The Biggest Morgue in the World
Jonathan Jermey – jonjermey@optusnet.com.au
CHAPTER I 
If you'd been proceeding in a westerly direction (as we say in court) along the Belconnen cyclepath in Canberra at 8:32 AM on Thursday the 20th of January, you would have passed an Inspector of the Federal Police, mounted on a Raleigh twelve-speed in pursuit of a sixteen year old girl on a Malvern Star. The girl was slim and fair: the Inspector broad, heavily built and balding, with a face that suggested a lifetime of lost prize-fights. Had you been told they were related, you would have found it very hard to believe: but we are, all the same. She got her good looks from her late mother, fortunately, not from me. 
She was outdistancing me, too. Understandable, because she only weighs about half as much. I put on a burst of speed and shrank the distance between us. We were riding in from our townhouse in Bruce, approaching her school and my work, through the scrub and bushland that extends like a finger pointing to Belconnen. Near Northbourne Avenue we came to a broad belt of deciduous trees. Some Anglophile on the Development Commission planted these when this part of Canberra was laid out thirty years ago. Australian plants are all the rage now — scrawny gums, looking half-starved and pathetic, Pittosporum, which take years to reach a decent height — all very patriotic: but to an old Yorkshire boy these oaks and elms are a memory of home. In autumn, when the acorns crunch under your wheels and the leaves blaze with green and gold, when the mist is pulling back and there's an edge of frost to the air — then it could be Bradford Common, almost. 
Here, amongst the trees, Julie slowed her bike. "See you, Dad."
 "Cheerio, lass. Have a good day, eh?"
"You too, Dad." She waved and wobbled off. I used to kiss her, but she's too old for that now.  Instead I watched her weaving down the narrow side-track to her college. Other cyclists were there already, boys and girls her own age, one or two teachers, none of them a patch on Julie. Funny how your own kith stand out from the others, isn't it? 
I set foot to pedal and was off again, changing rapidly up to the faster gears. When I left the Force in England the village bobbies were just handing in their bikes — dirty great big black three-speeds, they were, with back-pedal brakes. You could stop a lorry with them, if you had to — they weighed about as much.  Now we all drive air-conditioned cars. The crime rate keeps on going up, but at least we're comfortable. Mind you, you'd look a bloody fool pedalling like mad along the expressway after a hit-and-run.

At work I undid the quick-release nuts on the front wheel, put it next to the back one, threaded a hardened steel lock through both wheels and the frame, and fastened it to the bike rack by the entrance.. For good measure I took off the sheepskin seat-cover and slid it into my briefcase. So what if this is police headquarters? That just makes it all the more exciting for petty criminals, vandals and louts, kids looking for thrills in our sterile sanitized city. Toytown, that's Canberra to me — Toytown, with Mr. Plod the policeman, and Noddy driving around in his little car, and all the buildings made of wooden blocks, and all the people too. Trouble is, everywhere else is going the same way. 
Nodding to the Sergeant at the desk, I went up to my office. Its door is hidden behind pot plants — useful camouflage — at the edge of a busy open-plan area. We're an arm of the Federal Government: uniformed police share the hack work with Public Service clerks and stenos. No more two-finger typists tapping out reports on noisy typewriters; it's all word-processed these days. I share a secretary, Marta, with Cary Pratt, another Inspector. She can type with all her fingers: I know she can, I've seen her doing it. Why, then, does it take her four times as long to type a report as it takes me to write it? My theory is that she writes romances all day, using a special code that makes them looks like police business. She had a message for me when I got there: "Superintendent Devine wants to see you." 
"What've I done wrong?" 
"Search me." 
I contemplated her form: bony round the joints and too much make-up, but solid with it. "I wouldn't mind."
She sniffed and vanished back into her VDU. Another five thousand words, another beautiful young nurse paired off with the dashing, misunderstood brain surgeon. I entered my office, put down my briefcase, hung up my jacket and combed my hair. Attention to detail: Superintendents like that. There was a photocopied sheet of news clippings there which I glanced at: nothing I could see there for Devine to get ropy about. "Am I presentable?" I asked on the way out. 
Marta regarded me quizzically. "That'll be the day." she said.

Up two floors the rooms are quieter, the carpets and the secretaries lusher. Alex Devine holds court here over the Territorial Division, rewriting the bad news from downstairs into good news for the exalted Assistant Secretaries on the next floor up, the one below the roof. (Public Service ranks are like that: the less important somebody sounds, the more important they really are). The rooftop, as a gesture to democracy, is given over to the canteen.
Devine's secretary Linda is slim, trim, highly trained and extremely efficient-looking. She never does any routine typing; her talents are reserved for important matters, and anyway her nails are too long. So far we haven't found anything important enough for her to do, but when we do I bet she'll be good at it. "Is the Old Man in?" I asked her.
She buzzed the intercom without condescending to reply. "Inspector Thrale to see you, Superintendent."
"Send him in." 
Linda made to wave me through the door, but she was too late: I was already there.

Devine is a fat florid man with coarse leathery skin and a few wisps of blonde hair pasted across his scalp with brilliantine. He wears brown suits with blue nylon shirts and black wool ties, and looks as though he would really have preferred to stay on the family farm down by the Murrumbidgee. He was in a good mood today, which was ominous. Devine's good moods usually result from doing somebody important a favour, and the favour usually involves dropping someone like me up to their necks in it. I folded myself into an armchair by the desk. "You wanted me, Super?"
"G'day, Ozzie. How are you? Ride in today?" Like many Australians, for some reason Devine can't cope with my given name Oswald. 
"Mm-hmm. Warm out there this morning." 
"I should think so. They had bushfires up the Brindas last night. I thought the house down the road was gunna go."
We exchanged similar pleasantries for a moment or two. Then "Much on your plate at the moment?" he asked me, as if he didn't know.
I took the luxury of a moment to think before I shook my head. "Not a lot." I said. "Nowt I can't pass on. Why?"
For answer Devine sat back in his chair and sucked his breath in between his teeth, the irritating habit of an ex-pipe smoker. "What d'you know about Antarctica?" he asked.
If he was trying to surprise me he didn't succeed. Nothing surprises a policeman. "It's bloody big and bloody cold. If you keep going south you can't miss it."
"That'll do to start with. D'you know we administer a big chunk of it?" I didn't. "Two big chunks, really." Devine drew a photocopied map from a file on his desk and passed across to me. It showed the roughly circular shape of the southernmost continent. Imagine a pie — lemon meringue, to get the colour right — with one half intact and the other half cut into three equal slices. Of those three slices one is missing, one has been nibbled at by mice, and the third piece has been sliced in two crossways, and the outer section smeared out into a string of crumbs. The  crumbs sweep past the Falkland Islands and halfway to South America. Look at a map if you don't get it. Not that it matters. 
Devine indicated the intact half of the pie. "Two-thirds of that is ours. This big bit here and this smaller bit next to it. The little wedge in between belongs to France. God knows why they got that bit — I don't. This chunk — " he pointed to the ragged edges of the absent slice " — belongs to New Zealand. This bit — " the intact part " — belongs to the USA. This bit near the Falklands — " the smeared part " — is British. And the rest — " the top third of the intact half " — is Norwegian."
"Done all right for ourselves, haven't we?" I studied the map more closely, taking in the names and boundaries. "Pardon my ignorance, Super, but if all this is ours why are there Russian bases on it?"
"Because of the Antarctic Treaty." He pulled another document from the folder. "This goes into all the details, but I'll just read you the guts of it now. 'Following the success of co-operation in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year 1957-58, a treaty was signed by Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the UK, the USA and the USSR....'."
"Hang on." I said. "Why Belgium? What have they got to do with it?"
Devine shrugged. "You haven't heard anything yet. 'Later signatories included China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary...' " He looked up. "Basically all of the Commos, all right?...'Papua New Guinea ,and Spain.''"
"Sounds like everybody wants to get into the act." 
"Too right." Devine said. "No-one wants to miss out on the chance of a quid. 'The Treaty stipulates that Antarctica be used for peaceful purposes only, that nuclear material not be tested or dumped, that no mining or removal of non-renewable resources take place without the agreement of the signatories, and that scientists from the signatory countries can freely inspect other countries' sites and exchange information. It also fixes the territorial boundaries as they are during the life of the Treaty. Clear?"
"I think so." I said. "The Russkies toddle over to our bases and we show them our bits and pieces, and in return we toddle over to their bases and they show us theirs. But if we try to actually use the place for anything we get half the United Nations breathing down our necks and telling us not to."
Devine slid the document back into the folder. "That's more or less it, yes."
"Does it work?"
"As far as I know." Devine said. "Right now it's too bloody cold and expensive to do anything except study the place, so nobody's worried too much about the territorial claims — so far."
"And when does the Treaty expire?"
"There's no fixed expiry date. It comes up for review in two years."
"What if someone discovers something down there in the meantime that's worth hanging on to?
"Then the Treaty could go bang." Devine said. He closed the folder. "That's not our problem. Our problem is that Australian Antarctica is a Commonwealth Territory. We're responsible for law enforcement there."
"I get your drift. What happened — one of our boffins get bumped off?"
Devine sat back with a sigh. "Ozzie, that's exactly what's happened."
 
Murder is not funny, even at a distance, even when you make a business of it. There was a silence in the office before Devine went on. "His name was Samuels, Doctor Paul Samuels. He was a zoologist at Whale Base. We have three year-round bases down there, Seal Base, Whale Base and Penguin Base. That just about covers the local fauna. Whale Base is relatively new. The other two have been there since the 1950's. All of them are staffed throughout the year by volunteers — either career public servants or else recruited for the duration. You've probably seen the ads in the paper — wanted, scientists and tradespeople for a one-year stint. It's a tax-free zone, and there's nothing to spend your money on but grog, so they either come back pretty rich or pretty drunk. "
"I prefer the Gold Coast for my holidays." I told him.
"Hm. Anyway, the scientists — they call them 'boffins' — are employed by the Department of Science, the tradespeople by Housing and Construction. They travel down by ship in the summer, when the pack-ice melts and the ships can reach the shore. All the bases are on the coast. There's been talk of building an inland one with an airstrip, but it hasn't happened yet. Some of the expeditioners leave at the end of summer when the boat comes back. Others stay there till the ice melts again and the ship can get back to pick them up and drop off the next lot. That can be up to eighteen months. Nobody's allowed to spend two winters in a row down there, but a fair few people go back for a second trip or more."
"Gluttons for punishment." 
"They say it's beautiful."
"So's the Gold Coast." 
He looked at me hard, but I kept my face blank. "Eighty people are wintering down there this season." he went on. "Thirty of them are at Whale Base, where Samuels was stationed. Twenty-eight are men and two are women. There were two zoologists including Samuels. The Officer-In-Charge of the base is an Executive Research Officer from Defence called Machin. There's been an attack on him too. Samuels was staying at a remote hut. Someone apparently drove out there from the Base, poured some whisky down his throat and dragged him out in the snow to die. Not very pretty." He slid the file across to me. It's all in here."
 "Whale Base has radio contact via satellite with the Antarctic Research Commission in Tasmania when the weather down there is good, and they can fax documents then, too. I've asked Machin to send up his log, and that's coming through to Hobart in dribs and drabs. And at the moment that's all I know. The Minister's keen to get it cleared up before the papers have a field day. The Press have got wind of it already." He paused. "There's no holds barred on this one, Ozzie. Work out what you need to spend, and spend it. I hope you can sort it out from here, but if you can't — " he sighed " — we'll manage to get you down there somehow. Have a look and let me know if you come up with anything, eh?"
I took the file. "What about his family?" I asked. "Any leads there?"
"Wife and young child in Perth, parents in Albany. I'm expecting a report from the WA force, but I wouldn't count on much. The investigating officer over there is a woman that I know slightly. She rang me this morning and said that the wife couldn't help at all. She was totally stunned and had to be sedated for shock."
I nodded. "All right, Alec. I'll let you know what I need." 

Back in the office I composed a curse that encompassed politicians in general and Ministers in particular. Ministerial patronage is a pain in the neck: get it right and they take all the credit, get it wrong and you wear the blame — at least until the department changes hands. And when politicians interest themselves in something it's usually something very murky indeed.
I pulled the material out of the file and arranged it on the desk. It was an odd assortment, cobbled together quickly from the material on hand. There were maps of Antarctica, plans and descriptions of the bases, transcripts of the specific messages in which the Acting Officer-In-Charge had asked for our help. None of it made much sense without a bit of background. I buzzed. "Marta?"
"Yes?"
"Find someone with nowt to do and send him in here, will you?"
"Him or her." 
"Him, her or it. I don't care which, as long as they can drive and read."

A few minutes later the door was opened by a large pair of red-framed glasses. A young woman came in behind them and blinked at me owlishly. "You sent for me, Inspector?"
"Kerri, isn't it? Come in." We recruit an annual dose of Bright Young Things straight from the universities. The smart ones shoot through as soon as they can. The dim ones stick around forever.  I didn't know which type Kerri was yet. I waved her to a chair. "Got a notebook?"
She nodded, settling a writing pad on her knee. 
"All right. I want you to dig up some information for me. Start with the Department of Science at Woden, then try the National Library, then the morgue at the Canberra Times — after that it's up to you. I want information on Antarctica in general, on the Australian Antarctic Territory in particular. I want it labelled, tied up in neat little packages that I can read without getting bogged down in details. And I want it by this time tomorrow. It's for a murder." I paused, seeing her flinch. "Does that upset you?"
"It's just a surprise." she said. "I haven't worked on a murder before."
"I have. Lots." 
"Why Antarctica?"
"Because that's where it happened."
Her eyes widened. "I read that in the paper." she said. "A man was found dead from exposure. Do you mean that was a murder?"
"You know more about it that I do." I told her. "Get me a paper too, eh?"
"Yes, sir." She closed her notepad and rose to go, pausing at the door. "Do you think we'll get him, sir?"
"That depends on how well you do your research, doesn't it?" I said. "Anyway, how do you know it was a he ? That's sexist language, that is — you talk to Marta like that and she'll soon put you right." 
"Yes, sir." She nodded, trying to look efficient. "I'll get right on to it."
"That's the way." I told her. Unsmilingly she left the room. 
Graduates! A police cadet would have written down every word, called me 'Chief', laughed at my jokes, and then gone off and looked up the Arctic. You knew where you were with cadets. But graduates — who could fathom 'em? 

I went back to the file. Some facts stood out. One: Antarctica was big. Bigger than Europe, one-and-two-thirds times as big as Australia. And scattered all over the icy surface were fewer than five hundred people, most of them male. The same number of people as worked in the Federal Police Building. I imagined the building picked up by a giant hand, whisked off to the south, and shaken like a pepper-pot over Antarctica. According to my pocket calculator, if they were spread out evenly over the continent each person would be a hundred and sixty kilometres from the next. I had a comforting image of the Assistant Secretary buried up to his waist in snow, one hundred and sixty kilometres from the nearest stenographer. 
Two: despite Australia's claim to own about a third of it, our Antarctic presence was pretty feeble. One base on Macquarie Island, only halfway there; and three others spread out along the eastern coast like fleas on a whale: Penguin Base, Seal Base and Whale Base, the last one the closest to Australia. Around the coast and towards the interior there were lots more foreign names: Pushkin, Lysenko, Byrd, Ellsworth, Amundsen . The Norwegian section had a smattering of royalty: Crown Princess Martha, Crown Prince Olav. Some of the Russian and American bases had airstrips, but none of ours did. Conclusion: if someone wanted to play rough, we wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of fighting back. 
Three: Antarctica is a desert. The word took me aback for a moment, but the report explained it. There's not much snow, simply because there's no heat to evaporate it. Nearly all the water is locked up as ice. Savage winds chuck drifts of old snow around, but there isn't much new snow; Antarctica is one of the dryest places on Earth. 
Four: like most deserts Antarctica is short on life.  Devine's catalogue of fauna — whales, penguins and seals — became complete when you added the fish and seabirds that call in there annually on their way to somewhere else, and the squid and crustaceans that live in the bottom of the ocean where it never gets too cold — just five degrees or so. There was a lot of talk about krill, which turned out to be a kind of small shrimp, breeding in vast numbers. Whales thrive on it, apparently, and so do Japanese: hence the dwindling number of whales.
Five: it's cold. The lowest recorded Antarctic temperature is minus eighty-eight degrees Celsius, cold enough to liquefy chlorine and freeze mercury (have you ever seen frozen mercury?).  The hottest was a sunny fifteen degrees, recorded at the furthest tip of the peninsula that crawled north towards the Falklands. At Whale Base the temperature had once reached a record nine degrees in midsummer. Canberra was equatorial by comparison. 

All of this useful information had come to us courtesy of the Australian Antarctic Research Commission, conveniently abbreviated ARC. ARC was based in Kingston, near Hobart, another city not noted for its tropical climate. Here expeditioners were trained and kitted out before being loaded on board ship for the long trip down. A photograph of ARC Headquarters showed a big group of low buildings connected to a massive warehouse — the store. ARC assured the taxpayers they were getting their money's worth by means of a quarterly magazine, of which there were several recent copies on the file. It was full of black-and white photographs showing people in heavy clothing, little spherical huts dotted about arid lunar landscapes, and various mysterious devices doing inexplicable things. Nobody looked as though they were having lots of fun, but then taxpayers don't like to see that anyway. There were lots of scientific reports full of jargon, and acronyms of the kind that bureaucrats love — AWSs, ARGOS, SCAR and ATCMs. 

One of the recent journals showed small head-and-shoulders photographs of the wintering staff at each base, taken just before they left. Samuels, the murdered man, had been a round-faced pudgy balding fellow in his mid-thirties. His was one of the few faces that wasn't smiling. Machin, the Whale Base OIC, was smiling, but he didn't look as though he made a habit of it — a lean, deeply tanned man with fair wispy hair and wrinkles around his eyes. 
Two other faces caught my attention. One was of the Medical Officer, Helena Craig. I noticed her first because she was clean-shaven; only when I read the name did I realize she was a woman — a woman with a man's face. Her cheekbones were female, but she had a coarse thatch of dark hair and a rugged plainness that brought to mind a recent unpleasantness about a pair of allegedly female East German discus throwers. She too was smiling, but there was a grimness to her expression, a resigned look that I'd seen on ugly women before. 
The other striking face was a different proposition altogether — Debbie O'Sullivan. A sparkling blonde in her twenties, with clear skin, good teeth, and just enough character in her face to pass for attractive in Canberra, where there was plenty of competition. At Whale Base she would be devastating. The journal listed her as an Observer Grade Two. What an Observer was I had no idea, but I couldn't help thinking that for the next year or so Ms. O'Sullivan would be more observed than observing. 
I went over the photos again. Slightly more than half of them were tradesmen, a hearty-looking bunch who wouldn't have looked out of place with their boots on the bar rail of a country hotel. The rest were scientists, mostly young, fresh-faced and eager to be off on their big well-paid adventure. Samuels, slightly older and patently miserable, stood out like a sore thumb. I couldn't imagine what would make anyone go to Antarctica, much less a man with a loving wife and a young child. I wrestled with the problem for a while without success, then decided it was time to think about something else. Like lunch.
CHAPTER II
Kerri was one of the good ones, I discovered. I came back from lunch to find a pile of books and a folder of photocopied newspaper clippings in my in-tray, with a note promising more by this afternoon. The books were mostly large and glossy, coffee-table style, with lots of photos, or else very dated. There was a published diary from a South Pole expeditioner of 1949, an anecdotal account of a visit to the continent by a grandmother, lots of books about penguins and seals, very little of real value. The clippings folder was surprisingly thick. I couldn't remember having read a single article in the Press on Antarctica, but there were dozens of them here: descriptions of scientific projects, announcements of visits by local or foreign dignitaries, accounts of the occasional medical crisis, usually with us as the victims and Russians or Americans cast as well-equipped rescuers. Kerri had included some of the advertisements put in the national papers by ARC every year — 'Work in Antarctica: the adventure of a lifetime'. Paging back through the years, I totted up the accidental deaths, each with its own half-column. There were enough to make it clear that Antarctica was not a good place to be clumsy. Were they all accidents? I wondered. Murder colours every other incident in its own lurid light. 
In 1975 an Argentinian airliner carrying 250 Antarctic sightseers had crashed in the Serpentine Hills, inland from the coast and roughly equidistant from Seal and Penguin Bases. Fifteen of the passengers were Australian. Expeditioners had set out by vehicle from both bases, taking a week to reach the wreck. They found no survivors. A grainy photo showed the wreckage of the plane, already several metres deep in drifting snow. Tiny black oblongs near the plane might have been rocks, or bodies. After an investigation the crash had been put down to pilot error, the result of flying by sight in unfamiliar conditions. 
In 1976 an electrical engineer died in a fire at Macquarie Island. He had been working on a heater that was necessary to liquefy vehicle fuel before it could be used. Residual fuel in the pipes had vapourized and blown up. He had received third-degree burns to twenty percent of his body, and died in the Infirmary there after three days, before the weather cleared enough to fly a helicopter across from a nearby ship. The name of the Resident Medical Officer on the base rang a bell: Helena Craig. 
In the same year Princess Anne opened the new administration block at ARC headquarters in Tasmania. The move to Kingston from Melbourne was criticised by environmental lobby groups, who claimed that the whole Antarctic issue was being swept under the carpet...and also by public servants, who didn't fancy the move. 
 In 1977 an Antarctic ship had been stuck in the pack ice near Seal Base for six months until a track could be carved for it by a Russian icebreaker, the Podgorny. Supplies were flown out by helicopter from the base. Things were getting serious, apparently — a source was quoted as saying that by the time the Podgorny got there they were down to their last case of beer. 
A clipping from 1978 showed a map of the Australian Antarctic Territory. Only two of the bases were shown, Penguin and Seal. 'A third base is planned,' I read, 'and an expedition will go eastwards along the coast from Seal Base this summer to examine suitable sites'.
I leafed forward. Another clipping told me that the expedition had just left from Seal Base. 'The party will use motorized transport. It is made up of Dr. David Stuart, a biologist, Kevin Green, a mechanic, Per Pedersen, a radio technician, and Brian Machin, an engineer.' So Machin had been in on the very founding of Whale Base.
The next clipping was ominous: 'Contact has been lost with the Antarctic expedition led by Dr. David Stuart. Bad weather is hindering the search, but US and Soviet aircraft are preparing to overfly the area in an attempt to locate the four men.' And three days later: 'A wrecked vehicle has been spotted near the coast about 210 kilometres west of Seal Base. It is believed to be that belonging to the missing expeditioners led by Dr. David Stuart. The vehicle was seen by an American seaplane at 9 PM yesterday. A rescue party is being organized and will be taken by boat to the coast near the vehicle.'
Pedersen and Green had been found in the tractor, which had slipped into a deep crevasse. Both men appeared to have been killed by the fall. There were signs that Stuart and Machin had climbed out and up the side of the crevasse. Of the men themselves there was no sign, and it was believed they might be making for the coast. 
Then a headline — 'Expeditioner Found!' Brian Machin had been picked up on the coast by a Soviet helicopter and taken to a Russian base. He was suffering from frostbite and exposure. Machin was flown to a hospital in Hobart while searchers looked in the same area for Stuart.
It was a week before Machin recovered enough to make a statement to the press. At the age of twenty-two he had already perfected the bureaucratic style. 'Mr. Machin said that they had tried the radio but that the fall had rendered it inoperative. He had assisted Dr. Stuart, who was suffering from internal injuries, to leave the vehicle. Machin had recovered a tent and some food, but did not try and retrieve any more supplies as the vehicle was unstable and might slip down further. The two men then set out on foot for a snow-free area along the coast, which they knew to be about ten kilometres away. Bad weather had blown up quickly and trapped them in the tent. Dr. Stuart had been unable to proceed, and when the weather cleared Mr. Machin had left him there with most of the food while he walked to the coast. Here he had sheltered in a cave for three days, living on penguin eggs, until rescued.'

Machin's story was corroborated when they found the tent, half-buried in snow. Stuart wasn't there. Had he gone off in search of Machin and the coast? Or had he done an Oates, staggering off to die with dignity in the open air? There was a brief obituary. It told me that the man had been married, had a son aged twelve, was an authority on the leopard seal. I leafed through the remaining clippings, but Stuart's body had never been found. Later the area had been named in his honour — the Stuart Ice Shelf. Pedersen and Green had their memorials too, in a range of hills and a dormant offshore volcano. Antarctica was like Canberra in this, at least — you had to be dead to get something named after you. I wondered briefly whether Samuels would qualify. Probably not — people prefer to forget murders, not commemorate them. 

The rest of the clippings were less dramatic. Helena Craig turned up again in 1979 as the Australian delegate to a Budapest conference on polar medicine. A new satellite dish was erected at Seal Base. Work began in 1980 on the site that had been chosen for Whale Base, and within a few summers it had been made ready for occupancy. The first party had wintered there six years ago. A whole article was written about the toilets, which were high-tech chemical types costing $2000 each. The writer thought the money could have been better spent on basic research. I wasn't convinced. A man likes to have a comfortable toilet, after all. 
 Penguin Base underwent extensive renovations, and a historic old hut on the Telfer Peninsula where Mawson had stayed was repaired. An American party got into difficulties in the New Zealand section and lost two men. There were increasing problems with the ageing transport ship, and questions were asked about it in Parliament: why not use a Navy ship, or build airstrips on the bases? Both questions got the same answer — 'the Government is looking into the matter'. Meaning 'come back next year and ask us again'. More recently there had been pressure from environmental groups to have Australian Antarctica — or substantial portions of it — declared a Wilderness Area. A small paragraph recorded Alan Kittle's appointment six months ago as Director of ARC, a transfer across from the Department of Defence Support. It coincided with a change of government, which might have meant something: then again, it might not. There was a photo of the man — balding and bespectacled, with a worried look. Not my type.

I closed the file, and was just thinking about a coffee break when the phone rang. Marta's voice crackled through. "The Deputy Director of the Antarctic Research Commission on the line from Hobart, Inspector."
"Put him through." I said. 
"It's a her." 
She'd set me up for that one. "All right." I said. "Put her through."
There was a click, and then I heard a dark, husky voice with a nervous edge to it. "Inspector Thrale, is it? Wilma Ashton here, from ARC. Superintendent Devine said you were handling the Antarctic case. Is that right?" Her accent was upper-class. In England I would have called it Knightsbridge; here it was the mark of grammar schools, globetrotting parents and imbibing one's culture from the ABC. Like oak trees in autumn, it gave me a pang of nostalgia. "I've made a start on it." I said. 
"I'm at the airport now, just about to jump on a Canberra plane. Can I come and talk to you this afternoon?" 
"Please do." I said. "You might save me a trip."
"To Hobart?" she asked.
"Or to Antarctica." 
"Oh dear. I hope we don't have to send you down there."
I hoped so too, but a man had had his life stolen, and all I had to go on so far was coffee-table books about penguins. "I may have to." I said.
"I do realize that, Inspector. I'm just not used to — " She broke off. "Look, I've got to board. What do I tell the taxi man when I get there?"
I gave her directions and hung up. Ninety minutes to Canberra, twenty minutes from the airport. I returned to the file. Pictures of penguins, looking like humans, pictures of humans, wrapped up like parcels in heavy shapeless waterproofs; nothing that told me anything about the people down there, the kind of life that they led. 

It was a little past four when Marta buzzed me. "Doctor Ashton to see you."
The woman who entered was tall, slim and fair. She slid into a chair facing me, laying a thick manila folder on the desk between us. "Inspector? I'm Wilma Ashton." 
This is what Kerri aspires to, I thought. A husband in the upper echelons, a part-time postgrad degree in Economics gained on study leave. Hair carefully styled, two-piece light green wool suit with grey stockings and coat, matching shoes and bag. Must be chilly in Hobart. "Doctor Ashton." I said. "How was the flight?"
"I hardly noticed." she told me. "I've been too busy."
"Busy doing what?"
"Working out what I was going to say to you." She twined her fingers into the straps of her bag. "I might as well come out with it, I suppose. I just can't help wondering if this is all somehow my fault."
"Why should it be your fault?"
"Well, I pushed like mad to get Debbie sent down there. Brian was really against it — and now this has happened!"
"Hang on." I said. "Let's start at the beginning. Who are you, what do you do and why?" 
She composed herself carefully. "I'm the Deputy Director of ARC — that 's the Antarctic Research Commission, within the Department of Science. We organize the annual expeditions. As well as staffing the three winter bases we also have people going down there to do short projects in the summer. We arrange for the purchase and supply of equipment, and recruit and train the scientific staff and artisans — tradespeople. We have a permanent staff of about a hundred and fifty based in Kingston, Tasmania, though we visit the other capitals when we're recruiting. Clear so far?"
And beautifully modulated. I nodded. "Go on."
Wilma Ashton stopped tangling her fingers in her handbag straps. She was gaining confidence as she played out the role she'd written for herself. "As Deputy Director I don't have any fixed administrative responsibilities. I assist the Director — that's Alan Kittle at the moment — and handle special projects." That 'at the moment' told me something. I guessed that Kittle was a political appointment; very likely he'd gazumped her claim to the job. "Part of what I do — probably the hardest part — is implementing the Government's Equal Employment Opportunity Scheme. The Minister wants women in Antarctica."
Funny place to want to have 'em, I thought. "Why is it so hard?" I asked. "Trouble finding the women?"
"No! We get more applications than we can use. From well-qualified women, too! I could send a female expedition down there tomorrow. The problem is the men. Some of the men in our expeditions have been back and forth to Antarctica for a decade or more. A lot of them are loners — that's understandable. Some of them have trouble relating to women, which is often why they go there in the first place. They get possessive about the place, as though it's a kind of exclusive club." She smiled wanly. "We call it the Foreign Legion effect. They're good reliable men, and they do the job well. We don't want to alienate them."
"But the Minister wants women."
"The Minister wants women and so do I." She smoothed her skirt. "To humanize the place, if for no other reason. Up until two years ago only one woman had ever wintered in Australian Antarctica. We used to send down pornography to keep the men there happy — if that's the right word. We hope that by introducing women we can change the place from a frontier town mentality into something more like civilized society. But inevitably some people are getting upset about it."
"I see." I said. "Do you think this has anything to do with Samuels' death?"
She shook her head. "I don't know, I honestly don't." She indicated my open file. "You've seen the photos of expeditioners? What do you make of Debbie O'Sullivan?"
"Passable." I said. "What's she like?"
"Just as she looks. Bubbly. Bright, frank, cheerful, open, friendly." She smiled. "Something like me when I was that age, naive and totally fearless. Perhaps I saw her as a protege. Anyway, she was one of this year's applicants. I met her and we got on well from the start. Debbie passed all the tests with flying colours, and I thought she was exactly right to go down there as a kind of ambassador for women, someone that the men could get used to." Ashton frowned. "Now I'm wondering whether she might have been a little too friendly. It's possible she may have given someone the wrong idea. Brian was against her from the start."
"That's Brian Machin, the Officer-In-Charge? The other man who was attacked?"
"That's right. He told me at Kingston that he didn't want to take any responsibility for her. Debbie was there at the time. She blew up at him and said she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. It was quite a scene. Brian took it to Alan — the Director — and he confirmed what I'd said; Debbie was to go down whether Brian liked it or not."
"What did Machin say to that?" 
"He wasn't very happy about it. I can understand that — it gets very tense there during winter. Not that Debbie would do anything deliberately, but someone might easily misinterpret a friendly gesture, even a smile. Some of the men are a rough-and-tumble lot, and Brian thought there would be fights. I told him that was their problem, something they had to work out for themselves." She paused. "But murder! I never thought.." Her hands began twisting again. 
"How well do you know Machin?" I asked, trying to distract her.
"Fairly well. I'd call him a close acquaintance. Apart from a love of Antarctica we don't have much in common."
"What about Doctor Craig?"
Her eyes lit up. "Helena's one of my closest friends. She's a lovely person!"
"I take it that she was the first woman to winter in Antarctica?"
"That's right." she said. "You've seen the photo, you know she's not..." She paused, looking for words. "Well, she's nothing like Debbie."
"Tell me about her." I said. 
Ashton gathered her thoughts.  "Helena was a Registrar in a hospital. She lived at home until she was thirty-five. Then she married a surgeon. Three weeks later she — found him — with one of the nurses. She'd had a sheltered life, and this almost destroyed her. Helena left her job and her husband and came to stay with me — I knew her from University. I'd just started working with ARC, and I suggested, as a joke really, that she ought to apply to go down to Antarctica. She took me seriously, and that was it. She's been with ARC ever since."
"The Foreign Legion effect." I said.
That drew a smile. "I suppose so, yes. We're always short of medical staff, so she was a godsend. That was fifteen years ago, and she's been down five times since. In between visits she researches low-temperature medicine — she's an international authority, and she's writing the  book. When she's down there the men treat her like one of the boys, but they're all a bit afraid of her. Medical Officer is that sort of position."
"Not a woman to provoke jealousy?" 
Wilma Ashton shook her head. "You've seen the photos, Inspector. Helena's a lovely person, but she doesn't have sex appeal." 
That seemed conclusive enough, coming from a professed friend, but I wasn't entirely sure. I'd known some appallingly plain women who could still attract some members of the opposite sex — like me, for instance. And spending a year in Antarctica might make a sex symbol out of Clara the Cow.  I changed the subject. "Did you know Samuels?"
"Not really. I met him at a few receptions and parties before he went down, but we never spoke much. I knew that he was a good man in his field."
"Who did know him?" I asked. "Anyone he got on well with?"
She paused for a moment, as if the question disturbed her. Finally she drooped a polished nail on to one of the photos. "Him. Barry Cooper, the other biologist. They had professional interests in common, at least."
"Fair enough. Anyone at ARC know Samuels well?"
"Not really. He kept himself to himself. And he was a bit of a late arrival at ARC: he didn't really have time to get to know anyone."
"Why was he late?"
"We had a biologist lined up." she said. "Martin Kirk from Monash. But he came down with a virus, so we took Samuels at the last minute." There was an atom of hesitation there, but it might have been just embarrassment — embarrassment at letting a man go friendless to his death. 
People who were old when I was a boy used to talk about seeing death in someone's face, watching it settle like a vulture on a healthy man's shoulders. It was all nonsense — I'd seen young constables, going off on motorbikes as bright-faced and happy as larks, coming home two hours later in pieces in a plastic bag. If anything could have made me think there was something to it, though, it was the photo of Samuels, solitary and morose in the middle of this band of happy hermits. 
"Is there anyone else you can think of on the Base that I should know about?" I asked her. "Anyone who stands out in your mind?" Any potential murderers? 
Ashton ran her gaze over the pictures. She singled out a burly-looking man with tufty red hair and a heavy beard. "Him. Mark Baron."
"Senior Plumber." I noted. One of two. "Get a lot of frozen pipes down there, do they?"
"Hot water is pumped into the buildings and waste is pumped out. If something goes wrong you're either very cold or — "
"Up to your ankles in crap. I get the idea." I looked at the man closely. "Big fella?"
"Very big. He used to play football — for Queensland, I believe. According to Brian the tradesmen look on him as a kind of leader. Baron's behind a lot of the unrest down there now."
"Violent?" 
She shook her head. "I can see him throwing a punch, but not killing a man. Not the way that Helena says it was done."
"You've spoken to Dr. Craig since the murder?"
"She put in a report by radio."
"All right." I said. "How was it done?"
She stared at me. "You've got the fax of her report — "
"I want to hear what she said to you." I'd read the report. It was in medical language — cold, concise and sterile. Samuels might have been a burnt-out building or a broken vehicle for all the humanity it gave him. 
"Oh." She paused and gathered her thoughts. "Well, first you have to know about the station. Whale Base is on the coast, sheltered by some low mountains behind it to the south — the Spartan Hills. It's a good location, but a dead spot for radio transmission. So we've got a big radio repeater station five kilometres away, out of the radio shadow, with an accommodation hut next to it. 
"Samuels was working on the radio-location of Adelie penguins, which put him at the radio hut — Hut D — for three days during the week, including two nights there. Helena said that somebody drove out there at night in one of the vehicles and — killed him."
"Killed him how?"
"They — the murderer — forced him to drink whisky till he was comatose. Then he was dragged outside half-dressed. It was fifteen below, Inspector! He would have been dead in an hour from exposure."
"Hastened by the whisky." 
"Well, of course! Alcohol increases blood flow through the capillaries, so the body cools down faster."
"A scientist would know that." I said. "Would a plumber?"
She shook her head, frowning. "Everyone we send down is thoroughly trained. We teach them exactly what they should and shouldn't do to stay alive in cold weather."
"And someone remembered." I said. "What then?"
"Wilkins, the radio operator, called the hut from Base the following morning. When there was no reply he contacted Brian, the OIC, who went out there in a tractor with Dr. Cooper."
"Hang on." I said. "Is that normal? Ringing someone once and then sending out a vehicle just because you don't get a reply?"
She nodded. "It's a dangerous environment, Inspector. People in isolated spots are supposed to report in regularly, at appointed times. There are set procedures to follow if they don't. Samuels was supposed to call in at eight AM that morning."
"Fine." I said. "So Dr. Machin was just following routine."
"More or less, yes." She paused. "Anyway, when they got there they found Samuels' body in the snow. They thought at first that it was suicide — Samuels had been very depressed — but when they got back to the Base with Samuels' body, one of the mechanics told Brian that he'd seen a skiddoo going out during the night. It's very light this time of year down there, but you get a brief twilight around midnight: that was when this person was seen. The skiddoo is a little motorized sledge, very light and fast. The rider was dressed in outdoor gear; there was no way he could be identified.
"Brian asked that person to step forward, and of course nobody did. Then Dr. Cooper told him that some things had been taken from the hut. Helena said that was when Brian decided to treat it as something more than an accident." 
I thought for a moment. It seemed a big jump from suicide to deliberate murder, but it might have been the logical way to go. There were undercurrents there which I knew nothing about, unstated assumptions I didn't share. It could be that they knew already — or suspected — who had done for Samuels; all they needed was my signature. Or it could be the other way, a vague fear of the unknown taking on the tangible shape of a killer. "Go on." I said. "What happened then?"
"Brian was going to search Samuels' room, to see if he could find any sort of clue to the murderer. For some reason or other Baron wanted to be along on it too. He has a lot of influence with the men, so Brian agreed. They planned to go to the room at twelve o'clock, after Baron finished some urgent work he was doing, but Brian was attacked in the workshop before they could get there. Helena Craig is the second-in-command. She put Brian to bed in the infirmary and called me at ARC. I told her that we'd go to the police; meanwhile she should put a padlock on the room and hang on to the key. I hope that was all right."
"Fine." I said. "How long ago — ?"
"Helena's call was logged at a quarter past four PM their time — just after nine last night. I rang the Hobart police, and they put me on to you. The switchboard gave me Superintendent Devine's home number; he told me to come up, and — well, here I am." She hesitated. "What will you do now?" 
I indicated the cluttered desk. "Read all this. See if I can dig out any leads. Go through Machin's log, when it gets here."
"It's on its way." she said quickly. "We're sending it up by courier. I would have brought it, but we're having weather problems. It hadn't finished coming through when I left. And then?"
"I don't know." I said. "I don't know enough about it yet. Let's say that we do identify a suspect. Is there a way for someone to be confined down there — a drunk tank or anything like that?"
"You could leave them in a remote hut with a supply of food and fuel." 
"I can't see a magistrate letting us do that." I said. "Not without a trial." 
"The OIC has power to enforce the law on the Base."
"But the OIC's been attacked. In a situation like that he can't be expected to behave impartially. And this man Baron seems to have something up his sleeve." I sighed. Most murder cases begin with a body, a chunk of human meat in a dark street or a dirty room. This one was a pile of papers and a problem in logistics. "It all seems so far away." 
Ashton put her hand on my sleeve. "I know the feeling. Come down to ARC. It's all a lot closer there."
"I might at that." Her wrist was slim and brown — no Hobart tan, that. I noted her elegant gold watch — and jumped. "Five-thirty! Julie'll be wondering where I've got to."
She drew back her hand. "Your wife?"
"My daughter." I said. "Look, how are you fixed for tonight? Did you get a chance to make arrangements? Can I take you to a motel?"
She forced a smile. "Is that a proposition?"
I flushed. "Just trying to be helpful."
"I appreciate that." she said. "I've got friends I can stay with in Red Hill, but I could do with something to eat. I missed lunch."
"You should have said." I told her. "I would have had sandwiches sent down. Too late now — the canteen's closed." I hesitated — then plunged. "D'you want to come out for dinner? With Julie as chaperone? I have to ask her, or she'll never forgive me — and she knows all the best places. She and her pals crawl round restaurants the way I used to crawl round pubs." 
"Thank you." she said. "I'd like that a lot. I'm famished."

I rang Julie and asked her where I could take a famished woman at 6 PM. She directed us to a BYO Vietnamese place in the low-rent area of Woden. It turned out to be a single room the size of a barn, with pastel green walls and bright fluorescent lighting. Julie arrived just as we were deciding that 'Oswald' and 'Wilma' sounded better than 'Inspector' and 'Doctor'. It took her a little while to get over her shyness, but by the time we'd cleaned up the entree they were getting on like a house on fire. "Have you been to Antarctica?" she asked Wilma.
"Once, on a summer trip. It was gorgeous."
"Cold?" I asked.
"Twenty below. But very sunny. When there's no wind you don't feel the cold. A clear blue sky, seals, dolphins and whales everywhere and great big icebergs sliding past the ship all day."
She turned to me wide-eyed. "Can I go, Dad?"
"What d'you reckon, Wilma? Could we pass her off as a trainee or something?"
"She's too young and innocent." Wilma said judiciously. "They're a tough bunch down there."
If I'd said that Julie would have thumped me. From Wilma she took it like a man. "Don't you have any women expeditioners?" 
"Some. Not enough."
"What do I have to do if I want to go?"
She turned to me. "Is she going on to Uni?"
"If she wants to. The year after next."
"Physicists and biologists are in demand. We're getting a few more geologists down there now too. We need glaciologists and meteorologists, but they're mostly post-grads. The tradespeople we take are usually older, well-established and fairly responsible. Of course, there's nothing to stop you going down more than once..."
"Steady on!" I told her. "I see little enough of her as it is."
"Well, those are the options. Our typical scientist is twenty-three or four, holds a degree in one of those fields and has worked for a year or so. We don't like to take fresh graduates."
"What about Samuels and his mate Cooper?" I asked. "Are they typical?"
"It's Cooper's first time, but apparently he loves it down there. Brian reckons he knows all the seals by their first names. Samuels..." She thought for a moment. "Samuels wasn't typical. Married for four years with a young child. Just bought a house. Had a secure job at university. He'd never even been to Sydney before, let alone Hobart. And his application was late."
"Was he interviewed?"
"Alan Kittle interviewed him. I think Samuels said something about an itch to travel, wanting to see the world. It was all pretty vague. But he had a skill we needed, and he passed the tests so we took him."
"What sort of tests?" Julie asked. 
"Personality tests, intelligence tests, tests for latent weaknesses that might come out in a crisis, tests to rule out people who are too introverted or extroverted. Tests for homosexuality, overt or latent. We try and be as careful as possible when we pick the winter crews."
"Isn't that a bit unfair on homosexuals?" Julie asked.
She nodded. "I know it sounds patronizing, but we tend to think it's for their own good that gays don't go down. In fact — " she glanced around " — in strictest confidence, I'm trying to do something about that too. Just to break down the barriers a little bit."
"And do the tests always work?" I asked.
"They're better than nothing. We haven't had any serious personality problems down there — until now." 
"I've never heard murder described as a personality problem before."
She shook her head. "I couldn't believe it at first. Violent death is bad enough, but murder!  I can't help thinking — what if it happens again?"
"Doesn't seem likely." I said. "This doesn't seem to me like a violent killer, someone who gets a kick out of it. It's more likely that he wanted something, and Samuels got in his way."
"Is there any reason why you say he ?"
"Only the odds. There are twenty-five men it might be, and only two women. That's not much of a horse race. Unless you have some inside information."
"I can't help wondering who Samuels was waiting for." she said wearily. "Alone in the hut at midnight. If it was Debbie..."
"Don't fret." I told her. "You're not paid to worry about it: that's what I'm for. All right?"
"All right." She smiled, and raised her glass in a toast. "To a successful investigation."
"And a short one." I added. 

We dropped her off at nine, outside a stately brick house in Red Hill. Not one of the mansions, this one, but nicely situated, with a pleasant privet hedge as a border. The outside light was on, and the door opened before she got there. For a moment she was a waving silhouette, then the door closed. Julie jumped in the front and I started the car. "She was nice." Julie said.
"Mm." I could tell what was coming.
"How long is she here for?"
"Just a couple of days."
"Is she married?"
"I never asked." 
"Oh, Dad! Why not?"
"Didn't occur to me."
"You're hopeless!"
We drove home in silence.
CHAPTER III 
Machin's log arrived the following morning, a neat stack of thin facsimile paper in a two-ring binder, with a covering note from Wilma. Before opening it I made a list of names and taped it to my desk where it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle. There might be others — I left room at the bottom of the list — but these people at least seemed to me to be important. 

Paul Samuels 
Barry Cooper
Brian Machin
Deborah O'Sullivan
Mark Baron
Helena Craig

I opened the log and began to read.

It was a little like viewing a mural by torchlight. Machin's style was bureaucratic, meticulous and unimaginative, confining itself to rigid administrative details. If the style was a measure of the man, then God help Whale Base! Personalities, the things I needed to know about the most, came through only dimly. The entries began with the landing of the expedition in November, two months ago. There had been a four-week period during which they shared the Base with last year's expedition and some summer visitors, then the ship returned from the other bases to pick them up, and Machin's party was left at Whale on their own. I gathered from this that the Base was fairly spacious; more than the little huddle of huts I'd been imagining. 
Each day, eventful or dull, was given its own page. The first reference to Samuels was at the beginning of December, seven weeks ago; 'Dr. Samuels put in a request to the workshop today for construction of five radio backpacks for Adelie penguins. Wilkins passed it on to me for checking; does this relate to IAFF?' The file told me that IAFF stood for the International Agreement on Flora and Fauna — Antarctic wildlife was not to be disturbed except for indispensable food or as scientific specimens. Samuels' request was apparently judged OK; two days later there was the entry 'Wilkins and Bartlett given Samuels' radio-backpack project'. Wilkins was a radio operator: Bartlett an electrician. Why anyone would want to provide penguins with radio backpacks was not immediately obvious to me. Humanitarian reasons, perhaps, so they could squawk to each other across the vast Antarctic distances. 

A week later I found the first reference to Debbie O'Sullivan. 'Official complaint from Tweening about mess seating arrangements. O'Sullivan monopolized by Table 3. Told him not to be childish. Later discussed it with O'Sullivan, who agreed to rotate between tables'. An interesting sight in itself. But the girl's influence did not abate. Two weeks later there was another note: 'Baron and Bartlett in scuffle over O'Sullivan — Baron took exception to Bartlett's choice of words. Reprimanded both men severely.' As every copper knows, a scuffle is an assault where no-one presses charges. It sounded like O'Sullivan was raising blood pressures already; I wondered what things would be like at mid-winter. 

At the beginning of January Samuels and Cooper had gone on a penguin hunt. An Adelie penguin had been captured, christened Charlie, and returned to Whale Base to be fitted with a backpack. Charlie and his backpack had then been taken for a walk by Cooper while Samuels did something that Machin described as 'tracking'. The experiment had been a success, and two days later Charlie was released sporting his trendy new gear. Samuels had gone off to Hut 'D' with Wilkins to set up some radio equipment, and during the next few weeks he and Cooper had treated nine more — apparently nameless — penguins in the same way. 
Helena Craig popped up about that time too. 'MO reports that Tweening has German measles. How?? Isolated for a week. Asked Sharpe to take over his work as much as possible.' The file listed Gary Tweening as a draftsman and Martin Sharpe as a surveyor. Helena Craig had sent Tweening back to work a fortnight later, and the rubella outbreak appeared to have stopped there. She was mentioned again when McLean (a plumber) scalded his hand; 'MO says two weeks in bandages'. Machin himself remained faceless, a bureaucratic despot who avoided the personal pronoun, making his decisions sound like the acts of God. 'Cooper allowed to take a vehicle to the SW Sastrugi'. 'Darkroom opened for public use on weekends. Keys with Eastbrook.' Samuels made another appearance the following week, when he moved out to Hut 'D'. He was expected to be there from Wednesday to Friday for six weeks, 'recording data and monitoring results', which presumably had something to do with the penguin backpacks, and arranged to radio in at eight every morning, two in the afternoon, and six every evening.

Then, at the end, there was yesterday's entry. 'Thursday, 20th January. Wilkins tried radio contact with Samuels this morning without reply, so at 8.45 Cooper and I took a tractor to Hut 'D'. Found Samuels lying in the snow outside the hut in shirtsleeves and woollen trousers. Carried him into the hut, and tried artificial respiration, but he was dead. Strong smell of whisky on his mouth and clothes, two empty bottles on the floor of the hut. Cooper vomiting. Brought him and Samuels back to base and notified ARC. MO is treating Cooper for shock, examining Samuels' body for indications of cause of death, suicide or misadventure. Samuels had been gloomy and morose since his arrival, and spent long periods by himself. Cooper was in radio contact with him yesterday evening about 7.30.'
Machin must have completed his log as it was being sent; the final page was a summary of the events that had taken place since then: 'Dave Quinn claims to have seen someone taking a skiddoo out in the direction of Hut 'D' at 10.30 last night. There is no record of a vehicle being taken, but the odometer figures recorded in the vehicle log for Skiddoo E1 have been whited out and written over, adding another ten kilometres. This would tally with the distance to Hut D and back. I have asked the person responsible to see me, either publicly or in private, but so far there has been no response. I propose to open Samuels' room, which is currently locked. '
At the very end there were a couple of paragraphs in a different hand, but equally concise. 'Dr. Machin was attacked from behind in the workshop at 11.30 AM, and sustained a broken collarbone. I have put him in the infirmary and taken over as acting OIC of Whale Base. ARC in Kingston have been notified, and will be seeking police assistance.
 'Andreyev called from the Maxim Gorky at 1.15 to arrange an exchange of supplies. When told of Samuels' death, he suggested that one of the Russian zoologists might be available to continue his work. I am considering the offer.' The page was signed 'Helena Craig, Medical Officer, Acting OIC.'

Behind the dry prose I could sense the mounting disturbance at the base, the slow crumbling of the barrier that had to fall before they would admit that one of them had taken a human life. This is the murderer's greatest advantage, the deep-seated reluctance to admit that anyone could really do it. I've seen wives who were battered black and blue, swearing blind that their hubby just couldn't be capable of murder: sensible men and women bankrupting themselves to prove their homicidal child, brother, or friend just wasn't that type. But there isn't any type. We're all capable of murder, if we're pushed. Some of us get pushed a little harder than others, that's all. 

 Wilma had said she'd call me at ten. That was over an hour ago. I picked up the phone and dialled the number she'd given me at the Department of Science. She was in a meeting, but she came out of it to talk to me. She at least had no trouble with my name. "Oswald! So sorry — things have been so hectic here, you wouldn't believe it!"
She had the same voice as my old History teacher, Miss Boston. Behind her back we took the mickey and called it lah-de-dah, but in class we'd sit and squirm over our Bradford-born thick-voweled inferiority. I was doing it again now. "I won't keep you." I told her. It sounded to me like Ah wun't keepyer. ""I just wanted to know when you were going back down to Kingston."
"I'm booked for eleven o'clock tomorrow. Why?"
"Do you want company?"
"You're coming?" she asked. "That's such a relief!"
"I'll have to clear it with the Super and pick up an off-sider, but that shouldn't be a problem."
"That's marvellous!" She had a voice that could get away with phrases like that. "Can I come and see you after this wretched meeting?"
"Whenever you like." I said. "I've still got plenty of reading to do."
She laughed. "You'll be an expert soon. Maybe we can find you a permanent position!"
"Sheriff of Seal City? No thanks. See you later, then." I lowered the phone. 

Ten minutes later I was in Devine's office. "I'm going down to Hobart, Alec. I'm clutching at straws here: at least there I can get in touch with the people, try and work out what's going on."
He nodded. "Fair enough. The Commissioner's given us open slather on this one." He shook his head ruefully. "Someone high up's pissing themselves."
"Any word on who it might be? Rumours through the grapevine?" Like everybody else who gets things done in Canberra, Alec has a flourishing bush telegraph system. 
"If I knew I'd tell you, Ozzie." This, I knew, was not necessarily true. "D'you want an off-sider?"
"I've been thinking." I said. "What if I take a WPC?"
"A woman ?" 
"We do have them, you know." I told him. "Anyway, there's twenty-six men down there and only two women. If I take a WPC she can get the women on side straight away and then go to work on the men."
"Secret weapon, eh?" He smirked at me. "You're not just doing this for a bit of female company?"
"Come off it." I said. "Most of the WPC's are young enough to be my daughter."
"Never stopped me." he pointed out. He thought for a moment, fingers clutching on the desk for the pipe that wasn't there. "D'you want a bright one or a pretty one?"

That was how I ended up with Alice — Detective WPC Alicia Peters, B.A. (Sociology), a blue-eyed redhead. She'd been working with Narcotics, setting up a big raid, and she came into my office with a long face because I was taking her away from it. I was halfway through a phone call to Perth, and I was expecting Wilma, so I gave her complaints short shrift and sent her off to Travel to arrange for our tickets. 

At lunchtime I gave up waiting for Wilma, made a phone call, borrowed a car, and drove over to Parkes, where I cultivate my own grapevine in the shape of another Pom. Gordon is a paunchy middle-aged man from the Department of Defence whose idea of Heaven has central heating and fitted carpets. We went to a bistro in the city, and I forcibly swung the conversation around to ARC. Gordon already knew I was on the case — Defence people are the biggest gossips in town. "If it wasn't for the silly Treaty ARC would be in Defence, where it belongs." he told me. "Half the time Science don't tell us what's going on down there, and the other half of the time it doesn't make sense anyway. And they spend money like drunken sailors. Most of them are drunken sailors. All the current bosses are ex-Forces."
"Including Machin?" 
"Oh, yes. Machin did three years in Vietnam before his first expedition — volunteer, not Nasho. When he's not in Antarctica he runs a Section in Recruiting. Shanks at Seal Base is Navy — a full Captain. He operates the base along the lines of a patrol boat, I believe."
"What do the other Bases make of what's happened at Whale? I haven't heard anything about that."
"I gather they're a bit parochial. You know, Whale Base thinks Seal Base is uncouth, and Seal Base looks down on Penguin Base as old-fashioned, and Penguin Base sees itself as a sort of exclusive club that the others failed to get into. Which is bloody funny, really, since it's the same people who go down to different bases each time. And they're not that close — it's more than six hundred k's from Whale to Penguin, and the same again to Seal. But Science is taking it very seriously. The Deputy Director of ARC was there this morning, closeted with the Permanent Head and his lackeys — half his luck! She's not bad."
"I've met her." I said, rising. "In fact I'd better get back to my office before she does. I was going to ask if you and Joan would mind looking after Julie for a while."
"'Course not." Gordon said. "She'll be company for Mark." Mark is their son. They've been trying to pair him up with Julie for years, but he prefers model aeroplanes. "We'll just feed her, I suppose, and let her sleep at home if she wants to." 
"She says she likes being alone. I can't understand why."
"Runs in the family, I expect." Gordon said.
"It's not by choice, you know. You try being a copper some time."
"Bullshit." Gordon said cheerfully. "You love it, you know you do. Send her round tomorrow afternoon, then." He made a vague gesture which had the dual purpose of saying goodbye and summoning the barman. I paid on the way out. 

Wilma was waiting for me in the office, leafing through one of the books. "Your secretary let me in." she said. "Alec told me that you're making progress."
Alec now, was it? "Only in a negative sense." I said. "I know now that it's not going to be easy."
"Well, that's something."
"It's not much." 
"I've got some news." she said. "But I don't know whether it's good or bad. I had a call from ARC this morning. There's an American plane flying supplies down from Wellington on Sunday night. They've offered to make a detour and drop you off at an airstrip near Whale Base. If you want to go." 
"Lovely." I said. "I've been looking for somewhere new to spend my holidays."
There was a knock. I swung the door open, and Alice came in looking gloomy. She smartened up when she saw Wilma, though — police policy; keep a united front against the enemy. "Here are the tickets, sir. I thought I'd have the afternoon off to pack."
"Fine." I said. "Take some winter woolies, though — we might not be stopping at Hobart."
Alice opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She tried again. "Do you mean Antarctica, sir?"
"Ghastly as the thought is, yes." 
"That would be fantastic!"
"Fantastic. Everybody wants to go there but me." I introduced Wilma. "You'd better tell us what we're going to need down there."
"Casual indoor gear and toiletries." she said. "Apart from that ARC can kit you out from head to toe."
"What about books?" Alice asked. 
"Books? You won't have time to read , lass!" I told her. 
Wilma smiled. "We've got everything from Zane Grey to Jane Austen. Plus videos, cassettes — you name it."
"Plenty of books here." I indicated the pile on my desk. "You can make a start on these this afternoon." 
"Yes, sir." Alice took the books and left the room with a nod. Wilma gave me a look of cool amusement. Grey eyes, I noticed. "She seems efficient." she said. "I think you made a good choice."
"She'll be all right, once we get rid of this nonsense about reading books."
Wilma frowned. "I never know when you're being serious."
"I'm always serious." I told her. "Now tell me about ARC."
CHAPTER IV
Hobart airport was small, clean and quick; we were through the terminal in a matter of minutes. As we came out there was a toot from a small eight-seater bus parked nearby. Wilma steered us towards the vehicle and introduced the driver; a short, almost dwarfish man in his forties. "Stan Boole. Stan, this is Inspector Thrale and Constable Peters." Despite his size, the man had a hell of a handshake. I climbed into the back behind Alice, nursing my palm. "Heard the latest from Whale?" he asked.
"Not more? What?" Wilma asked.
"Someone's gone through the mail down there."
"Oh, Christ! What's the reaction?"
"They're hopping mad." Stan chuckled. He seemed to see the situation as a joke. "Baron wants that locked up too."
"He would." Wilma sighed. "The sooner we get the Inspector down there the better."
"Three days." Stan said. "We've had USAF on the blower, making arrangements, and I've booked two tickets to Wellington for Sunday afternoon. There might be a Russian chopper picking up mail from the airstrip; if so they can give you a lift straight to Whale, save you a six-hour trip."
"A six-hour trip?" I leaned across to the front passenger seat. "You told me the airstrip was close to the Base."
"It is close — for Antarctica." Wilma turned to the driver. "Try and arrange that, can you, Stan? I don't want Helena sending out a vehicle if she doesn't have to."
"I have a question." Alice said. "The US and Russia seem to do us a lot of favours down there — what do they get out of it?"
"It's good public relations." Wilma pointed out. "It never hurts politically, either, to have a card or two up your sleeve." She paused. "Besides, there's a lot of people — in Antarctica and elsewhere — who think of themselves more as citizens of the Antarctic than as Australians, or Americans, or Russians. There's a degree of comradeship, and a certain impatience with the bureaucrats who want to do things by the book. Of course, they tend to forget it's the taxpayer who funds the whole business."
"One minute's silence for the unsung taxpayer." Stan said. "All bow your heads."
"'Citizens of the Antarctic'." I repeated. "Anyone at Whale Base answering that description?"
"Helena would, I suppose. Perhaps Brian Machin. Collins seems to be getting that way, he probably qualifies. And some of the tradesmen."
"If they go down for a second winter," Stan said, "it's usually a sign that they're hooked."
"What about Samuels?"
There was a brief hesitation. "It was Samuels' first time." Wilma said.
"From the photo I got the impression that he wasn't a happy man."
"Wasn't happy? I don't know." Wilma shook her head. "We'll have to look up his file."

We crossed the Derwent, and passed through the edge of Hobart before turning south to Kingston. I'd been here before, but only briefly, in winter, when Hobart was a cold and gloomy little settlement with empty streets. In summer it was quite different: a comfortable, well-laid-out, relaxed-looking place with a broad estuary and a solitary mountain looming up impressively behind it. The air was a little colder than it had been in Canberra, and jackets weren't uncommon, a reminder that we were moving south.
Traffic was light, and before long we were well clear of buildings and into open farming land. When we got there Kingston proved to be nothing more than a village, the whole area dominated by the massive ARC building a few kilometres to the north. Stan pulled into a parking lot at the edge of town where a sign said 'Kingston Lodge'. "We've booked you in here." he said. "Self-contained cabins. D'ye want to drop your luggage off?"
An elderly man in overalls came out to greet us. "Welcome to Kingston." he said cheerfully. "I'm Wal, the manager here. Also the cleaner. And the cook. Did you want one cabin or two?" Then, as we hesitated, he added; "There's two bedrooms." 
I looked enquiringly at Alice. "I think I can cope with sharing a cabin." she said. "You're not a secret smoker, are you?"
"I have lots of secret vices.' I told her. "But smoking's not one of them."
The old man led us wordlessly to a small cabin almost hidden by a stand of trees. Alice looked around appreciatively. "Nice." she said. It was a neat little newish structure of polished wood, with wide double-glazed windows, a tiny balcony, and — I saw with satisfaction — a powerful oil heater in one corner. "We've got a hostel near Hobart, but the expeditioners always prefer it here." Wilma said. 
"I can understand that." I said. "There's a kind of backwoods, last-outpost feel to it."
"And double beds." Alice had been on a tour of inspection. "This looks like dirty weekend territory for Hobart executives."
"More like a working lunch, at this distance." Stan said. "Eh, Wal?"
The old man grinned. "All I know is that we get a hell of a lot of people in here called Smith."

We left our luggage there and drove on to the ARC offices. They looked even bigger close up — a monstrous concrete-and-glass structure perched on top of a low hill overlooking the town. "How many staff do you have here?" I asked Wilma.
"About a hundred and fifty. Most of them live in Hobart, but a few are locals. We have a few out-staff working in universities and in Canberra, too. We moved down here from Melbourne in 1981."
"Best thing that ever happened to ARC." Stan put in. "Put us out of the reach of the career public servants. Nobody comes this far to work unless they really want to."
"That's mostly true." Wilma conceded. "But we still have a few opportunists."
Stan swung the bus into a labelled niche in the car park beside two others. "Here we are." he said. "Just in time for lunch. See you later."
Wilma led us into the building. "My turn to return the favour." she said. "Come to our cafeteria."
"What favour's that, then?" Alice asked quietly.
"None of your business, lass." I told her. "Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open."

We entered the building through a hall covered with posters and displays. One of them showed a mannequin dressed in Antarctic gear — a balaclava, a jacket with a sealskin hood, fur-lined leggings and monstrous, clumsy boots and mittens. "He looks like Nanook of the North." Alice said. "Do we have to wear all that?"
"Go out jogging in your shorts and singlet, then." I told her. "See how far you get."
"Keeping hands and feet warm are very important." Wilma said. "Quite a few people have lost fingers and toes through frostbite. Noses too." She smiled. "We had a case at Penguin Base a few years ago where a metal lock was frozen, and a new bloke bent over to blow on it and warm it up. Somehow or other his tongue got stuck to the metal of the lock. Luckily there were other people nearby, or — well, he would have come home with a speech impediment." She led the way through a covered corridor. "Here's the caff."
It was a long, well-lit room, nearly empty now, full of the smell of good food cooking. "Better than AFP." Alice said.
"There's nowhere else around here to go." Ashton said. "And sometimes we have to feed another two hundred trainees."
We took a table by the window, and ate lunch in near-silence. I was gazing out at the pasture land around the building, watching the cows graze. Did they know they were going to end up on our plates, I wondered? Would they thank you if you told them? "I should go and find out about this mail room business." Wilma said as we were finishing. "Do you want to come?" 

We followed her downstairs into the administrative section. This was in the usual Public Service style — open-plan offices and rows of labelled doors. She knocked on one marked 'Assistant Director — Operations Branch', and ushered us in. "Inspector Thrale, Constable Peters, this is Terry Gibbons. We've come about the mail room business, Terry."
The man behind the desk rose to shake hands. He was tall, lean, and long-faced, with joints that swung loose as he walked. His hair was grey and windswept, and he wore round gold-rimmed glasses which he kept pushing back up his nose as he spoke. "Wilma!" — push — "How was your trip?" — push. I could see his other hand, moving uneasily over the papers on his desk. I diagnosed nerves. "Any conclusions," — push — "Inspector Thrale?"
"Not yet, Mr. Gibbons." We took the proffered seats. "What's all this new business about? Can you give me the background?" 
"Well, each of the Bases sends two sorts of mail. There's what we call physical mail — written letters and such — which is stored in a big bag in the radio room and sent off whenever there's a ship or a plane available. That might be once every two months in summer, perhaps not for six months or more in winter. Then there's radio mail, which is addressed and written out on forms provided, placed in sealed envelopes marked 'For Radio', with a tick to show whether it's official or personal and how urgent it is. The radio operator broadcasts those when weather conditions permit it, in order of when they came in and how urgent they are. Is that" — push — "clear?"
"The radio messages come through here first?" I asked.
"That's right, yes."
"What happens to them then?"
"Our operators type them out. Official ones are passed on by courier. Private ones are sent by Air Mail to their addressees. Our operators are very discreet. We do try to maintain some standards of" — push — "privacy."
"What if a radio letter didn't say who it was from?" I asked. "Would the Whale Base operator still transmit it?"
"They might ask around or contact the OIC to see if they could find out who it came from." Gibbons said. "But they'd send it, yes. They're obliged to do that. It's legally Australia Post mail."
"A lot of the radio messages are in code." Wilma said. "That is, we have code words, and the expeditioners are encouraged to invent their own. If the person wants to say something simple like 'Hello, having a wonderful time, love to Mother.' then they just have to use a couple of code words: 'YVOONGEY YMOROXA'. That can be sent by Morse when weather conditions aren't good enough for voice transmission. It works in reverse, too — friends and family in Australia also get a copy of the code book, they write to us, and we radio the messages down. Each expeditioner only has a limited number of words they can send per year, but that's usually enough."
"Can you get me a code book?" 
"Certainly. In fact — " Gibbons rummaged in his drawer with one hand and pushed up his glasses with another " — here it is."
I leafed through the slim paperback. "'YFGTSLRM' — 'I am in the infirmary with...'. 'YKPJCXZO' — 'Today we saw a flock of penguins'." There was something comic about it, but it seemed to do the job. I handed the book to Alice. "Put this on the file, Constable."
"Yes, sir."
"We make the code words as unlike real words as we can." Wilma added. "They always start with X,Y or Z. That reduces the chance of their being mixed up."
"One more question." I said. "If someone sent you official mail including a code word that wasn't in the book — what would you do?"
They exchanged glances. Was this something I wasn't supposed to know? "Our operator would take it straight to the Director. There are certain contingencies..."
"All right. I just wanted to get that straight. Now, what's happened down there?"
"It was about three hours ago, four A.M. Whale Base time. Bob Wilkins was on duty in the Radio Room..."
"I've heard that name. He was the one who tried to raise Samuels on the radio."
"That's right." Ashton said. "There are four full-time radio operators at Whale Base, because it passes on most of the radio traffic from the other Bases as well. They work shift work. This week Wilkins has had the midnight-till breakfast shift. There's supposed to be someone in the Radio Room twenty-four hours a day."
"And is there?"
"It works reasonably well." Gibbons said. "Last night seems to have been the first occasion since the murder that the Radio Room was unattended for" — push — "any length of time. Wilkins says it can't have been more than ten minutes."
"Why was it unattended?"
"Wilkins had a headache. He can't swallow aspirins, so he went to the medicine cabinet in the infirmary to get a powder. That took him past the Recreation Room, where there was an all-night card game going on. He says he watched it for a few minutes. When he got back the mail was disarranged. Some of the radio mail had been opened and the person had rummaged through the bag containing physical mail. Wilkins radioed us before he even told Dr. Craig. He got in touch with the night operator, who rang me at home. I told him to" — push — "leave everything exactly as it was, because you were on your way down." He smiled apologetically. "I hope I didn't give the game away."
"Not at all. You did exactly the right thing." 
"They don't seem to trust the OIC's down there very much." Alice commented. 
"Remember Machin was in sick bay, probably sedated." Wilma said. "And Helena is — well, is a woman. But you're quite right; there is a kind of 'us and them' feeling among the tradesmen." 
"Especially in times of" — push — "crisis." Gibbons chipped in. "Even more so among the Radio Operators, of course, because they work shift work. Sitting there at midnight in the middle of a snowstorm, sometimes you feel as if you're the last person on Earth."
"You sound as if you've tried it." Alice said.
"I have. Penguin 1975 and Macquarie Island 1981." He paused. "Is there anything more I can help you with, Wilma?" 
"It's possible I might need some code words of my own." I told him. "Can I see you about those tomorrow?"
"By all means, yes." Gibbons rescued his glasses one more time. "I'll see you then." He sighed. "Somehow, in the middle of all this, we have to find the time to run three other Bases as well."
Wilma shepherded us out and closed the door. "What did you make of Terry?" she asked.
"Another 'Citizen of Antarctica'?"
"Yes, I think so. They say you never get it out of your blood. It makes me wonder sometimes whether I want to go down or not. But I suppose I should. It may not be there much longer."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked, startled.
"Oh, pollution, loss of the ozone layer, the Greenhouse Effect." She waved her hands vaguely. "Some people here give Antarctica another century at the most."
"And then what?"
"Then we have a tropical climate, a barren rocky desert to the south, and enough extra meltwater in the sea to flood our coastal cities." 
"There you go." Alice said. "I knew there had to be a reason for building Canberra." 
I glanced up and down at the row of offices. "Who was Samuels' boss? Who did he report to?"
"Sally Charteris." Wilma led us to the second door along. "The Science Branch is a separate unit again. There are five in all — Science, Operations, Medicine, Projects and Policy, and Resource Management."
"And of course they all fight over money."
She smiled. "Of course." She knocked on the door, and poked her head in. "Sally, it's Wilma. Have you got a minute?"
Sally Charteris was a great blob of a woman on a flimsy Swedish ergonomic chair, the backless kind. It looked as though it might break at any minute, and send her crashing forward into the desk. But her bright dark eyes took us all in, missing nothing. "Before we start," she said, "Would you like a cup of coffee? Don't ask for tea — it's ghastly."
I accepted the offer, and Charteris delivered the message to her secretary. "Now, what can I do for you?"
"I wanted to ask you about Samuels. I gather he worked for you." 
A veil of caution fell across the woman's pudgy face. Perhaps she had something to hide. Or maybe she just wanted to forget Samuels, to bury him. "In a manner of speaking." she said. "I assisted with planning his project. What did you want to know?"
"Let's start with his qualifications." I said. "He was a Ph.D.?"
"That's right. I've got his file just here." Charteris opened an ochre-coloured folder on her desk. "B.Sc. with Honours from Murdoch University in 1980 for a thesis on the praying mantis. He joined CSIRO in 1981 and worked for a while on Amitermes meridionalis — that's the Magnetic Termite to you and me. Resigned in 1983 and went to Perth University, where he tutored in Entomology while doing his Ph.D. thesis on Palophus titan — er, the Giant Stick Insect. Recognized as an expert on Australian native insects."
"That's very interesting." I said. "Can someone explain why an expert on Australian insects would go to Antarctica to study penguins?"
There was a pause. Charteris was the first to speak. "I asked myself that." she said at last. "I didn't have an answer."
"But did anyone ask Samuels?"
"I don't know." Ashton said. "Cooper might have."
"Excuse me." Alice said quietly. "I have a question. Are there any insects in Antarctica?"
"There might be a few winged ones unlucky enough to be blown there." Charteris said. "And there's a good breeding population of fleas and lice on the Bases. But generally speaking no."
"Then he couldn't have gone down there to study insects." Alice said. "I mean — "
"Fair enough, lass." I reached across Charteris' desk quickly and took the file. The woman made a half-movement as if to grab it, but held back. "That is confidential." she said.
"The man's been murdered." I reminded her. "I'm sure Dr. Ashton will clear this." 
Charteris looked at Wilma, who nodded — reluctantly? "Inspector Thrale has full access to all our available documents." 
I leafed through the file and handed it to Alice. "Psychological test reports — who do I see to make some sense of these?"
"That would be Dr. Nowell." Wilma put in. "He's not here at the moment, but he should be in tomorrow. I'll let him know you want to see him — what time?"
"Make it nine o'clock." I said. "I'll go through this tonight."
Wilma nodded. "I'll sign for it." 
"Okay." Charteris said, in the tone of someone losing a point. "Anything else I can do for you?"
"How well did you know Samuels?" I asked her.
"Minimally. I'm not a socializing person and I gather that he wasn't either. We communicated about the project, of course, but mainly in writing; he wasn't here long enough to meet very often."
"The project you're talking about involved fitting penguins with radio backpacks?"
"Adelie penguins, that's right."
"Pardon my ignorance." I said, "But why ?"
"Sorry." Charteris said, sounding almost human. "You get so insular in this place, it's hard to remember there are people out there who can't make sense of it all." The chair groaned as she reached back for another file. She showed us a colour photograph of a very human-looking penguin, standing erect with its arms — sorry, flippers — extended from its sides, gazing ruminatively into the distance. It wore a yellow vinyl jacket, and on its back, taking up about half its length, was a square package, closed at the top with insulating tape. From the very top of the package a radio aerial protruded, reaching just above the crown of the bird's head. "That's a gentoo." she said.
"Not a penguin?"
"A gentoo is a penguin. Sorry again. Let me explain. In 1971 an American team decided to investigate blood flow in wild gentoos. Gentoos are a species of penguin — one of the sixteen, or eighteen, species, depending on who you believe. Antarctic penguins are well adapted to the cold. In fact they get heatstroke at ten degrees Celsius. The Americans wanted to see if their blood flow had anything to do with their ability to withstand cold. So they set up this arrangement, with a radio to transmit data, and it worked quite well. It also gave us the idea for a project of our own.
"Penguins do several other things which are remarkable, and one of them is navigation. They can find their way back to a rookery — a breeding ground — across a featureless plain of ice. There's all sorts of theories to account for this, but none of them are proven. So we hit on the idea of using an arrangement like this — " she indicated the picture — " to track the penguins' locations at given times. The idea's been kicking around for a few years, but it wasn't until we sent up a satellite last year that we've been able to solve the technical problems and put it into practice. We had arranged with Martin Kirk from Monash that he would be handling it, but at the last minute he came down with a virus, so we went through the other applications and came up with Samuels. Cooper, the other biologist at Whale Base, agreed to help him out — he's very competent."
"But Kirk is a penguin expert?"
"Yes. He's recovered now. He's handling the data analysis, in fact — it gets bounced down here from the satellite and we send it over to him in Melbourne."
"I'd like to talk to him. Can you arrange a phone call?"
"I'll see to it." Wilma said. "You can look at the project records when you get there, if you think they're relevant. Anything else?"
"Not at the moment." I said. "Thank you, Dr. Charteris."
"My pleasure."
We left the office just as a a young woman arrived with the coffee. I seized a cup and drained it. "That's better. Now, can you find us an office?"

The room I ended up with was bigger than my office in Canberra, with an anteroom for Alice. Wilma went off to get some stationery while we unpacked. From the window I could see Mount Wellington towering in the distance, and the little ant-colony of Kingston. "This is the life, eh, Constable?"
"I'd prefer it if you call me Alice." she said. "I'm no oil painting. Was that a stupid question of mine, Chief? About the insects?"
"Depends what you were getting at." 
"All I meant was that Samuels could have wanted to go to Antarctica for some other reason. So the penguins might be a kind of cover story."
"Possible." I conceded. "But look at this." I showed her the journal with the expeditioners' photographs. "Did you ever see anyone who looked less like he wanted to go anywhere?"
"Maybe he needed the money." Alice said. "With a wife and a young kid to support — "
"Then why didn't he stay in CSIRO? He had a well-paid job there, and he left it to go back to University and study. He already had a wife then, and in pod, to boot. You'll have to do better than that. But keep thinking, eh?" 
Alice was settling in in the ante-room when Wilma arrived with a handful of papers. "I brought you some books, too." she said. "This is the ARC Handbook — two copies — it gets issued to everybody who goes on an expedition. This is the Survival Guide , which people are supposed to carry with them in the field. I hope you don't have to use it."
"I hope so too." I said. "All I seem to be doing is reading."
"I've contacted Dr. Nowell." she said. "He'll see you in his office at nine tomorrow."
"Good. I want to see the Director before I go, too."
She hesitated for a second. "Alan won't be here." she said. "He sent a message saying that the airport in Oslo was snowed in. Monday is the earliest that he can get back."
She wasn't lying, but her voice said that she wasn't telling the whole truth, either. Now she was waiting for me to play along. "All right." I said finally. "If I can't see him I can't. What about Professor Kirk?"
"We haven't been able to get in touch with him, but I've left a message with his secretary."
"Fair enough." I said. She relaxed a little at that. I'd taken the blarney — now for my reward. 
"I was going to ask you something — I mean, I don't know if you have the time — but perhaps you'd like to see something of Hobart tomorrow night? It's not one of the world's great cities, but it has some nice old places."
"I'd be glad to." I said. "Constable Peters will be madly jealous, of course."
Wilma smiled. "I think I can cope with that." 
CHAPTER V 
The man who met us at ARC the next morning was a good-looking lad in his late twenties. "Inspector Thrale? I'm Martin Smolenski."
"Pleased to meet you." I said. "This is Alice Peters." 
"I'm supposed to get you kitted out." he said. "If you want to come down to the store I'll get you one of everything."
"I don't have the time." I said. "Take Constable Peters down — she's got my size — and whatever she gets I'll have one of too — within reason, of course. All right? How's the training set-up?"
"Dave Keegan said he'll meet you in the gallery at two. Does that suit?"
"Lovely. And just before you go, where do I find Doctor Nowell?"
"Fourth door on your left. And good luck." He drooped his left eyelid slightly.
"Why?"
"Oh, no reason." He shepherded Alice away to the storeroom while I strode down to the indicated office.

Dr. Nowell was a tall angular man in a black three-piece suit that wouldn't have looked out of place in Macquarie Street. He had a trace of a middle European accent that I couldn't place. "Sit down, Inspector. I hope this isn't going to take too long." His voice was friendly enough, but his eyes were hostile. What's biting you? I wondered. I laid Samuels' file on his desk. "Paul Samuels' test results, doctor. I want to know what they mean."
"The results are confidential."
"All right, then, give me your interpretation of the results. I'm not interested in the numbers, Doctor. I want to know about the man."
Nowell took up the file, leafing through it. "I'll tell you what I can. But the tests aren't very profound. Their main job is to weed out anyone who might be a nuisance down there. If the person is approximately normal then they're considered to be OK."
"Am I to take it that Samuels was approximately normal?"
"In psychological terms, anyway." He thumbed through the file. "His IQ score was 140, good even for an academic, and his personality profile fell well within the normal range. A little bit immature, perhaps, something of a loner, and somewhat dependent."
"What does that mean in English?"
He glared at me before going on. "It means he was probably fairly conventional, did what he was told, and bowed to authority."
"Is that a normal profile for Antarctica?"
He shook his head. "There's no such thing. We get all sorts applying, Inspector. At one extreme we have rugged individualists who want to sledge to the South Pole by themselves, and at the other we have dewy-eyed young men who anticipate a year-long gay orgy. Samuels is — was — very normal."
"You mentioned homosexuality. Is it common?"
"It takes place from time to time, yes. Not as a matter of choice, but because there's no alternative. The same thing happens in jail."
"I know about jails." 
"Yes, of course. Then you understand that it's not a matter of emotional attachment, but physical need." He looked at me hard, as if he was trying to hypnotize me into agreement. "There's nothing romantic about it."
"I don't understand it at all." I said. "Do you think it might be a motive for murder?"
He shook his head. "No, I can't see it. Especially since they've only been down there — what — three months? And with that woman there now, too."
I guessed who he meant by that woman . "The O'Sullivan lass? What about her?"
Dr. Nowell sniffed. "Men are much less likely to form attachments when there's a chance — even a slim chance — of making love to an attractive woman."
"Is that a proven fact?" 
"No, just common sense." He gave me a wintry smile. "Even psychologists have that, you know."
I decided it was time to change the subject. "What about drugs?" 
"The place is awash with alcohol, but there's nothing illegal about that. There's some abuse of prescription drugs — usually it's up to the MO to keep an eye on that. Anyone caught using hard drugs would be sent back as soon as possible and handed over to the police."
"What about marijuana?"
He shrugged. "Privacy is important there. If a smoker kept it to himself, then he probably wouldn't be bothered. But he'd be taking a risk — any complaints and we'd have to come down hard."
"Let's go back to Samuels." I said. "He wasn't homosexual, he was bright, solitary, immature and good at following orders. Is that a fair assessment?"
"On the basis of some quick and dirty tests, yes. But none of that would stand up in court."
"We're not in court yet." I reminded him. "God knows if we ever will be. What I want to know is, why would anyone kill a man like that?"
"I can't help you there." he said. "I'm a psychologist, not a clairvoyant."

There was a cable from Alec Devine waiting in the office. It listed four of the Whale Base expeditioners who had criminal convictions. Two of them were for minor drug use and one for receiving stolen goods — all many years ago. The only name I recognized was that of Mark Baron, charged with criminal assault in 1974. There was a summary of the case. Baron had been drinking after a football game, and got into a disagreement with a member of the opposing team — probably about some legal violence on the pitch. Baron had thrown a punch and broken the man's jaw. He was given a year's probation and ordered to attend a clinic for problem drinkers. 
Of the other three two were scientists — Wilton James and Grant Kitten — who'd separately got into trouble with drugs while at University; the third was a Senior Carpenter called O'Toole, who'd bought some electrical equipment from two boys who'd robbed their high school. It was small beer. 
Another report from Western Australia dealt with Samuels' wife and colleagues. He had married a Germaine Campbell (no previous marriage, no convictions) in August 1984. Their son Austin was born in April 1985; pushing things a little, perhaps, but not unusual. They had bought and paid for a three-bedroom house in a respectable area of Fremantle. Samuels had no outstanding debts, no enemies, no close friends. His colleagues described him as quiet and competent, his students thought he was a good teacher but 'insect-mad'. There was nothing to show why he should travel five thousand kilometres away from home, or why someone else should kill him there. I added the meaningless report to the growing dossier, and read some more about penguins.

There was a knock at the door and Wilma breezed in, carrying a folder of tickets. "Hobart to Christchurch, 2.15 tomorrow afternoon. Stan will take you out to the airport. At Christchurch you'll be met and driven to the other end of the airfield, where the military planes fly from. I've got you some NZ money in case anything goes wrong, but you shouldn't need it." She handed me the folder. "The Starlifter doesn't leave till eleven PM., I'm afraid."
"What time do we get to Antarctica?"
"Seven A.M. local time at Peary airstrip. The sun will be well up, but it'll still be cold. They'll turn off the heating on the plane so you can acclimatize before you land."
"Very thoughtful of them. Then what?"
"There's a hut there you can shelter in. Sometime that morning a Russian helicopter will arrive to collect mail. They'll pick you up and drop you near Whale Base."
"I'm honoured." 
She grinned at me. "All part of the service. You don't know how glad I am that you're on the case. Still all right for tonight?"
I nodded. "What time?"
"I'll meet you at the motel at seven. How's that?"
"Fine. What should I wear?"
"Dress warmly." A wave, and she was gone. 

I leafed through the tickets, feeling slightly bemused. The two from the USAF were on official forms, three pages long and authorized by half-a-dozen officers, from Acting Air Commander Zbigniew all the way down to Staff Sergeant T.P.Lewis. What would they do if there was a war, I wondered, and T.P.Lewis wasn't there to sign the tickets? 

Alice turned up an hour later, grinning broadly and carrying an huge armful of clothing. "Is that all?" I asked sarcastically.
"No, there's more." She swung the door open for Martin Smolenski, who staggered in with an even bigger load. "Where shall I put this?" he asked. 
"In the corner there." Dumped in a pile it looked like a hibernating mammoth. "Do we have to wear all this?" I asked.
"Not all at once." Alice began sorting out bundles. "This is a rucksack, and this is a sleeping bag. Here are your mukluks."
"My what ?"
"Mukluks. Sealskin overboots." Smolenski explained.
Alice was still pawing through the pile. "Balaclava, mittens, sungoggles, long underwear..."
"I should have stayed in England." I said. "I could get by with an overcoat there. You'd better show me how all this fits together." 
"I can't just now." she said. "We're going out for lunch. Want to come?"
"There's a little Chinese restaurant in Kingston..." Smolenski began reluctantly . He didn't sound too keen to have me along, which suited me; Chinese food gives me wind. "When are you coming back?" I asked.
"Two o'clock for Dave Keegan. That all right?"
"Fine." I said. "You go off and enjoy yourselves. I'll sit here poring over the case with a stale sandwich."
"See you later, then!" They trotted off. I wondered idly if Smolenski was handing Alice a line. She wouldn't fall for that, would she? But women are funny that way. Lie to 'em like a trooper and they love it: tell 'em the truth and you're out the door before you have time to turn around. 

"Thrale and Peters? I'm Dave Keegan, Training Officer." 
When I did National Service we used to have a Sergeant-Major for P.T. — Physical Training. His name was Nash, so we called him Gnasher. He was a little Welsh bastard built along the lines of an ice-cream cone, with tiny feet and shoulders like a barn door, and when he did sit-ups he looked like the bulldog on the front of a Mack truck. Keegan was the same type, heavily muscled and almost as broad as he was high, but his accent was rural South Australia, not Welsh. If there was a gram of fat on him I couldn't see it. Like Gnasher, he had a fervent belief that what he was teaching us might save our lives one day. Unlike Gnasher, he was probably right. 
The floor of the gymnasium around him was covered with training equipment. "All right, fellas." (Alice's eyebrows went up at that). "S'afternoon I'm gunna give ya just a taste o'the basics. This doesn't mean ya can get off the plane and expect to know it all. While youse are down there you'll hafta stay inside and do as you're told, orright? But just in case you hafta go out, or there's an emergency, I'm gunna try and teach you enough to stay outa the way and make yerselves useful. O-kay?"
The question clearly didn't require an answer. Before we could try one Keegan was off again. "Gear . Wear it or carry it when you're outside. Doesn't matter if the sun's shining, doesn't matter if you're only goin' out for a piss." (And at that). "Wear it or carry it. Orright?" On he went, without a pause. "If youse get lost or separated from your party then stay where y'are . Don't try an' walk somewhere unless it's real close an' the route is clearly visible. Distances are deceptive bastards in the snow, when there's nothing to judge 'em against — orright? 
"If you have to take shelter in a hut then don't take any gear off until you've got the stove fired up and running. Orright? I'll show youse how t'do that later. Radios — this is how to use 'em." 
It went on for three-and-a-half hours. Keegan was abrasive, patronizing and intolerant of error — "Nah, put the rope through there !" — but thorough. He went step by step through the Survival Handbook, emphasizing the most relevant parts. By the end we knew — in theory — how to set up a polar tent, build a snow cave, manhaul a sled, rescue an unconscious comrade from a crevasse, use an ice-axe and an astrocompass, and what to do if trapped upon breaking sea-ice. It was theory I fervently hoped would never be put into practice. 
His conclusion was abrupt and dramatic. "Finally. If youse are in any doubt — look in the bloody Handbook . An' if you're not in any doubt, then look in the Handbook anyway, 'cos chances are you've got it wrong. Orright? That's it." The tape-recorder delivery shut off abruptly. Keegan extended a hand. "And good luck, eh? I hope you catch the bastard."
"Did you know Samuels?" I asked at a venture.
"Not from a bar o'soap." Keegan said. "Stupid bastard, getting himself killed! Since I started training here he's the first bloke who hasn't come back in one piece." He seemed to take this as a personal slight. 

We left him there among his ropes, tents and sledges. Stan Boole was waiting in the watchman's office to drive us back to the motel. It was getting dark as we passed through the little town. "Can you drop me off here?" Alice asked. "I'm going to meet somebody."
Smolenski, of course. She hadn't told me, but then there was no reason why she should. And it got her most conveniently out of the way for Wilma. I wondered if I should have bought Wilma a gift — chocolates or something. I couldn't think of anything appropriate, and besides, it was too late now. We left Alice in the unglamorous main street of Kingston, and Stan drove me back to the motel. I took the bundle of Antarctic clothing from the boot. "Picking us up tomorrow, Stan?"
"I suppose so." the little man said. "What time?"
"Nine? No, make that ten. How's that?"
"Suits me." Stan said. "Means I can stay up and watch the golf." He gave me a wave and threw the bus into reverse. I let myself in to the dark cabin, putting the briefcase away carefully into a padlocked cupboard. I showered and shaved, and remembering Wilma's injunction, donned my long Antarctic underwear. A long spectral figure gazed gloomily back at me from the wardrobe mirror. Forty-two years old, with a dicky liver and an ex-pug's face. 

She was ten minutes late, just enough to make me think I'd been stood up. We drove to Hobart along little country roads, past cottages, hop-fields and pocket-handkerchief farms that could have been in Sussex. For dinner we ate Tasmanian scallops and crayfish in a deserted beer garden, enjoying the solitude, the darkness, and the taste of wine, while inside behind the windows people moved through a crowded neon fog of sweat and cigarette smoke. "Too cold for you?" she asked.
"Not at all." I said, glad of my long underwear. 
"I like the cold." she said. "I'm glad we moved down here."
"We?" I asked delicately.
"Frank and I." She paused. "Frank lectures in politics at the University of Hobart. He wrote a book two years ago -Cold War Etiquette. You might have heard of it."
I remembered a rash of reviews, colour supplement articles, a brief buzz of publicity. 'Professor Ashton has grasped the underlying truths behind the facade of global politics.' I'd even had a look at the book myself when it turned up in our local library. To me it was a literary version of the paranoid theories I used to get from loonies on the streets of Leicester. The Americans have a secret radar, Sergeant. They're spying on my brain... But that's what people want to hear these days. The more depressing it is the better they like it. "That's right. It made him quite well-known for a while."
Wilma sighed. "For a while." she said. "The media persuaded Frank that he was really important. He'd always felt that he ought to be famous, and he accepted it as his due.
"Then the papers and TV found someone else to be interested in, and Frank went back to being just another academic. Since then he's shut himself off from everything. He does nothing but write and read about politics all day. We can't have a sensible conversation any more."
"Children?" I asked.
"One boy, at boarding school in Melbourne. Frank's idea."

She took me up Mount Wellington, steering carefully over the slippery roads. From the top we could see the lights of Hobart, sliced in two by the broad dark band of the Derwent, with the glittering bridge arching between them. The breeze from the south rushed up the mountainside, blowing her hair back from her face. "Antarctic wind." she said, leaning over the rail. "Tomorrow you'll be on your way. I wish it was me."
I let my arm slip round her waist. "So do I." 
She laughed. "You're not a very romantic man, are you?"
"I can't afford to be." I said. "Romantics make mistakes."
"Come on, Oswald." She turned to face me. "You must have made some mistakes in your time."
"Only off duty." I told her.

I was back at the cabin in pyjamas, boiling a saucepan of milk for cocoa, when Alice rolled in. "What sort of time d'you call this, lass?"
"I call it half-past one." she said. "I don't know what you call it. Do you want some news?"
"Go on, surprise me."
"I went out with Martin and a couple who work at ARC, Anna Henty and Bill Austin. Guess what?"
"I can't imagine." I said. "Do you want some cocoa?"
"Anna was actually engaged to Barry Cooper!"
"Really?" I said. "Sugar?"
She stared at me for a moment. "You bastard!" she said at last. "You knew it all along! You and that Ashton bitch set me up!"
"Unseemly language in the presence of a senior officer." I said. "An offence under Paragraph 37, Subsection (b). Now sit down, have a cuppa, and tell me what you found out."
Alice sat down, crestfallen. "Not much, after all that." she said. "This engaged bit came up because we were talking about the blokes she knows down at the Base. I mentioned Cooper, and she said oh, yes, she knew him, but please don't mention her name to him. Of course, I asked why not, and it all came out."
"She met him here, at ARC?"
"That's right. He arrived, they got to know each other, within two weeks they were engaged. Not bad going, eh? He spent a pot of money on her, too."
"She must be one of the opportunists that Dr. Ashton mentioned." 
"You can't blame her." she said defensively. "These blokes are on their way south, they're not going to see a woman for a year, they're making scads of money with nothing to spend it on. What's wrong with a few of the girls going along with them for the ride?"
"It's cynical and immoral, that's what's wrong with it. If I had my way..."
"Stuff that." Alice said boldly. "Do you want to hear what I found out or not?"
"Go on, then."
"Well, Samuels arrived for training late — we already know that. He wasn't fit, either. Most of the blokes are fairly healthy, they jog and that, but Samuels was all flab. Even after two weeks he wasn't in much condition.
"They went out a few times, Anna, Cooper, Samuels and a friend of hers called Daphne. I gather that Daphne was on the make for Samuels, but he wasn't having it. Couldn't talk about anything but his wife and kid. Every time they mentioned Antarctica he used to look as miserable as sin. Anna thought he was a bit slow — you know, stupid. Some of the boffins are like that, she says, and I quote — 'wouldn't know the time of day if it wasn't written down for 'em somewhere'."
"You told her about your degree, naturally."
She ignored that. "Most of Samuels' spare time he spent in his room at the hostel, reading up on penguins. It might not have been his field of knowledge, but he had this project down pat, from start to finish. Then in the last week he went off on a short course for radio operators."
"Hang on." I said. "Why would he want to do that?"
"Probably because of the penguins. Anyway, he was away for a day and a half. Anna reckons he did very well, and that cheered him up a bit."
"Is that all you got?" 
"Just about." she said. "You mean in the way of information, of course?"
"If you got anything else I don't want to hear about it." I told her.
"You have a dirty mind. And don't tell me you spent the night here virtuously drinking cocoa!"
"How do you know I didn't?"
"There's a cold patch near the door where you came in. Your coat's on the back of that chair, and it's freezing. I'd say you got in about twenty minutes ago."
"Twenty-five." I said. "Touche."
"Besides, Martin told me you were out with that Ashton woman. Learn anything?"
"Not much you can teach me at my age." I said. "But I found out a bit about Kittle. He's a gutless wonder who did a favour for the right politician at the right time. An easy nut to crack. And he knows all the details of Samuels' recruitment. Such a shame he isn't here to talk to us. Heavy-handed hints like that."
"I checked with the Met. Office this afternoon." she said. "The weather in Oslo has been clear for the last week."
"So Alan Kittle doesn't want to talk to us." I said. "What do we make of that?"
"Maybe he's not in Oslo!" she said. "Maybe he went down to Whale Base in secret, killed Samuels, and caught the next plane back." She caught me looking at her. "All right, Chief — just speculating."
"Stay up and speculate, then." I told her. "I'm going to bed."
CHAPTER VI 
It was raining the next morning. We drove in with Stan, who let us in to the locked building. "Don't fancy your job." he said. "Working weekends all the time and that."
"Ah, but think of the fringe benefits. Here we are on an all-expenses paid trip to the coldest place on earth."
"You can keep it." Stan said. "Hobart weather's rotten enough for me. See you at eleven-thirty."

"What do we do now?" Alice asked when we reached the office.
"I write a report for the Super. You go down to the Radio Room and see what calls have been made from Whale Base since the new party arrived in November."
"Right-ho."
I went to work. There was little to put in a report at the moment, but I didn't know when I'd next have peace and quiet and a flat surface to write on. There was also a rule somewhere that said police officers should make a full report before venturing into hazardous conditions. I supposed Antarctica was hazardous. It had been hazardous enough for Samuels. And Machin. And all the others.
A knock at the door interrupted my reverie. "Come in."
It was Wilma. "All set?" she asked. 
"More or less." I told her. "Any news from Whale?"
"They had a big storm last night, but it seems to have blown itself out. Sometimes they go on for days." She perched on the edge of the desk. "I can't imagine what you're going to do down there."
"Nor can I." I said cheerfully. "I expect I'll make it up as I go along."
"Don't give much away, do you?"
"If I told you how little I know about the case, love, you wouldn't believe me." I opened Samuels' file. "But since you're here — "
"What?"
"Why didn't Samuels' radio course get entered on his file?"
"What radio course?" she asked. "Samuels didn't do a radio course."
"He told Cooper that he did. And Cooper told his girlfriend."
"She must have garbled the story. No-one does a radio course unless they've arranged to go on an expedition."
"Well, he went off somewhere for a day and a half. Say he spent a full day doing something. There's not much to do in Hobart, so it's likely that he flew out." I picked up the phone. "Let's try Melbourne first. Your switchboard on duty today?"
"There should be someone there." She took the handset. "Hello, Veronica? Wilma here. Can you put through a call from Inspector Thrale? Thanks, dear." She covered the handset. "Who do you want?" 
"The local airlines. Start with the reservation desk." She relayed the information. A few seconds later I was talking to an airline clerk. "Federal Police here, laddie. I want to know if somebody called Paul Samuels took a flight out of Hobart at any time in October. Quick as you can, eh?" There was a pause. "October 23rd, 9AM to Melbourne. Came back on the 24th at noon. That's very helpful. Thank you." I lowered the phone. "First time lucky."
"You sounded very tough." she said.
"Did I?" I was surprised. "Force of habit. It works, though." I checked the date. "So much for Samuels' radio course. He was off in Melbourne."
"Why?"
"That's what I'd like to know. Time for another call." I gave the switchboard operator a Melbourne number. "Ask for Inspector Davies."
"Will he be in the office?" Wilma asked.
"No. That's why I'm ringing him at home." 
It was only a moment before the familiar voice crackled out of the handset. "Oswald! What the hell are you up to now?"
I went through college with Taffy back in London, all those years ago. "How are you, Taff? And the wife and kids? I can hear them, all right. Give 'em my love, eh? Can you do me a little favour, Taff? Get your lads to find out if somebody called Paul Samuels, or something similar, stayed in a Melbourne hotel on the night of October the 23rd. Start at the top end and work down. Give up if you haven't got anywhere by the one-star level, eh? I'm just trying to confirm a hunch. And if you do find him, send it up to Alec Devine. I won't be here. No, not holidays, exactly. Antarctica. Antarctica . Yes, that Samuels. I won't, Taff. See you later." I lowered the phone. "Taffy says not to forget my wellies."
"Funny way you do business." she said. "Ringing up a family man on his day off."
"You're a bureaucrat." I pointed out. "Your jobs can wait for the weekdays. Mine can't. They've got to be hunted. Did you ever play the horses?"
"No." she said, startled. "Why?"
"'Cos a murder's a bit like a horse race. You put a few bob on this one, and a few bob on that one, and a bit each way on this one, and try and nose around the jockeys and local stablehands to find out what looks good. You might think you have a dead cert, but it's still got to get past the stewards. It's always best to hedge your bets."
"So you're a gambler?"
"I bet. But I never gamble."
There was a knock which I recognized as Alice's. "Come in, Constable."
"Here's a photocopy of the radio log, sir." Alice laid a paper on the desk. "Samuels made a ship-to shore call to his family five days out, and another radio call three days after he got there. Another one two weeks later, then one three weeks later, followed by another after four days — that was the last. His wife sent immediate replies to the first three."
"Not to the last one?"
"Apparently not. That was on January the eighth, twelve days before he was killed."
"Plenty of time to reply." I said.
"Why should she reply?" Wilma asked. "She'd already replied to one three days before."
"Turn the question around. Why did Samuels send another message four days after his last one?"
"It could have been any reason. A birthday, an anniversary..."
I looked at the file. "Samuels was born in February and married in august. The child was born in April. I don't know his wife's birthday, but I'd be surprised if it's January the eighth. If so, why did he make the earlier call?"
"That's pretty tenuous." she said.
"Lass, I've had cases that make this chain of reasoning look like a steel cable." I glanced at my watch. "Time to pack up, Alice. Stan'll be round with the bus soon."
"I'll take the packs down." Alice said. She shouldered the kitbags and set off.
"Tactful, isn't she?" I stood up. "Any last words?"
"Take care of yourself." Wilma said. "I wish I was going with you."
"Last night you wished you were going instead."
"Things have changed since then — haven't they?"
"Things that have changed can change back again." 
"You're a pessimist." she said. "Come and see me when you get back."
"If I get back." 
"I'll get you back," she said. "Come hell or high water."
"I might hold you to that." I told her. "'Bye, lassie."

"What kept you?" Alice asked out in the car park.
"Paperwork, lass. Reports to send. Last-minute Telexes to write. You wouldn't understand."
"You'll be glad o' the paperwork down there." Stan said. "Give you a chance to stay inside where it's warm."
"Don't worry." I told him. "After all I heard from Dave Keegan yesterday about blizzards and crevasses, I don't even want to look out the window."
"It's like being stuck in a cave down there." Stan said. "In a cave with a bloody great tyrannosaur sniffing around outside trying to get in." 

The flight to Christchurch took two and a half hours. I tried to sleep — it's better than gripping the arms of the seat and staring out of the window, though not as entertaining for the other passengers. Dr. Nowell would probably have said I have a fear of heights, but that's not true. I don't have any fear of being up high. It's not staying there that I'm afraid of. I was disturbed by a snort of laughter from Alice. "What's up?"
"Listen to this, Chief." She was reading from the ARC Handbook . "'In Antarctica people are equals. The false trappings of civilization are cast off and nothing remains of the privileges of birth, possessions and social status.'" She chuckled. "Up the Revolution! How much does an OIC get paid, I wonder?"
"A damn sight more than us, any rate." I said. "They all do pretty well down there. Eighty per cent bonus and a tax concession."
"Plus Commonwealth insurance." Alice reminded me. "Would that be enough money to kill someone for?"
"Might be, lass." I told her. "So if you can work out how Mrs. Samuels did him in from Perth then I'll get on the blower and have her hauled in and charged."
Alice looked hurt. "Just speculating again, Chief."
"Speculate all you like." I said. "Wake me up when we get there."

A solid-looking black American in U.S. Air Force uniform greeted us at the airport. "Hi! You guys Thrale and Peters? I'm Tom Lewis."
"T.P.Lewis?" I asked.
"Thomas Pierce! Say, you are a detective! I'm your man." Lewis led us out of the terminal. "I had a word to the Customs guys and they let your luggage straight through. I kinda didn't think you'd be smuggling drugs — not the type, y'know? The limo's out here." Outside the terminal a khaki truck was squeezed into an official parking area. It had already collected a ticket. Lewis crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the boot with half-a-dozen others. "You guys didn't see that, right?"
"See what?" Alice asked innocently.
"All right! You eaten? The food here's lousy! Want to grab a burger somewhere?"
"We ate on the plane." I told him.
"That's good, because finding somewhere to eat around here ain't easy." Lewis indicated the shuttered buildings. "This place makes Peoria, Illinois look good! You wanna go to Antarctica? Man, you're halfway there!" 
He drove us around the edge of the airport and through another gate. Long low hangars dominated the end of the runway, and a few military planes were visible. We were met here by a languid South African who introduced himself as Gavin Waley. "Liaison Officer for ARC, ameng other things."
"Busy job?" Alice asked him.
"Too besy. I've spent the last week trying to work out how we're going to get you back again."
"How's it going?"
"Not too well. I don't suppose you could estimate how leng it might take..?"
"Not a hope." I said. "It could be tomorrow, it could be six months."
"Six months!" Alice was aghast. "That long?"
"You've got about two weeks." Waley said. "Efter that the winter sets in, and you're probably there till August at the earliest."
"Marvellous." I told him. "I can catch up on my reading." 
"Oh, I expect they'll find something for you to do. No shertage of work down there."

Over coffee he told us about the New Zealand bases. "One big one stuck out on an islend, and a couple of huts on the ice shelf. It's a token presence really." He nodded to Lewis. "These fellows could chase us off any time they wanted to."
"Come on, man." Lewis protested. "We're a peaceable nation! Besides, what would we want with eighty billion tons of ice? There's just not that much Scotch!"
"The Starlefter will be leaving at eleven PM." Waley said. "I'll introduce you to the pilot and crew when they get here. They're doing a mail drop at Macquarie Islend first, then a fuel drop for a New Zealand expedition before they finally get to Peary. We never waste a trip. In the meantime — " he hesitated "- I don't suppose either of you wants a game of bredge?"
 I told him I'd lev one.
_CHAPTER VII 
After seven rubbers Waley and I were ahead by eighty cents. He was a good player, but had a tendency to be impulsive in a crisis. Our opponents were a USAF captain and an American technician called Billy something who was travelling down to repair a broken computer at Byrd. Between hands Billy waxed lyrical about the time to come when all the people in Antarctica would be replaced by robots. "Imagine it, fellas — you could sit right here in Christchurch and drive your vehicle around down at Admiral Byrd BaseÁ" 
"What if you got a flat tyre?" I asked him.
"Then the repair bloke in the next seat would drive his vehicle out and fix it for you." Waley said. 
After an hour or so spent trying to follow the game Alice had fallen asleep in an armchair. She woke up with a start when the silence outside was shattered by the roar of propellers. 
"Warming ep" Waley said. "Better get your gear on."
"Everything?"
"Wear it all getting on, jest to make sure you haven't forgetten anything. Take the outer gear off when you get inside. There's a room over there you can use."
We took our kitbags into the other room and dressed. Alice examined herself in a dirty mirror. "I feel like an Eskimo." She adjusted her balaclava. "An Eskimo about to rob a bank. Why couldn't we just pick up this stuff when we got there?"
"Because we might not get there." I pointed out. "What if we come down in the sea? Half-past two in the morning, out there among the icebergs and leopard seals."
Bloody marvellous." she said. "When I get back I'll ask for traffic duty at Woden Plaza." We stomped out of the room and into a flash of light. "Lovely." Waley said, lowering his camera. "Inspector, here's your crew."

The pilot was a Texan and the co-pilot navigator came from Alaska. Both of them said little, and seemed anxious to get under way. They led us out and into the gloomy plane. It was raining, and the dark, windowless fuselage seemed like a coffin. We found seats along the side with Billy, and strapped ourselves in. After what seemed like an age, the plane began to move. The nose tilted up, the note of the propellers rose, and there was a jolt as the wheels left the ground. I tried to think about something else. 
It was too noisy at first to talk. After the plane had levelled off the co-pilot came round with earmuffs, which I accepted gratefully. I must have been asleep by the time we reached Macquarie Island — all I remember is a swoop downwards, a few shouts and flashing lights, and then a resumption of the flight. At five by my watch daylight began to creep in, showing up the plane for the jerry-built structure that it was. The pilot came round with packaged meals — thin shreds of chicken, frozen peas and instant potato, with a tiny bread roll — which we ate hungrily. Through the cockpit windscreen we could see nothing but blue sky. 
After breakfast Billy unstrapped and made his way forward. A moment later he called back to us. "Come and see this, guys! You won't believe it!"
It was quieter in the cockpit. I pulled off the earmuffs and gazed through the side window at the view below. The sea was a clear translucent pool studded with vast icebergs. Their tops were smooth planes of snow, the sides jagged cliffs of electric blue. Some were the size of islands, others as big as large ships. As we watched, one of the larger bergs broke up, cracking into many smaller pieces. "Calving." said the pilot.
"'The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here/ And this is ocean's poem. '" said the co-pilot unexpectedly. "Walt Whitman."
"How far to Peary?" Billy asked.
"Two hours. Want some coffee?"
"Love some." I said.
"Pot's back there." The pilot jerked his thumb back down the fuselage. "I take mine black."

We drank coffee from polystyrene cups, loking out through the porthole in the door. The icebergs slid by gradually underneath, getting larger as we approached the continent. "Look at the size of that one!" Alice said. "You could put Canberra on that and it wouldn't touch the sides!" 
"Makes you feel sorry for the Titanic, doesn't it?" I said.
"Sorry, Chief — that case was before my time."
"Cheek! For that you can make the next cup of coffee."
The icebergs thickened — then vanished for a moment. The sea was abruptly covered by a sheet of glittering ice. "The Ross Shelf." said the pilot, calling back to us. "Nearly there." A few minutes later the radio crackled to life with a message from the New Zealand expedition who were waiting for our fuel drop. The co-pilot came back with an empty coffeepot. "Hang on." he said. "When the fuel goes down we go up." We strapped ourselves in and waited. The plane made a couple of sharp turns and came down in a long slow glide. As we reached the bottom of the glide there was a noise from underneath the fuselage, and the plane shot upwards like a cork from a bottle. Alice says I screamed, but I thought it more of an involuntary yelp. We levelled out again, and made another turn. "Chute open." yelled back the co-pilot. "Wanna come up here and see it land?"
Back in the cockpit, we watched the plastic fuel tank drifting down on its double parachute. The expedition was nearby, a long chain of big, clumsy-looking vehicles, the front one flying the New Zealand flag. "What would happen if it broke?" Alice asked.
"They'd go back to base and we'd get our asses kicked." the pilot said. There was a crackle of acknowledgement from the radio as the fuel tank touched down gently, and the plane waggled its wings in acknowledgement. "Better get dressed — I'm turning the heating off now."
We struggled into the heavy gear, doing it up in the way Keegan had shown us, and strapped in again. Even fully clad, I could feel the icy walls of the fuselage drawing the heat from my face. The pilot came back and donned his own Antarctic clothes, followed a few minutes later by the co-pilot. "Cold enough?" he asked cheerfully. "You'd better strap in — we're nearly there." The note of the engines dropped slightly as he turned back into the cockpit. For a long while nothing seemed to be happening, then the engines picked up abruptly, the nose of the plane lifted, and we hit the ground. There was a roar of protest from the engines kicking into reverse, pushing us forward against the straps. More half-heard radio talk, and then the plane swung its nose around to the right, and finally taxied to a halt. The co-pilot called back through the connecting door. "Last stop, folks. Everybody out!"

We stepped from the plane on to the runway. On every side there was nothing but vast white snowdrifts. Behind the plane was a was a bulldozer, its cabin glassed in and insulated against the cold, and next to it a pair of small cramped-looking huts. It was from one of these that a man emerged now, waving. We met him halfway towards the larger of the huts, which was actually a kind of caravan, its caterpillar tracks nearly buried in the snow. There was a vestibule there which we entered two by two, shedding our outer garments, and beyond that a tiny room with two small plastic windows and a gas stove and heater. The man there extended a mittened hand. "Tony Gale." he said. "U.S. Navy. Pleased to meet you fellas. If I'd know there was a lady coming I'd have tidied up some." 
"That's all right." Alice said. "You can't do much tidying in a room this size."
"That's for sure." Gale agreed. "I'm your reception committee. Want some soup?"
"Love some." 
The windows steamed up as we drank cups of thick packet soup. Then the aircrew excused themselves and went out to unload the plane. We offered to help, but Gale shook his head. "Those guys know what they're doing. Don't get in anyone's way, that's the rule down here. Your ride'll be coming along in about an hour's time." He spoke briefly into the radio, reporting our arrival, then turned back to us. "You really think you're going to crack this case?"
"With lots of help." I said. "Any ideas?"
"I only know what I've heard." Gale said. "I was thinking, though — couldn't it still be suicide? Someone took a skiddoo out, okay, and the next morning this guy was found dead. Doesn't mean there's a connection."
"What else would they want it for?" 
"How should I know? Could be any number of things."
"Like what?"
Gale shrugged. "Like, maybe they had some dope stashed somewhere. Or maybe they met some other guy in one of the huts — to buy drugs or something, you know?"
"Does that happen here?" Alice asked mildly.
Gale shook his head. "All kinds of crazy things happen here, I tell you. But nobody's killed anyone before, that I know of."
"What's the temperature outside?" Alice asked.
"Right now it's about seven below."
"That's not too bad." she said. "Can I go for a stroll?"
"Please yourself." Gale told her. "But not too far, hey?"
"I'll come with you." Billy said. They slipped out. 
"First thing they're gonna do is throw snowballs." Gale said when they were gone. "This place does it to you every time."
The co-pilot appeared with a crate. "This all your stuff? Where'd you want it?"
"You could leave it outside the door." I suggested. 
Gale shook his head. "Don't leave anything outside down here without a marker. Just a little breeze and it's covered in snow and gone forever. There's no way to tell two piles of snow apart that I know of. We lost a tractor that way once."
The co-pilot grinned. "Don't believe a word of it." he said. 
"It's as true as I'm standin' here."
"Fair enough." I told him. "Put it in the corner over there."

Alice and Billy were gone about twenty minutes. When they came back their faces were red with exertion and the cold. "It's fantastic out there." Billy said. "The sky's so damn blue — "
"You look sunburnt." Gale said prosaically. "Got cream?"
"Amazing." Alice agreed. "There's a couple of tractors coming. Are they from Peary?"
"Hope so." Gale switched on the radio and chatted for a moment. Then he turned to me. "Mikael's on his way too. Ever flown by chopper before?"
"I haven't had that pleasure."
"Wait for it to stop before you go near it, and keep your head down when you get in. There's not a lot of room, but you'll fit. Nervous?"
"Frankly, yes."
"Don't be." Gale said. "Mikael's a good pilot. Flown in Afghanistan, y'know? Get him to tell you about that some time. Hell of a place. At least there's no-one shooting at him down here."

The tractor train from Peary arrived to pick up the men and the cargo. There were greetings, bustle, and the smell of brewing coffee. I donned my gear — though it still didn't feel like mine — and went out into the snow, where I was less in the way. Alice was right — it was amazing. Not just the snow, the dazzling white blanket, but the flatness of it all, the enormous stretch of nothing. No trees, no hills, no buildings. Here was one place, at least, that the human race hadn't wrecked yet. It was a world in which nothing or anything might happen. Beyond the noise of the tractors and the hum of the generator, there was only the sound of the wind. 
Then there was another noise, a soft chattering sound that built up until it filled the sky. Because there were no echoes, and the sky was so open, it took me a long time to locate the source — a helicopter, flying low over the ground towards us. It seemed to loom up suddenly from nowhere, and then dropped on to its skis with a rush that was suddenly the gentlest of landings. 
The door swung open and the pilot climbed out of the cockpit. My first thought was that it was a bear, a broad, long-armed shambling furry figure. Only when it straightened up, outside the reach of the swinging rotors, could I be quite certain that it was a man. He strode forwards and extended a hand. "Inspektor Thrale? You fly, eh?" Steam rose from his lips. Now he patted himself with a gloved paw. "I am Mikael Andreyev, your pilot."
"Pleased to meet you." I extended a hand, and had it half crushed. The name had caught me off-guard. Was this the same Andreyev who had called Whale Base after the murder? "Terrible thing about Samuels." I said, fishing.
"Da, da." Andreyev agreed cheerfully. "Murder! Is getting like Moscow down here."
"Did you know him?"
The big man shrugged. "I see him, you know? Not to speak."
I nodded. "Shall we load our gear?" 
"First have coffee." Andreyev said. "American coffee is good! Russian coffee is..." Lost for words, he pulled down his balaclava and spat expressively into the snow.

Inside the hut was a warm fug of soup, cigarette smoke and coffee fumes. Andreyev gave and received a riotous greeting, shaking hands all round. He settled himself in a space meant for two and drank four scalding mugs of coffee in succession, talking all the time, while men bustled in and out around him. Finally he led Billy and me out behind the hut, and the three of us stood in a line urinating in the snow. Patterns in the drifts showed where previous visitors had tried to be artistic. I was content to send it straight down into its own neat hole in the snow. It was an oddly intimate moment.
Then the Russian led us to the helicopter. He bundled Alice into a tiny seat at the back with a bag of mail in her lap. It was an operation which apparently required quite a lot of lifting and squeezing, but she didn't seem to mind; Andreyev's good humour was infectious. I was strapped in to the seat beside him, and the blades began their slow rotation, speeding up as the motor burst into life with a roar. We lurched forward and up. "Do you know Whale Base well?" I asked, bellowing above the engines.
"Da!" Higher up, away from the ground echo, things were a little quieter. "Last week I am there." 
So this was the same Andreyev! "What do you make of it?" I asked cautiously. The man was outside our jurisdiction, after all, and it is never a good idea to irritate the pilot. 
"Is bad man!" Andreyev said. "A man who wants to kill, now he finds the perfect way. Come to Antarctica, where there are no police."
"A psychopath? I don't believe that." Alice said. "Samuels wasn't tortured or hurt."
"Do you know for sure?" Andreyev asked unexpectedly. "There are ways!"
"I'm sure there are." she said.
There was silence for a while. We sped forward. "Look!" Andreyev gestured downwards. "Is the hut where he died."
He pointed to a blob on the snow. I suppose I had been expecting a log cabin; this was more like a pair of bright red plastic apples, connected along one side. Behind them there was a long drift of snow, and beside them a towering radio mast with its own tiny control room at the bottom. 
We slid over the hills that ringed Whale Base. Even close up, it was hard to distinguish the buildings from the rocks and dirty snow around them. A few large constructions, a domed observatory, and an L-shaped pair of long barracks-like buildings raised up on a scaffold were all there was to see. 
"They've all got trapdoors in the roof." Alice pointed out.
"Da . For the winter, when the snow is high around the walls."
Andreyev chatted into the radio as he brought the helicopter down. Figures began to emerge from the buildings. We fell with frightening speed, coming down with a thump on a flat patch of cleared snow about fifty metres from the buildings. The pilot extended his hand. "I see you again?"
"I hope so." I said. "Thanks for the lift."
"Welcome." Andreyev said. "You keep head down." He indicated the whirling rotors. "Scalped, da?"
I clambered out, crouching, and turned to help Alice. We moved away from the machine in a crouch until we were well clear of the whirling blades. Andreyev tossed out the mail bag and our luggage. He gunned the engine, and the helicopter began to lift, driving the snow into flurries around us. I returned his final wave, and turned to greet the reception party.
 There were half-a-dozen figures, all anonymous behind sunglasses in heavy furs and hoods. When the leader stepped forward and extended a hand, I suffered once again that odd shift of perceptions — male to female — that I had experienced over her photograph. "I"m Helena Craig." she said. "Welcome to Whale Base."

CHAPTER VIII
"Doctor Craig — " I began.
She checked me. "Helena, please. There's no room to stand on ceremony down here." She looked me over carefully, as though I were a patient in for surgery. "Wilma radioed me that you were coming. She's got a lot of confidence in your abilities."
"Let's hope it's justified." I said. 
"I'll show you your rooms and then you can shower and change." she said. "We'll have a general meeting in the Rec. Room in forty-five minutes, is that all right?"
"Suits me." I said. "There's a few people I'd like to talk to individually as well."
"Let me know who they are and I'll ask them to wait." she said. "We're anxious to get this thing cleared up as soon as possible." She managed a laugh. "I suppose you are too."

We shed our outer clothes in a heated vestibule, and were shown to our rooms. Mine was in the mens' barracks, Alice's in the womens'. The two buildings were connected by a covered walkway which ran past the infirmary and the Radio Room. "Rooms in this area are heated all the time." Helena said. "All the other buildings are just heated when they're in use." In indoor clothes she was a tall angular woman with a hard weatherbeaten face that lent itself to a grim sardonic expression. She looked at ease in a heavy cardigan and woollen trousers, and I wondered if she even owned a dress. 
The rooms themselves were tiny cubicles coming off a central corridor, barely large enough to turn around in. Mine had a full-length mirror and a wardrobe, a set of shelves and a folding desk with a chair. Something seemed to be missing. "Where's the bed?" I asked.
"There." Helena pointed to the top of the wardrobe. "Hot air rises, so it's warmer up there." She indicated a set of handgrips mounted in the wall. "This is how you get there. I hope you don't sleepwalk."
"I'll try not to." I told her. 
"We've found you an office, too." she said. "It won't quite be what you're accustomed to, though." 

The offices were housed in the Store, a long low building a stone's throw away from the barracks. Each was a small room with a low ceiling, just tall enough for me to stand up in. In mine there was a half-pint desk, and two chairs for Alice and myself. As Dorothy Parker remarked in a similar situation, if the office had been any smaller it would have constituted adultery. There was also a filing cabinet, with I lock that I could have picked with a knife and fork. Obviously security wasn't a major issue. The OIC had a slightly larger office nearby, and the Foreman, who supervised the tradespeople, was housed next door to that. Other offices were divided up between two or more scientists: there was a high demand, I discovered, for space. "It's not so bad now, because you can still go outside." Helena said. "In midwinter it's murder." She caught herself. "I mean..." 
"I know what you mean." I said. "Shall we go and rally the troops?"

The Recreation Room was a long narrow area with bench-style tables at one end and a cluster of armchairs around a television at the other. There were moveable partitions stacked along the wall, so the area could be divided up as necessary, and a big double-glazed picture window at one end, with a fantastic view of the harbour and the sea, still just visible beyond the thickening pack-ice. The other wall was taken up with labelled shelves where videos, games and books were neatly stacked. All the seats were taken by the time we got there, and people were perched on the tables and sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor. Debbie O'Sullivan was at the centre of things, lounging in an armchair surrounded by half-a-dozen admirers. In another armchair slightly apart from the group sat a dour-looking man with his arm in a sling, whom I recognized as Brian Machin. He nodded to us. "Sorry I couldn't be there to meet you. Helena won't let me go outside for a few days yet." He didn't invite us to call him 'Brian'.
"You should be in bed." Helena told him.
"I've got to know what's going on." He passed his hand over his forehead worriedly. "There's going to be hell to pay when we get back."
The buzz of conversation fell away gradually when Helena rose to her feet. "You know why we've called this meeting." she said firmly. "Paul Samuels died last week under suspicious circumstances, and Inspector Thrale and Constable Peters have been sent down from Hobart to investigate. Bearing in mind the tension that we've all been under, I expect your full co-operation with them in getting this business cleared up as quickly as possible." There were murmurs of assent. She glanced briefly at Machin. "Anything that you want to add, Brian?" 
He shook his head, and Helena turned to me. "How do you want to conduct this, Inspector?"
I studied the expeditioners. Some met my gaze aggressively. Others did their best to avoid it. Close to O'Sullivan, at the centre of the group, the men looked tidier and more responsible, like public servants who had self-consciously dressed down for the occasion. I remembered what Wilma had said about women being a civilizing influence. Those on the outskirts were a different proposition: big, surly-looking men, with wild hair and massive beards, lumberjack shirts and overalls. Some of them were eyeing Alice hungrily. If these were the men who'd passed  the psychological tests, I wouldn't have liked to meet the ones who failed.
"Let's do it this way." I settled myself on on the edge of a table, and Alice took a spot behind me. "I'll go through what I know of what happened, and you can fill me in as I go with anything you think is important." I opened a notebook, and made a show of leafing back through the pages. "I want to start with Samuels' arrival at ARC in Hobart. He was late, wasn't he?"
"That's right." The speaker was a bearded, bespectacled man who was sitting on the floor near O'Sullivan's feet. I subtracted the beard and identified the face. "Doctor Cooper, isn't it?"
"That's right." the man said. "Barry. We did the training in three shifts, of forty people each. Paul was in my shift, but he only turned up halfway through the first week."
"Did he give any reason as to why he was late?"
"He said it was a family crisis — I don't know what."
"Thanks." I said. That was the first I'd heard of a family crisis. "Does anybody here remember anything about Samuels during training? Any little thing, whether it seems important or not."
There was a brief embarrassed silence. They were thinking: I really should have known him better. You always do when someone dies, no matter how well you knew them. I'd been married to Annie for sixteen years when she died, and I hadn't even begun to know her.
The blonde girl slowly raised her hand. "I'm Debbie O'Sullivan." she said.
"I guessed that, lass." There was a faint laugh. "Well?"
"It's only that — well, I was talking to Paul one day just over coffee or something. He used to eat alone in the ARC cafeteria, you see, and once I just wanted to be by myself, so I went over and sat with him. I said something stupid like 'Isn't it going to be exciting, being in in Antarctica!' and he said 'Christ, I hope not!' Just like that."
"You felt that he wasn't keen on coming?" 
There were murmurs of agreement. Helena Craig nodded her head. "I think we all felt that."
"Didn't anybody bother to ask him why he was coming at all?"
"He didn't encourage conversation." Helena said. "And you don't ask those sorts of questions." She squeezed out a smile. "Some of us have pretty strange reasons for being here."
Me too. "All right." I said. "Let's move forward to the end of training. Samuels was away for a day and a half, is that right?"
"That's right." Cooper said. "He went to Launceston on a radio course."
"No, 'e bloody didn't!" This was a tall spare man in his forties, straddling a backward-facing chair. "'E never went on no radio course!"
"Now, that's interesting." I said. "You are....?"
"Eric Bernstein. Radio Operator, Grade Two. There were only ten of us on the course that week, and Samuels weren't one of 'em."
"Then where did he go?" I asked. "What did he do?"
Silence — broken at last by Helena Craig. "That's funny." she said. "The administration normally wouldn't let someone just go off like that. I'm surprised they didn't pick it up."
"I'm not." Machin said behind her. "Bloody bureaucrats wouldn't know what day of the week it was if it wasn't written on the desk calendar." There were nods from one or two of the men. Machin had his supporters, mostly among the men on the outskirts. From their reaction the men in the middle seemed to feel they were included in the OIC's contempt. There was a stretch of silence. You could have cut the air with a knife. "Let's get on to the voyage down." I said. "Anything odd about that?"
"It took — what? — eight days." Helena said. "Seas were fairly rough. Most people stayed in their cabins."
"I remember him — Samuels — taking pictures of whales." a man said unexpectedly. "We had a couple of big humpbacks that travelled with the ship for a day or so. There were a dozen or so of us up on deck one time snapping away at them, and Samuels came up to have a go too."
"What sort of camera did he have?" 
"An Olympus 230 SLR." This from a bearded man at the back. 
"Jan Eastbrook." Helena said. "Our photography expert."
"Is that a good camera?" I asked.
"Bloody oath! He had all the gear, too — zoom lenses, macros, the lot. He was carrying about a thousand dollars worth of stuff. That's not unusual down here, for a biologist. But he didn't know how to use it. I had to show him how to attach the zoom."
"Was it new?" I asked.
"No it wasn't. He said he'd bought it off his wife's brother."
"But his wife didn't have a brother." Cooper said suddenly. "She was an only child."
"That's what he said." Eastbrook repeated stubbornly. "Bought it off his wife's brother." He paused. "Maybe he nicked it."
"Where is it now?"
There was a sudden silence. "It was taken." Cooper said. "It was in the hut when he died, and it was taken."
I felt a surge of excitement, in the group as well as me. It's often the way. People talk between themselves in twos and threes for days without finding out anything new; but as soon as the group comes together things start happening. Sometimes it's laughably easy: two people put their facts together and suddenly you have the solution. "We're getting somewhere." I said. "Anything more about the voyage?" There was nothing. "Let's get to the arrival and unpacking. How much gear did he have?"
"Not a lot." One of the men indicated the size of a small crate with his hands, about one metre square. "Nothing fancy."
"Books?"
"Stuff about penguins, mostly." Cooper said. "And a Bible. That should all still be locked up in his room."
"I'm coming to that." I said. "Anything else? Clothes, entertainment? What were his other interests?" 
"He was a very nondescript man." Machin said drily. "Very — forgettable."
"Let's move forward to the penguin project, then. Doctor Cooper?"
"We've been planning the project for two years." Cooper said. "The primary researcher was to be Martin Kirk from Monash, but he fell ill and so it was offered to Paul." He paused. "How much do you want to know?"
"Just give me a once-over. I'll get the details later."
"Well, the goal of the project is to track the movements of Adelie penguins. Adelies are migratory birds — they move north to feeding grounds in winter and return to the same place in summer to breed and raise their young. There's a rookery — a breeding ground — near here where about forty thousand birds come annually. Just Adelies, nothing else."
"How big is an Adelie?"
Cooper raised his hand about half a metre from the floor. "So big."
"Dangerous?"
There was a general laugh. "Hardly." Cooper said. "You could walk up to one of them while it's not looking and pat it on the head. On land they're fairly helpless. In water, of course, it's different. They're faster than anything except a leopard seal."
"Fine" I said. "Now, what's the point of all this? You have a pretty good idea of where all your penguins are all the time — so what?"
Helena laughed and shook her head. "Never ask a boffin what their work is for, Inspector! It all contributes to the greater glory of Science."
"Look at it this way, Inspector." Machin added quietly. "If your murderer was one of our penguins, you'd have traced him by now."
"True." I conceded. "But I'd still like to know the rationale."
"It's like this." Cooper said. "Penguins eat fish. So do people. If we can find out where penguins go for dinner, that gives us an idea of where we might find fish to feed people. That's the selling point, anyway."
Alice picked him up on that. "You sound like you don't think it will work."
He shrugged. "Penguins travel deep and fast underwater. They can dive under the ice and catch squid and crustaceans as well as fish. None of that applies to fishing boats."
"So the project is a waste of time?" she asked.
"If Martin Kirk had been in on it we could have got some useful results. As it is..." He shrugged again. "I've got orders from ARC to keep it going; otherwise I'd retrieve the transmitters and pack it in till next year."
"These transmitters." I said. "Did you bring them down with you?"
"We brought a dozen. Sam and Bill made them up into backpacks for us."
"Sam and Bill..?" I glanced around. 
A squat, heavily bearded man raised his hand. "I'm Sam Bartlett, Senior Sparks. Bill Deutsch is a radio technician — he's out at one of the huts." He had a Somerset accent. 
"Tell me about tracking penguins."
"You use a minitransmitter, with its own battery pack." Bartlett said, indicating the size with his hand. "The whole thing is about as big of a roll of mints. The original idea was to cram the thing down their throats — that's what the Yanks do with Emperor penguins over yonder, right?" He glanced at Cooper, who nodded. "But Adelie penguins have smaller throats. So Dr. Machin came up with the idea of a backpack."
"It's not an original idea." Machin said. "The Yanks were using them in 1980."
"And the backpacks work?"
"Reasonably well, under the circumstances. We set up ten penguins with them, and eight are still going strong."
"So you can track them by the radio?"
"Not exactly." Cooper said. "Every twenty minutes the backpack broadcasts a shortwave signal which is picked up by satellite. The satellite triangulates it with other information and produces a position estimate. Once a week the channel opens automatically and downloads a stream of data from the satellite onto a personal computer. Hobart does the same, but on to a larger computer — a mainframe. From there it's backed up on to tape. The data takes up a lot of space, so we can only analyse one week at a time here. Back there they can do it in terms of months." 
"Understood." I said. "So the backpacks were made, tested and attached to some captured penguins. Any incidents there?"
"Nothing special." Cooper said. "We had to tie the dogs up, of course. We have a kennel of huskies for study and recreation. They're normally well-behaved, but chasing penguins is their idea of bliss. We tested the backpack on one penguin first, and when that seemed to work we caught nine more, three at a time, tied their feet and brought them back to Base on a sledge. Here we took blood samples and checked the birds for parasites and injury before mounting the packs. All routine stuff."
"Bear with me." I said. "This is my first time south of Hobart. How long does the monitoring go on for?"
"Till the penguins die or the batteries run out." Cooper said. "As I said, we've lost two already. With luck the rest might run for a year or so."
"Can you reuse the packs?"
If a penguin died on land and its pack was still transmitting we could probably track it down. But there aren't any predators on land who'll attack an adult penguin. Most of them get taken by seals at sea. If that happens the backpack's gone for good."
"Fine." I said. "And from that point on Samuels went out to Hut 'D' two nights a week to check the satellite data?"
"That's right." Cooper said. "The data was downloaded on Wednesday nights at eleven P.M. Paul went over at six on the Wednesday, got ready, recorded the data and copied it to tape. He spent Thursday and Friday analysing it and writing up his report." 
"How did he get there?"
"By skiddoo. He arranged to use a tractor in bad weather, but it wasn't necessary."
"What are the arrangements now that Samuels is dead?"
"We're getting the signals sent back here from Hobart by radio." Helena said. "I've put the hut off-limits."
"How did Samuels spend his time on the Base?" I asked. There was a momentary silence. "Reading, mostly." one man volunteered. 
Machin spoke in his abrupt, surprising undertone. "He played a good game of chess."
"Better than you, Brian?" Helena asked, surprised. "I thought you were the East Antarctic champion."
"He beat me once or twice." Machin said. "He was a very unconventional player. He said he learnt by playing computers."
"That sounds like Samuels." someone said. 
"Preferred machines to people." agreed another.
"Anything else, Dr. Machin?"
"Well, he didn't like the dirty videos." Machin said with some asperity. "I can understand that — I don't like them myself."
"Someone mentioned photography." I said. "What about that?"
"Yeah, he was keen on that." Eastbrook said. "In fact he used the darkroom just a day or two before he died."
There was a stir at that, a little uneasy shift just at the edge of my vision. I turned to take it in, but all seemed calm now. I glanced at Alice, but she seemed to have missed it. "What day was that?" 
"Let me think." Eastbrook said. "It can't have been Saturday because he was at the hut — it must have been Sunday."
"After he'd come back on Saturday night?"
"That's right."
"What time of day was that?"
Eastbrook did some figuring. "About three o'clock, I reckon."
"Who saw Samuels next?" I asked. "On the Sunday, that is?"
Cooper raised his hand. "I sat next to him at dinner."
"Did he say anything about photographs?" I asked. "Show you any?"
The biologist shook his head. "Not a word."
"He was in there!" Eastbrook began angrily. "He got the key from me!"
"Is there anything else he could use the darkroom for, other than developing photographs?" I asked. There was silence. "All right, we'll have a look at it." I nodded to Alice, who made a note. "Who saw Samuels after that?"
"I saw him again on the Monday morning." Cooper said. 
"Where was that?"
"In the cold lab. As well as the penguin project we have other ongoing studies. One of these is a cold-water fish tank. We take readings from that every day. Paul wrote the readings down for that Sunday morning."
"Anyone else see Samuels that day? Monday? What about Tuesday?"
"He was around." Helena said helplessly. "I'm sure we would have noticed if he hadn't been."
"Wednesday?"
There was a pause. A little man near the front raised his hand. "Tom Gratz, Inspector." he said politely. "I saw Dr. Samuels after lunch on Wednesday afternoon."
"What was he doing?"
"Going into Dr. Machin's office."
There was a long silence. I looked at Machin, and he looked back. Eventually he nodded. "That's right." he said. "Samuels came to see me that afternoon."
"Can I ask why?"
Machin nodded. "I'll tell you in private." 

That put a quick end to the meeting. Helena dismissed the group with a few words, leaving us alone with her and the OIC. "Come across to my office." he said. 
"Are you feeling OK, Brian?" Helena asked. She glanced at me. "He's only been up since this morning."
"Well enough." Machin said. "The sooner we get this damn thing cleared up the better." We followed him through the covered walkway to a small but comfortable room lined with filing cabinets. Machin sat behind the desk. For the first time I noticed his hands, both of them missing the top joints of the ring and little fingers. He motioned us to two armchairs which just about filled the remainder of the office. Then he frowned. "I don't quite know how to begin, Inspector. We don't have a Chaplain down here, so the OIC tends to become a bit of a father confessor. People bring odd problems to me and expect me to solve them. Usually I can't. I'm not the counselling type. I didn't want to talk about this in public, or send it through the fax. The fact is that Samuels came to see me because he wanted me to send him back."
"Back to Australia?"
"That's right." Machin said. "It's not unusual, though it usually happens in the middle of winter — someone just gets the feeling that they can't stand it any more. They kick up a fuss, start being uncooperative, and generally make life hell for themselves and everybody else. And of course it's impossible to send them back then anyway." He shook his head. "I'm not a psychologist. I don't know why it happens. All I know is that it usually blows over in a week or so and after that the person is as right as rain. I assumed that would happen with Samuels."
"Did he give any reasons?" Alice asked. 
Machin frowned, and rubbed his hand over his forehead again. He looked tired, and older than his years. "He said something about — or I got the feeling that — he was in love, or out of love, or words to that effect. Frankly, Constable, I didn't want to know. All I remember clearly is that there was another person involved."
"Man or woman?"
He shrugged. "I can't even tell you that."
We went over the same ground a few times, but there was nothing more to be had: Samuels, poor unmemorable Samuels, had left no clear impression but that of distress. "I was almost shouting at him by the end." Machin said. "I was trying to get it through to him that I couldn't send him home, that he would have to stay and stick it like everyone else. Eventually he just walked out." He looked at me. "Should I have sent him back? How was I to know?"

We left him in his office, doing paperwork. Helena Craig was waiting for us outside. "It's an hour to lunch." she said. "I suppose you'll want to see the body?"
"I don't want to." I said. "But I should. Have you done an autopsy?"
She shook her head. "I've been dreading it ever since Wilma said you were coming. It's not easy to think about cutting up — someone you knew."
I glanced at Alice. "Want to come?"
She shuddered. "Not particularly."
"Hunt up Mark Baron for me, then. Find out about this locked room business. Check the darkroom. And get timetables — when everyone eats, who does what when where, and so on. That'll keep you out of mischief." 
"Baron will be in the heavy workshop." Helena said. "Tom Gratz can take you there."
The little mechanic was sitting at a table in the Rec. Room, sipping a cup of coffee. He seemed only too glad to have something to do, so I left Alice to him and followed Helena out through the vestibule, where we donned warm clothes, and on to the rocky waste in the centre of the station. "It's free of ice here most of the year." she told me. "That and the harbour makes it ideal for a base." She indicated the sprawl of buildings. "It's not as chaotic as it looks. All this was carefully planned."
"It was Dr. Machin's expedition that chose the site, wasn't it?" 
She looked up at me, startled. "That's right. Brian was on the expedition in 1978. On the way back they had that terrible accident." She held up her mittened hands. "Did you see? He lost four joints to frostbite. It's a ghastly thing."
"At least he survived."
She looked at me hard. "Are you suggesting that Brian could have done anything to save the others?"
"I'm not suggesting anything. I've just got here." I pointed out. "I don't even know what a crevasse looks like."
"You will, Inspector. Believe me, you will." 
We were approaching a long metal-walled shed with a padlocked door. Helena drew a key from her pocket and gripped it in her mittened hands "I wouldn't have thought you'd need all the locks." I said.
"There's a lot of pilfering goes on." she said. "People use the equipment every day for a year, they start to feel as if they own it."
"It's the same with police stationery." 
I closed the door behind us while she turned on a light and a small electric heater. On a nearby bench there was a shrouded shape of the kind that I knew only too well. "Welcome to the morgue, Inspector," Helena said grimly. "There's your corpse."
 CHAPTER IX 
I slid off my mittens, leaving the undergloves on. Carefully I pulled the sheet back from the dead face. The cloth was cold to the touch, and the face below it was icy. No need for a refrigerator here.
Samuels lay with his eyes half-open, his skin looking like wax. The flesh had pulled away from the stubble on his chin and cheeks, giving him a dark five o'clock shadow. His nose and cheeks were dark and bruised-looking where his freezing blood had burst his capillaries. Up until now I had played with the thought that it might all be a bizarre joke, a plot, some kind of mass hysteria. But here he was, the corpus delecti , the reason for my presence. "He's very well preserved." I noted. "It's remarkable."
"Sub-zero conditions, Inspector. No bacteria, no decay."
"So a corpse could last here forever?"
"If it was sheltered from the scouring action of the wind and from predators like leopard seals and skuas. Remember the mammoths they found in Siberia, ready to thaw out and cook? Corpses stick around here. Every South Pole expedition has a look for the body of Oates, just in case it's still intact. They haven't found him yet. I hope they never do." she added. "Poor Oates!"
"They never found Stuart, either." I said.
"Stuart, Watson, Strezlecki — half-a-dozen others. Someday they'll have their South Pole Hilton down here with its international airport, and then the tourists can go on organized body hunts for fun!" 
I was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. "You think we should just leave them here?"
"Why not, Inspector? It's not Oates any more, is it? It's not Samuels, or Stuart. It's just a lump of meat." She grimaced. "I don't like pointless death, Inspector. It's an enemy I've been struggling against for thirty years, with a small degree of success. And now this — !"
I was reminded of Dave Keegan at ARC, whose record of survivals had been spoilt. It took an effort of will to draw down the sheet over Samuels' body. Inside the freezing shed it was hard not to worry about the naked man catching cold. "I think you should do an autopsy." I said. "It just might help to catch his murderer."
She nodded. "I'm tempted to say 'so what?', but of course that's what you're here for. I'll make a start tomorrow morning. Do you want to assist?"
"No thanks." I said. "I'll give you Peters if you can't find anyone else." I sniffed at the corpse's lips. "Still a touch of whisky there."
"I siphoned his stomach." she said dourly. "Whisky, and some traces of dinner — field rations. Chicken soup, meatballs, peas, chocolate and tea."
"When did he eat dinner?"
"How should I know?" She shrugged. "Say four hours before he died."
"Which was when?" 
She shook her head. "Inspector, you don't understand what conditions are like down here! Samuels was lying outside in sub-zero temperatures for several hours at least. There's just no way to tell exactly how long."
"But it could tally with the time that Quinn saw the skiddoo?"
"Easily."
"Say that Samuels worked until seven, then ate dinner. Four hours from seven o'clock makes eleven at night."
"Give or take at least two hours each way."
"All right, Doctor, I'm only looking for a bracket. He was found when — about nine-fifteen AM?"
"That's right."
I bent over the body, examining it carefully. There was a small puncture hole in the forearm. "I did that." Helena said. "Once he had warmed up enough to liquefy his blood I took a sample."
"You found alcohol?"
"Point one-nine percent. Enough to induce a stupor in anyone who wasn't an alcoholic. Samuels wasn't."
"And in the stomach?"
"Half a bottle undigested."
"Even when people drink alone they usually do it gradually." I said. "They don't pour down a bottle of whisky at a time."
She nodded. "I thought at first it might be deliberate suicide."
"Was he so depressed?"
"He could have been. Everyone gets depressed at midwinter. Maybe Paul was a little early. Brian said he had some sort of problem."
"But that doesn't explain the vehicle." I said.
"Damn the vehicle!" she said abruptly. "I just wish this was all over and done with!"
"It is — for him." I replaced the sheet. "Are these his clothes?" There was a bundle at the head of the table.
"All except his underpants. They're in that plastic bag. They were soiled."
"Meaning that he pissed himself?"
"That's not unusual with high doses of alcohol." she said.
"Nor with high doses of fear." I went through the clothes quickly, finding nothing that looked promising. There was a felt-tipped pen and a comb in Samuels' shirt pocket, and a keycase and a slim leather wallet in his trousers. I transferred them to a plastic bag and pocketed them. "Where can I wash?"
"Back at the infirmary. Come on."

Alice met us in the Rec. Room. "This is Mark Baron, Chief." She ushered forward a burly red-bearded man. He seemed unhappy at being transferred from Alice's company to mine, but his eyes lit up when I spoke. "Where'y from?" he asked shrewdly.
"Bradford." I said.
"Aye?" The man grinned delightedly. "I'm Durham meself. Coom out when I was fifteen."
"You must have learnt football fast."
"Wasn't anything in it." Baron said scornfully. "Joost grab t'ball and run." He motioned me to the chair next to his, Alice forgotten. "What d'ye reckon of our chances in the Cup?"
We talked football for a while until the smell of lunch beckoned the other expeditioners away. Baron leaned forward secretively. "D'you want me t'tell you what Ah think's going on 'ere?"
"Please do." I said.
"Ah think Samuels was a spy."
This was a new one on me. "A spy?"
"That's right. A Rooshian spy. And d'y'know why?" He paused, determined to squeeze all the sensation out of his story. 
"Why?" I asked.
"'Cos of what I found in his hut." Baron lowered his voice. "A Rooshian codebook."
"Wait a minute." I said. "How did you come to be at the hut?"
"A couple'o weeks ago Barry Cooper called in from the hut to say the toilet weren't working properly. I went out wi'Bill Deutsch — the radio feller — on the Wednesday to try and fix it. The float were jammed by a little plastic packet. In the packet was a book in Rooshian." 
"How do you know it was Russian?" I said. 
"Well, it looked like Rooshian." Baron growled. "What else would it be?"
"Tell me about the book."
"It were about this big." Baron made the shape of a cigarette packet with his hands. "No title, just a plain red plastic cover. There were lots of words inside — single words, with explanations, like it was in code."
"It could have been a dictionary, then."
Baron was crestfallen. "All right, a dictionary. You tell me what it were doing hidden in a toilet."
"Was there anything to show it was Samuels'?"
"Nah. Course not. He'd be daft to put his name on it, wouldn't he?"
"Or how long it had been there? Months or years?"
"Not years." Baron said. "Ah cleaned that tank out when we got 'ere. It were empty then." He gave me a baleful glance. "'Course it were Rooshian. An'for all Ah know you're in with 'em too. And the lass."
Time for a tactful withdrawal. "I'll look at the hut tomorrow." I said. "You haven't told this to anyone else?"
"Not a soul." Baron said. "Joost moved it the book o'the way a bit, that's all." He brought his fist down on the table, quietly but with emphasis. "You'll see it termorrer."

"I should have warned you about Baron." Alice told me after lunch, when they were alone in the office. "He's got a fixation about the Russians."
"So I gathered." I said. "Do you think there's anything in it?"
She frowned. "Assuming the book was Russian — and not Chinese, let's say, or Greek — then someone using Hut 'D' has or had an interest in the Soviets. But it could have been anyone. People go out to the hut all the time for one reason or another. One of the main expedition routes goes right past it. Anybody could have used it for a hiding place." 
"That occurred to me." I said. "It could even have been Baron himself."
"Then why would he tip us off?"
"It's a good bet that we're going to go out there and have a look around, and that we'll probably find the book. If it's on record that Baron fixed the toilet..." 
"Then he's a prime suspect."
"Unless he diverts suspicion by telling us about it beforehand. Doesn't it seem odd that he didn't bring the book back and report it?"
She smiled. "He probably suspects Machin too."
"Either that, or he's covering for himself."
"He doesn't seem the type." she said. "A Queensland footballer..."
"State footballers travel overseas." I reminded her. "To Central Europe, amongst other places."
She looked at me hard. "Are you serious about Baron, Chief?" she said. "Or are you just having me on?"
"Just speculating." 
"But if this case involves espionage..."
"Then we're out of our depth." I said firmly. "We cry off and send for the big boys."
"Would you do that?" 
"Like a shot." I said. "I'm not James bloody Bond."

Alice went off to chase up some timetables, and I examined the contents of Samuels' pockets. Comb, keycase — only three keys — handkerchief and wallet. Inside the wallet there was a driving license, credit card, bank account card — God alone knew why he wanted them down here — Perth University library photocopying card, a few notes and coins. Something about the arrangement of the items didn't seem quite right. The bank account card and the credit card had been put back upside down, for instance. But it was precious little to go on.
I looked at the photocopy card again. It was a rectangle of stiff paper with 'Perth University Student Photocopy Card' on the back, and a magnetic stripe on the front. Underneath the magnetic stripe were the words: 'WARNING: This card may be demagnetized by contact with a credit card'. 
I had laid the contents of the wallet out in the order I found them. Now I put them back together. The photocopy card was sandwiched between the credit card and the bank account card, both with magnetic stripes of their own. I replaced them in the wallet and took it with me. A passing scientist took the trouble to lead me to the electronics lab.

"That's a hell of a question." Bartlett said. "Can I find out if a magnetic strip still has some oomph in it? Why d'ye want to know?"
I showed him the photocopy card. "It was in Samuels' wallet between two credit cards. He's unlikely to have taken either of them out since he got here, so if he put the card there himself then it's had eight weeks to be demagnetized. But it's possible that somebody else went through his wallet and disarranged things after Samuels' death. Hence the question about oomph."
Bartlett stared at the card, as if he was trying to read the magnetism directly off the strip. "It's been out in the shed for four days, remember."
"But it's cold out there." I said. "Wouldn't that slow the process down?"
"It might at that." Bartlett said musingly. He pondered for a moment. "Now, how the hell...of course!" He slapped his thigh. "It's only magnetic tape, innit?"
"Is it?"
"Too right it is! So all we have to do is splice it on to some real tape, play it through a recorder and listen to it! Then we demagnetize it thoroughly, and compare the signal."
"Marvellous." I said. "It's such a pleasure to do business with an expert."
"You'll turn me 'ead." Bartlett said. "I suppose you want it done now."
"If not sooner." 
"Give me ten minutes." 
While the curly-headed little man scuttled around collecting equipment I took in the decor of the electronics workshop. It included an abundance of nude females, completely lining the walls and ceiling. "What do the ladies make of this?" I asked him.
Bartlett chuckled. "I tell them it's got historical value. Some of them girls go back to the days before they invented pubic hair." He emerged from a cupboard with an impressive tape recorder. "Ready?"
"Fire away."
We played the tape through at half-speed. The machine was silent until the cardboard-backed strip passed through the heads; then there was a high-pitched electronic squeal.
"Something on there, any road." Bartlett said. "We'll play that on to a cassette." Another machine was hooked up and the process repeated. "Now for me magic wand." He produced a magnet, and waved it solemnly across the strip. This time there was only a faint hiss when it was played back. "There you are." He handed the strip back triumphantly.
"Thanks." I said. "I'm impressed."
He looked at me reflectively. "So am I." He said. "I wouldn't've thought o'that in a million years, and I'm an electrician. That's 'ow you do it, is it? One little bit at a time."
"Every bit counts." I said. "Can I keep that cassette? Ta very much." 

I stowed it away with the growing pile of 'evidence' in my room, uncomfortably aware how vulnerable it was to intruders. The clock in the radio room told me that it was an hour till dinner. I hunted up Alice, who was talking to Collins in the biology lab, and together we sought out Helena Craig. "I want to open Samuels' room." I told her.
She frowned. "Brian asked to be present for that. He's sleeping at the moment — I've given him a mild sedative."
"Why's that?" I asked. "He seemed all right this morning."
"He worries a lot." Helena said maternally. "It's a very hard job, and not a popular one. I'm trying to get him to take a decent rest." She sighed. "I suppose we can do it without him. I'll just get Mark Baron."

Baron was outside working on exterior plumbing. He arrived with ice in his beard and Bob Wilkins in tow. "I want everyone to stay in the corridor." I cautioned them. "Nothing's to be disturbed." I led the way to the locked room and stood outside it for a moment, studying the lock. 
Baron extended his hand. "Go on, then. Here's the key."
"Thanks." I reached out and pocketed it. "I won't need it, though. The lock's been picked." I turned the handle carefully and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.
 Machin was in the corridor with the others when I emerged, ten minutes or so later. He had a coat thrown over his pyjamas. "Helena told me you were searching." he said eagerly. "Did you find anything?"
"Take a look." I swung the door open. The room was neat and tidy, the bed made, books stacked in their shelves, clothes hung in the wardrobe. 
Helena Craig appeared from the nearby Radio Room. "You're sure somebody picked the lock?" she asked. "I was just asking myself, who would know how?"
"Any of the mechanics." Machin said. "They'd have the skills — and the tools." He stepped into the room, looking around. There was a photo on one wall, a woman holding up a baby. "Is that his wife?" he asked. 
"That's right." I said. 
"Did you find anything?"
"Nothing important."
"You're sure you searched thoroughly?"
"I'll get Alice to take it apart tomorrow." I said. "Meanwhile..." I rummaged in my pockets and brought out a couple of tattered paperbacks. "These were in one of Samuels' drawers. I suppose they're from the collection here."
"Porno books!" Machin said in disgust. 
"It's perfectly natural, Brian..." Helena Craig began.
"Perfectly disgusting!" was Machin's comment.
I handed her the books. "Could you put them back in the collection, Dr. Craig? I don't see any point in including them in the official report."
"Yes, of course." She slid the books into her bag. "Now what?"
"First I plan to have dinner." I said. "Then I intend to do some sleeping. It's been a long day."
CHAPTER X 
Alice came to my room that evening for instructions. "How did you go in Samuels' donga, Chief?"
"Samuels' what ?" 
"His donga. That's Whale-speak for 'room'. Jan Eastbrook's been teaching me the language. I heard that someone beat you to it."
"Not exactly." I said. "Someone picked the lock, but they didn't search the room."
"Why not?"
"Perhaps they didn't have enough time. My guess is that it was done at the same time that the Mail Room was searched — when Wilkins was off getting his aspirin. The two rooms are virtually opposite each other. The Mail Room search might even have been a diversion for the search of Samuels' room. But picking locks is a slow business."
"Fair enough." Alice agreed. "You'd look pretty conspicuous crouching in the corridor fumbling with a lock in the middle of the night."
"Precisely, my dear Watson." I told her. "That was probably why it was done from the inside."
Alice looked at me hard. "From the inside ?"
"In the dark, to judge by the scratches. A neat job, too — it only left a few marks."
"But why would anyone bother to pick the lock if he could get into the room already?"
"I can think of one reason." 
"But you're not going to tell me, are you?" She considered for a moment. "I get it! He had a key, but he wanted to make it look as though he didn't."
"Right, lass." 
"Let me get this straight." she said. "Our mate hangs around waiting for his chance until Wilkins trots off to the infirmary, lets himself in to Samuels' room with a key, kneels down inside and picks the lock, then lets himself out and goes through the mail without even searching the room. Is that the current state of play?"
"More or less." I told her. 
"It doesn't make sense. Are we looking for a loony here, or something?"
"That's Andreyev's theory." I reminded her. "A very clever loony. What did you get from Wilkins?"
"I looked at the letters and took some photos. Someone had gone through the lot very quickly. I put them back in order and did the same thing myself while he timed me — eight minutes. Then we retraced his steps — through the infirmary to the dispensary, opening up the medicine chest...there are two, by the way, one with minor stuff and one with prescription drugs which is kept locked. Dr. Craig has the key. Then back to the mess, where Wilkins got a cup of tea and chatted to the blokes playing cards for an estimated ten minutes before heading back. Whoever searched the mail was cutting it very fine."
"Maybe they thought they'd have a chance to get back to Samuels' room later. What about Wilkins' toilet breaks?"
"The loo's just across the way from the Radio Room. He says he never took more than two or three minutes, and if anyone had come past by night he would have heard them, because that plastic floor carries echoes and shifts under someone's weight — it does, Chief, I checked. Either the searcher was hanging around waiting for a chance to look, or he was just lucky enough to come by at that time."
"Or Wilkins is lying." I pointed out. 
"You think he might have searched the mail himself? Called in at the mess later to produce an alibi?" Alice shook her head. "Is murder always this complicated, Chief?"
"Just looking at the possibilities." I said. "Stretching your mind a little. Never take anything for granted in this game. Now, what's next?"
"I run along and find out who had a key that would open Samuels' room."
"Good girl! And there's something else I want you to do..."

It was sunny when I woke the next morning, though only a pallid shred of light found its way through the thick plastic skylight over my bed. I climbed down cautiously from my eyrie, dressed and shaved, and entered the mess. The looks I got from the bearded men already there were a mixture of resentment and respect. I was an outsider from the mainland, meddling with their Base. But I was getting results; they could appreciate that.
I ate cereal, followed by fruit that tasted of the zinc lining on the can — they called it 'compote', which with my O-level French I always translate as 'compost', and drank three cups of bitter tea, mashed in the pot long enough in the pot to leave fur on the tongue. It reminded me of Maisie's Chip Cafe in Leeds. Cold climates go with stewed tea, somehow. Towards the end of the meal Machin came in and walked over to join me. He was dressed for work, in the jeans and heavy pullover that most of the men here wore inside, a kind of unofficial uniform. There were dark shadows under his eyes and he carried his arm stiffly, but he was clearly back in command. 
He drank coffee from a mug that had his name taped on the side, clutching it in a way that showed his abbreviated third and fourth fingers. Noticing my glance he raised his other hand, similarly damaged. "Frostbite, Inspector."
"So I see." I said. "Was that from the Stuart Expedition?"
A cloud crossed the man's lean face. "That's right. I imagine you looked that up before you came?"
"Just the newspapers." I said. "I suppose if it wasn't for you Whale Base wouldn't be here at all."
"That's most unlikely." Machin said with a trace of bitterness. "This place had already been throughly mapped from the air. With the harbour and the sheltered rock it was ideal. Our job was to find a way across to here from Seal Base and to check on the local wildlife, make sure that we weren't going to do any serious damage to the environment by setting up a Base here. It was on the way back that we had the disagreement with a crevasse."
"Pardon my ignorance, Doctor," I said. "but how big is a crevasse? I've seen the tractors; I just can't imagine how you could lose a vehicle that size." I was trying to get him talking, and for once I succeeded.
"Look at it this way." he said. He turned over a clean plate, so that the base became a raised platform. "Assume that this is Antarctica. The centre is a dome of ice, higher than the edges. Just like everywhere else, it snows here — when it snows at all — mainly on high ground. The snow gets compacted by its own weight until it becomes a kind of conglomerate of ice and air. It's quite strong under compression — that's why you can build igloos — but under tension it just falls apart. And this great mass of compacted snow is continually flowing outwards and downwards, from the centre of the dome towards the shore. You can think of it as a huge mountain, if you like, with rivers running off all sides. But the rivers aren't water — they're ice."
"Understood." 
"The snow goes downhill through channels, just like rivers do. When you have a channel full of compacted snow sliding towards the coast, you've got a glacier. Since it's being continually pushed from the other end, the tip gets shoved out beyond the coast, where the sea water undermines it and it breaks away into icebergs. Clear so far?"
"Admirably."
"There are thousands of glaciers, and we're discovering new ones all the time. Because they run from the central dome to the coast, you can't go anywhere without crossing them. Most of the time you don't know it, because they move so slowly. But when a glacier takes a dip you get a crevasse." He demonstrated on the plate. "Imagine a big block of snow sliding downhill in a smooth channel. Suddenly the floor of the channel drops away more sharply. The front part of the block falls forward, while the back part stays where it is. So you get a lateral crack — a crevasse. Soon the snow blows over the top, forming a bridge, and you can't see it any more — it looks like a flat snowfield. The real problem is that the cracks then move along with the glacier, so you can't be sure where you're going to find them from one year to the next."
"Very clear." I said. "Thank you, Doctor. Your expedition vehicle fell down the crevasse backwards, I believe. Does that mean it was on a bridge?"
"Just about halfway across." Machin said. "It was in blizzard conditions, and we wanted to make shelter in the lee of a cliff we knew of nearby. There was no indication that we were in an unsafe area. Suddenly the ground fell away beneath us, and we began dropping backwards."
"What happened then?"
"I was stunned or in shock — I don't remember. When I came to it was twilight. I could see that Pedersen and Green were dead, and that Stuart was injured. The windows were broken, and snow was beginning to drift into the tractor. We were about eight metres below the surface. I thought we were going to be buried alive."
"How did you get out?"
Machin forced a smile. "I chucked up a grappling hook — just like in the old war films — and hoped to God that it would hold. The first couple of times it came whizzing back down again and nearly killed me. Finally it stuck. I climbed up and made a decent belay with an ice-axe, then I went back down to get Stuart, some camping stuff, and some food. By the time we got a tent fixed up on the surface it was too dark to do any more." He looked at me hard, with suffering in his eyes. "Do you really want to hear this?"
"Please." I said. "Just to get some idea."
"Anyway, the damned blizzard went on for three days. We were cold and hungry, and I couldn't even stick my nose outside the tent. Stuart just lay there moaning. I hadn't thought to bring the medical kit, and there was nothing I could do for him. Finally the blizzard stopped and I dug us out." Machin shook his head wryly. "The bloody crevasse was full, full to the brim with drift snow. It would have taken me a week just to get back down to the dozer."
"And then?"
Machin gazed into his coffee mug. "All the books tell you to stay put." he said. "Maybe that's what we should have done. But I'd had a knock on the head, and perhaps I wasn't too rational. I was only twenty-two, for God's sake! But it seemed to me that even if we were spotted by an aircraft, they'd still send a vehicle out to pick us up. We had no radio to warn them with, and I could just see it disappearing down another crevasse. I didn't think of helicopters, back then — we didn't have them, just the Russians. I didn't want to have that on my conscience, so I decided to try and head for the coast, where I knew it was safe for them to come and get us. Frankly, Inspector, I didn't think it mattered. I got it into my head that I was finished, and I had an idea that I'd like to see the coast and the sea again before I died. 
"Somehow I got Stuart on to his feet, and we set off for the coast. That evening we camped about ten kilometres west of here. I thought they might be looking for us around the harbour, which was our last radio fix, so I came out this way and left Stuart in the tent. I tried to get out on the pack ice to see if there were any ships, and like a fool I went through it, and got soaked. I spent that night in a bivvy bag buried in a pile of snow, cold and wet and wanting to die and get it over with. That was when I lost these." He lifted his mutilated fingers. "The next day I had just enough strength to crawl out of the bag and collapse on the snow. I was unconscious when Mikael found me and took me back to the Russian base. They told me afterwards that I had delayed concussion and a broken rib. Excuse me." 
He slid from his seat, and refilled his coffee cup at the urn. "As for the rest," he said, returning, "You know as much as I do. There was another blizzard, and after that they found the tent — empty. Later they excavated the crevasse and pulled Green and Pedersen out, poor bastards. They're buried on a hill near here, under cairns. I can show you if you like." 
I nodded. "If I have time."
There was a pause. I couldn't help thinking of Machin, out there in the snow, welcoming death. Was that when he'd drawn into himself, built up his hard, unfeeling shell? "Getting back to the present," I said at last, "I'd like to know about the attack that was made in the workshop."
"Go ahead." 
"Can we go there?" I asked. "It would help me to know what to ask."
"Sure." Machin said. He signalled to another man, one of those whom we had met yesterday. "Wayne, I'll be out in the workshop for a while if anyone wants me. All right?"
"Fine." The man waved a hand. 
He led me out through the vestibule, glancing at the sky. "Won't need coats if we run." I jogged behind him across the rocky ground, struggling to keep up, while the cold cut at my hands and cheeks. There were wide patches of treacherous ice on the rocky ground, and the buildings around us gave off gusts of steam from their air vents. To me it was a nightmare vision; but to someone like Machin it was home. 
The garage, like the makeshift mortuary, was a large windowless corrugated iron shed. Machin swung open the door and flipped on the lights and heating. "Don't touch any metal with your bare hands." he warned. 
There was a garage here, where two large vehicles and half-a-dozen skiddoos were parked, and coming off it the smaller workshop, connected to the garage by an insulated door. "He came from in there." Machin said. "I was looking at the skiddoo that had been taken out, trying to see if it told us anything. He came up from behind, belted me with the crank handle, then dropped it and ran. Nobody else was around at the time. Look, there's the handle." He had lifted the object from the floor before I could stop him. "What's the matter?" he asked. 
"Fingerprints." I said succinctly.
His face creased with irritation. "Oh, damn! Sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"That's all right. Our man probably wore gloves anyway." I looked at the crank handle, an S-shaped steel rod with an extra bar, and swung it experimentally through the air. It wasn't a weapon I would have chosen. Machin seemed to read my thoughts. "He must have heard me coming, and grabbed the first thing he could find."
I wandered into the workshop. The walls were lined with tools: spanners, panel-beating mallets, screwdrivers and pliers. In the centre of the concrete floor a motor was being taken apart. A dark, weasel-like man knelt beside it, working away with a spanner. He stood up when we entered. "Hello." It was the man who had introduced himself earlier, Tom Gratz. He had a trace of a European accent, one I could not place. 
"Tom's one of our mechanics." Machin said. "He's the one who noticed the mileage was up on the skiddoo."
"Sharp work." I said.
"Was nothing." the man said, though evidently pleased. "We keep record of comings and goings. Here is suddenly ten kilometres more! So I report it."
"Could I see the vehicle?"
"Sure." Gratz led us back into the garage, to a corner away from the door. "There it is — E4." The skiddoo was a short, blunt-nosed motorized sled about two metres long. It had a central runner at the front for steering and caterpillar tracks behind. The control panel carried a distance meter, a speedometer, and a prominent temperature gauge. There was a tall plastic windshield to protect the rider, and beneath the seat was something that looked like a well-insulated motorbike engine. "Top speed forty." Gratz said. "Forty-five downhill on flat snow." 
"It looks very exposed."
"Oh, yes." Gratz wrapped his arms around himself. "Brr..!"
There were two small lights on the front. I found the appropriate switch and turned them on. "Not very bright."
Machin shrugged. "It's not meant for use in the dark."
"So whoever took it out at twilight would have to know their way around?"
"Presumably, yes." Machin said. "But it's not hard to find your way to Hut D. There's a line of snowpoles leading out there, marked with foil."
"I'd like to take a trip out there this afternoon." I said. "Is that possible?"
"Yes, of course." Machin said. "I have to work, but perhaps Tom..."
"I take you." Gratz said. "You want a vehicle?" He indicated the two big bulldozers, standing side by side.
I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. "As a matter of fact I wanted to do it on this skiddoo."

Back in the barracks Alice brought me some mail. "These came on the telex last night, Chief."
Taffy Davies in Melbourne had come through with one word, but it was the right word — Hilton . If Samuels had put up at the Melbourne Hilton then probably somebody else was paying the bill. I wondered who it might be. The other report, from Perth, was longer, and it took me a moment or two with my home-made code book to decipher it. I sat back with a frown. "So! Another mystery! Samuels vanished for three months in 1982, while he was at University. He told his friends that he'd been fruit-picking in Victoria. Much later he told his wife he'd never been out of WA."
Alice shrugged. "Perhaps he had an affair over there. Didn't want his wife to know."
"Bit of an elaborate lie, isn't it?"
"He may have felt guilty."
"Guilty about something that happened two years before, when he was still unattached?"
"You keep trying to make Samuels into a mystery man." Alice said. "I just don't see him as a villain."
"Who said anything about a villain?" I asked. "He's a victim. We're looking for the villain what done him in."
"Maybe Andreyev was right. Perhaps there is a psychopath down here." Alice shuddered. "This place is enough to drive anyone crazy. Not enough room to swing a cat."
"We'll have an excursion this afternoon." I told her. "Out to Hut D. How's the autopsy going?"
"Gory." she said. "I had to go out and be sick."
"You'll get used to it." I told her. "I've seen road accidents that were worse."
"But he looks so dead ." Alice said. "By the way, Dr. Craig said she wanted to see you."
"No time like the present." I said. "Coming?"

We found her in the makeshift mortuary, bending over the distorted shape on the slab. Cooper was helping her now, his face the colour of old putty. She straightened up as we entered. "We'll take a break." she said. "Make sure you wash up, Barry."
"You don't have to tell me." Cooper said. With a nod of greeting to Alice he hurried off. Helena rinsed her hands in a basin, and dried them on a pinkish towel. "Welcome to the charnel-house, Inspector."
"I've said I'm sorry, Doctor." I pointed out. "If there was an alternative..."
"No, it's all right." She laughed harshly. "I've even got another chapter for my book. Look!" I followed her pointing finger. "Subcutaneous fat deposits built up over two months. It happens in animals, but that's the first time it's been found in humans."
Alice muttered something that sounded like 'Congratulations'. I drew the doctor aside. "Constable Peters said you wanted to speak to me."
"That's right." she said. "When you do an autopsy, you know, you have to drain out the blood first."
"I know."
"Well, just as I was making the incision I remembered something Samuels had asked me. We were in the mess, sharing a table with some of the others. He mentioned something about penguins, and the talk got around to the Adelie rookery nearby, and then to Emperors, and how they survive the cold in winter. I think there was some discussion about body temperatures. Anyway, at some point Samuels asked me — as far as I can remember — whether a dead Emperor penguin would bleed on land when the temperature was well below zero."
"What did you say?"
"I think I said that it would depend on how long it was dead, and whether it had been hurt beforehand, and the position it was in, and body size and blood pressure. Warm blood will run like any other liquid, of course, but it freezes at about ten below — hence frostbite. If you kill a seal or penguin you're supposed to hang it upside down to drain while it's still warm — preferably into a bowl, so the dogs can drink the blood." Alice, who had drawn closer, retreated again. "Someone told a grisly story about killing a seal and having blood spurting all over the place. I said that was because the heart was still pumping, even though the neck was broken."
"And that was all Samuels said?"
"That's if it was Samuels. It was one of those conversations, you know, that drift from person to person. Do you think it means anything?"
"I have no idea." I said truthfully. People say many strange things in conversation, but the fact that Helena had remembered this suggested that it was more than just a casual remark. "How big is an Emperor penguin?"
She lifted her hand to her chest. "About so high. And they weight up to 45 kilos fully fed — that is, when they're about to start laying."
"About as much as you, Constable." I pointed out.
"Don't flatter me." said Alice. "You haven't seen me fully fed."
CHAPTER XI 
We travelled out to Hut 'D' on a sledge, drawn on a steel cable behind the skiddoo Tom Gratz was driving. I had asked Barry Cooper to come along, and he had brought another skiddoo. The sky was a perfect blue, but the wind on my face was bitterly cold. No wonder the locals grew beards. I was thinking of growing one myself, and said as much to Alice.
"Wish I could." she said.
"You have to ask permission from your senior officer for that." I reminded her. "Paragraph twenty-seven, sub-section five."
"Permission to grow a beard, sir?"
"Granted." I said. "It'll give you something to do for the next six months."
"Oh, Lord! I thought we were making progress!"
"We are — I think." I said. "Did you find out about the key to Samuels' room?"
"Well, officially there are two keys that it might have been. One is Samuels'. It wasn't on his body, so if it isn't in the hut then we can assume the murderer took it, hey?"
"Sounds reasonable." I admitted. "The other?"
"The other is the master key, which sits in the top drawer of Machin's desk. The drawer's not locked, and the office is sometimes left open, so anyone could have come along and 'borrowed' it — but it's there now."
"What about unofficial keys?"
"Open slather." Alice said gloomily. "There's a lathe in one of the workshops which can be used to cut them. I worked out how to do it in five minutes, and anyone else could have done the same. Key blanks are kept nearby, so anyone who had Samuels' key, or the master key, or even an impression thereof, could have made themselves a copy in a jiffy. Machin and Dr. Craig didn't think the master key had gone walkies, but they weren't prepared to swear to it. So that leaves us back where we started."
"Not quite." I said. "Given that there are lots of keys available, given that our lad knows there are lots of keys available, why should he bother picking the lock? What good does it do him?"
There was a long silence. "Is that a rhetorical question, Chief?" Alice asked at last. "Because for the life of me I can't see what you're getting at."
"I'll give you a clue." I said. "Why is an Antarctic base like a hospital?"
She thought a moment. "I dunno."
"I had a mate once who worked as a cleaner in a hospital. He said it was pathetic, the places people used to try and hide things. Cigarettes, dirty mags, chocolate bars for diabetics, bottles of grog, even quite innocent things, things that they didn't want other people to find and paw over. They'd even hide the newspaper, to stop Nurse taking it away while they were asleep. It's the same here. You can't hide anything indoors because you've got a tiny room with no secret panels, and everywhere outside your room is public territory, with people coming and going all the time. And you can't hide anything outdoors because every pile of snow looks the same, and if you mark yours in some distinguishing way then the chances are that someone else will notice it too. If you wanted to hide something in Canberra, Alice, you could just drive up to the Brindabellas, pick a landmark tree and dig a hole under it. You can't do that here — you've got to be cunning."
Alice digested this slowly. "Are you saying Samuels wasn't cunning enough?"
"Maybe he was too cunning." I said. "Maybe that's why he was killed. But it wasn't Samuels I was thinking of."

I sat back, feeling the wind scouring my cheeks, imagining the murderer making this trip. He would be sitting astride the skiddoo in the twilight, the way Gratz was sitting now, with a bottle or two of whisky in the box behind him. And a gun. He must have had a gun. Samuels had done what he was told, but there wasn't a mark on him. How had the killer got the gun down here? What had he done with it? Buried it somewhere, perhaps, in the dim light from the skiddoo; buried it under ten centimetres of snow, never to be found again. I might be passing over it now, without knowing it. 
A snowpole drew closer and swept by. These were wooden cylinders as thick as a broom handle and three or four times as long. Most of the length was buried in the snow, with only a couple of metres protruding. The top was wrapped in silver foil, with an outer layer of transparent plastic to keep the weather out. The poles marked out a safe route for the most popular journeys to nearby sites. At night, and during the three-month darkness of winter, their reflection helped to guide vehicles on their way. Samuels' murderer had simply followed the snowpoles. 

Gratz raised his right arm, the signal for slowing down. I gripped the brake, ready to dig it in to the snow. It wasn't necessary. The little man guided his skiddoo around slightly to the left and we came to a gliding halt nearby. He pointed to the east. "Over there about ten kilometre — is where Stuart expedition falls through crevasse, ya?"
To the eye the surface looked no different to the smooth white plain we were on. I lifted my snow goggles for a moment, but saw nothing. "Can we go there?"
"Too dangerous." Gratz said. "Last year someone fall down a hole and break his arm. Dr. Machin, he put it off limits." He swung around, pointing in the other direction. "There is the hut."
There were the familiar red dots, with the radio relay pylon towering beside them. The pylon had its own generator; its humming was the only sound we could hear. The little clump of buildings stood out so clearly that I wondered how I could have failed to see it — but Antarctica was like that, so featureless that if you looked away from something it was terribly hard to find it again. We swung around in that direction and set off. From the tautness of the towrope and the whine in the skiddoo's engine I guessed we were going upwards, but the unchanging snowfields around us made it all look flat. I imagined cross-country skiing through all this, endless weary miles of blind navigation. What on earth made explorers do it?

Cooper pulled up close, keeping pace as we moved off. His trailing sledge was empty, ready to bring back Samuels' things after I'd looked at them. "I'm glad to get back out in the open." he said. "After this morning..." He kept pace as the sledge moved forwards. "Funny, the autopsy made me feel even more as if I'd like to get the bastard that did it. If it wasn't for him, Paul wouldn't be laid out like that."
"You must have done the same to hundreds of animals." I said. "First you anaesthetise them, then you kill them, then you cut them up. What's the difference?"
Cooper flushed hotly. "That's different." he said. "That's science."
"Perhaps that's what the killer thought." I suggested "A nice scientific murder."
"Are you implying that it could be one of us?"
"If by 'us' you mean the boffins, then yes I am. It could be anybody."
"I don't believe it." Cooper said. "None of us are violent people."
"This wasn't violent." I pointed out. "This was as unviolent as you could get. The murderer didn't even have to touch his victim. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he kept his hands clean from start to finish. Doesn't that sound like a scientist?" I asked. Cooper shook his head and let his skiddoo drop behind. 

A few minutes later we were at the door of the hut. The vehicles lined up side-on to the prevailing wind, and I led the way into the hut. "The door's not locked." 
"You never lock a hut door." Cooper told me. "If someone's lost or sick they may need to get in." He shook his head ruefully. "We don't usually have a crime problem here, Inspector."
"Well, you do now." I said. I inspected the vestibule carefully, for appearance's sake, before shedding my outer gear. "No clues here. Can you wait here just a few minutes? Thank you."
I stepped into the adjacent hut. There was an unmade bed in one corner, one of a pair of bunks. Beside it on the floor there was a cassette recorder, one of the newer kind with a built-in condenser microphone. A boot locker held a jumble of clothes and some indoor shoes. It had a fat paperback on top: The Brothers Karamazov , stamped on the flyleaf with the Whale Base logo. I leafed through it and found nothing. A metal-topped cupboard in the centre of the room held some packaged food and a propane stove. On the other side of the room from the bed there was a small desk with a little battery-powered portable computer on top. An open box next to it held ten magnetic disks. 
Wires from the computer ran through the narrow connecting door into the adjacent hut. Here they plugged into a radio set, an elaborate device with an abundance of dials, gauges and switches. There was a swivel chair facing the panel and another pair of bunk beds against the wall. A couple of books lying around in here turned out to be well-thumbed radio manuals. 
There was also a curtained cubicle in one corner. I slid back the curtain and found a tiny toilet and washbasin. The cistern was empty: if there had ever been anything there it was gone now. I replaced the curtain and ducked back through the passageway to the other hut. "Gentlemen, you can come in now. If you see something out of place let me know. But please don't touch anything yet."
Cooper and Gratz entered the hut cautiously, shepherded in by Alice. "We can light the stove?" asked Gratz. 
"By all means." I blew on my freezing fingers. "It's perishing in here."
Gratz lit the stove, and the two men moved around the little room as if playing hide-and-seek, each with half an eye on the other. It was Gratz who noticed something first. "There is cassette player, ya?" he said. "But no cassettes."
Alice rummaged quickly through the cupboards. "No cassettes here, sir."
"Dr. Cooper?"
"There should be half-a-dozen., They were usually kept with the cassette player. I've been trying to think whether they were here when we found him." Cooper closed his eyes for a moment, visualizing the scene. "They weren't, I think." he said finally. "At least, nowhere in sight."
"So the murderer took them." I said. And buried them, along with the gun? Or had he listened to them first? "I suppose everyone on the Base has access to a cassette recorder?"
"Just about."
"Dead end, then. What about these?" I waved my hand towards the floppy disks. Cooper jumped up, startled. "Our data!" he yelped. "That's our data! If he's tampered with that...!" He sounded more concerned about the data than he had been about Samuels. 
"Can you go through it?" I asked him. "Make sure that it's all there?"
"Jeez, I hope it is! I never thought to check." Cooper settled into the seat in front of the computer and flipped a switch. "It'll take the batteries a moment to warm up."
"Fair enough. Constable, you gather up Samuels' things. I'll have a look round outside. Tom?" 
Gratz had been prowling around the radio room. Now he emerged. "You want go outside again?"
"That's right. And I need some of the stuff that's been digging into my back all the way here."

From the outside the linked huts looked very small. I circled them once or twice, looking at the packed snow, the drifts that had built up behind them. If a man wanted to hide something..."Tom!"
Gratz appeared around the hut, carrying a snow shovel. "Ya?"
"Is there such a thing here as a rubbish heap?"
The man shook his head and grinned. "All rubbish is parcelled up and carried back. We take it through Customs, even — so much rubbish!" 
Not even a rubbish heap. I thought of Samuels coming out of the huts with something to hide, moving instinctively around the back, away from that open snowfield, towards the cover of the pylon. Carrying something light, that needed a marker so he could find it again. Or dragging something heavy that could be found again, that wouldn't travel far. While Gratz looked on I combed the ground, kicking at every lump, every patch that might have been something more than wind-driven snow. Twice I took the spade and dug for a moment, only to drop it again and set off somewhere else, casting for a scent. 
Samuels was out of condition. Samuels was scared. Samuels had something to hide. Samuels was too cunning for his own good. One by one the possibilities merged, until at last I almost had a picture of the man, coming out of the hut with his burden — what burden? — and hunting around, trying to out-think the enemy and at the same time save himself effort, outwardly calm, inwardly panicking. Samuels was short ! Jackpot! I ducked under the low fence around the the humming pylon. Gratz gave a warning shout. "Careful! Is live wire!" 
"Then shut it off!" I put out my mittened hand for the spade, and Gratz passed it to me, careful to avoid the electrified metal. He hurried over to the nearby junction box and pulled a switch. The humming stopped, and I rose to a crouch. With my elbows brushing the pylon I began to dig, turning the snow aside carefully. A few minutes later there was an impact, and I struck something more solid than snow. I put the shovel aside and began to brush the flakes out of the way. With a stifled cry Gratz ducked under the fence to join me. 
In a few moments we had exposed a body. It lay on its back, its skull smashed, gazing up at us through sightless eyes. Its jacket had been torn open, and the collar was smeared with blood.. 
"What — !" Cooper, emerging from the hut, had caught us. He stood there groggily for a moment, then clutched at the pylon and was noisily sick. 
"Recognize it?" I asked, when he had finished. 
Cooper nodded. "It's Charlie!"

With Gratz's help I dragged the penguin from the hole, laying it out on the ice. "How do you know it's Charlie?" I asked. 
Cooper pointed out a black patch under the wing. "He had a blemish there. And he was missing a toe — see?" He shook his head. "This explains one of the lost transmitters. But why the hell would anyone want to kill Charlie?"
"Good question." I said. "Homicidal maniacs are one thing, but avicide is another." I rolled the penguin over, grunting at its weight. "No wonder they can't fly." 
"Fat." Cooper said. "Lots of body fat. They need it for warmth."
"I could do with a bit of that myself." I went over the body carefully, but there was little more to see. The bird's fragile cranium had been smashed by several blows from a rounded pole. The backpack transmitter was gone. I fetched a standard-issue ice-axe from the sledge, and compared it with the wounds. As I had expected, they matched. "We'll take Charlie back with us." I said. "Meanwhile let's get inside."
Back in the hut Alice had brewed some tea. Samuels' things had been folded and stacked on the bed. I went through them carefully, one by one, but they told me nothing. When I he had finished I stood behind Cooper, watching the rows of numbers rolling past on the computer screen. "Anything missing from the disks?" 
Cooper shook his head. "Everything seems OK. When we get back to Base I'll write a program to check it thoroughly."
"I'm what you call a naive user." I said. "It all looks like a lot of numbers to me."
"First you get the time and date." Cooper explained. "Then the transmitter ID number, then the location in triangular co-ordinates. Satellite transmission time is expensive, and it all has to be sent twice for checking purposes, so it leaves out all the unnecessary stuff like spaces and commas and just sends a long string of numbers. It's not meant for human consumption at this stage. Paul was going to write a program to put it in map form." He broke off, swivelling around to face me. "Inspector, do you think Charlie might have been killed as a sort of trial run for Paul?"
I shook my head. "Nobody fed Charlie alcohol. And nobody smashed in Samuels' head. Charlie was killed for his transmitter."
"But what was the point of that?"
"That's what I'd like to know." I said.

Gratz emerged from the radio room and accepted a cup of tea. "I been talking to Machin." he said. "He wants a full report. We have to take Charlie back, but under a tarpaulin."
"Christ, yes!" Cooper said. "Killing penguins is forbidden under the Treaty! If this gets out we could be in trouble."
"Murdering people's all right, though, is it?" Alice asked. 
Cooper coloured, but replied calmly. "Murder's domestic business. This is a breach of international law."
I sipped at my tea, unmoved. "International law leaves me cold". 
Cooper shrugged, and returned to the computer. "All accounted for." he said after a moment. "What do we do now?" 
"Load up Samuels' gear and Charlie and head back to Base." I said. "Unless anyone has other ideas?"
There was silence. Alice stood up. "I'll go and help shift that bloody penguin. I hope you're not planning a post-mortem on him too."
"Mightn't be a bad idea." I said.
"Routine policy." Cooper told me. "Any bird or beast that dies here, we turn it inside out to find out why."
"Not much doubt of that." I said. "Unless you think it was poisoned, and knocking in the skull was just a red herring." 
"Charming." Alice commented. "Tom, d'you want to give me a hand?" 
After the others had left the hut I sat there for a moment, nursing my tea. I had a feeling that I'd missed something, that afternoon; a sense that if only I'd been faster, warmer, more awake, I might have heard something that made sense. As it was... I rose and stretched, scraping the roof of the tiny hut with the palms of my hands. It would come to me in time, I knew, if only I could leave it alone.
CHAPTER XII 
Back at the Base the preliminary results of the autopsy on Samuels were waiting. They were largely negative. No drugs, no physical history of alcoholism, no tumours, signs of serious illness or organ damage. Nothing that a smart lawyer could seize on to press for a verdict of suicide. I added the report to the growing file. It looked impressive, but I was still a long way from getting any answers. 
Alice came to see me after lunch. "Did you find Baron's codebook?" she asked.
"I looked in the cistern." I said. "Nothing there."
"That pilot — Andreyev — was at the Base on Friday afternoon, dropping supplies. He could easily have flown out to the hut and picked it up."
"You'd see landing marks." I pointed out. "The only flat area that's safe to land in is right next to Hut D. You can't land or take off in a helicopter without making a hell of a mess in the snow."
"What if he had someone on the ground to clean up after him?"
"How would they have got there? They would have to have sneaked out of the Base, got hold of a vehicle, and gone all the way to the hut and back again, just to clean up after the chopper. Anyone who was doing that couldn't have been hanging around watching the Radio Room most of the night just in case Wilkins took a break. That pretty well rules him out as the murderer, so why bother?" She looked so crestfallen that I had to add: "Keep speculating, lass. It'll all come clear in the end."
"Well, we've got another corpse to work on now, Chief — poor old Charlie. Debbie practically went into hysterics over him."
"No doubt she found plenty of comforters." I said. "How are you getting on with the girl?"
"I like her." she said simply. "She's got a good head on her shoulders"
"Any evidence that she was mixed up with Samuels?"
She shook her head. "Chief, if you could have the pick of the men down here, you wouldn't choose Samuels."
"Who did she choose?"
Alice shook her head. "It's funny," she said. "I came down here expecting to find all sorts of illicit goings-on. But this place is straighter than Canberra — and that's saying something. There's just not enough privacy to indulge your vices. Half the Base would know immediately if anyone visited Debbie at night. I'm not saying that they'd mind, but it's enough to put a damper on things. Though a few of the blokes are still trying."
"Any names?"
"Jan Eastbrook. WIlton James, the glaciologist. Barry Cooper...":
"He gets around a bit, doesn't he? What about his true love back in Hobart?"
"I mentioned that, Chief, and he had a good laugh. He didn't seem to take it very seriously."
"Fair enough." I was glad of that. I liked Cooper, for all his posturing: he seemed to have a sound grasp of what was important. It wasn't something I could have said about the rest of the staff here. "What about drugs? Anything there?"
"Cooper and a couple of the other scientists went so far as to admit they'd used marijuana. There's not a skerrick of the stuff on Base, as far as I can tell."
"More dead ends."
"Why so gloomy?" she asked. "You did well to find Charlie this morning."
"Frankly, lass, I wasn't looking for Charlie. Charlie's just mucked the whole thing up."
Alice settled herself on the edge of the desk. "But you were looking for something. The codebook?"
I shook my head. "The Russian codebook is a red herring — if you'll pardon the pun. I was looking for something Samuels might have hidden in his wallet, in a cassette, or inside his camera. Something the murderer was expecting to find on his person, or in his room, and didn't."
"Something that he's still looking for."
"That's right." 
"Like what?"
I shrugged. "Haven't a clue."
Alice thought for a moment. "Oh well," she said. "At least that tells us who killed Charlie."
"Does it?"
"'Course it does." she said cheerfully. "Samuels did it."
I nodded. "All right, lass — let's have the reasoning."
"Nobody else could have, Chief. We know that Samuels had something that put him in danger. He hid it in the first backpack to be made up, and sent Charlie off with it, thereby getting himself off the hook. But he was tracking Charlie with the information from the satellite. When he wanted the ring back he knew exactly where to look. He went out there on his skiddoo, clobbered Charlie, and took him back to the hut."
"Why kill Charlie?" I asked. "Why not just take the backpack off there?"
She thought for a moment. "Bit oppressive, Chief, wouldn't it be, with forty thousand of Charlie's mates watching? It might have attracted attention, too — lots of seabirds, lots of noise. Quieter to bundle him onto a sledge like we did today and drag him back to the hut."
"I can think of another reason." I said.
"You always can! Let's hear it."
"No, not yet." I told her. "You go on."
"All right. Back at the hut Samuels dumps Charlie's body and retrieves whatever was hidden in the backpack. The backpack gets disposed of in one place and Charlie in another. Then someone nobbles Samuels to get the whatever-it-is for themselves. But they can't find it. Hence the hunt through the mail, and all the palaver about Samuels' room. If it was Baron, that would explain why he was so keen to have the room guarded — to stop the murderer getting in and finding it before he did. Remember that Machin said any mechanic could have picked the lock."
"I haven't forgotten that." I said. I stood up. "It's not bad, lass, but it leaves us with five whacking great holes. One, why did Samuels need so badly to get his whatever-it-was back from Charlie in the first place?"
"Maybe he found out that one of the transmitters had broken and thought the same thing might happen to Charlie's."
"It doesn't make sense." I said. "Because, Two, if this whatever-it-is is so valuable, why entrust it to a seal's dinner?"
Alice thought for a moment. "Buggered if I know." she said at last. "But you put me on to that, Chief, talking about how hard it was to hide something. I thought, what a great idea to put it on a penguin, with a transmitter attached so you could keep track of it..."
"And watch it drifting off towards Argentina on an ice floe." I pointed out. "Three, who killed Samuels? Four, how does this tie in with what Machin said about Samuels having an affair, being involved with somebody? And the umpteen thousand dollar question — what's the object? What would you entrust to a penguin that's worth killing someone for? We're not far off it, lass, by my thinking, but we're not quite there yet." I rubbed my eyes. A few minutes outside without snow goggles had made them red and sore. "How did you go in Samuels' room?" 
Alice grinned, and lowered her voice. "I made it look searched." she said. "And I left a porno paperback with some meaningful-looking numbers scrawled on the cover, tucked down through a tear in the mattress lining."
"Aye? What was it called?"
"Bedroom Berserker . It was all about a big Norwegian called Eric — original name, that — who gets smuggled in to a girl's boarding school." Alice chuckled. "If I'd known you were interested, Chief, I would've made notes."
"I've done my time in the Vice Squad, Constable." I told her. "Right now I'm only interested in when and how it makes its reappearance." I checked my watch — an hour till dinner. "What's O'Sullivan doing at the moment?"
"She's Observing, Chief."
"And what's that?"
"I don't know." Alice confessed. "Do you want me to go and find out?"
"Don't bother." I said. "I'll go myself. About time I talked to a pretty girl."
"Thanks very much!"
"Present company excepted, of course."

The Observation Shed was a corrugated iron hangar perched on the low ridge beside the Base. One of the off-duty mechanics led me to the door and knocked. I let myself in, stooping through the low entrance. 
In the centre of the room a long table was covered with maps. Various instruments and other apparatus were ranged around the walls, and crates were stacked in one corner. A big silver balloon, empty of gas, lay across the crates. Debbie O'Sullivan and a colleague were taking measurements from the map while a third read from a teletype. He broke off as I entered. 
"Don't let me interrupt you." I said. "I just wanted a word with Ms. O'Sullivan."
The man (I recalled that his name was Temple) glanced at his colleague protectively. She shrugged. "Let's have a coffee break." she said. The two men left — grudgingly, I thought — and she dragged another chair close to her own, waving me into it. "This suit you, Inspector?" 
"Admirably." I said. 
"I was wondering when you'd come." she said. "I mean — I suppose I am a suspect."
"Are you?" I said. "That's news to me."
She laughed. "You must be the only person who thinks I'm not! Everyone else is sure I'm mixed up in it somehow. The first year you have a young woman on base, and — bang — look what happens!"
"That's fallacious reasoning." I said. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc ." 
"Is that Latin? I thought nobody on earth but me knew Latin any more! But all the detectives do, don't they — they come up with these wonderful quotes. I suppose being police you have to know things like habeus corpus and de minimis non curat lex , and — what's another one?"
"In flagrante delicto ?" I suggested with a smile.
"Yes, that's probably it." She smiled. "Anyway, you could hardly call me a casus belli . Not in this gear, anyway."
I studied her for a moment. Dressed as she was in loose jeans and socks, flannel shirt and a heavy woollen jacket, with her hair tied back, her cheeks and nose scoured pink, and no make-up, she would have gone quite unremarked in the streets of Canberra or Hobart. But this wasn't Canberra; it was a place where women were scarce, and people lived in each other's pockets. I could feel an irrational male sense of achievement already just at having got her to myself for a moment. "I think under the right circumstances you could be very much a casus ." I said. "Dr. Machin said in his log that there were fights over you."
O'Sullivan looked annoyed. "He would." she said. "If he could get me sent back I think he'd do it. He's a real woman-hater."
"But there were fights?"
She shrugged. "They were guys who were getting on each other's nerves anyway. I just happened to be around when it started." 
"And what about recently?" 
O'Sullivan shook her head. "Things have settled down. They've started to realize that I'm here to work, not just as an alternative to pornography. And I've learnt to be careful."
"Careful about what?"
She looked at me coolly. "Careful about where and with whom I spend my time."
Clearly she wasn't going to tell me any secrets. "How well did you know Samuels?" I asked her.
Surprisingly, she laughed. "Sorry, Inspector! You just sounded so much like a TV policeman springing the unexpected question! If you're asking me whether he was a lover, the answer's no."
"A friend?"
"Oh, we're all friends down here." she said brightly. Then she shook her head. "No, not even that. An acquaintance. I didn't have much in common with Paul; I don't think anybody did."
"And how did he feel towards you?"
She shrugged. "I caught him looking at me carnally, once or twice, like everyone else — well, almost everyone else. But he never tried to do anything about it. I wouldn't have encouraged him to try."
"He wasn't involved in the fights?" She shook her head. "What about Cooper?"
"Barry's a nice guy." she said. "He is a friend of mine. Just a friend."
"Fair enough. And Dr. Machin? You said he dislikes you?"
"I don't think it's personal." she said. "He just doesn't like women in Antarctica."
"Why not?"
"Well, he says it's because I'm bound to cause trouble at mid-winter, and he's responsible for this Expedition being safe and working out properly. If things go wrong it's a black mark against him. But I think there's more to it than that. It's something deep and psychological — don't ask me what." There was a discreet knock at the door. "That'll be Carl with some coffee. Anything else you want to know, Inspector?"
"You could tell me what an Observer is."
"Sure. Come in, Carl!" She indicated the maps. "A lot of Australian weather comes from Antarctica. We keep in touch with the Bureau of Meteorology all over the continent, and with remote weather stations that broadcast data by radio, and every couple of days we send up a weather balloon. That gives us a pretty good idea of what's happening at or near ground level. Because we're near the Pole we also get interesting things going on at high altitudes — cosmic rays and stuff — which affects radio transmission around the world. That goes out to national governments so they can modify their broadcasting plans accordingly. We're also involved in some work being done at Seal Base right now on the changes in the ozone layer."
"What's that?"
"Ozone is a form of oxygen. There's a thin layer of it in the upper atmosphere all over the world. That is, there used to be. With the increase in the use of spray cans, fridges, and car air-conditioning, the ozone's getting broken down. A hole in the ozone has started to appear over central Antarctica in mid-winter."
"Is that bad?"
"It might be." This was Carl Temple, in a soft American accent. "The ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet rays. If it gets depleted all over the world then we're all in for a bad case of sunburn — at the very least."
"We examine the sky visually, too, of course." O'Sullivan said. "Have you seen the Aurora yet?"
"Not yet."
"There should be a tremendous one soon. Solar flares are building up."
"Good for them." I said. Temple had put his coffee to one side and unrolled a map. I glanced at it over his shoulder. "That's this area?"
"That's right." he said. "We had new maps made this year." He indicated a dot on the map. "Here's the Base, between two glaciers. These are the huts, A,B,C,D..."
"Do you know where the Stuart expedition went down?"
"They showed us back at ARC." His finger drifted over the map, stopping near the edge of the eastern glacier. "That's it, I think."
I replaced his finger with my own, and drew a slow line northward to the coast. "Where's the scale? That's about twelve kilometres as the crow flies. More, I suppose, if you dodge the crevasses."
"We don't say 'as the crow flies' down here." O'Sullivan said. "We say 'as the penguin walks'. It's a joke, really, because penguins never go in a straight line. They just amble around on the shore."
"Is that so?" I found the penguin rookery marked on the map, about twenty kilometres away, near the other glacier to the west. "I think I'll have to pay them a visit and see for myself."
"I might come with you." she said unexpectedly. "I haven't been yet, and they say it's fun. If you don't mind."
"Not at all." I said. "How would tomorrow suit you?"
Temple shook his head. "You can't go tomorrow."
"Why not?"
"Because there's a blizzard coming."
I gazed up at the sky, a brilliant limpid blue visible through the open skylight. "I don't believe it." I said.
CHAPTER XIII 
The first signs came at daybreak. Half-asleep, I had the sensation of rocking back and forth, dreaming I was back on the Mediterranean cruise I'd made with Annie, years ago. Footsteps in the corridor roused me to wakefulness, but the rocking sensation persisted. Around me the plastic sides of the cubicle were creaking, and from time to time there was a scraping sound against the walls, as though they were being sanded down for painting. 
I climbed out of bed and dressed quickly, driven by the unease that comes to people who find themselves in a strange place during a crisis with nothing to do. Outside in the corridor men were going back and forth in snow gear, carrying ropes; some had red faces and ice in their beards. Baron was one of them. "What's up?" I asked him.
"Joost a blizzard, chum." the plumber told me, and vanished through the swing doors. 
I made my way to the mess. Machin was sitting at a long table with several lists in front of him, looking as though he'd been at work for hours. As people came and went he crossed off items one by one. Despite the awkwardness with which his mutilated hand gripped a pen, I had the feeling he was firmly in control. He greeted me with a wave. "Should I do anything?" I asked.
"No." Machin said automatically, then changed his mind. "Yes. You can give Greg a hand in the kitchen. Keep the coffee and soup coming, that's the main thing. All right?" He was already back among his lists by the time I had made my way through the servery bar. 
It was the first place I had been in since Christchurch that was hot. Really hot, with three big microwave ovens pumping out warm air and the gas range roaring away on all burners. I found the chef working at the sink in shirtsleeves. "What can I do?"
"Any objection to washing up?"
"None at all."
"Off you go, then." The man — his name was Swan, I remembered — drew back from the sink and busied himself around the stove. I rolled up my regulation blue shirt sleeves and set to work. The pile of mugs, cups and soup bowls was not large, but there were enough thirsty men at the servery bar to keep them coming back. When there was a break I helped myself to a cup of tea. Through the bubble-shaped windows of the mess I could see groups of men stepping out carefully into what appeared to be a dense white fog. 
"We're roping up." Swan told me. "They string ropes between the buildings so you don't get lost."
"What would happen if you did get lost?"
Swan drew his finger across his throat and grinned expressively. I had thought as much. "What about the people out in the huts?" I asked. 
"They sit it out." Swan said. "A bloke can get a lot of reading done at a time like this."
After an hour or so the first rush for coffee and soup died down. Swan began working on more substantial breakfasts, and my efforts were rewarded by one of the first — bacon and eggs with a side plate of toast and jam. I carried it through the servery hatch into the mess. 
Machin was still at the table, crossing items off his lists in a less hurried way. The smell of bacon seemed to rouse him from his reverie, and he looked up with an unexpected smile. "Feel like a walk after breakfast, Inspector? A breath of fresh air?"
"Out there?"
Machin nodded. "It's perfectly safe. And there's something you might like to see."
I was being challenged. Machin was offering what looked like an undefended pawn. "All right, Doctor."
"Good." The OIC seemed pleased. He rose and went to the breakfast bar. "Got another bacon and eggs, Greg?"

The vestibule was even colder than usual. I put on the outdoor gear hurriedly, doing up all the zips and flaps, stepping into the heavy sealskin boots. Machin seemed to be taking his time by comparison, but he was still finished long before me. He slid open the insulated door, and we stepped outside.
We collided with the wind like a solid object, as if a medicine ball had caught me squarely in the middle of the chest. I would have fallen if Machin hadn't caught me. "Lean into it!" He had to shout over the howl of the wind. "Like this!" He canted forward at what looked like an absurd angle, pushing the weight of his upper body against the wind. I copied him, swinging back and forth for a moment before I found a stable position, one arm slightly outstretched, the other clutching the rope. The wind carried Machin's shouts back to me. "This is it!" the man was bawling. "This is the real thing!"
I nodded, saving my breath, and thrust myself forward. Flakes of windblown snow tore at my face like shrapnel. My goggles — where were they? They were in my pocket — but to reach them I would have to let go of the rope, take off my mitten, steady myself against the wind. The task seemed so complex as to be impossible. For the first time I had an inkling of what it might be like to be here alone, naked to the fury of the weather, with a thin tent for protection and a handful of men for company. Only a minute in the blizzard, and already I felt vulnerable and lost. How would I feel after a day — or a week?
Ahead of me Machin's back vanished into the swirling snow. Behind me the barracks hut was invisible. The rope was my only link to safety, to the Base, ultimately to Australia, my home and my daughter. What if I let go? I could move away and let the rope vanish into whiteness. I could become another mound of snow, like Charlie, like Samuels, like Stuart. To be uncovered — when? In the spring? Or much, much later, when the glaciers finally rolled me down to the coast and splashed into the sea? Wilma thought the ice might all be gone in a hundred years. What would the meltwater reveal, I wondered, what deeds that might have been buried forever?
Preoccupied, and half-blinded by the snow, I nearly bumped into Machin, who had stopped ahead of me. I could make out a looming wall. "This is the stores shed!" Machin bawled into my ear. "It's the largest building on the Base!" He gestured for me to follow, and led the way to a metal staircase that ran up the side of the shed. I followed him up gingerly, testing each step for ice, and clutching at the handrail, so cold that it pulled at my mittens every time I lifted them off. 
At the top of the first flight of stairs the blizzard had quietened noticeably. At the top of the second I was astounded to see bright sunshine. Machin laughed. "Blizzards are low-level phenomena." he said. "Look at that."
I leant on the guardrail, looking out over the Base. It was a fantastic sight. The tops of the radio masts, the roofs of the higher buildings, were all visible. In the distance I could see mountains, sharp-edged against a clear blue sky. But the Base itself was drowned in a swirling deluge of wind-blown snow. In a white frenzy it came hurtling across the plains from the inland. It was blown through a narrow channel towards the coast, and finally flung out on to the pack-ice, where the wind had already dropped away; so that there the snow seemed like a dying animal, crawling with its last ounce of strength towards the sea. 
"I like it up here." Machin said. "It gives me a sense of perspective."
"I thought you'd need that all the time." I said.
The man shook his head. "Hardly, Inspector. Down there I have to pretend that I'm a stickler for the rules and regulations, because that's what they expect of me. A weak OIC is useless — or worse. Back in Canberra I have to be a loyal servant of the Department of Defence, a good little cog in their ghastly machine." He paused. "Up here things are different. It's a unique experience, one that can't be described, to see nature at its wildest. You know the story of the expedition to found this place. You know what a tragedy it was, how we lost three men — and I lost four fingertips." He held up his mittened hands. "And yet those few days when I was on my own and expecting to die, the only living thing in this vast white world — that was the only time, Inspector, that I've ever felt really alive."
"You should go on some more expeditions." I said after a moment. "Visit the South Pole or something."
Machin shook his head. "It's not the same now." he said. "They've spoilt it all. What with radios, and satellites, and all-weather vehicles, it's like Bourke Street out there now, and about as exciting."
"But if it saves human lives..." 
Machin laughed. "Oh, yes! Human lives. Much better to save your life, to live it in air-conditioned comfort, than to waste it doing something real, taking on a continent. Remember Scott and Amundsen, Inspector? Amundsen travelled in comfort and got there first — but it's Scott who has the glory."
"They think rather highly of Amundsen in Norway." I pointed out. "And they look on Scott as an unprepared fool who led his men to death."
Machin's reply was a snort. He stood there for a moment, looking out on the smothered Base. "I suppose I should ask you what progress you're making." he said.
"You're entitled to ask." I told him.
"But you're not going to tell me?"
"Not at the moment, no."
Machin shrugged. "It's not easy." he said. "Giving men orders, sharing out jobs, knowing all the time that one of them is a killer and might strike again. What if I were to pair him up with someone, and — " He paused. "You won't even give me a hint?"
"If I knew who the killer was, then it would be because I had evidence." I said. "If I had evidence, then I could send off a report and see about going home."
"But you must have suspicions." Machin insisted.
"I have a lot of suspicions. I came here suspecting twenty-eight people. Now I've ruled out about half of 'em. That's the meaning of the term 'deduction'." 
"I see." Machin said carefully. "Do your suspects include Helena?"
"Possibly. What makes you think that?"
"She is a woman." Machin said. "And she's very much by herself. I'm not an expert on feelings, by any means, but I'm sure she feels herself quite alone, unloved. Some of the things she's said to me, at times... And now, with Debbie here, surely that can only be like rubbing salt into the wound. What if Helena was the person who was meeting Samuels at the hut? Perhaps they had an arrangement. Or maybe she just felt he was a kindred spirit, someone who would understand. Perhaps she felt he had rejected her, so..."
"So what?" I asked. "So she persuaded him to drink a bottle of whisky and lie down in the snow?"
"There's a medicine cabinet in the hut." Machin said. "There'd be tranquillizers or something. She'd know what to do."
"But no drugs were found in the autopsy."
Machin looked at me pityingly. "Inspector, who did the autopsy? Dr. Craig was in an ideal position to mislead you."
"And who taught her to pick locks?" 
"She may have one of the tradesmen under her thumb." Machin suggested. "Perhaps there were drugs involved. She may have got him to teach her."
"If a tradesman was on drugs then anybody who found that out would have the same power over him." I pointed out. "Which means that anybody could have been taught to pick locks."
"Almost anybody." Machin held up his ruined hands. "You can rule me out."
I nodded. "I've ruled you out for that, yes."
"I suppose I should be relieved." Machin said. "But you don't sound that encouraging."
I leant on the rail for a moment, watching the flurries below. How much could I tell him? "Put it this way." I said. "The best possible thing that I could do for your Base would be to give up and go away. Samuels wasn't murdered by a madman. The person who did it isn't going to kill anyone else. The sooner I quit here the quicker you can forget about it and get on with your lives.
"But I'm not here for your sakes. I'm here to catch a murderer. Not because of his morals, not to punish him for breaking the law, but just because every time someone gets away with murder then somebody else gets the idea that they might too. And this whole expensive exercise is nothing more than an attempt to show them that they can't. For that reason, Doctor, it doesn't really matter who Samuels was, or why he was killed. What matters is that I go back with the person who did it. Which I intend to do." I straightened up. "Is that clear?"
"Perfectly, Inspector. Thank you." Machin nodded towards the stairway. "Shall we go down?"

I donned my goggles, and followed him back into the blizzard. For an instant we were at eye-level with the surface, looking across a field of snow at the aerials and rooftops of the buried Base: then we were in amongst it, buffeted by the wind and the snow, groping along in semi-darkness. Walking with the wind was worse, if anything, than walking against it; now it was a question of leaning backwards, making this overclad body as thin as possible, and trying to take controllable steps instead of seven-league strides that sent you flying flat on your face. The thought that somewhere up above all this the sun was shining teased and tantalized me, as if I could bob up to the surface and take my bearings before plunging down again. The whole case was a little like that: snow was being thrown in our eyes, but somewhere, just a little way overhead, there was a place where all would be revealed. 

I found Alice in the mess, busily tucking into breakfast. "Hello, Chief! Pretty breezy out, eh? Cold enough for you?" 
Debbie O'Sullivan, sitting next to her, waved a fork. "Will you join us, Inspector?"
"I just want soup and a coffee." I said, and meant it. I sat down opposite O'Sullivan. "You're the expert — how long is this going to last?"
"The rest of the day, at a guess." she said. "It's already cleared at Rostov, and they started getting it last night."
"What time does it get to Canberra?" 
"In about a week. Why?" She laughed. "Thinking of sending a homing pigeon?"
"I'd just like my Super to know what I'm going through."
"It's not that bad, is it?" she asked consolingly. "Wait till you see the penguins. And the Southern Aurora!"
"I live in hope." I said. "Meanwhile — " I turned to Alice " — I've got a job for you, lass."
CHAPTER XIV
After lunch I took the autopsy report back to Helena Craig. She was working in the office of her surgery, next to the infirmary at one end of the barracks. It was a tidy set of rooms, as well-equipped as a small hospital. There was a bed in one corner of the office, I noticed. 
Helena followed my gaze. "In case I have to stay the night. I don't want to have to duck back and forth from the women's barracks." 
"Have you used it?"
"In the past. Not this year."
"What would you do if you had a bad accident?" I wondered. "Four or five people, say, all badly injured?"
"That would depend on the time of year. In summer they could be flown back. In winter we'd have to make do."
In one corner of her desk there was a neatly stacked manuscript, all carefully written out by hand. "Is that the magnum opus?" 
"That's right. Survival and Health in Extreme Cold ." 
"You don't use a typewriter?"
She shook her head. "Never bothered to learn." 
While she used the phone I studied the topmost page. It was a part of the index. "Cable burns; Cadavers — preservation of; Caecum — cold injury to; Calcium; Calculi — renal; Calculi — vesical; Calculi — prostatic. Get many of those?"
Helena had delivered her message and replaced the phone. "Not personally, Inspector." she said. "But I'm told they're very painful."
"I can vouch for that." I read on. "Callouses; Calorie intake; Canada; Cannibalism — nutritional value; Cannibalism — psychological effects. Charming, I must say!" I lowered the manuscript. "All the same, I think we'd like a copy for our library."
"I'll make a note of it." she told me. "But don't hold your breath. I've been working on it for eight years now, and it's nowhere near finished." She waved me to a chair. "Did you want to talk about the autopsy?"
"Just a small point." I said. "Some questions have been raised about Samuels' sex life. You don't mention anything in here."
Helena shook her head. "I wasn't being delicate, Inspector. I didn't mention anything because there was nothing to mention. No signs of intercourse, homosexual or otherwise. As far as I could tell Paul was perfectly chaste."
"And you haven't heard anything that might have contradicted that?"
"Nothing whatsoever." she said firmly. 
"Thank you, Doctor. I think that's all." I stood to go. In a corner of the office there was a rectangular tank. Seven or eight silvery fish darted back and forth aimlessly . They were the first living things I'd seen other than human beings since I arrived. "What are they?"
"Guppies."
"They look like anchovies." I said. "Can you eat 'em?"
"I wouldn't try it, Inspector. There's probably more fecal matter per gram of fish than there is fish."
"First cannibalism and now fecal matter. You've put me off my food altogether. Where does cannibalism come into it here, anyway? Are you thinking of that business in the Andes?"
"Where the plane came down, and the survivors had to eat the dead, yes. That's one case. There are others. It happens more in cold weather areas because you need more protein, and there's less likely to be edible vegetation. Eskimoes get their vegetables from the stomach contents of fish — did you know that?"
"Charming. Any other cases?"
"Some attested cases, some rumoured. It's not the sort of thing you boast about."
"True." I said. I decided to try what O'Sullivan had called the TV policeman method. "Why were you so reluctant to do the autopsy on Samuels?"
"I told you why. Because he was a friend, someone I knew well. It's not a pleasant job, even with a stranger."
"Would you say you knew Samuels any better than the other people on the Base?"
She considered the question. "Not better . But I think I had more sympathy for him. He was a bit of a loner — and so patently miserable."
"Your sympathy didn't extend any further? To a romantic attachment, say?"
Dr. Craig gave an unexpected roar of laughter. "Good God, man, I'm fifty-four years old! I put that all behind me long ago! And even if I had the inclination, I've got a book to write, an infirmary to run, and twenty-six hypochondriac men to look after!" She shook her head. "This is a manifestation of the absurd modern theory that everybody has to have hot and cold running sex, or else dreadful things happen! It's a myth, Inspector, put about by randy young men! I'm entirely celibate, and quite happy to stay that way!"
But my mind was off on another track. "You said 'hypochondriac men'. Does that include Dr. Machin? He was in the infirmary from the Thursday until we arrived on Saturday. That seems like a long time for a broken collarbone."
She hesitated for a second. "I ordered Brian to rest." she said. "Otherwise he would have worried himself into being ill."
"Was he a good patient?"
"He slept most of the time. I checked him each day, noted his condition, and gave him some sedatives for that evening. Why?"
 "I wondered if he might have seen Wilkins when he came through for his aspirin."
"Brian had taken two Serepax that night, Inspector. He wouldn't have noticed a herd of Arabian camels!"
"Fair enough." I said. "Thank you, Doctor. You've been very helpful."
"Sorry I laughed." she told me. "But I don't like to think of you wasting your time on hypothetical hanky-panky. Not when there's a murderer about."
"No more do I." I said. 

The blizzard seemed to be abating, and some people were already outside going about their business. I wandered over to study the bookcase, trying to look bored. One shelf was given over to general books about Antarctica, including various government publications, most of which I'd read by now. Below that there was a shelf of classics — Dickens, Trollope and the Brontes. The reading matter grew more dog-eared and less respectable as I descended, through fat gaudy best-sellers, detective novels and science fiction, reaching rock bottom on the lowest shelf where westerns and pornographic paperbacks competed for space. Bedroom Berserker had been jammed in at one end: two other titles that I recognized were at the other. I stood up, thinking.
A vast hand fell on my shoulder, and I spun around. It was Baron, grinning from ear to ear. "Lookin' fer summat t'do? Never mind books! Coom an' see a video!" He nudged me sharply. "It's the real thing, this one!" 
"No thanks, Mark." I said. "Too much to do here."
"Aye; well, the sooner you get it cleared oop, the better." Baron lowered his voice. "Did'ye find that Rooshian codebook?"
"No trace of it in the hut."
"Ah — that goes t'show, don't it? Whoever carked Samuels must've done it t'get the book."
"Possibly." I conceded. "On the other hand they also took some cassettes."
Baron scratched his head. "There's a puzzle. Mebbe they wanted summat t'listen to on the way 'ome." He looked at me shrewdly. "You've got an idea, 'aven't yer?"
"Call it half an idea." I said. 
There was a shout from the TV lounge. Baron waved to a couple of his mates, eerie-looking agains the light of the giant screen. "I'll be off, then." he said. "Sure y'won't pop in? It's called Sauna Party ."
"I was in the Vice Squad for three years." I told him. "I've seen more tits and bums than you've had hot dinners."
"I dare say y'ave." Grinning, Baron ambled away. 

My next stop was Cooper's lab, where I found the biologist dissecting the hapless Charlie. Various penguin organs rested in jars of alcohol; others were scattered about the dissecting table. It was a depressingly familiar sight. "How's it going?" I asked.
"Not too bad. I've been doing chemical analyses on the tissues and organ contents as I go. It's all pretty crude, but as far as I can tell Charlie was reasonably healthy and well-fed right up until the moment of his demise."
"Which was caused by...?"
"The neck being broken, in the approved fashion."
"Sorry, I'm a bit slow. What's the approved fashion?"
"I looked it up for you." Cooper said. "It's in the ARC Field Manual, page one hundred and seven — 'Emergency Sources of Food.'" He read from the book: "'Penguins may be killed by breaking and cutting the neck or by squashing the air out of their lungs by sitting on them for a fairly long period.'"
"You're a mine of useful information." I told him. "It doesn't have people in there, does it? Nothing about getting them smashed and rolling them in the snow?"
Cooper flushed. "I just thought you'd want to know."
"Fair enough." I told him. "I'm just feeling a bit aggro." I picked up a glass jar. "Stomach contents?"
"Fish, of course."
"Why 'of course'?"
"Because that's all they eat."
"TouchŽ . You said he was well-fed."
"Oh, yes. 'The condemned penguin ate a hearty breakfast'. Plenty of undigested fish in the crop."
"Could he have been baited with it?" I asked. "Attracted closer so that he could be killed?"
"Possibly. But penguins aren't hard to catch, as long as you stay between them and the sea. They're fairly slow on their feet. There is one odd thing." He pointed at the penguin's webbed toes. "See any calluses?"
"No." 
"Well, you should." Cooper said. "According to our satellite record, Charlie walked fifty kilometres before he died."
"Is that unusual?"
"For a penguin it's almost a record. If he did it."
"The other possibility is that he was carried." I said. "We know he was dead when he was taken to Hut D — call that fifteen kilometres from the rookery..."
"Now it's my turn to be stupid." Cooper said. "How do we know that?"
"Fresh fish in the stomach." I reminded him. "And a remarkable absence of penguin crap in and around the hut."
"All right. So he was killed somewhere and taken back to Hut D." Cooper shook his head. "The only question left is why."
"I know why." I told him. "At least, I think I do." I replaced the jar, and strolled over to where the computer stood on its bench at the far side of the room. "You're typing in notes?"
"That's right." Cooper said. "It's easier than making a rough draft and then writing it up. Most of the boffins here use computers for word processing — the younger ones, anyway."
"Computers worry me." I said. "People have a box crammed full of facts, so they think they know something. They don't."
Cooper shook his head. "They're wonderful machines, Inspector. As long as you've got the right program, you can make that little box do anything." He walked over to a sink in one corner and washed his hands. Returning to the computer, he began to type in figures. "These are the weights of Charlie's organs. They're facts. Now look at this." He pushed a few buttons. In a second or two the figures had been replaced on the screen by a neatly labelled bar chart. "Comparative weights relative to body mass — seal, penguin and skua digestive organs. The same facts in a different form. Doesn't that count as information?"
"Very impressive." I said. I looked at the screen for a moment. A half-formed idea was swimming towards the surface of consciousness, slipping away whenever I tried to reel it in. "You said that Samuels was writing a program to show the penguin movements on a map?"
"More or less, yes." Cooper said. "The idea was to plot the movements out on transparent paper to the same scale as an existing map. Then we could lay the plot over the map and see how penguins travel in relation to landmarks and contours."
"Could you do that?" 
Cooper considered for a moment. "My programming's a bit rusty." he admitted. "I could give it a go. It would be quicker if I had some help."
"The sooner the better." I said. "And keep quiet about it, eh?." I moved towards the door. "Somehow I have a feeling this might be what I've been looking for all along."
chapter xv
I found Alice in the mess with Debbie O'Sullivan. The constable greeted me with a wave. "Take a seat, Chief. Lunch'll be along soon."
"I've just come from another autopsy." I said. "I don't know if I feel like lunch."
Alice leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
"Give me the good news first."
"The good news is that Jan Eastbrook looked up the photography equipment book this morning."
"And found..." 
"Before he went in the darkroom Samuels indented for two sheets of photographic paper, big enough for eight normal prints."
"So what?"
"Well, the negatives on the film only come in rolls of twelve, twenty, and twenty-four. It looks like Samuels had a few specific prints he wanted developed in a hurry."
"That's not much to go on." I pointed out. "He could have just fluffed four snaps out of twelve."
Alice shook her head. "The rolls of twelve are only used for scientific purposes. Eastbrook develops all those himself and keeps track of the ones that are used. All Samuels' scientific rolls were accounted for before he was killed. This was a roll of twenty, at least: but he only wanted between five and eight of those developed."
"These prints are missing, I take it?"
"Prints and negatives, both gone."
"Like the cassettes." I said. "Is that the bad news?"
"Not exactly." Alice said. She glanced across at O'Sullivan. "Debbie?"
"The weather's closing in." the other girl said. "By next week we'll probably be snowbound. You might be here for six months after all."
"Damn! Is that certain?"
"As certain as the weather ever is." She shrugged. "Don't make any long-term plans."
I thought fiercely for a moment. "There's still a chance. Are we going to see the penguins with Tom Gratz tomorrow? Will the weather hold till then?"
"Tomorrow should be fine."
"And we're taking two skiddoos?"
O'Sullivan nodded. "I've already booked them."
"Fine." I stood up. "Alice, I'll see you later on this afternoon. I'm going to put in a call to the Super."

Later that day I knocked on the door of Machin's office. "Busy, Doctor?"
He looked up with a grim smile, and waved me to a seat. "I'm always busy. How can I help you?" 
"You've heard the news about the weather?" 
Machin nodded. "It looks like you might be here for a while."
"I was hoping to make a quick escape." I said. "But I need help with something."
"Fire away."
"I've got Cooper writing a program for me, to analyze some data that Samuels left behind." 
Machin nodded. "I see. And..?"
"I want to borrow your best programmer for a day or two, to help him finish it."
Machin thought for a moment. "That would be Bill Deutsch, I should think. He's fixing some radios at the moment, but that can wait. I'll give him a call."
He picked up the phone and dialled. "Martin? This is the OIC. Is Bill there? Thanks." There was a brief pause. "Bill? Can you drop what you're doing and come over here? Inspector Thrale wants you to do some programming." 
There was a squawk from the earpiece. Machin cupped his hand over the phone. "He says what language?"
I fished out the piece of paper on which Cooper had written it down for me. "Tell him Pascal. Does that make any sense?"
Machin shrugged. "Pascal, Fortran — they're all Greek to me." He relayed the message, and lowered the phone. "He should be here in a few minutes." He sat back, watching me narrowly. "Any closer to an arrest?"
I shrugged. "That's a matter of opinion." 
"The morale of the Base gets fairly fragile in winter." Machin said. "I don't want it too much disrupted."
I shrugged. "I'll be submitting a report to my superior tomorrow afternoon. If he agrees than I'll try and arrange to travel back before the bad weather arrives. There's nothing more to be done here."
"Does that mean you're giving up?"
"Just waiting for a little information. By this time tomorrow I should be making an arrest." 
"I see." Machin said slowly. "But you think you know now."
"Let me put it scientifically." I said. "You should appreciate that. I have a hypothesis which explains the data. The question now is whether some new data will fit the hypothesis."
Machin smiled. "Admirably said. I suppose being a scientist makes me a detective too, in a small way. Pity that we never had a chance to play chess."
"Bridge is my game." I told him. "I prefer the odds — two against one."
There was a knock on the door. Machin called "Come in!", and Bill Deutsch strode into the room. "Y'wanted me?"
I stood up. "That's right." I said. "Come on down to Cooper's lab, and I'll tell you what's happening on the way."

It might have been the prospect of winter, or the rumour of an imminent arrest, but for some reason dinner that evening was a sombre affair. Cooper and Deutsch were absent, having taken a makeshift dinner back to the lab in thermos flasks, and Debbie O'Sullivan, sitting between Mark Baron and Alice, seemed to have lost her sparkle. Helena Craig presided at one end of the long table, and Machin at the other, like the Pater and Mater of a large Victorian family. Being Sunday, it was the Swan's evening off, and a group of boffins led by Gary Tweening had made something which had started out to be beef stew, but been side-tracked before it got there. Dessert was a hot steamed pudding which had the consistency of rubber, and even the coffee was weak and brackish. At the conclusion of the meal a laboratory bottle containing a clear fluid was brought to the table by Baron, and ceremonially passed down from hand to hand. I poured a little into my glass and sniffed it cautiously. "Diesel fuel." 
Helena must have overheard me. She shook her head. "Don't you know lighter fluid when you smell it?"
"This is Baron's home brew?"
"That's right. You'd better be nice about it, too, or you'll hurt his feelings. He's put a lot of work into this."
I gazed gloomily at the oily fluid. "Is this in your book?"
"The recipe's secret." she told me. "The effects are, alas, public knowledge."
Baron, already fortified by several beers, rose to his feet. The murmur around the table died down. "Ah'd like t'make a toast." he said. "'E's been 'ere nearly a week, and we've got to know him as a decent bloke. 'E's got a mucky job t'do, and Ah for one don't envy 'im. But it's a job that's gotta be done. There's Evil here, and 'e's the man t'rid us of it. Ah give you — Inspector Thrale." 
There was a brief embarrassed silence, and then a quick murmur round the table — "Inspector Thrale". I gave what I hoped was a gracious nod. Baron's moonshine was sipped, or swallowed, or returned untouched to the table, according to the preferences of the drinker, and the conversation gradually rose back to its former level. 
I had been one of the sippers. Now I licked my lips. "You know, that's not as bad as I thought."
"Wait for the after-effects." she told me. "Mark's right, you know. You can't make many friends in your job."
"I've made at least one on this trip." I said. "More, I hope."
"You mean Wilma." she said. "I wish you luck there, really. Her husband's a beast."
"How do you know I'm not?" 
Craig shook her head. "I thought you'd bully us." she said. "I was expecting to be kept up all night, and have lights shone in my eyes, and — oh, I don't know what. You're very discreet." She lowered her voice. "Is it true that you're making an arrest tomorrow?"
"'Police are looking for a person who could help them with their enquiries.'" I said. "That's the current state of affairs."
She hesitated for a moment, swirling her glass as she gazed into the clear liquid. "And do I know who it is?"
"That's a strange question to ask me."
"I think you know what I mean, though. Don't you?"
"Perhaps I do." I said. "If — and that's a big if — things come out as I expect, then — well, you'll know what to do."
She nodded slowly, staring at the table, then caught herself and laughed. "Here we are in the middle of a tragedy — and bureaucrat that I am, I can only think of the paperwork!"
CHAPTER XVI
There was a conference with Alice, and a lot to arrange before turning in. In bed I felt restless and wakeful, waiting for something to happen. It had all been too easy. Had I been too clever this time, I wondered; had I outguessed myself? Only tomorrow would show that. 
I dozed off eventually, wondering what Julie was up to. All this time, and I hadn't even bothered to call her... 
I was woken by a shout, and a fist hammering on the door. "Inspector!" It was Bob Wilkins' voice. "Come quick!"
I scrambled out of bed and nearly fell headlong on to the floor below. Recovering myself, I slipped a jacket and fur boots on over my pyjamas, and joined him in the corridor. "What's up?"
"Someone hit Barry — in the lab!" Wilkins was shaking. He was also in pyjamas, without the benefit of a jacket, and clearly feeling the cold. "Knocked Barry out and smashed up the equipment!"
"All right." I told him. "I know the way to the lab. You'd better get some clothes on, then call Constable Peters."

The walkway to the lab, enclosed though it was, was bitterly cold. It was the first time I had been outside here in the twilight, and the sight of the feeble lights of Whale Base against the great mass of land and sky made me realize just how isolated we were here. Damn Cooper! — and damn me for letting it happen!
I swung the lab door open with unnecessary violence. Machin was there, with another man — Wilton, the seismologist. Helena Craig was bending over Cooper's body on the floor, probing it for broken bones. Alive, then! "How is he, Doctor?"
"He has a hard skull, fortunately. He's got a cut scalp and concussion, and I imagine he'll have trouble remembering things for a while. He was lucky, though — that was the target." She indicated the computer, smashed now to fragments: the screen was shattered, and the workings looked as though they had been pounded by a heavy object. Smears of blood told me that the same instrument had been used on man and machine. I found it in the corner — a long spanner with a rag wrapped around one end. "Our friend likes to get his tools from the workshop."
The door swung open again and Alice hurried in. "What's up, Chief? She caught sight of Cooper and blanched. "Oh my God. Is he — "
"Just concussed. Can we move him, Doctor? He'll be better off in the infirmary, and I want to look around the lab."
Helena stood up. "Can you get the stretcher, please, Brian? In the infirmary, just inside the door on the left. We'll roll him on to that, and then you and Jim can carry him." She glanced at me as Machin went out. "Will you two be safe here?"
"As safe as we'll be anywhere." I said. "I didn't expect Barry to stay here this late." I glanced at my watch — two A.M. "It can't have been more than ten minutes ago — the computer's still warm."
Wilton nodded nervously. "I've got the room at this end of the barracks. I heard someone walking past, just a few minutes back. He dropped something outside the door, and sort of fumbled for it. I though it was a bit strange, so I got down out of bed to see what was going on. By the time I got there the corridor was empty. But I found this." He handed me a flat plastic envelope — a floppy disk "I could see the light was on in the lab, so I came through to have a look. Barry was lying there on his side — with the blood — so I went for the Doc. I didn't even notice the computer till I got back."
"Fine. Just show Constable Peters where your room is, and where you found the disk. Then we'll get Cooper to the Infirmary and you can go back to bed. All right? Alice, you'd better check up on Deutsch." She ushered the shaken man out. I turned to Helena, who was wiping her hands on a tissue, and indicated the floppy disk "The key to it all, Doctor."
She looked at it sceptically. "I don't know if you've noticed, but all the others are missing too. What makes you think that's the one he was after?"
"I was using the word 'key' in another sense." I said. "The sense in which you don't need a key if you've already picked the lock." I glanced around. "Where — ah, yes!" 
The door swung open, and Machin and Wilton came in carrying the stretcher between them. Behind them there was a crowd of excited faces, Baron's and O'Sullivan's among them. I moved to the door and cleared a path for the stretcher-bearers on their way out, followed by the MO. Baron clutched at my arm. He was fully dressed, I noticed, and stank of alcohol. "'Oo did it?" he demanded hoarsely. "I'll kill the bugger!" 
I blinked away the haze of moonshine fumes and shook my head. "Go back to bed." I told him. "All of you. There's nothing you can do."
One or two of them peeled off at that, mooching back down the walkway towards the barracks: the others remained, wide-eyed. Alice reappeared, and beckoned me after her back into the lab. "Deutsch has been doped." she said quietly. "Someone's gone through his room with a fine tooth-comb."
"That makes sense." I said. I checked that the door was closed, with no more staring faces behind the panes. "Ready to try for all or nothing?"
"As ready as I'll ever be." 
"They'll string us up by the ears for this at Headquarters."
She shrugged. "Let 'em. I don't want to stay here another six months."
"Fair enough. All right, lass — follow my lead." 
It was a minute or two before the door opened again. Machin strode in. "Helena's given Cooper a sedative." he said. "He'll be out for a while."
"How's your collarbone?" I asked.
He looked bemused at the question, but flexed his arm nevertheless. "Back to normal, I think."
"Funny that you should have been hit on the collarbone and Cooper on the back of the head."
"I was moving at the time." Machin pointed out. "And perhaps he's improving with practice."
"I rather think he's getting worse." I said. "Dropping a disk was very clumsy."
"So was smashing the computer, Chief." Alice pointed out blithely. "There's no hard disk in there — the information's all on floppies. Smashing it up was a waste of effort." She paused. "I bet we could find the floppies too, if we searched thoroughly."
"No need to search, as long as Cooper did what I told him to." I dropped to my knees and rummaged under the desk. "Ah — there it is!" I wriggled something back and forth, and emerged at last with a floppy disk, dusty but intact. I rose to my feet. "Sorry, Dr. Machin. We're a bit preoccupied at the moment."
"I can appreciate that." Machin said tightly. "I just wanted you to know that I'm radioing a report to ARC. If there's anything you want me to add..."
"Not at the moment, no." I said. "But you can book me a call for tomorrow afternoon, if you wouldn't mind. About five o'clock."
Machin nodded. "All right." He hesitated. "That disk there — is that the same type as the one that was dropped?"
"I can't say — they all look alike to me."
He nodded. There was a pause. "I take it you'll cancel your excursion to the rookery after this?"
"I don't see any reason why we should." I said. "It would be silly to come all the way down here and go back again without seeing one live penguin."
"That seems very frivolous." I shrugged. "I'll see you at breakfast, then." Machin said. "Goodnight, Inspector Thrale. Goodnight, Constable."
"Goodnight, Doctor."

We searched — desultorily. I found what I had expected to find, which was nothing: even in a hurry, Cooper's assailant had been too clever for that. Under my direction Alice played the attacker's part, walking in quietly with her footsteps covered by the noise of the computer fan. A ruler, standing in for the weapon, was lifted and lowered: I fell forward across the keyboard. The swivel chair was pushed out of the way with me in it, sending me sprawling to the floor. The victim rose and dusted himself. "That's about the size of it." I said. "Nothing more we can do, is there?"
"I might look in on Deutsch." Alice said. "How do you think he managed the doping?"
"I imagine that our friend was hanging around here, listening in while he waited for these two to go to bed. Deutsch suggested making a hot drink, and our friend had an inspiration, got to the kitchen first, and dropped a few pills in the kettle. Cooper didn't have any, unfortunately for him. You'd better check on that." I told her. "We don't want the whole Base comatose tomorrow morning."
"It might make things easier if they were." She made for the door — then stopped. "Look, Chief, I'd rather not leave you alone. As long as you've got that disk..."
"I appreciate the thought, lass." I told her. "That's why I'm giving it to you." I handed over the disk. "Rouse Gratz or Wilkins — someone we can trust — and get them to make half-a-dozen copies. Hand 'em out to Helena Craig, Baron, and anyone else with a bit of clout. Make sure Machin gets one too. Okay?"
Alice nodded, frowning. "Chief, if our friend comes after me, I'll do him. I swear it. He could have killed Barry."
I shook my head. "Coppers get into enough fights without looking for them, lass. You know the rules — slow 'em down, stop 'em, put 'em on the ground, but whatever you do, don't hurt the buggers, even if they're after your guts with a steak knife. Most of 'em have a reason for it, God help them. You'll end up feeling sorry for 'em in the end, even when they're down in the cells howling for your blood."
Alice shook her head. "This is so cold-blooded."
"What do you expect? If our friend had gone for Samuels' throat at the dinner-table then he would have been sent home in a strait-jacket, Samuels would still be alive, and we wouldn't be here. Murdering someone's easy — it's getting away with it that's hard. Our mate has a good chance even now, curse him, if he can keep his cool. If I arrest him now he could walk out of court smiling and leave us with egg on our faces. That's why we're doing this bit of needling — to get him to make a mistake."
"I'll feel better when it's over."
"So will I." I told her. "But it's got to be done."
We turned off the light in the lab, and walked back together through the covered passageway. 

It seemed as though I had only slept for a few minutes before Debbie O'Sullivan was knocking at my door. "Inspector! Time to get up!"
"I don't believe it." I told her, peering through the half-open door. "It can't be morning already."
"Sure is!"
"Well, be an angel and order us a plate of bacon and eggs, will you, love? I'll be along in a minute." I scrambled into clothes and went along to the mess. Baron greeted me there, looking as fresh as a daisy. "How's Cooper?" I asked him. 
"'E's well enough, Ah reckon — still asleep. Ah don't reckon y'could wake 'im." 
"I don't intend to." I said. 
"You're off this morning?" Baron asked me ominously. The big man was barring my path to the servery.
"Off to see some penguins, that's right."
"Leaving us in the lurch, like, with a murderer around?"
I let my weariness show. "Mark, you've been living with a murderer for two weeks."
"Aye, but 'e's turned nasty now, like." Baron leaned closer. "I've got me disk 'ere, what your lass gave me, safe under me string vest." He tapped his chest and leaned closer. "Secrets, is it?"
"In a way, yes."
"Secrets from the Rooshians?"
"Let's just say it's secrets."
"Fair enough." Baron said. "Look 'ere — Ah want a gun."
"A gun ?" I was startled. "What the hell for?"
"T'hold 'im at bay, like." Baron dropped into a gun-slinger pose.
I shook my head. "Not a chance, Mark. I don't want people here blasting away at each other, thanks very much."
"Then Ah want you t'arrest 'im." Baron said. "Put 'im away somewhere safe, where 'e can't 'arm anyone else."
Out of the corner of my eye I could see bacon and eggs congealing rapidly on my cooling plate. Baron had a point, that was the problem; the longer I waited, gathering evidence, the more risk there was of another attack. I thought of the alternative. Charges that might fail to stick, embarrassing admissions at the trial, even the chance of a suit for false arrest. Storybook detectives never have these problems; the murderer confesses like a good boy when confronted with the evidence. Not so in real life. I'd love to see Sherlock Holmes try and explain his magical deductions to a sceptical jury. "Mark, you're as safe now as I can make you. But don't tell me how to do my job, eh? Just trust me."
For a moment he wavered. I could see suspicion flickering over his face. Then the big man stepped aside. "Aye. Well, since you're from Bradford..." 
"Much obliged." I said, and passed through to join the others at breakfast.

By ten past eight we were in the garage, rugged up in outdoor gear. Gratz was there before us, filling the skiddoos with fuel and checking the wheels and treads for wear. Under his supervision we loaded the supplies — a hearty lunch for four, packed by the chef, and an abundance of emergency gear, including a radio, medical kit, provisions, tents and sleeping bags. "I feel like I'm off to the South Pole." I told him. 
"Is all necessary." Gratz said. "Snow can come in and then — poof! — you can't see no more."
"Just think of the old days." O'Sullivan pointed out. "They had to tow all this lot behind a pack of snarling dogs."
"You're not a dog person, I take it?"
She laughed. "No. Goldfish strain my affection to its limits."
"I find that hard to believe." I told her. "You look like a soft touch to me." She actually smiled at that.
"Have you got a camera?" Alice asked me.
I slipped a slim package out of my pocket. "Police issue — scene of crime, for taking pictures of."
Alice shook her head. "There you are." she said. "I never thought..."
"Ready!" Gratz's call interrupted us. 
"Let's go." I said.
chapter XVII 
There was no-one to see us off — only the dogs in their compound, gazing incuriously after the two laden vehicles. The wind savaged our faces, and I drew up my balaclava and put on my goggles. The world looked blue now, oddly like an underwater scene in the tropics. All I need is a snorkel , I thought. 
I went over again in my mind the message I had received from Devine that morning. Dictated from the Superintendent's bedside at 3 AM EST, it was terse and cryptic, but I chose to believe that I had approval for my plan. Providing, of course, that it worked. 
We sped through the snow, detouring around the rocky outcrops. The landmarks were gradually becoming familiar; anonymous tors and mountains were starting to stand out, take on an identity of their own. Like the case, Antarctica was beginning to open up, to reveal itself. I found myself looking forward to the penguins, thinking back with shame and regret to Charlie, sacrificed to a man's need. Watch yourself, Oswald, I thought. You'll end up wanting to come back here too. 
About an hour out from the Base we crested a low rise, and suddenly there was a city in front of us. A city without buildings, without streets or roads or a scrap or shred of shelter; a city with nothing but a population. But what a population! Hundreds of squat little birds waddling over a broad stretch of bare rock, jostling for space, honking loudly at the slightest provocation. It was hilarious and fascinating. The penguins trotted aimlessly back and forth like cartoon people, passing the time of day with every indistinguishable friend and acquaintance. 
Gratz turned off the skiddoo engine. "We walk from here." he said. I followed him carefully down the slope to the rocky patch where the penguins were. Alice and O'Sullivan followed. I was expecting to make a cautious approach to the birds, but O'Sullivan and Gratz simply strode up to the edge of the colony. The inhabitants retreated a metre or two, and gave vent to some aggrieved honks as Alice and I joined the pair; but after a moment or two they seemed to decide that we were just larger penguins, and resumed their normal behaviour — if holding a cocktail party on rocky ground in sub-zero temperatures could ever be normal. 
"These are the first females." O'Sullivan said. "They come ashore to lay their eggs. There'll be thousands here in a few weeks."
"Where are the eggs?" Alice asked her. 
She pointed out a few nest-piles of stones and gravel "They only lay one or two each year. The stones are there to stop them rolling away. Stones are very precious — there's a lot of thieving goes on."
"How long do the eggs take to hatch?"
"About five weeks."
"And the parents stay here all this time?"
She nodded. "That's right. The males come up after laying and incubate the eggs while the females go off and fatten up on fish. When the eggs hatch the females come back and they swap over. It's very liberated."
Gratz was crouching down, crooning to the birds to encourage them to come closer. I followed his example, checking the backs of the birds I could see. Nothing. Dodging blobs of sticky guano, I moved to higher ground, and used the binoculars I had taken from Samuels' hut. While the others petted and stroked the birds, I swept over each identical penguin in turn, looking for a backpack. There! I lowered the binoculars carefully, keeping my gaze fixed on that point. On the far side of the colony a bird with a yellow backpack was standing motionless, gazing out to sea like a statue. I began to skirt the colony, trying not to alert my quarry.
I needn't have bothered. As I drew near to the bird it turned to face me and opened its beak to hoot, waddling clumsily backwards a metre or two. It was protecting a nest, and that hampered its movements. I pictured lifting up an ice-axe, bringing it down — no trouble at all. With a nod of apology to the nesting mother, I made my way back to the group.
Alice caught my eye. "Did you find one, Chief?"
"Easy as pie." I said. I indicated the slope. "My guess is that Samuels knocked Charlie on the head here and dragged him up there on a rope. Pity it's snowed since then, or we might have seen the tracks." I looked again at the penguins, so human and yet so remote, happily socializing in this frozen hell as if it was the beach at Cairns. "Time for us to go."
We disentangled ourselves from the friendly birds, and made our way back up the slope to the skiddoos. I turned to O'Sullivan. "All right, lass — you know what you have to do?" She nodded. "Take care, then, eh? No heroics." I glanced at Alice. "That goes for you too."
"Don't worry, Chief." she told me. "I'm a confirmed coward."
"Fine." I glanced at Gratz. "Ready, Tom?"
The little man nodded, and brought the skiddoo into life. 

The skiddoos ran together along the tracks back to the Base. About two kilometres from the Base, however, and out of sight, Gratz and I swung away to the north. The other skiddoo stopped, and Alice clambered off. She waved. "See you."
Debbie O'Sullivan hesitated. "Take care." she said. "I don't like leaving someone out here alone."
"Look, the Base is just over that ridge. I've even got food. It'll be all right."
"Well...I hope so." Biting her lip, O'Sullivan put the skiddoo into gear and slid away towards the Base. Alice watched her disappear over the ridge. Checking the time, she settled down in the snow to wait. 

The route Gratz had mapped out took us around by the empty Hut 'D'. I wanted to go straight past, but Gratz insisted on stopping to pick up some fuel and hot food. Knowing how much I depended on the man's skills, I agreed. Holding down my tension, I sat at the table studying a map while Gratz brewed up coffee and prepared a thick, hot soup. He put the bowl in front of him. "There." he said. "Just like Mama used to make."
I had to smile, and relaxed a little. "Where are you from, Tom?"
The little man took a seat. "Officially or unofficially?" he asked shrewdly.
It was a question I had heard before. "Both." I said.
"Officially I am Yugoslav." Gratz said. "But I was born in Bulgaria." He gave the word its long 'a'. 
"Why did you leave?"
"Russians." 
I raised an eyebrow. "I thought Bulgaria liked the Russians."
Gratz shrugged. "If you live too long next to a crazy country then you go crazy too." He looked over at the map, at the prohibited area I had been studying. "Any ideas?"
I shook my head. "It's an ideal place to lose something in."
Gratz nodded agreement. "Not so good to find again, hey?"

Ten minutes later we were on our way once more, passing the demarcation line of bright orange poles that marked the off-limits territory. We were crossing a glacier now, and the going was dangerous: Gratz slowed the vehicle to a crawl, and insisted that I travel behind, on skis, so that I could cut free if the vehicle went into a crevasse. I squatted on my haunches to keep my balance, and we inched forward slowly for what seemed like hours. At last Gratz brought the skiddoo to a halt. "Here is crevasse."
I could see nothing but a slight dip in the snow ahead of us. "How can you tell?" 
"Snow makes a bridge." Gratz demonstrated with his hands. "But the bridge sags in the middle." He surveyed the scene carefully. "We go around, or across?"
I drew out the map. "Where are we?" Gratz traced inward a centimetre or so from the edge of the forbidden area. "Here."
"We'll go a little further." I said. "He's got to see us moving." 

We travelled alongside the crevasse for a few minutes, looking in vain for a stronger crossing-point. Eventually Gratz selected a stretch of snow that he thought would hold us, and we spread out along ropes again, Gratz in front and me behind, pulling the skiddoo behind us. The little man crossed the bridge, putting one ski carefully in front of the other, prodding as he went with his ice-axe. I dug my heels in and waited for the rope to snap taut if the man fell. But Gratz reached firm ground safely, and waved for me to follow, not on the route he had taken, but a little to one side. 
I started across, copying Gratz's actions as closely as I could, trying not to think about the bridge of soft snow, and the open space below me. One step, then the next, then the next — was it halfway, yet? I twisted slightly, trying to see how far I had come, and that was my undoing: as my skis moved out of the perpendicular the snow bridge beneath me gave way, and I dropped suddenly into a world of ice. 
The ropes caught me, pulling tight against my chest-harness, and for a while I dangled there helpless, like a spider in its web, smothered in tonnes of snow that crashed down around me. Then the rope to the skiddoo slackened as my weight drew the vehicle closer, and I fetched up against one crumbling wall of the crevasse. I scrabbled for a foothold, but the snow gave way below my boots, and I only succeeded in kicking away some of the wall and bringing down a chilly shower of snow from the crevasse lip up above. 
A surge of terror shook me. I was alone, alone and out of my depth at the bottom of the world. I would die here in the darkness, die and be covered by snow, lost forever. Nothing could save me...
The sight of Gratz's balaclava'd face peering over the crevasse rim brought me back to his senses. "You OK?" the little man called. "Nothing hurt?"
"Nothing but my pride." I told him. I took a deep breath and tried to remember what Dave Keegan had said about climbing out of a crevasse. "It's all in the book..." I laughed shakily when I realized I had the Survival Manual on me, strapped under my harness in a pocket of my vest. If I took the harness off then I could get the book out and read it — on the way down.
I suppressed another laugh and drew my attention back to the present. Gratz was lowering two more ropes, each with a noose on the end. A hangman's knot. Following his gestures I realized that I was meant to put one foot into each. I did so, and while Gratz hauled on a complicated pulley arrangement I found himself literally walking up the side of the crevasse. 
Soon I was near enough to reach Gratz's hand. The little man stretched down and yanked me out with surprising strength. He drew me carefully away from the edge, and turned me around. "Look." he said simply.
Where we had crossed there was a broad channel in the snow, at least five metres across. I could see glittering ice on the other side. "How deep is it? I asked. 
"Maybe seven metres." Gratz said. "Why — you want to go down again?"
I took a deep breath. "Not particularly." I said. "But how are we going to get the skiddoo over?"
"We don't." Gratz told me. "We go back to it."
"Then we have to find a way around." I pointed out. "That'll take time."
"So?" Gratz shrugged. "What else can we do?" I didn't have an answer to that one. 
We decided to travel in the direction we'd been going — north, by Gratz's compass — in the hope that the crevasse would peter out. A few hundred metres on things started to look hopeful. A rocky outcrop straight ahead ran perpendicular to the chasm. It was then that I noticed the skiddoo approaching from our left.
The vehicle was speeding towards us, threading its way across the dangerous snowfield much faster then we had dared to go. I shouted to Gratz, and we struggled to speed up and reach the outcrop; but the heavy winter gear was not made for speed. Bruised and exhausted, I found myself tripping over my skis. The other skiddoo pulled up by the outcrop. We stood there panting as Machin leapt out and strode towards us. His face was as pale as the snow. "Inspector Thrale! What in the name of Christ do you think you're playing at?"
chapter XVIII 
It was not the way I had imagined the scene. I struggled to regain composure. "Hello, Dr. Machin. I'm glad you came alone."
"You're risking the life of one of my men already." Machin said angrily. "I'm not about to risk another. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I think you know what I'm doing." I said. "I'm looking for a body."
Machin hesitated. "A body?" he said. "You're mad. There's no body out here." Then, as the silence lengthened, he asked "Whose body?"
"Stuart's body." I said. "And you're going to tell me where it is."	
"Why should I know where it is?"
"Because you killed him." 
Machin turned to Gratz. "Help me get him back to Base, Tom." he said. "We'll talk about this there."
Gratz shook his head. "Hear him out, Doctor."
Machin sighed. "All right." he said. "What is this crazy theory?"
"In your account of the loss of the Stuart expedition, you said you rescued some food from the vehicle." I began. "That wasn't true. You and Stuart were stuck out here with no radio and no food. When you had to leave the wrecked vehicle you must have known you would probably starve to death. You say Stuart was injured; let's assume that's true. You assumed that he would die. Perhaps you even thought he was dead already. He was your only source of food; so you began to butcher him.
"Dead men don't bleed; so when Stuart started bleeding you knew for certain what you were doing. I don't know what happened next, whether you went on with it, but I suspect you did, because when Samuels found Stuart's body, ten years later, it was pretty clear what had been done to him."
Machin shook his head calmly. " I left most of the food with Stuart." he said. "I killed a penguin on the coast, and ate that."
"Penguins don't stray this far from their rookery." I pointed out. "And you told me yourself that there wasn't a living thing in sight when you were out here."
Machin's mouth opened to speak — then closed again. "This is fantasy." he said hoarsely. "There's not a shred of proof."
I went on. "My guess is that you jammed the body down a shallow crevasse, to protect it from the skuas, expecting that you'd need it again for food. You never had a chance to come back here alone and dispose of it, and no reason to try. The crevasse would be covered by snow anyway. And people just don't think of bodies lasting, still being recognizable after ten years. But this place is a giant freezer. Stuart's still here, somewhere, just as you left him. And somehow Samuels found him. Maybe the snow blew away — maybe Samuels fell through the crust on a crevasse, as I did just now. However he did it, he stumbled on the body. 
"I don't know if he realized at the time that it was Stuart, or whether that meant anything to him. But Samuels was a biologist, and he could see that the man had been murdered and mutilated. He had a camera with him, so he took pictures. And he marked the place temporarily with a flag or something. But he wasn't sure what to do. I don't know his character well enough to judge what his motives were. Perhaps he felt some loyalty to you. Or perhaps he planned a little blackmail. For whatever reason, he wanted to keep his find secret. He needed a way of marking it that no-one else could see, either from the ground or the air. He must have thought it was a flash of genius to use the penguin transmitter. 
"He took the skiddoo out to the penguin colony and got hold of the first penguin with a backpack that he could find — poor Charlie, who was used to human company. Samuels knocked Charlie on the head and took him back to the hut, with his transmitter going. Then he brought the backpack out here. He put it near Stuart's body and let it transmit — to the satellite, to the computer, to the University in Hobart. Now he had Stuart's location securely marked, in a place that you couldn't destroy. My guess is that he took the backpack back to the rookery and chucked it in the sea. Charlie was buried in the snow to keep the skuas away. Maybe it was finding Stuart that gave him that idea." 
Machin had thrust his hands in his pockets. His long face was taking on colour. Whether it was rage or tears that were coming I could not tell. "Go on." he said ominously.
"This was on Friday. Samuels went to you on the following Wednesday with the news. He probably gave you the photos and kept the negatives. You arranged to meet him at the hut and discuss it. You wanted the negatives. He must have hinted that he had the location hidden away somewhere, and you wanted that too. Even if you avoided a murder charge, your career would be wrecked when the body was found. Imagine the headlines — Antarctic Cannibal! You took the skiddoo out to Samuels' hut with a gun and a bottle of whisky, and you killed him. But you couldn't find the location — he'd hidden it too well.
"You thought it might be somewhere in his room, but Baron insisted on searching it with you, so you had to postpone the opening. You attacked yourself with a crank handle, just about the last weapon anyone would use, but ideal for hitting yourself from in front and making it look like an attack from behind. That put you in the infirmary, close to Samuels' room, where you could wait for your chance. You didn't take the sleeping pills, of course — you kept them, and used them to dope Deutsch last night. You looked for the location of Stuart's body in the mail and in Samuels' room, but you didn't think of looking in the computer for it — until it was too late."
Behind me Gratz stamped his feet to keep warm, pounding his mittens together. Machin did not move. "Even if this nonsense were true," he said slowly, "why on earth should I take you to Stuart's body now?"
There was a faint noise, a buzzing in my ears, like an irritating wasp. Maybe he's right, I thought. Maybe I am going crazy. Now I had put it into speech I could see just how flimsy it all was. "Because Constable Peters is back at the Base, going through your office." I said. "If anything is there she'll find it."
"I see." Machin stepped back, looking thoughtful. His hand slid out of his pocket, no longer mittened, carrying a small silver gun. He shook his head. "Then I'm sorry, but..." The gun barrel rose, centred on my chest. There was a moment of absolute silence. Then I was hurled aside as Gratz dove past me with a shout, lunging for Machin's hand. 
The gun barked once. Gratz clutched at his chest with a groan and sprawled sideways. I picked myself up and went across to the little man. Bright red blood was welling from his lips. "You've got his lung." I said. "He needs treatment."
The buzzing in my ears was still there, louder now. Could Machin hear it too? The man shook his head sadly. "Sorry, Inspector." he said again. "This is it."
I felt the seconds slip by. "What about Alice?" I said. "She knows . They'll all know by the time you get back. Christ, man, you can't kill them all!" I was shouting, I realized, trying to get through to him. Above us the sky was booming. The wind had risen to a hurricane. Had Machin shot me already? 
I glanced up as something massive blocked the sun, hurtling towards us like a stone. It was instinct, not reason, that made me throw myself down as the helicopter hit the ground. I fell, rolling through the snow, expecting to hear a shot and feel the sharp sting of a bullet. Instead there was a chopping sound, and a football-shaped object that spun through the air, spraying red. 

The helicopter groaned and shuddered to a halt. I dragged myself on to my hands and knees, and watched as a vast bear-like figure swung himself out of the cockpit, ducking under the shuddering blades. "So! Inspektor!  We meet again, hey, like I say?" 
I struggled to my feet. "Machin — "
"Is dead." Andreyev looked solemn. "He had the gun, yes?" I nodded. "Is good." the Russian said with relief. "I can't see that too well from up high." 
We hurried over to Gratz. The little man's eyes were open now, and the blood from his mouth had dried to a trickle. "Machin's dead." I told him. "Don't try to speak." I turned to Andreyev. "Do you keep a medical kit in that thing?"
"I get." The Russian trotted quickly across to the 'copter, returning with a large tin canister of medical equipment. "You can manage?" he asked me. "I radio for help."
I agreed. "Will that thing fly?" I asked. 
Andreyev shook his head. "No way! Is not good for rotors, to go like this." He drew his hand across his throat in a gesture that made me feel queasy. "I call another."
I strapped up the bleeding Gratz while Andreyev made the call. There was little we could do but keep the man as still as possible and get him to a surgery. "You're an idiot." I told him crossly. "Charging a man with a gun!"
Gratz made as if to shrug, and winced. "For time." he whispered. "To give you time." Then he fell unconscious again, his head pillowed on the snow. 
Between us we took Gratz into the helicopter. Andreyev bore most of the weight, and I carried his feet. The route took us past Machin's body, his naked hand still clasping the gun, the bloody stump above his shoulders. I felt my gorge rising, and turned away. "He didn't shoot." I said. "I don't understand why he didn't shoot." As we climbed over the rocks my head brushed against one of the rotors, and I flinched involuntarily — then looked again. "It's too high. How could it have — "
"They bend." the Russian said shortly. 

The radio was chirping for attention. Andreyev ignored it while we stowed Gratz at full length in the back. It was warm in here, once we closed the doors, and safe. I slumped into the passenger seat, blind behind my steamy goggles, while Andreyev dealt with the radio. After a short conversation he handed me the microphone. Helena Craig's voice crackled out. "Thrale! Are you all right?"
"I am." I said wearily. "Tom isn't. He needs surgery."
"Mikael's sent for another helicopter. They'll take you both to the Russian icebreaker." She paused. "Is Brian — "
"Dr. Machin is dead." I told her. "He died instantly."
"I see." She digested this in silence for a moment. "Would you like to speak to Constable Peters?"
"I suppose so." I said. "If it really can't wait."
Alice was eager and cheerful. "We've got him, Chief! I went through the office with a fine tooth-comb. The cassettes were in a padlocked cash-box in his bottom drawer. The disks wouldn't fit there, so he put them between the carpet and the underfelt. We've got him!"
"We've got a body." I told her. "And Gratz has been shot."
"Machin took the gun?" Alice asked. "That's why I couldn't find it!"
"Great work, Sherlock." 
"Is Tom all right? Wilkins said — "
"He should be," I said. "if we can get him to a surgery. How's Maid Marian?"
"She did well, Chief. She burst in and told Machin that you and I were going to the prohibited area, and away he went like a bat out of hell."
"Tell her thanks." I said. I ought to take the goggles off, I thought, so he could see. It was really very hot in here. I ought to do something about that, too.
"Are you all right, Chief?" Alice asked. "You sound a bit stressed."
"No, I'm not all right. I'm sick. I'm sick of being asked if I'm all right!" I put down the microphone with a satisfying click, and began to peel off some of the heavy clothing. Andreyev was holding something out to me — a little silver cup. "Is vodka." the Russian said. "You need."
Removing my goggles, I caught sight of someone staring at me from outside in the snow. I closed my eyes and reached for the cup. 
chapter XIX 
The Russians were efficient. In a few minutes another, bigger, helicopter arrived, bringing new rotors and a pair of expressionless mechanics who slid Machin's reassembled body into a heavy plastic bag and strapped it onto one of the skis. With the same unconcerned care they carried Gratz across to the other helicopter on a stretcher slung between them, and started the repair work while another pilot ferried us back to the icebreaker. It was a fast, hair-raising ride; I saw very little of it from the back, but I would have been happier to see even less. Bringing a chopper down on the deck of a tilting ship in high seas is not my favourite way to spend an afternoon.
We were met by the ship's crew and taken to our respective destinations — Machin to the cold room, Gratz to surgery, where the ship's surgeon was already waiting, and me — after a quick once-over by a medical orderly — to the mess, where I assisted Andreyev in demolishing half a bottle of plum brandy. There followed a crowded five-way conversation in the Radio Room, with me, Andreyev and a senior crew member at one end and Helena and Alice at the other. At length it was agreed that we would stay on the ship, which was already heading north, and that Alice would be picked up by the returning helicopters and join us on board. There was a discreet silence about the outcome of the investigation, which I for one was glad of. Then back to the mess for the other half-bottle. By this time Andreyev and I were on first-name terms — Mikael and Osfalt, which was as close to Oswald as the Russian could get.
The arriving helicopter, an hour or so later, was loud enough to be heard below decks in the mess. Followed by Andreyev I staggered up the reeling ladders and greeted Alice with an effusiveness that visibly startled her. "Ee-Oop, lass! Welcome to Mother Rooshia! If Baron could see us now, eh?"
The crew — whose names I never got to know, and could hardly tell apart — had found us a couple of berths. Alice shared with a petite female seismologist from Lake Baikal, who was delighted to have someone to practice English on. I had a cabin with Andreyev, presumably at his request. Now he excused himself and went roaring off to fill in his log book, while Alice tried his hammock. "I've never slept in one of these before." she said. "Are you sure you're all right, Chief?"
"Fine." I told her. "Just getting my sea-legs." I reached for my hammock, and by clutching and crawling eventually managed to turn it into a seat. "Now let's see what you found."
"Here it is." Alice began to empty her bag — then glanced at the door. "D'you think we're safe here?"
"We're in the bowels of a bloody Russian ship, lass." I reminded her. "If we're not safe there's nowt we can do about it, is there?"
Alice seemed to see the truth of this. She handed over the items. "Here's the disks, and here's the cassettes."
"Not much cop as evidence." I pointed out. "No photos? No negatives?"
"Come off it, Chief! He had ages to destroy them!"
"I thought he might have kept them." I said. "We haven't got much of a case without."
"It doesn't matter, though, does it?" Alice asked. "I mean, we know he did it."
"If Machin hadn't pulled that gun," I said, "if he'd had the sense to get a clever lawyer instead, we'd be up the creek, lass."
"All right, but he didn't. They'll dig Stuart's body out in the spring, and we'll be home and hosed."
"You think so?" I asked gloomily. "Even with the transmitter location, it's still going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There's a lot of territory out there."
Alice shrugged. "Not much we can do about that."
"Fair enough." I admitted. "But Devine's not going to be impressed with a pile of floppy disks and a couple of Schubert cassettes. I just wish the bastard had kept those photographs."

Progress through the pack ice was slow and tortuous. It was two days before the Maxim Gorky was clear enough to put on some speed. After writing up my report I spent a lot of time on deck watching the icebergs slide past, some with passengers in the form of penguins, others vast and desolate. The scenery was intriguing, and when Andreyev suggested I join him on a scouting flight, I repressed my natural caution and accepted. 
There was the same sickening lurch as the ship dropped away beneath us, and the tumult of the rotors overhead made it hard to talk. I contented myself with watching the maze of white and blue dwindle away beneath us. The machine swung around, and the Russian gestured towards the south. "There she is!" 
I could see the Antarctic continent, distinguished from the pack-ice by its hills and ridges, folds of dark grey rock. As I watched, a massive glacier calved into the sea, spawning a berg that would have dwarfed the largest ocean liner. Perhaps Stuart's body would come that way one day, unfound, melting away at last into the heart of the polar seas. "See?" We rose higher, and Andreyev pointed at something further away still — a dark band across the sky at the very horizon. "The winter weather, she comes."
"You're not staying here for winter?" I asked. The man shook his head. "Winter is no good for flying. I go back to Vladivostock, work there for a while — oil rigs, fishing, da ? Maybe come back in summer." 
"Don't you get bored with coming down here?"
The Russian shook his head, and made a sweeping motion in which the helicopter shared, turning on its axis. A panorama of crystal ice and untainted seas swept past us, a hazeless sky of brilliant blue. "Nyet. " 

That evening we dined at the Captain's table. He was an affable red-bearded Estonian who nodded a great deal and tried hard to work in his English, which consisted of three phrases: "I hope you are well.", "Certainly not." and "The weather is exceptional for this time of year." — the last being a guaranteed agreement-getter for any time and place in the world. Alice sat next to her roommate, who gave us a running translation as we went. Dinner began with borscht, which, she explained to us, was "soup with beetroots". 
Alice swept the thin red liquid with her fork as if she was trawling for cod. "Where's the beetroot?" she asked.
"We throw away." the seismologist told her, as if it was obvious.
Halfway through dessert — an uninspiring flan — the mess door banged open and there was a shout in Russian. All around us men jumped to their feet and rushed for the door. Netya glanced at the Captain, who nodded; grasping me with one arm and Alice with the other, she gently but firmly propelled us through the mass of bodies to the exterior, and on to the deck. 
I expected to see a looming iceberg, or at least a lifeboat drill. But the Russians were thronging along the rail, gazing raptly at the sky with expressions of wonder. Looking upwards I saw why. The sky was fluorescent, full of twisting sheets of light. They clashed, melded, melted and came apart in a kind of slow-motion ballet. I could not have said how close they were, in front of the next berg or beyond the stars: they existed in their own space, a world of light and darkness. One after another they came forward, twisting and splitting, weaving themselves into cloth of glowing colours, a fabulous display of Nature's handiwork. 

All too soon the Southern Lights began to fade, dwindle into points, flicker and disappear. with the kind of sigh reserved for the last firework, the Russians trooped back to their flaccid flans. Netya steered us inside. "Is good, yes?" she demanded.
"Is incredible." Alice told her. She turned to me. "Chief, who do I see about getting a posting down here?"

The days passed. Gratz was declared out of danger, and spent his days wrapped up like a geriatric passenger on the QE2, watching the passing scenery from a deckchair. He grumbled about the pay he had lost and the delights of spring in Antarctica that he wouldn't be there to see, and made private comments to me about 'these crazy Russians'. At length one of the crazy Russians offered to play him at chess, and from that time on he spent most of his days battling them across a chequerboard. I watched enough games to learn that Gratz was good, but wildly unconventional; the methodical Russians usually won, but sometimes lost spectacularly. I could not help wondering how Machin would have fared. 

I spent most of my own time with Andreyev, discussing a variety of things in a casual sort of way — bureaucracies we had worked for, the merits of European football — and found myself growing to like the man more and more. It's easy to like somebody who has saved your life, but I felt we would have got on well anyway; there was a cheerfully cynical streak in the man that I relished. He had a daughter too, I learned; she lived back home in Odessa with their mother, who was a farmer. We went together to the ship's 'entertainments', which consisted of maudlin arias from Russian opera, sung in amazing basso-profundo by the crew. It reminded me of the Methodist hymn-singing of my childhood, and after a glass or two of home brew one night when Alice wasn't there to stop me I went so far as to give them an unaccompanied rendition of Blake's Jerusalem. 

Five days out of Wellington Andreyev took us into the bowels of the ship to meet a man he described as 'the Staff Officer'. This turned out to be a squat female public servant in a white ship's uniform who passed the time of day, offered us a drink, and asked — through Andreyev — one or two conversational questions about our work and the current case. We replied with polite evasions and matters of public record, and she nodded and smiled, no doubt gathering material for her obligatory report. Five thousand words or so later she broke off the conversation, shook my hand and said goodbye. I wondered if they had enough to start a file on me in the Kremlin. More than likely they had one already. 

On the last day before our arrival in Wellington Andreyev brought a bottle into our cabin. I thought I had tried them all by now, but this was one that I didn't know. "What's this?" 
"Is present." Andreyev told me. He picked up the bottle and shook it. Tiny flecks of gold swam through the clear liquid. "Is called gold-spirit."
"Well, ta very much." I was touched. "Shall we try it now?"
The Russian shrugged. "Why not?"
The spirit was more or less like all the others, and the gold was tasteless, but drinking it gave the feeling of enormous wealth. "I've enjoyed this trip, Mikael," I told him. "I didn't think I would, but I have."
"Why did you not think?" Andreyev sounded hurt.
"I suppose I thought you'd be sinister blokes." I said. "Scuttling around in trenchcoats and putting bugs everywhere."
"Ha!" Andreyev shouted with laughter. He leant across the table. "Osfalt, my friend, you have us all wrong. You are the devious folks, making with the plots and plans. In Russia we are simple people."
"I suppose that's true." I said. "And yet it's a shame in a way."
"Hmm?" Andreyev's eyebrows went up. "Why so?"
"Well, if you were a sinister, devious lot, then I'd have an explanation for a lot of strange things. Things that have been bothering me, Mikael."
"You worry too much." the Russian refilled our glasses and sat back. "What things ?"
I took a deep breath. "Well." he said. "Let me put it this way..."

"Let's say it's a few years back, back when relations between East and West weren't so...cordial — " I lifted the glass " — as they are now." 
Andreyev returned the salute silently, with a grin. 
"And let's say, for the sake of argument, that an Australian expedition gets lost in Antarctica, that two of them die and two are missing. One gets picked up by a Russian helicopter in a state of collapse. If you Russians weren't such a simple people, Mikael, wouldn't you think of going back to where you found him and looking for the other one? Wouldn't you follow the rescued man's tracks from the air, back to the campsite — and elsewhere?" I spread my hands. "You see, if you were a devious people, you might have found Stuart's corpse ten years ago. And if you were really devious you might have told the pilot of that helicopter, when he radioed in for instructions, to take photographs and leave everything exactly where it was. And then you might await developments.
"Now, when the rescued man makes no mention of his companion's death, devious people might think they had a hook into that man, a way to make him do what they want. And when he starts to rise in the Defence Department, they might find he has access to some very useful information. They might find that Antarctica was a good place to meet him and obtain that information, especially if they already have someone who speaks English, who knows Antarctica, who can appear at one base or another at various times — let's say a helicopter pilot. 
"But let's say that the rescued man — not being a devious person by nature — gets careless, and his government suspects what's going on. They're not quite sure, but they decide he needs watching, so at the last minute they get hold of a 'sleeping' agent, a scientist who specializes in insects, who's already been taught some Russian, and give him the best cover they can. They give him a quick course in radio, so he can monitor Russian transmissions. He's not much of an agent — he has a conscience, and divided loyalties — but he's the best they can find. Do you follow me?"
Andreyev nodded. He gulped down the tiny glass of spirit. "Another, Osfalt?" I extended my glass while the Russian poured. "So!" he said happily. "This way we soon reach the gold at the bottom. Go on, my friend."
"That would explain several things about Samuels — why he came to Antarctica at all, where he disappeared to during training, where he went for three months before his marriage, how he could afford to buy a house while he was studying. If you Russians were a devious people, all of that would make sense. As it is, it makes no sense at all."
Andreyev nodded sympathetically. "Life makes no sense." he said dramatically. "Is unfortunate."
"Let's go one step further." I said. "Let's assume that our devious people learn that Machin is back at Whale Base. Obviously the first thing he'll do when he gets the chance is to get rid of Stuart's body. It would be easy enough. All he has to do is chuck it in the sea for the leopard seals, or leave it in the open where the skuas can get to it. So they move the body; and pass on its new position to their country in code. But Samuels has a code book, and understands Russian. He intercepts the signal, so he knows where to look. He goes out there with a camera and takes his own photos, makes his own record of the location. If anyone asks why he was there then he has an excuse; he was tracking a penguin. 
"But Samuels makes a fatal mistake. He gives Machin a chance to explain: and Machin kills him. That would solve my next two problems, Mikael: why Machin didn't find Stuart's body and destroy it, and how Samuels was able to find it."
"So." Andreyev said. There was a shout from the deck outside. He smiled dreamily. "They can see land."
"Just one more thing." I said. "Suppose our devious people get to hear that Machin's under investigation. They send someone to help him — someone who can pick locks, let's say. Machin tells them that he wants asylum. But they decide he'd be an embarrassment. The man's a murderer, after all, and a cannibal. They've blackmailed him into spying. It casts a poor light on a country that's trying hard these days to prove how enlightened and liberal it is. So when the time comes Machin's contact is sent out with orders, not to pick him up, but to eliminate him. 
"And that would explain a few final points, Mikael. Why Machin didn't look up when the helicopter was coming down from above. Why he didn't shoot me. He didn't have to — he thought he was getting clean away. And why..." I broke off. 
"Why I save your life?" Andreyev asked. He shook his head, looking more than ever like a great shaggy bear. "Ha! My friend, you are fine detective, but this time you are wrong. Come with me." 
He grasped the bottle and led the way out of the room, down several stairwells into the heart of the ship. Here he swung open a door, and a blast of cold air chilled me to the bone. "You think he would not have shot, hey?" the Russian demanded. "You think you were safe?" He marched over to a slab where a figure lay sheeted in a long open crate. "I show you this." He pulled back the sheet to Machin's waist. Tearing my gaze from the bloody ruin of the man's neck, I looked where Andreyev was pointing. 
On the back of Machin's right index finger, on the finger that had pulled the trigger, there was an ugly red welt where the flesh had been torn away. "You think he wouldn't shoot?" Andreyev repeated vehemently. "Osfalt, you don't know Antarctica! You know nothing about it! He is holding a metal gun in his bare hand! The fingers freeze to the metal! He tries to pull the trigger but his finger is stuck to the guard! He has to pull it away! Your Bulgarian friend, he knows this also. He would have killed you both, Osfalt. A man like that, he has no use for life." He looked at me gravely. "You think you were safe there, my friend? You were not. I save your life — and Tom's life, the mechanic man who doesn't like Russians — I save him too."
"I see." I said slowly. I pulled back the sheet, and we left the cold room. In the corridor I paused. "Thanks again for the present, Mikael. I have a present — of sorts — for you." I reached into my jacket. "I found this in Samuels' room. One of your people must have dropped it, I think. It seems to be in Russian."
Andreyev took the little red book carefully into his huge hands. "Thank you, Osfalt, my friend." he said seriously. "Is beautiful." He motioned towards an open porthole. "Do you mind if I look at him by the light?"
"Not at all." I said.
The Russian took the book across to the porthole. When he turned his hands were empty. On his face was a look of comic despair. "So clumsy I am! I have dropped him!"
"Never mind, Mikael." I told him. "It probably wasn't important."

There was an impromptu celebration on the deck to mark the sighting of New Zealand, and a dinner that night at which the Captain made a tipsy speech, in Russian, in honour of his guests; to me it sounded very much like Baron's equally tipsy attempt at the same thing. Then there was more drinking, and I gave another rendition of Jerusalem by popular demand, this time with a massed chorus. I felt like I was leading the Red Army Choir. Alice and Netya disappeared somewhere with a couple of crewmen and I wandered back to bed, feeling elderly and exhausted — until I saw the envelope on the hammock.
It was a big grey, official-looking envelope, made of cheap paper. I could feel what was inside. Photographs, large glossy photos. And the smaller negatives as well. I stowed them under my pillow and sent up a brief prayer of thanks to the god who looks after detectives. Then I crawled into bed. 
There would be plenty of time to look at them in the morning. Stuart had waited ten years; he could wait another night. It wouldn't matter much to him, down there in the biggest morgue in the world.