passed the wheelhouse, Franklin could see the pilot only a few yards away, concentrating like hell.

  The helicopter touched down, bounced on its wheels and settled. The deck crew raced to secure it; Parsons and her team ran out from where they’d been sheltering and slid open the door. Two stretchers came out, covered in foil blankets that flapped and crinkled in the wind. Then came the bodies. Franklin counted eleven. Last of all, Lieutenant Klein, the first officer, who had led the mission. He looked none too steady on his feet, though the crew had done a good job clearing the ice.

  ‘Tell Klein to see me in my quarters. And send someone to make sure Anderson stays in his cabin. I don’t want him seeing this.’

  Tim Klein, Terra Nova’s first lieutenant, sat in the easy chair opposite Franklin. His family were Marines, three generations; it had been a minor family scandal when he went into the Coast Guard. But he still had the posture. He sat ramrod straight, but angled about ten degrees forward, gripping the coffee cup two-handed. He still couldn’t stop it shaking.

  ‘It was real bad, sir. First they burned, then they froze.’

  ‘There was a fire?’

  ‘More like an explosion. The main building was jacked up on stilts. Something blew a hole right out of it: whole thing collapsed and burned. Like a car bomb, or a missile strike.’

  He stared at his reflection in the cabin window. ‘You wouldn’t think it could burn so much in this cold.’

  Franklin waited for Klein’s thoughts to settle, and made a mental note to arrange some CISM counselling for him with the Chief.

  ‘Any idea what caused it?’

  ‘There were some gas tanks – but they were a ways from the Platform.’ He knitted his fingers together around the cup and frowned. ‘To be honest, sir, it looked like high explosive.’

  ‘It’s plausible. Anderson – the guy from the ice – he said they did seismic blasting on the glaciers there. Something could have gone wrong.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Klein was looking at Franklin, but his eyes were seeing something else. ‘We found these, too.’

  He held out his palm. Three copper bullet casings gleamed. ‘There was blood on the snow nearby.’

  ‘Did you get anything from the survivors?’

  ‘They weren’t in a position to talk. Frankly, they were lucky to be alive.’ His voice shook. ‘There were a lot of bodies, sir. We brought back the ones we could fit, but there’s more we’ll have to go back for.’

  ‘There’s no hurry, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  A knock at the door; Santiago came in. Klein looked grateful for the intrusion.

  ‘The Brits emailed photos of their Zodiac people. We’ve identified three of the bodies so far – the rest got burned too bad.’ He handed Franklin the printout, three of the photos circled in red marker. ‘Stuart Jensen. Daniel MacGregor. Francis Quam.’

  Franklin scanned the rest of the pictures. ‘Where’s Anderson?’

  ‘They didn’t have him on file.’

  ‘Makes sense – he said he went there in a hurry. So who are the survivors?’

  Santiago pointed. ‘These two, sir. Bob Eastman and Sean Kennedy.’

  ‘Can they talk?’

  ‘Eastman had it worse – he’s still out. Doc has him rigged up in the sickbay. But Kennedy’s OK. Well, conscious. She’s moved him to one of the staterooms to keep him comfortable.’

  ‘Then let’s go see what he has to tell us.’ Franklin touched Klein on the shoulder. ‘You’ve done good work, Lieutenant. Get some rest.’

  It was strange meeting a man you’d just been hearing about. Stranger still when he was bandaged up like a mummy, one eye and his mouth about all you could see. Kennedy was taller and thinner than Franklin had imagined him. As much as he could tell.

  He held up the bottle he’d brought from his cabin. ‘I thought you might like this. Scotch – not Irish. It’s the best we could do.’

  Kennedy struggled to prop himself up.

  ‘It’s kind of you, Captain.’ His voice was hoarse, the Irish accent almost buried in the rasp. ‘And I don’t want you to think badly of the Irish, now – but I don’t drink.’

  ‘Really?’
>
  ‘A disgrace, to be sure.’

  Franklin was about to say more, but decided against it. ‘My apologies.’

  He put the whisky on the table and took the seat beside the bed. Santiago loitered by the door.

  ‘Are you able to talk? I don’t want to—’

  Kennedy shook his head – as much as the bandages would allow. ‘I’m better than I look. On the outside, anyway.’

  ‘How did you …?’

  ‘Survive?’ Kennedy lapsed into a fit of coughing. ‘The luck of the Irish. Bob Eastman and I had just gone out when the explosion happened. That was what saved us. From the fire, of course – and from the cold. We had our ECW gear on, you see; none of the others did. We did what we could for them, but in that climate …’

  He slumped back. ‘The ones that didn’t burn froze to death.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Franklin. It sounded inadequate; it always did.

  Kennedy put out his hand. ‘Perhaps I will have that drink after all.’

  Franklin splashed some whisky in a plastic cup. He thought about taking some for himself, and decided against it. He had to stay sharp.

  ‘I’m trying to figure out what happened at Zodiac. There are folks back in Britain and Stateside who are asking a lot of questions. If there’s anything you can tell me …’

  ‘I’ve spent the last five days asking myself these questions. I don’t know why it happened.’

  ‘I understand. But maybe if you go through what happened those last few days before the explosion, you’ll remember something.’

  Kennedy’s good eye flickered towards Santiago. ‘I don’t want to take up your time, Captain. You’re a busy man, you’ve a ship to run.’

  ‘Just give me a second.’

  He took Santiago into the corridor.

  ‘Keep an eye on Eastman. Tell the Doc I want to speak to him the minute he comes round. And keep tabs on Anderson, too.’

  ‘You think something’s up?’

  ‘Something very bad happened at Zodiac. Until we know what it is, I don’t want to risk it affecting my ship.’

  Back in the cabin, Kennedy had put his whisky down on the table, almost untouched.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I can.’

  Twelve

  Kennedy

  The dirty secret to being the doctor at a place like Zodiac is you don’t actually have much to do. Especially outside the summer season. You’ve got maybe two dozen people, mostly young and fit, all screened for every disease under the sun before they set foot there. I had a surgery kitted out like a small hospital, a dispensary to make a pharmacist weep with envy – and all they ever needed was a few paracetamol on Sunday mornings after movie night.

  But you’ve got to keep busy. Some of my predecessors dabbled in science; others painted, or wrote the novel they’d always meant to get round to. I’m a fossil man, myself: Utgard’s stuffed full of them. But there’re always odd little jobs coming up that need to be done. Because the scientists have no time, they usually land on the doctor.

  Now, there’s an outfit in America called Planet Climate Action. Don’t let the name fool you: it’s actually a front for oil companies, car companies, utilities, anyone who wants to burn fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow. They’d been getting hold of some of our data and leaking it so as to make us look bad. Quam, the base commander, had it in his head that someone at Zodiac was helping them. He asked me to find out about it.

  To tell the truth, I hadn’t got very far. To leak the data, you’d have to understand it, and the climate expert at Zodiac was Fridge Torell. Well, he’s the biggest global-warming fanatic there is: Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF, he carries so many cards they don’t fit in his wallet. Scientists guard their results like a pot of gold at the best of times. It was inconceivable Fridge would give away his own data to undermine the cause.

  Then Martin Hagger died – fell in a crevasse. Tragic. I knew, from some private conversations, that he’d been under pressure with work, things not going his way. I thought it had got too much for him. But then I started to wonder.

  I know it sounds ridiculous, that someone would be killed for a few numbers on a graph. But there’s a lot of money chasing round the Arctic. Ice caps are melting; places that have been out of bounds for fifty thousand years are suddenly opening up. Just when we thought we had the planet all parcelled out, it turns out there’s a bit more to grab. People get foolish when they think they can have something for nothing. And if fools and money are involved, anything can happen.

  Hagger had an assistant, fellow named Tom Anderson. Quiet, gentle and desperately unlucky: he landed at Zodiac the day Hagger died. I spoke to him once or twice, liked him at the time. There was a sorrow in him, but dignified, you know? Life had dealt him a rough hand, and he was trying to play it the best he could. He was supposed to have gone home already, but the plane got delayed – often happens – so he went up to spend the day at Camp Gemini, on the ice dome. Then Annabel Kobayashi and Jensen the pilot carried him into my medical room on a stretcher. He was out cold.

  ‘He fell in a moulin,’ Dr Kobayashi explained.

  Well, you couldn’t make it up. First Hagger, now his assistant. A moulin – perhaps you know this, Captain? – is a hole in the glacier that the meltwater bores out in summer. They tunnel under the ice; some of them go on for miles. Anderson did better than his boss – he was alive, at least – but he’d banged his head hard. I gave him Mannitol to ease the swelling, and put him on halothane to keep him under.

  ‘Is he going to make it?’ Jensen asked.

  There was no point lying. ‘You can’t tell with head injuries. He could be right as rain tomorrow morning – or he might never wake up.’

  Of course, I wondered if it could be coincidence. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Didn’t see,’ Annabel said. ‘I’d gone for a wee behind the moraine. When I came back, he wasn’t there. I found him at the bottom of a moulin. Stupid,’ she added fiercely. ‘He shouldn’t have left the safe area. I marked all the moulins at the end of last season. Martin must have taken the pole down.’

  The emotion surprised me. Annabel wasn’t what you’d call a demonstrative person. Around Zodiac, they called her the Ice Queen. If she’d been shaken up, I didn’t like to think how the others were taking it.

  The doctor at Zodiac has a tricky role. He’s confessor, counsellor, friend – and psychologist. If people start cracking up, it’s his job to nip it in the bud. It happens more often than you’d think. Or perhaps you think it would happen all the time in a place like Zodiac.

  Annabel slipped a bag off her shoulder, a standard-issue Zodiac field pack. She unzipped it and took out a green notebook, with a sheet of paper pressed between the pages. It was damp and creased and made no sense at all. Just a page full of numbers – zeros, ones and twos, like some kind of Sudoku for idiots.

  ‘This was Hagger’s. Anderson found it in a snow pit just before he fell.’

  ‘Did he say what was so important?’

  ‘No.’

  I glanced through the rest of the notebook. ‘You’d best leave this here.’

  ‘I think—’

  ‘Obviously it meant something to Anderson. If I put it where he can see it, it might help him come round.’

  Annabel gave me a look – but we doctors are trained to sound convincing. It might even have been true. A head injury’s a funny thing, poorly understood.

  I shooed the others out of my office. Once I’d satisfied myself Anderson’s condition was stable, I turned my attention to the notebook. An idea had struck me, and was building nicely into a theory. There hadn’t been a fatal accident at Zodiac in twenty years. Now we’d nearly had two in three days: Hagger and his assistant. It couldn’t be coincidence. I’d seen Anderson poking around Hagger’s lab. I wondered what he’d found. Or been trying to hide.

  And if you started to think about it, you might ask a few more questions about Anderson. Starting with how he came to be at Zodiac in the firs
t place. Most personnel are selected a year in advance, there’s rigorous screening and months of training. Anderson swanned in on forty-eight hours’ notice, didn’t even bring a proper coat. The story they put about was he’d come to replace Hagger’s old assistant, South African fellow named Kevin, who’d had to go home with a wisdom-tooth infection. But the doctor at Zodiac is also the dentist, and I can tell you that boy’s teeth were sound as a drum. The truth is, Hagger decided he wanted Anderson, and when Quam said he didn’t have funding for two assistants, he packed off the unfortunate Kevin and replaced him. So you could say I was curious to see what Hagger had in his notebook.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Lots of numbers, some equations and pretty graphs, and precious few words to explain what they might be. Lots of cryptic little notes like Check SO ions and Concentration of X and Where is X coming from? A hand-drawn map of Utgard scattered with little x’s like a treasure map.

  But there were a few sentences I could read. And one of them made me very anxious to talk to Fridge Torell.

  I found him up a mast on the edge of the base, cracking ice off some instruments as he hung on to the steel frame. It’s tricky work: if your skin touches the metal, it bonds like cement. Most scientists would leave it to their students, or the techs, but Fridge is a hands-on sort of fellow.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ I called up. ‘About Hagger.’

  An icicle, two feet long and sharp as a knife, dropped off the mast and stuck quivering in the snow. I took a step back.

  Fridge clambered down and dropped the last few feet on to the snow.

  ‘Nothing works in this fucking place,’ he complained.

  ‘Data link down again?’

  ‘It’s up – but all I’m getting is garbage.’ He made karate-chopping motions with his hands to get the circulation going. ‘Some kind of interference screwing with it.’