Cold is the Sea (21 page)

It was not, however, Keith's intent to proceed directly to the North Pole. If there were time, he might do it later. Likewise, the slow counterclockwise rotation of the ice pack had long been plotted by explorers and scientists. This was a factor of interest, not of immediate concern.
Cushing
's mission was to proceed to several specified geographical positions and determine if she could depend upon being able to fire her missiles within a given radius of each as the ice slowly drifted overhead. The operation order said she was to be the first of a number of submarines sent
to determine whether the possibility of firing missiles in the Arctic Ocean could be guaranteed during all periods of the year.

Of all the navigation instruments with which ships have been fitted since the beginning, the most important has always been the compass. The early mariners had nothing else. But a compass in the Arctic Ocean is essentially valueless, a fact dramatically brought out when one contemplates that at the North Pole all directions are south. The rotation of the earth no longer gives any directive force, and the gyrocompass, that marvel of the industrial age, wanders at will. A magnetic compass might theoretically be able to point to the nearby north magnetic pole, which ever so slowly drifts around among the icebound islands of Canada's northern archipelago, but at this close range the magnetic pole is very broad and very weak. Inside the steel hull of a submarine a magnetic compass, moreover, is not dependable.

This problem had presented itself with the voyage of the
Nautilus
across the top of the world, not quite three years before. It had been resolved by installation of the guidance system of an early missile, and by redrawing the map of the Arctic so that
Nautilus
' northward course, as she headed toward the Pole, continued to be “north” after she had passed through it and was heading in a southerly direction—and remained so until normal functions of the gyrocompass could be restored. The grid system resulting made it at least possible to orient one's location in relation to navigable water and land masses. Three years later,
Cushing
had a much more sophisticated system designed specifically for submarines and useful anywhere in the world. A good segment of Keith's training and that of many of his officers and crew, before ever reporting to the Electric Boat Shipyard, had been devoted to learning the intricacies of the Submarine Inertial Navigation System, which, inevitably, became known as SINS.

Now they were using their SINS for real, in the trickiest of situations, the high northern latitudes, and applying it to the same old grid system. Even though he had been well prepared for it, both in briefings and in his studies of previous northern voyages, Keith felt a surge in his adrenaline when
Cushing
's ice detector showed that the ice above was solid.

There was an underwater television transmitter mounted on the main deck several feet forward of the sail, controllable in
train and elevation from a small console located near its receiver in the control room. Two strong searchlights had also been installed, synchronized in direction with the television head. It was hard to see far underwater in the best of conditions, but the water was at least clear, the lights powerful. Keith estimated that he could see for about a hundred feet in any direction. The only things visible, however, were
Cushing
's rounded bow, if one trained the head down and forward, and bumpy ice overhead.

The comparison to the plastered ceiling of a room flashed into Keith's mind. Surprisingly, despite the fact that his research into previous under-ice voyages had prepared him for it, the undersurface of the ice was far from smooth. Great rounded projections extended downward, reflecting additional thickness above. From his reading, Keith knew that such projections usually resulted from jamming together of the ice floes and the consequent rafting, or piling up, of broken segments of the once smooth surface when they did so.

One of the books had been written by survivors of a whaling ship which had been caught in the Arctic and had had to spend two horrible years there. It told how their ship had ventured into a wide lead at the edge of the ice pack, how it had unwisely gone too far between solid floes, how the lead began to close at the same time as the wind died, so that finally, in desperation, the crew had tried to tow her by getting out on the ice and pulling on hawsers.

Two or three times the lead reopened, bringing hope and causing renewed effort, but finally the ship was caught fast. Efforts to keep the ice broken up around her waterline were totally unavailing, and the squeeze began. Driven by far-distant winds and currents, the ice floes between which she was caught pushed inexorably together. Great blocks of ice popped up from the pressure, lying askew on top of those below. Many more were driven below the surface. A regular pressure ridge formed where the original lead of clear water had been, and the poor whaler was part of it, embedded in it.

The grinding pressure was slow, but irresistible. The ship's wooden ribs bent, finally broke in a number of places. At the same time, by good fortune, she was heaved up, out of the worst of the pressure, so that her hull, though dangerously wounded, was still sound. Listing over heavily on top of the ice hummock
created by the rafting together of the floes, she remained in this situation for two years, her crew suffering unbelievable privation from lack of food and the fierce cold. Ultimately this particular ship was fortunate. She had been stove in, but not excessively so. Her crew had been able to make the most critical repairs. When the ice floe released its pressure, which luckily for her it finally did, she was able to remain afloat and sail home. Most ships in her situation were not so fortunate and sank as soon as the ice opened up again.

The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen had deliberately taken advantage of these circumstances when he made his exploratory voyage across the Arctic Ocean in the last years of the nineteenth century. His ship was specially built, so designed that when frozen in the ice and subjected to the squeeze of the ice floes, she would rise up on top rather than be crushed. The little
Fram
endured a three-year freeze in the ice during which she actually did slowly progress across the Arctic Ocean, and finally, when the ice let her down once again into the free sea, sailed home to Norway, triumphant.

All of this was history; but now Keith was seeing the same situation from underneath. Although ocean currents and slow melting gnawed at the bottom side of the rafted ice floes and blunted their initially jagged edges, the hummocks nevertheless projected far deeper into the sea than their corresponding grinding edges extended above it. And in the water, as Keith well knew, the floes he was observing were teeming with life—primarily microscopic life—so that, even under the
Cushing
's pair of powerful searchlights, the undersurface was dark.

But, though rafting was frequent, particularly in the area near the edge of the ice pack, it was by no means consistent. Most of the ice was a broad, thick sheet, solidly covering the surface of the sea. This was what Keith expected, having read all the accounts of the early under-ice explorations. As long as
Cushing
remained submerged in deep water, and barring the possibility of an iceberg frozen in the vast expanse of sea ice, he need fear no danger. In an apt analogy, one of the accounts had compared the Arctic Ocean to a huge room full of water, with a submarine the size of a matchstick suspended from the ceiling. On this basis the ice would be the thickness of the paint on the ceiling of the
room, and the occasional rafting could be compared to carelessly laid or cracked plaster, bulging it downward.

Indeed, one could include polynyas in the metaphor by suggesting that the plaster had cracked open in several places—and icebergs by comparing them to occasional walnut shells, glued to it. In any case, in the deep Arctic Ocean basin, actually two basins, the only problems were those associated with its ceiling.

Next day, with the ice solid overhead, Keith ordered
Cushing
's speed slowed to the minimum creeping speed and gently planed upward, raising a periscope long before there was danger of contact with the ice above. This permitted him to see the ice directly, from a much closer range, to confirm the reports he had read and the visual impressions given by the television transmitter. There was danger to the periscope, of course, should
Cushing
inadvertently come too close to a hummock. In one of the early explorations
Nautilus
had bent both of hers in such an accident.

To maneuver the ship into the shallowest portion of the ice floe, however, to find a polynya (inevitably frozen over in winter) and surface through it, or fire missiles through it, use of the periscope was imperative. It was as much for drill as for anything else, but it was nevertheless with extreme curiosity that Keith followed his periscope up from the floor. He put his eye to it as soon as the eyepiece came out of the periscope well, almost as though he were making an observation during a wartime approach on an enemy ship.

By careful calculation, the top of the 'scope was no closer than twenty-five feet from the bottom of the ice floe. Nevertheless, Keith had momentarily forgotten that even in low power it had a magnification of one and a half times, and his first reaction was alarm as the huge menacing cover filled the delicate lens. He had deliberately chosen the time of maximum daylight, and there was a moderate lighting of the nearly impervious ice. Except for color, it looked much like the frosted glass viewer upon which people spread their colored slide transparencies for comparison. Training the periscope forward he could see the powerful rays from the searchlights of the television set beaming upward through the water and reflecting upon the bottom of the ice, giving it an eerie surreal effect. To either side, with less benefit
from the searchlights, the ice appeared like heavy green-tinged rain clouds, except much closer and more menacing. The best view was dead ahead, where he had the most light, and he could see, as the television had shown from farther below and with less resolution, that while it contained many small bumps and a few large ones from rafting, the undersurface of the ice was relatively free of jagged edges. He would never dare run at more than creeping speed this close to it, however. An unseen hummock of deep rafted ice, detected too late by the upward-beamed fathometer, could easily destroy a periscope and even damage the tough steel of
Cushing
's sail.

Cushing
had only just entered the ice pack. Perhaps there were thinner patches of ice ahead. Perhaps a polynya, or a lead, more thinly frozen over than the main floes. But already the vista was discouraging. Fifteen or twenty feet of ice were far too much to shoot a missile through, no matter what stratagems were employed.
Cushing
would have to break through and launch her test missiles in the surface mode. And, so far, the ice detector had found no areas of thin ice at all. Thoughtfully, Keith motioned for the periscope to be lowered. The entire time it was up had been one of tension. He was afraid of damaging the delicate instrument, but mainly his tension was due to the menace of the ice cover.

With a sense of concern, Keith ordered
Cushing
's depth increased. His mission was going to be more difficult than he had imagined. There were millions of square miles of solid ice in the Arctic Ocean. This reality brought home the implacability of the environment against which he was pitted. On his side, he had a fine ship with a sturdy hull and a magnificent, ever supplying heart, the reactor. But compared to the vast expanse of solidity under which he must maneuver,
Cushing
was indeed a matchstick, suspended by an infinitesimal thread, under a flat ceiling of ice. And the ice stretched as far as the eye or the imagination could reach, in every direction.

10

P
eggy Leone's almost twice-weekly drop-in visits had become a real bore, but maybe her pattern was beginning to change. If so, Laura was grateful she had not yet shown any of the impatience she had been beginning to feel. Maybe the problem was starting to solve itself. So far there had been but one subject on Peggy's mind, worked over interminably, through infinite variations: her desire that Keith exercise his option to retire from active duty at the completion of twenty years of commissioned service in the Navy. His retired pay would be fifty percent of his active-duty pay (she hardly acknowledged Laura's comment that the allowances for subsistence and quarters, a substantial part of the total pay package, would not be included in the computation, nor would submarine extrahazardous duty pay). He could easily get a job paying him at least that much again. They would buy a home somewhere, have a flower and vegetable garden, plant permanent roots. Ruthie and any later little brothers and sisters would grow up in a stable home environment. They would no longer be gypsies, traveling hither and thither at the behest of BuPers. They would at last be
the same as other people. Keith had already made his contribution to the country and the Navy; not only during the war, but afterward. The twenty-year retirement option had been created for dedicated people like Keith. He should exercise it. Now that he was a commander, he had advanced in rank about as far as the Navy would allow a nonacademy graduate to go. (Laura reminded her that the highly honored first skipper of the first nuclear sub, the
Nautilus
, had not been an academy graduate either. Commander Wilkinson was now a captain, with every prospect of becoming an admiral in a few years. This, too, was irrelevant to Peggy's thesis.)

Laura was bone weary of citing the holes in Peggy's arguments. It did no good. Like Peggy, she was only repeating herself, but unlike her, she was tired of trying to think of new verbal clothing for the same old facts. Keith's prospects were every bit as bright as Wilkinson's, or Rich's, for that matter. Besides, he so obviously enjoyed what he was doing. The
Cushing
was one of the best commands in the Navy. Bud Dulany was three years older and a couple of years senior to Keith, and he had campaigned with every means at his command for the assignment to one of her two crews.
Cushing
, a standard Polaris submarine in all respects otherwise, had been built with a strengthened sail and superstructure designed to take far more than the usual impact with hard sea ice—everyone in the New London-Groton area knew that—and by consequence was expected to be a candidate for all sorts of special missions. It had been a feather in Bud's hat, and an even greater one in Keith's, to have been ordered, respectively, as skippers of the gold and blue crews of this somewhat special ship. But Laura might as well have been talking to herself. None of her arguments made the slightest impression. Peggy simply was not receptive to anything which, in the slightest way, contradicted her already cemented preconceptions.