Ice Station Zebra Read Online Free PDF

with close-cropped black hair already greying at the temples and a cheerful intelligent face. He caught sight of me, rose and stretched out a hand.
    ‘Dr Carpenter, it must be. Welcome to the wardroom. I’m Benson. Take a seat, take a seat.’
    I said something, appropriate but quick, then asked: ‘What’s wrong? What’s been the hold-up? Why aren’t we under way?’
    ‘That’s the trouble with the world to-day,’ Benson said mournfully. ‘Rush, rush, rush. And where does all the hurry get them? I’ll tell you -’
    ‘Excuse me. I must see the captain.’ I turned to leave but he laid a hand on my arm.
    ‘Relax, Dr Carpenter. We
are
at sea. Take a seat.’
    ‘At sea? On the level? I don’t feel a thing.’
    ‘You never do when you’re three hundred feet down. Maybe four hundred. I don’t,’ he saidexpansively, ‘concern myself with those trifles. I leave them to the mechanics.’
    ‘Mechanics?’
    ‘The captain, engineer officer, people like those.’ He waved a hand in a generously vague gesture to indicate the largeness of the concept he understood by the term ‘mechanics’. ‘Hungry?’
    ‘We’ve cleared the Clyde?’
    ‘Unless the Clyde extends to well beyond the north of Scotland, the answer to that is, yes, we have.’
    ‘Come again?’
    He grinned. ‘At the last check we were well into the Norwegian Sea, about the latitude of Bergen.’
    ‘This is still only Tuesday morning?’ I don’t know if I looked stupid: I certainly felt it.
    ‘It’s still only Tuesday morning.’ He laughed. ‘And if you can work out from that what kind of speed we have been making in the last fifteen hours we’d all be obliged if you’d keep it to yourself.’ He leaned back in his seat and lifted his voice. ‘Henry!’
    A steward, white-jacketed, appeared from what I took to be the pantry. He was a tall thin character with a dark complexion and the long lugubrious face of a dyspeptic spaniel. He looked at Benson and said in a meaningful voice:
‘Another
plate of French fries, Doc?’
    ‘You know very well that I never have more than one helping of that carbohydrated rubbish,’Benson said with dignity. ‘Not, at least, for breakfast. Henry, this is Dr Carpenter.’
    ‘Howdy,’ Henry said agreeably.
    ‘Breakfast, Henry,’ Benson said. ‘And, remember, Dr Carpenter is a Britisher. We don’t want him leaving with a low opinion of the chow served up in the United States Navy.’
    ‘If anyone aboard this ship has a low opinion of the food,’ Henry said darkly, ‘they hide it pretty well. Breakfast. The works. Right away.’
    ‘Not the works, for heaven’s sake,’ I said. ‘There are some things we decadent Britishers can’t face up to first thing in the morning. One of them is French fries.’
    He nodded approvingly and left. I said: ‘Dr Benson, I gather.’
    ‘Resident medical officer aboard the
Dolphin,
no less,’ he admitted. ‘The one who’s had his professional competence called into question by having a competing practitioner called in.’
    ‘I’m along for the ride. I assure you I’m not competing with anyone.’
    ‘I know you’re not,’ he said quickly. Too quickly. Quickly enough so that I could see Swanson’s hand in this, could see him telling his officers to lay off quizzing Carpenter too much. I wondered again what Swanson was going to say when and if we ever arrived at the Drift Station and he found out just how fluent a liar I was. Benson went on, smiling: ‘There’s no call for even one medico aboard this boat, far less two.’
    ‘You’re not overworked?’ From the leisurely way he was going about his breakfast it seemed unlikely.
    ‘Overworked! I’ve sick-bay call once a day and no one ever turns up — except the morning after we arrive in port with a long cruise behind us and then there are liable to be a few sore heads around. My main job, and what is supposed to be my speciality, is checking on radiation and atmosphere pollution of one kind or another