Zodiac Station Read Online Free

planet. The main building was a low, green oblong jacked up on spindly steel legs. A white geodesic dome bulged out of the roof; the rest of it was covered with a mess of masts, aerials, satellite dishes and solar panels. Subsidiary buildings clustered around it: a mix of faded wooden huts in assorted sizes, curved-roofed Nissen huts, and bulbous orange spheres with round portholes, like deep-sea submersibles left behind by a sinking ocean. Flags fluttered from a line of red poles that staked the perimeter, a shallow semicircle down to the frozen edge of the fjord.
    We pulled up outside the main building – the Platform. It was bigger than it had looked from the top of the hill, almost a hundred metres long, with a jumble of crates and boxes stored underneath. A flight of steel steps led up to the front door.
    A low bang rolled down the valley as I stepped out. I glanced over my shoulder.
    ‘Is that thunder?’
    ‘Seismic work,’ said Greta. ‘They’re blasting on the glacier.’
    We climbed the steps. On the wall by the door, a scratched and faded plaque said
Zodiac Station
; under it, a much brighter sign added,
British South Polar Agency
. It looked like the newest thing on the base.
    ‘Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?’ I looked around, half expecting to see penguins.
    ‘New management.’
    Greta kicked a bar on the base of the door and it swung in. All the doors at Zodiac opened inwards – to stop drift snow trapping you. Inside was a small, dark boot room, and a second door opening further in.
    ‘No shoes in the Platform,’ said Greta. She turned to go.
    ‘Wait,’ I called. ‘Should I introduce myself somewhere?’
    The door slammed behind her.
    I left my boots and coat in the vestibule and ventured through the next door. The first thing I saw on the other side was a gun rack bolted to the wall: half a dozen rifles standing upright, more spaces where others were missing. Beyond, a straight corridor ran for what seemed an eternity, dozens of doors but no windows. It reminded me, unpleasantly, of the set of the Overlook Hotel. You know, from the film
The Shining
. Stanley Kubrick directed it.
    I padded down the carpeted corridor in my socks. I read the signs on the doors I passed, little squares of card that seemed to have been typed on an honest-to-goodness typewriter.
Laundry Room
;
Dark Room
;
Radio Room
; laboratories, numbered in no particular order I could work out. One said
Pool Room
, and under it someone had taped a holiday-brochure photo of an azure-blue swimming pool. I opened it, out of curiosity, but there was only a half-size pool table crammed in a windowless cupboard.
    Further along, I found the door for Hagger’s lab. On a sheet of A4, a red skull and crossbones warned
HIGH INFECTION RISK OF UNKNOWN DNA
. Undeterred, I knocked and when no one answered I went in. None of the doors at Zodiac have locks except the toilet (and that had broken).
    Hagger’s big reputation hadn’t won him any favours in the room ballot. His lab was tiny, though at least there was some daylight. Two small windows looked back to the mountains behind the base, a vision of clarity against the clutter inside. Wires and tubes were draped everywhere: you had to step carefully to avoid bringing down the whole show. Somehow, he’d managed to cram a complete laboratory on to the workbenches: a mass balance, a shiny electron microscope fresh out of the box, sample bottles, Erlenmeyer flasks, and a set of green notebooks lined up against the wall. A length of yellow pipe sat in a tray of water in the fumes cupboard. A small refrigerator humming under the bench made me think of the old joke about selling fridges to Eskimos.
    A hard-topped table made an island in the centre of the chaos, though you could hardly see the surface for all the stuff piled up on it. Inevitably, I knocked something off when I walked past. A stapled sheaf of paper. I bent down to pick it up, and as I glanced at it – as you do – saw my own name