Ice Station Zebra (1963)

Ice Station Zebra is a 1963 thriller novel written by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. It marked a return to MacLean's classic Arctic setting. After completing this novel, whose plot line parallels real-life events during the Cold War, MacLean retired from writing for three years. In 1968 it was loosely adapted into a film of the same name.

Plot

Drift ice Station Zebra, a British meteorological station built on an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean, suffers a catastrophic oil fire; several of its men die, and their shelter and supplies are destroyed. The survivors take refuge in one hut with little food and heat.

The (fictional) American nuclear-powered submarine USS Dolphin is dispatched on a rescue mission. Just before it departs, Dr. Carpenter, the narrator, is sent to accompany it. Carpenter's background is unknown, but he claims that he is an expert in dealing with frostbite and other deep-cold medical conditions, and he carries orders from the Chief of Naval Operations of the United States Navy. Commander Swanson, the Dolphin submarine captain, is suspicious of Carpenter, and calls in his superior, Admiral Garvie. Garvie refuses to allow Carpenter on board without knowing his mission. Under duress, Carpenter finally reveals that the ice station is actually a highly-equipped listening post, keeping watch for nuclear missile launches from the Soviet Union, a statement that convinces the commander and the admiral.

Dolphin reaches the Arctic pack ice and dives under it. It surfaces in a break in the ice and succeeds in making tenuous radio contact with Ice Station Zebra. Carpenter confides to the Captain that the commander of the station is his brother. Having obtained a bearing on the station, Dolphin dives again, and succeeds in finding a lead 8 kilometres (5 mi) from the station and breaks through a crack in the ice above. Carpenter, Executive Officer Hansen, and two crewmen are put above on the pack ice and make the journey to the station on foot through an Arctic storm, taking with them as many supplies as they can. They reach Zebra after a near-impossible trek and find that eight of the men on the station are dead, while the 11 others are barely alive. Investigating the corpses, Carpenter finds that one of them has been shot. They find that their radio has been damaged, and so Carpenter and Hansen return to Dolphin. The American submarine moves close to the station, and finding no open water, uses a torpedo to blast a hole in the ice.

The sick men are cared for by Dolphin. Carpenter investigates further and finds that the fire was no accident; it was a cover to hide that three of the dead men, one of whom was his brother, were murdered. He also discovers some unburned supplies hidden in the bottom of a hut, while Swanson finds a gun hidden in a petrol tank. The surviving members of Zebra are brought on board the Dolphin, and the station is abandoned. While still under the ice, a fire breaks out in the engine room and the submarine is forced to shut down its nuclear reactor. Thanks to Swanson's ingenuity and several hours of hard work, the crew succeeds in saving the boat.

Carpenter calls a meeting of the survivors and announces that the fire was no accident. He reveals that he is an MI6 officer, and that his real mission was to retrieve photographic film from a reconnaissance satellite that has photographed every missile base in the United States. The film had been ejected from the satellite so that Soviet agents operating under cover at Zebra could retrieve it; Carpenter's brother had been sent to the station to prevent this. Carpenter reveals the identity of the Soviet agents, and arrests them.

The film of the American bases is recovered, but Carpenter has switched the film on the Soviets. The film they successfully sent to the Soviet surface ships is actually photographs of cartoon characters on the walls of the submarine's sick bay.

Background and origin of plot

The novel was influenced by the heightened atmosphere of the Cold War, with its escalating series of international crises in the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as the 1960 U-2 incident; West Berlin; unrest in Hungary, Indochina, Congo, and Latin America; and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The novel exploits contemporary fascination with the under-the-ice exploits of such American nuclear submarines as Nautilus (first to pass under the North Pole), Skate, Sargo and Seadragon. MacLean may have been anticipating the excitement of his British readers regarding the upcoming commissioning of HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy's first nuclear submarine. Also, MacLean may have been influenced by press reports about the nuclear-powered submarine USS Skate visiting Ice Station Alpha, located on Ice Island T-3 in the Arctic, on 14 August 1958, as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). At the time that the novel was published, under-the-ice operations by US Navy nuclear-powered submarines were prohibited until SUBSAFE measures had been implemented following the loss of USS Thresher.

Ice Station Zebra also uses the accelerating Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union as the backdrop for the novel, and may have been directly inspired by news accounts from 17 April 1959, about a missing experimental CORONA satellite capsule (Discoverer 2) that inadvertently landed near Spitzbergen on 13 April and may have been recovered by Soviet agents. In 2006 the National Reconnaissance Office declassified information stating that "an individual formerly possessing CORONA access was the technical adviser to the movie" and admitted "the resemblance of the loss of the DISCOVERER II capsule, and its probable recovery by the Soviets" on Spitsbergen Island, to the book by Alistair MacLean.