Authors: Edward L. Beach
But seven men per transfer, opening and shutting hatches, and
changing equipment for each group, took time. One hundred twenty-seven men,
Cushing
's actual complement counting her skipper, would take eighteen trips, with one man left over. At ten minutes per group, the fastest time achieved, eighteen transfers would take three hours. A nineteenth transfer would be necessary for the one man still aboard the
Cushing
. Richardson knew well who would be that last man.
Nor would he ever be able to forget the sinking feeling in his chest when one of the resting scubamen reported the
Cushing
to be higher in the water, her bow now conveniently level with the
Manta
. This could only mean that she was no longer able to maintain the down angle Keith had programmed to reduce the water pressure, and hence the force of the leak, in the damaged compartment!
Eleven transfers had been made. On the UQC Rich told Keith to hurry, that he would authorize eight men per trip, with only two monitoring topside. Keith's voice told him what he was afraid to hear: the ship would not last more than half an hour longer.
Then more disaster. Two of the scuba tanks ran out of compressed air. They were recharged immediately, but it took time. Then one of the mouthpieces, too anxiously taken from one of the transferees, dropped and was damaged. Unusable. More time lost.
“Boss,” said Keith over the underwater telephone, “we have a full outfit of regular escape breathing gear, with hoods. If we leave off the tanks, we might be able to reduce the suiting-up time.”
“Try it with half of the men!” The stratagem was successful, the men with the hoods being helped by the others, and the next time all but two used hoods instead of tanks. But now
Cushing
was floating with a noticeable up-angle, and its gradual increase could be seen by the scubamen topside.
“We can't hold her, boss! Depth's increasing! I'm going to let out a group without waiting for the wet suits!” Richardson and Williams, without the underwater TV, could only imagine the scantily clad men, wearing nothing but their regular clothing, a breathing bag with oxygen, and a yellow, Plexiglas-faced hood over their heads, being herded out of the
Cushing
's airlock. The scubamen would help them to the now tightly stretched nylon line which was beginning to take some of the negative buoyancy
of the missile submarine, and along it into
Manta
's airlock. The change in procedure caught the operating crew in
Manta
's torpedo room as they were opening the lower escape chamber hatch, getting the previous group out of the chamber. The instructions received only minutes before had been to bundle the suits quickly into sacks, forgetting the tanks, and give them immediately to the waiting scubaman, who would take them back into the airlock. Not till then would the lower hatch be closed. Of course, the upper one could not be opened for the same period. A small confusion, quickly straightened outâbut at the expense of another vital minute or two.
The men came in, nine of them, faint with the cold, gasping, but alive.
“Twenty-three men left, Rich! We're putting ten of them out this time! It's all our hatch can hold! Stand by to grab them!”
There was no way to communicate with the men topside, except through a hastily generated system of pounding on the hull. The situation had been explained, however, the last time a scubaman appeared in the escape trunk. The number of bangs on the hull indicated the number of men to be found in
Cushing
's trunk when the hatch was opened. As the tenth bang resounded, the rope connecting the two submarines was extending downward at an appreciable angle. The action of the line was causing the sinking
Cushing
to drift slowly under the
Manta
, or pulling the
Manta
over her, which was the same thing. The line was stretched to its uttermost, a fact the divers recognized. Hurriedly, they urged the men onward and up the line. The escapees pulled themselves up rapidly along it. Then, near the
Cushing
, but with a snap audible also inside the
Manta
, the line broke.
The released nylon snapped backward like the rubber band it had virtually become, but the vicious whiplash was subdued by the water. Even so, the short end of it struck the scubaman on the missile submarine's rounded foredeck, knocking him off. At that instant the two submarines touched,
Manta
's keel scraping across the bullet-shaped bow of the
Cushing
. Pulling himself back by his safety line, the scubaman found to his horror that the line was jammed in its slot on
Cushing
's deck, where the
Manta
's scraping passage had crimped the recessed track. He could feel the pressure rapidly increasing in his ears. Frantically, he struggled with the belt around his middle. It seemed jammed
too. He let out all his breath, tried to force the heavy web belt over his hips. It would not move. The buckle was suddenly too complicated to operate. Desperately, he tried to shove it over his shoulders, but this, too, was impossible. He had forgotten about the tanks on his back, and now he had lost his mouthpiece. A huge dark shadow, the
Manta
, and safety, was just above him. He could almost reach it with his hand! He grabbed for his mouthpiece, found it hanging down on its hose, jammed it into his mouth. His lungs were tight. There was pressure on his chest. No air in his lungs. No help for it; he would have to inhale water, swallow it. Then he could get air! But, instead, a violent coughing fit seized him. He lost the mouthpiece again. He could not release himself from the
Cushing
. With a last convulsive effort, he managed to yank the toggles which inflated his life jacket. The rubber-impregnated fabric closed around his chest, lifted him to the limit of the tether still connecting him to the sinking submarine. But now he could not move. He was like a kite on the end of a string, floating above the slowly descending
Cushing
. Despairingly, he saw the shadow of the
Manta
receding. He reached for it with both arms, and knew that he was doomed.
Three of the ten hooded men had got into the
Manta
's rescue chamber before the line broke. Two more were nearly there, managed to get in on their own. The remaining scubaman got two more in, but three floated away, lifted up against the ice cover by the air in their hoods. Heedless of his instructions, he released himself from his safety line, swam after them. Grabbing the nearest one, he motioned downward. Seventeen feet below, the submarine's dark upper works were visible. The man nodded, tried to paddle downward in a vertical, upright position so that the air would remain in the hood. He could not. The scubaman squeezed the hood, forced a bubble of air out, but it immediately expanded again with air from the breathing bag. He tried wrenching the hood off, tried improvising instant buddy-breathing technique with his single mouthpiece, but the man could not, or would not, understand.
Anxiously, the scubaman swam down, tried to enter
Manta
's rescue chamber. It was closed. The men inside were transferring into the interior of the sub. He banged on the deck with the hammer tied there for the purpose, heard the answering sledgehammer thump. The door opened after an interminable
time, and he entered. Minutes later, he emerged again, this time with an assistant, not dressed, who would remain in the airlock. He carried a length of line with a buoy on the end. Swiftly he knotted the line outside the open outer hatch, released the buoy, followed it up, riding with the line under his arm. He was not far from the men in the hoods, who were floating quietly with their heads against the underside of the ice. He reached the nearest, gripped his armâand recoiled in horrified dismay. The arm floated downward limply, remained hanging at a small angle with the rest of his body. The man was dead.
So were the other two. But as the scubaman was investigating them, two others appeared, and then four more, floating up swiftly from below the
Manta
. Rapidly he swam to each, dragged him to the buoyed line, indicated he should haul himself down it. Gratefully, worriedly, they obeyed. The next to last got only partway down, then stopped, his hands and feet desperately gripping the line. The man above was forced to stop also. When the scubaman finally was able to turn his attention away from the others to go back and clear the tangle, he had to pry both bodies free. Two more yellow hoods appeared below him, coming from deep beneath the
Manta
. Helplessly, fatalistically, he let go of the stiffened body in his arms, let it float away, lunged for the newcomers. He intercepted one before he had reached the ice, was able to get him to the buoyed line, start him down. The other hit the ice, but he was able to get the buoy to him, and he accompanied him partway as he haltingly pulled himself down.
There were five dead bodies floating in yellow, Plexiglas-faced hoods, up against the ice. The scubaman swam to each, felt him carefully, then on to the next, repeating the procedure. Finally he left them and swam down to the submarine. The two men he had just sent down were holding the knotted end of the line near the closed hatch. They were still alive, moving feebly. They could not last long in this temperature. He banged on the hatch, banged again. Finally an answering thump, and a minute later it opened. By this time both men were unconscious. He shoved them inside, yelled to the suited diver waiting for him with head above the waterline in the chamber, “Watch for more guys coming up! I'll be right back, but these guys may have had it!” Then he pushed him out and shut the door.
He was in time,
Manta
's doctor assured him, though barely.
But when he got back outside there was no one in sight except the scubaman who had taken his place, and the five hooded bodies above, against the ice. In vain they searched for the missing diver who had been on the
Cushing
's deck. He was an experienced, qualified scubaman. He would not have panicked, would have found means to free himself from the sinking missile submarine's deck. But he was nowhere to be seen. Ten minutes, fifteen, they waited. No more yellow hoods came up from the depths below. No welcome dark-suited comrade appeared. The five bodies overhead stood watch, dangling upright against the ice, their hoods slightly flattened against it, their bodies hanging loosely, limply, arms slightly away from their torsos. They had so nearly made it! Their heads were on the same level as the top of the
Manta
's sail. One could so easily swim the few yards up to them, grab their feet, and pull them down. . . .
Disconsolately, the two scubamen reentered the escape trunk, closed the door, and made ready to report that there was no further action topside.
“Rich,” said Keith, speaking over the UQC in a quiet, yet tense voice, “we got everybody out but four. Jim Hanson and Curt Taylor are with me still, and chiefs Hollister and Mirklebaum. I'm afraid we're going to have to ride her on down, boss. I hope all the others made it!”
“Five, Keith. You didn't count yourself!”
“That's right, five. Did you get all the rest?”
“I'm sure we did, Keith. We're still taking a muster with your list. Howie Trumbull is in charge. And I have your ship's log and your unfinished report. You can rest easy. All your men are okay!” Richardson was far from sure of the truth of this, for although he could not see, he had been receiving frequent reports and had an excellent idea of the struggle taking place outside the hull, only a few feet from where he stood in
Manta
's control room. “Is there anything at all you can do, Keith?” he could not refrain from asking. “Is all your variable water out? Safety and negative and everything? How about your anchor and chain? Could you try a big bubble in main ballast? Couldn't that boost you up for one final escape? One more time would do it.”
“Come on, old man, we've done all that. We all tried to pile in the hatch the last time, but the ship upended, and everybody fell down against the bulkhead. They were trying to make it back up,
but there wasn't time, so I had to slam the hatch on the two that were in already. Now we're at two hundred feet, and I'm back in the control room sitting on the bulkhead to reach the UQC. It's down between my feet. We can hear the air bubbling out of number-one main ballast through the flooding holes. We're making our last dive, and it will be a deep one.”
Richardson felt something salty in his face. More than one submariner in a sinking submarine had closed the hatch that might have led to escape over his own head, thus closing the trap upon himself as well as the shipmates trapped with him. This was precisely what Keith had done, with life prolonged at his option, with two men, destined for survival, already in the escape chamber and waiting. Rich knew without its being said that Keith had been handling the lower hatch himself, had had it yawning open above; or perhaps, since
Cushing
had upended, was now vertical in the water, it had been by that time alongside of himâand had consciously chosen not to enter it. In fact, since he had personally shut the hatch himself, he must actually have entered the escape chamber, taken hold of the hatch, and pulled it shut behind him as he backed out! Captain of the ship, he could not leave so long as there were men for whom he was responsible still aboard. Faced with his life's climactic decision, and only seconds to make it, he had chosen instantly. Or, possibly, he had firmly made up his mind before.
What to do? What to say? What to say to one's own deep, personal friend, now about to be stilled forever? Rich felt his eyes stinging. There were tears there. His nose hurt. There was a knot at its base, at the top of his mouth. He gripped the mike to control himself, strained with both hands to squeeze it away, finally said in a voice he could not recognize, “We understand what you're saying, Keith, old friend. Buck's here too. All that we've heard will be reported fully, and believe me, there's going to be some truth told when we get back. We're sorry, Keith. Believe me, we're so terribly sorry. What can we do for you and the fellows with you? Tell me. Anything. It's a promise!” Something like a vise was closing down Richardson's throat.