Authors: Alistair MacLean
"However it was," Swanson smiled, "you can consider yourselves two of the luckiest men alive. That rocket you saw was the third last we had, it's been a regular fourth of July for the past hour or so. And you think Rawlings, Zabrinski, and the survivors on Zebra are safe for the present?"
"Nothing to worry about for the next couple of days," Hansen nodded. "They'll be okay. Cold, mind you, and a good half of them desperately in need of hospital treatment, but they'll survive."
"Fine. Well, this is how it is. This lead here stopped closing in about half an hour ago. but it doesn't matter now: we can drop down any time and still hold our position. What does matter is that we have located the fault in the ice machine. It's a damned tricky and complicated job, and I expect it will take several hours yet to fix. But I think we'll wait until it is fixed before we try anything. I'm not too keen on this idea of making a dead-reckoning approach to this lead near Zebra, then letting off a shot in the dark. Since there's no desperate hurry, I'd rather wait till we got the ice fathometer operating again, make an accurate survey of this lead then fire a torpedo up through the middle. If the ice is only four or five feet thick there, we shouldn't have much trouble blowing a hole through."
"That would be best," Hansen agreed. He finished off his medicinal alcohol--an excellent bourbon--rose stiffly to his feet, and stretched. "Well, back to the old treadmill again. How many torpedoes in working order?"
"Four, at the last count."
"I may as well go help young Mills load them up now. If that's okay by you, skipper."
"It is not okay by me," Swanson said mildly, "and if you'll take a quick gander at that mirror there, you'll understand why. You're not fit to load a slug into an air rifle, much less a torpedo into its tube. You haven't just been on a Sundayafternoon stroll, you know. A few hours' sleep, John, then we'll see."
Hansen didn't argue. I couldn't imagine anyone arguing with Commander Swanson. He made for the door. "Coming, Doc?"
"In a moment. Sleep well."
"Yeah. Thanks." He touched me lightly on the shoulder and smiled through bloodshot and exhausted eyes. "Thanks for everything. Good night, all."
When he was gone Swanson said, "It was pretty wicked out there tonight?"
"I wouldn't recommend it for an old ladies' home Sundayafternoon outing."
"Lieutenant Hansen seems to imagine he's under some kind of debt to you," he went on inconsequentially.
"Imagination, as you say. They don't come any better than Hansen. You're damned lucky to have him as an exec."
"I know that." He hesitated, then said quietly: "I promise you I won't mention this again, but, well, I'm damned sorry, Doctor."
I looked at him and nodded slowly. I knew he meant it, I knew he had to say it, but there's not much you can say in turn to anything like that. I said: "Six others died with him, Commander."
He hesitated again. "Do we--do we take the dead back to Britain with us?"
"Could I have another drop of that excellent bourbon, Commander? Been a very heavy run on your medicinal alcohol in the past few hours, I'm afraid." I waited till he had filled my glass, then went on: "We don't take them back with us. They're not dead men, they're just unrecognizable and unidentifiable lumps of charred matter. Let them stay here."
His relief was unmistakable and he was aware of it, for he went on hurriedly, for something to say: "All this equipment for locating and tracking the Russian missiles. Destroyed?"
"I didn't check." He'd find out for himself soon enough that there had been no such equipment. How he'd react to that discovery in light of the cock-and-bull story I'd spun to him and Admiral Garvie in the Holy Loch I couldn't even begin to guess. At the moment I didn't even care. It didn't seem important; nothing seemed important, not any more. All at once I felt tired, not sleepy, just deathly tired, so I pushed myself stiffly to my feet, said good night, and left.
Hansen was in his bunk when I got back to his cabin, his furs lying where he had dropped them. I checked that he was no longer awake, slipped off my own furs, hung them up, and replaced the Mannlicher-Schoenauer in my case. I lay down in my cot to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Exhausted though I was, I had never felt less like sleep in my life.
I was too restless and unsettled for sleep, too many problems coming all at once were causing a first-class log jam in my mind. I got up, pulled on a shirt and denim pants, and made my way to the control room. I spent the better part of what remained of the night there, pacing up and down, watching two technicians repairing the vastly complicated innards of the ice machine, reading the messages of congratulation which were still coming in, talking desultorily to the officer on deck, and drinking endless cups of coffee. It passed the night for me, and although I hadn't closed an eye. I felt fresh and almost relaxed by the time morning came.
At the wardroom breakfast table that morning everyone seemed quietly cheerful. They knew they had done a good job, the whole world was telling them they had done a magnificent job, and you could see that they all regarded that job as being as good as over. No one appeared to doubt Swanson's ability to blow a hole through the ice. If it hadn't been for the presence of the ghost at the feast, myself, they would have been positively jovial.
"We'll pass up the extra cups of coffee this morning, gentlemen," Swanson said. "Drift Station Zebra is still waiting for us, and even though I'm assured everyone there will survive, they must be feeling damned cold and miserable. The ice machine has been in operation for almost an hour now, at least we hope it has. We'll drop down right away and test it, and after we've loaded the torpedoes--two should do it, I think--we'll blow our way up into this lead at Zebra."
Twenty minutes later the _Dolphin_ was back where she belonged, 150 feet below the surface of the sea--or the ice cap. After ten minutes' maneuvering, with a close check being kept on the plotting table to maintain our position relative to Drift Station Zebra, it was clear that the ice machine was behaving perfectly normally again, tracing out the inverted ridges and valleys in the ice with its usual magical accuracy. Commander Swanson nodded his satisfaction.
"That's it, then." He nodded to Hansen and Mills, the torpedo officer. "You can go ahead now. Maybe you'd like to accompany them, Dr. Carpenter. Or is loading torpedoes old hat to you?"
"Never seen it," I said truthfully. "Thanks, I'd like to go along." Swanson was as considerate toward men as he was toward his beloved _Dolphin_, which was why every man in the ship swore by him. He knew, or suspected, that apart from the shock I felt at my brother's death, I was worried stiff about other things. He would have heard, although he hadn't mentioned it to me and hadn't even asked me how I had slept, that I'd spent the night prowling aimlessly and restléssly about the control room; he knew I would be grateful for any distraction, for anything that would relieve my mind, however temporarily, of whatever it was that was troubling it. I wondered just how much that extraordinarily keen brain knew or guessed. But that was an unprofitable line of thought so I put it out of my mind and went along with Hansen and Mills. Mills was another like Raeburn, the navigation officer; he looked to me more like a college undergraduate than the highly competent officer he was, but I supposed it was just another sign that I was growing old.
Hansen crossed to a panel by the diving console and studied a group of lights. The night's sleep had done him a great deal of good and, apart from the abraded skin on his forehead and around the cheekbones where the ice spicules of last night had done their work, he was again his normal, cheerfully cynical, relaxed self, fresh and rested and fit. He waved his hand at the panel.
"The torpedo safety lights, Dr. Carpenter. Each green light represents a closed torpedo tube door. Six doors that open to the sea--bow caps, we call them--six rear doors for loading the torpedoes. Only twelve lights, but we study them very, very carefully--just to make sure that all the lights are green. For if any of them were red--any of the top six, that is, which represent the sea doors--well, that wouldn't be so good, would it?" He looked at Mills. "All green?"
"All green." Mills echoed.
We moved for'ard along the wardroom passage and dropped down the wide companionway into the crew's mess. From there we moved into the for'ard torpedo-storage room. Last time I'd been there, on the morning after our departure from the Clyde, nine or ten men had been sleeping in their bunks; now all the bunks were empty. Five men were waiting for us: four seamen and a petty officer, Bowen, whom Hansen, no stickler for protocol, addressed as Charlie.
"You will see now," Hansen observed to me, "why officers are more highly paid than enlisted men, and deservedly so. While Charlie and his gallant men skulk here behind two sets of collision bulkheads, we must go and test the safety of the tubes. Regulations. Still, a cool head and an iron nerve: we do it gladly for our men."
Bowen grinned and unlatched the first collision-bulkhead door. We stepped over the eighteen-inch sill, leaving the five men behind, and waited until the door had been latched again before opening the for'ard collision-bulkhead door and stepping over the second sill into the cramped torpedo room. This time the door was swung wide open and hooked back on a heavy standing catch.
"All laid down in the book of rules," Hansen said. "The only time the two doors can be opened at the same time is when we're actually loading the torpedoes." He checked the position of metal handles at the rear of the tubes, reached up, swung down a steel-spring microphone, and flicked a switch, "Ready to test tubes. All manual levers shut. All lights showing green?"
"All lights still green." The answering voice from the overhead squawk box was hollow, metallic, queerly impersonal.
"You already checked," I said mildly.
"So we check again. Same old book of rules." He grinned. "Besides, my grandpa died at ninety-seven and I am out to beat his record. Take no chances and you run no risks. What are they to be, George?'
"Three and four."
I could see the brass plaques on the circular rear doors of the tubes, 2, 4, and 6 on the port side, 1, 3, and 5 on the starboard. Lieutenant Mills was proposing to use the central tubes on each side.
Mills unhooked a rubberized flashlight from the bulkhead and approached number 3 first. Hansen said, "Still no chances. First of all George opens the test cock in the rear door, which will show if there is any water at all in the tubes. Shouldn't be, but sometimes a little gets past the bow caps. If the test cock shows nothing, then he opens the door and shines his light up to examine the bow cap and see that there is no obstruction in the tube. How is it, George?"
"Okay, number 3." Three times Mills lifted the test-cock handle and no trace of water appeared. "Opening the door flow."
He hauled on the big lever at the rear, pulled it clear, and swung back the heavy circular door. He shone his kam up the gleaming inside length of the tube, then straightened. "Clean as a whistle and dry as a bone."
"That's not the way he was taught to report it," Hansen said sorrowfully. "I don't know what the young officers are cornmg to these days. Right, George, number 4."
Mills grinned, secured the rear door on number 3, and crossed to number 4. He lifted the test-cock handle and said, "Oh-oh."
"What is it?" Hansen asked.
"Water," Mills said tersely.
"Is there much? Let's see."
"Just a trickle."
"Is that bad?" I asked.
"It happens," Hansen said briefly. He joggled the handle up and down and another spoonful of water appeared. "You can get a slightly imperfect bow cap, and if you go deep enough to build up sufficient outside pressure you can get a trickle of water coming in. Probably what has happened in this case. If the bow cap was open, friend, at this depth the water would come out of that spout like a bullet. But no chances, no chances." He reached for the microphone again. "Number four bow cap still green? We have a little water here."
"Still green."
Hansen looked down at Mills. "How's it coming?"
"Not so much now."
"Control center," Hansen said into the microphone. 'Check the trim chit, just to make sure."
There was a pause, then the box crackled again.
"Captain speaking. All tubes showing 'empty.' Signed by Lieutenant Hansen and the foreman engineer."
"Thank you, sir." Hansen switched off and grinned. "Lieutenant Hansen's word is good enough for me any day. How's it now?"
"Stopped."
Mills tugged the heavy lever. It moved an inch or two, then struck. "Pretty stiff," he commented.
"You torpedomen never heard of anything called lubricating oil?" Hansen demanded. "Weight, George, weight."
Mills applied more weight. The lever moved another couple of inches. Mills scowled, shifted his feet to get maximum leverage, and heaved just as Hansen shouted, "No! Stop! For God's sake, stop!"
He was too late. He was a lifetime too late. The lever snapped clear, the heavy circular rear door smashed open as violently as if it had been struck by some gigantic battering ram, and a roaring torrent of water burst into the for'ard torpedo room. The sheer size, the enormous power and frightening speed of that almost horizontally traveling column of water was staggering. It was like a giant hose pipe, like one of the outlet pipes of the Boulder Dam. It caught up Lieutenant Mills, already badly injured by the flailing sweep of that heavy door, and swept him back across the torpedo room to smash heavily against the after bulkhead; for a moment he half stood there, pinned by the power of that huge jet, then slid down limply to the deck.
"Blow all main ballast!" Hansen shouted into the microphone. He was hanging on a rear-torpedo door to keep from being carried away, and, even above the thunderous roar of the waters, his voice carried clearly. "Emergency. Blow all main ballast. Number 4 tube open to the sea. Blow all main ballast!" He released his grip and staggered across the deck, trying to keep his balance in the madly swirling already footdeep water. "Get out of here, for God's sake."