Ice Station Zebra Read Online Free PDF

officer was there; they must have come in after I had gone to sleep and left before I woke up. I looked around some more and then I listened. I was suddenly conscious of the almost complete quiet, the stillness, the entire lack of any perceptible motion. I might have been in the bedroom of my own house. What had gone wrong? What hold-up had occurred? Why in God's name weren't we under way? I'd have sworn the previous night that Commander Swanson had been just as conscious of the urgency as I had been.
      I had a quick wash in the folding Pullman-type basin, passed up the need for a shave, pulled on shirt, trousers and shoes, and - went outside. A few feet away a door opened to starboard off the passage. I went along and walked in. The officers' wardroom, without a doubt, with one of them still at breakfast, slowly munching his way through a huge plateful of steak, eggs and French fries, glancing at a magazine in a leisurely fashion and giving every impression of a man enjoying life to the luxurious full. He was about my own age, big, inclined to fat--a common condition, I was to find, among the entire crew, who ate so well and exercised so little--with close-cropped black hair already graying at the temples, and a cheeful, 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 today," 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 said expansively, "concern myself with those trifles. I leave them to the mechanics."
      "Mechanics?"
      "The captain, the engineer officer, people like that." 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've been makin 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 in the U. S. 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