HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER TEN FRIDAY AFTERNOON

THE SWITCH clicked on and the harsh fluorescent light flooded the darkening surgery. Nicholls woke with a start, one hand coming up automatically to shield exhausted eyes. The light hurt. He screwed his eyes to slits, peered painfully at the hands of his wrist-watch. Four o'clock! Had he been asleep that long? God, it was bitterly cold!

He hoisted himself stiffly forward in the dentist's chair, twisted his head round. Brooks was standing with his back to the door, snow-covered hood framing his silver hair, numbed fingers fumbling with a packet of cigarettes. Finally he managed to pull one out. He looked up quizzically over a flaring match-head.

"Hallo, there, Johnny! Sorry to waken you, but the skipper wants you. Plenty of time, though." He dipped the cigarette into the dying flame, looked up again. Nicholls, he thought with sudden compassion, looked ill, desperately tired and overstrained; but no point in telling him so. "How are you? On second thoughts, don't tell me! I'm a damned sight worse myself. Have you any of that poison left?"

"Poison, sir?" The levity was almost automatic, part of their relationship with each other. "Just because you make one wrong diagnosis? The Admiral will be all right-----"

"Gad! The intolerance of the very young-especially on the providentially few occasions that they happen to be right... I was referring to that bottle of bootleg hooch from the Isle of Mull."

"Coll," Nicholls corrected. "Not that it matters, you've drunk it all, anyway," he added unkindly. He grinned tiredly at the Commander's crestfallen face, then relented. "But we do have a bottle of Talisker left." He crossed over to the poison cupboard, unscrewed the top of a bottle marked "Lysol." He heard, rather than saw, the clatter of glass against glass, wondered vaguely, with a kind of clinical detachment, why his hands were shaking so badly.

Brooks drained his glass, sighed in bliss as he felt the grateful warmth sinking down inside him.

"Thank you, my boy. Thank you. You have the makings of a first-class doctor."

"You think so, sir? I don't. Not any longer. Not after today." He winced, remembering. "Forty-four of them, sir, over the side in ten minutes, one after the other, like-like so many sacks of rubbish."

"Forty-four?" Brooks looked up. "So many, Johnny?"

"Not really, sir. That was the number of missing. About thirty, rather, and God only knows how many bits and pieces.... It was a brush and shovel job in the F.D.R." He smiled, mirthlessly. "I had no dinner, today. I don't think anybody else in the burial party had either....

I'd better screen that porthole."

He turned away quickly, walked across the surgery. Low on the horizon, through the thinly-falling snow, he caught intermittent sight of an evening star. That meant that the fog was gone-the fog that had saved the convoy, had hidden them from the U-boats when it had turned so sharply to the north. He could see the Vectra, her depth-charge racks empty and nothing to show for it. He could see the Vytura, the damaged tanker, close by, almost awash in the water, hanging grimly on to the convoy. He could see four of the Victory ships, big, powerful, reassuring, so pitifully deceptive in their indestructible permanence.... He slammed the scuttle, screwed home the last butterfly nut, then swung round abruptly.

"Why the hell don't we turn back?" he burst out. "Who does the old man think he's kidding-us or the Germans? No air cover, no radar, not the faintest chance of helpl The Germans have us pinned down to an inch now-and it'll be easier still for them as we go on. And there's a thousand miles to go!" His voice rose. "And every bloody enemy ship, U-boat and plane in the Arctic smacking thek lips and waiting to pick us off at thek leisure." He shook his head in despair. "I'll take my chance with anybody else, sir. You know that. But this is just murder-or suicide. Take your pick, sir. It's all the same when you're dead."

"Now, Johnny, you're not------"

"Why doesn't he turn back?" Nicholls hadn't even heard the interruption. "He's only got to give the order. What does he want?

Death or glory? What's he after? Immortality at my expense, at our expense?" He swore, bitterly. "Maybe Riley was right. Wonderful headlines.' Captain Richard Vallery, D.S.O., has been posthumously award"Shut up!" Brooks's eye was as chill as the Arctic ice itself, his voice a biting lash.

"You dare to talk of Captain Vallery like that!" he said softly. "You dare to besmkch the name of the most honourable..." He broke off, shook his head in wrathful wonder. He paused to pick his words carefully, his eyes never leaving the other's white, strained face.

"He is a good officer, Lieutenant Nicholls, maybe even a great officer: and that just doesn't matter a damn. What does matter is that he is the finest gentleman, I say gentleman, I've ever known, that ever walked the face of this graceless, God-forsaken earth. He is not like you or me. He is not like anybody at all. He walks alone, but he is never lonely, for he has company all the way... men like Peter, like Bede, like St. Francis of Assisi." He laughed shortly. "Funny, isn't it, to hear an old reprobate like myself talk like this? Blasphemy, even, you might call it, except that the truth can never be blasphemy. And I know."

Nicholls said nothing. His face was like a stone.

"Death, glory, immortality," Brooks went on relentlessly. "These were your words, weren't they? Death?" He smiled and Shook his head again. "For Richard Vallery, death doesn't exist. Glory? Sure, he wants glory, we all want glory, but all the London Gazettes and Buckingham Palaces in the world can't give him the kind of glory he wants: Captain Vallery is no longer a child, and only children play with toys... As for immortality." He laughed, without a trace of rancour now, laid a hand on Nicholls's shoulder. "I ask you, Johnny-wouldn't it be damned stupid to ask for what he has already?"

Nicholls said nothing. The silence lengthened and deepened, the rush of the air from the ventilation louvre became oppressively loud. Finally, Brooks coughed, looked meaningfully at the "Lysol" bottle.

Nicholls filled the glasses, brought them back. Brooks caught his eyes, held them, and was filled with sudden pity. What was that classical understatement of Cunningham's during the German invasion of Crete," It is inadvisable to drive men beyond a certain point." Trite but true.

True even for men like Nicholls. Brooks wondered what particular private kind of hell that boy had gone through that morning, digging out the shattered, torn bodies of What had once been men. And, as the doctor in charge, he would have had to examine them all-or all the pieces he could find...

"Next step up and I'll be in the gutter." Nicholls's voice was very low. "I don't know what to say, sir. I don't know what made me say it.... I'm sorry."

"Me too," Brooks said sincerely. "Shooting off my mouth like that! And I mean it." He lifted his glass, inspected the contents lovingly. "To our enemies, Johnny: their downfall and confusion, and don't forget Admiral Starr." He drained the glass at a gulp, set it down, looked at Nicholls for a long moment.

"I think you should hear the rest, too, Johnny. You know, why Vallery doesn't turn back." He smiled wryly. "It's not because there are as many of these damned U-boats behind us as there are in front-which there undoubtedly are." He lit a fresh cigarette, went on quietly:

"The Captain radioed London this morning. Gave it as his considered opinion that FR77 would be a goner-' annihilated' was the word he used and, as a word, they don't come any stronger-long before it reached the North Cape. He asked at least to be allowed to go north about, instead of east for the Cape... Pity there was no sunset tonight, Johnny," he added half-humourously. "I would have liked to see it."

"Yes, yes," Nicholls was impatient. "And the answer?"

"Eh! Oh, the answer. Vallery expected it immediately." Brooks shrugged.

"It took four hours to come through." He smiled, but there was no laughter in the eyes. "There's something big, something on a huge scale brewing up somewhere. It can only be some major invasion-this under your hat, Johnny?"

"Of course, sir!"

"What it is I haven't a clue. Maybe even the long-awaited Second Front.

Anyway, the support of the Home Fleet seems to be regarded as vital to success. But the Home Fleet is tied up, by the Tirpitz, And so the orders have gone out, get the Tirpitz. Get it at all costs." Brooks smiled, and his face was very cold. "We're big fish, Johnny, we're important people. We're the biggest, juiciest bait ever offered up the biggest, juiciest prize in the world today-although I'm afraid the trap's a trifle rusty at the hinges... The signal came from the First Sea Lord-and Starr. The decision was taken at Cabinet level. We go on. We go east."

"We are the 'all costs,'" said Nicholls flatly. "We are expendable."

"We are expendable," Brooks agreed. The speaker above his head clicked on, and he groaned. "Hell's bells, here we go again!"

He waited until the clamour of the Dusk Action Stations' bugle had died away, stretched out a hand as Nicholls hurried for the door.

"Not you, Johnny. Not yet. I told you, the skipper wants you. On the bridge, ten minutes after Stations begin."

"What? On the bridge? What the hell for?"

"Your language is unbecoming to a junior officer," said j Brooks solemnly. "How did the men strike you today?" he went on inconsequently. "You were working with them all morning. Their usual selves?"

Nicholls blinked, then recovered.

"I suppose so." He hesitated. "Funny, they seemed a lot better a couple of days ago, but-well, now they're back to the Scapa stage.

Walking zombies. Only more so-they can hardly walk now." He shook his head. "Five, six men to a stretcher. Kept tripping and falling over things. Asleep on their feet-eyes not focusing, too damned tired to look where they're going."

Brooks nodded. "I know, Johnny, I know. I've seen it myself."

"Nothing mutinous, nothing sullen about them any more."

Nicholls was puzzled, seeking tiredly to reduce nebulous, scattered impressions to a homogeneous coherence. "They've neither the energy nor the initiative left for a mutiny now, anyway, I suppose, but it's not that. Kept muttering to themselves in the F.D.R.: 'Lucky bastard.' 'He died easy', things like that. Or 'Old Giles-off his bleedin' rocker.'

And you can imagine the shake of the head. But no humour, none, not even the grisly variety you usually..." He shook his own head. "I just don't know, sir. Apathetic, indifferent, hopeless, call 'em what you like. I'd call 'em lost."

Brooks looked at him a long moment, then added gently:

"Would you now?" He mused. "And do you know, Johnny, I think you'd be right... Anyway," he continued briskly, "get up there. Captain's going to make a tour of the ship."

"What!" Nicholls was astounded. "During action stations? Leave the bridge?"

"Just that."

"But, but he can't, sir. It's, it's unprecedented!"

"So's Captain Vallery. That's what I've been trying to tell you all evening."

"But he'll kill himself!" Nicholls protested wildly.

"That's what I said," Brooks agreed wryly. "Clinically, he's dying. He should be dead. What keeps him going God only knows-literally. It certainly isn't plasma or drugs... Once in a while, Johnny, it's salutary for us to appreciate the limits of medicine. Anyway, I talked him into taking you with him... Better not keep him waiting."

For Lieutenant Nicholls, the next two hours were borrowed from purgatory. Two hours, the Captain took to his inspection, two hours of constant walking, of climbing over storm-sills and tangled wreckage of steel, of squeezing and twisting through impossibly narrow apertures, of climbing and descending a hundred ladders, two hours of exhausting torture in the bitter, heart-sapping cold of a sub-zero temperature. But it was a memory that was to stay with him always, that was never to return without filling him with warmth, with a strange and wonderful gratitude.

They started on the poop-Vallery, Nicholls and Chief Petty Officer Hartley-Vallery would have none of Hastings, the Master-At-Arms, who usually accompanied the Captain on his rounds. There was something oddly reassuring about the big, competent Chief. He worked like a Trojan that night, opening and shutting dozens of watertight doors, lifting and lowering countless heavy hatches, knocking off and securing the thousand clips that held these doors and hatches in place, and before ten minutes had passed, lending a protesting Vallery the support of his powerful arm.

They climbed down the long, vertical ladder to 'Y' magazine, a dim and gloomy dungeon thinly lit with pinpoints of garish light. Here were the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers-the non-specialists in the purely offensive branches. 'Hostilities only' ratings, almost to a man, in charge of a trained gunner, they had a cold, dirty and unglamorous job, strangely neglected and forgotten, strangely, because so terribly dangerous. The four-inch armour encasing them offered about as much protection as a sheet of newspaper to an eight-inch armour-piercing shell or a torpedo...

The magazine walls-walls of shells and cartridge cases, were soaking wet, dripping constantly visibly, with icy condensation. Half the crew were leaning or lying against the racks, blue, pinched, shivering with cold, their breath hanging heavily in the chill air: the others were trudging heavily round and round the hoist, feet splashing in pools of water, lurching, stumbling with sheer exhaustion, gloved hands buried in their pockets, drawn, exhausted faces sunk on their chests. Zombies, Nicholls thought wonderingly, just living zombies. Why don't they lie down?

Gradually, everyone became aware of Vallery's presence, stopped walking or struggling painfully erect, eyes too tired, minds too spent for either wonder or surprise.

"As you were, as you were," Vallery said quickly. "Who's in charge here?"

"I am, sir." A stocky, overalled figure walked slowly forward, halted in front of Vallery.

"Ah, yes. Gardiner, isn't it?" He gestured to the men circling the hoist.' What in the world is all this for, Gardiner?"

"Ice," said Gardiner succinctly. "We have to keep the water moving or it'll freeze in a couple of minutes. We can't have ice on the magazine floor, sir."

"No, no, of course not! But-but the pumps, the drain-cocks?"

"Solid!"

"But surely-this doesn't go on all the time?"

"In flat weather-all the time, sir."

"Good God!" Vallery shook his head incredulously, splashed his way to the centre of the group, where a slight, boyish figure was coughing cruelly into a corner of an enormous green and white muffler. Vallery placed a concerned arm across the shaking shoulders.

"Are you all right, boy?"

"Yes, sir. 'Course Ah am!" He lifted a thin white face racked with pain.

"Ah'm fine," he said indignantly.

"What's your name?"

"McQuater, sir."

"And what's your job, McQuater?"

"Assistant cook, sir."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen, sir." Merciful heavens, Vallery thought, this isn't a cruiser I'm running-it's a nursery!

"From Glasgow, eh?" He smiled.

"Yes, sir." Defensively.

"I see." He looked down at the deck, at McQuater's boots half-covered in water. "Why aren't you wearing your sea-boots?" he asked abruptly.

"We don't get issued with them, sir."

"But your feet, man! They must be soaking!"

"Ah don't know, sir. Ah think so. Anyway," McQuater said simply, "it doesna matter. Ah canna feel them."

Vallery winced. Nicholls, looking at the Captain, wondered if he realised the distressing, pathetic picture he himself presented with his sunken, bloodless face, red, inflamed eyes, his mouth and nose daubed with crimson, the inevitable dark and sodden hand-towel clutched in his left glove. Suddenly unaccountably, Nicholls felt ashamed of himself: that thought, he knew, could never occur to this man.

Vallery smiled down at McQuater.

"Tell me son, honestly-are you tired?"

"Ah am that-Ah mean, aye, aye, sir."

"Me too," Vallery confessed. "But, you can carry on a bit longer?"

He felt the frail shoulders straighten under his arm.

"'Course Ah can, sir!" The tone was injured, almost truculent.

"'Course Ah can!"

Vallery's gaze travelled slowly over the group, his dark eyes glowing as he heard a murmured chorus of assent. He made to speak, broke off in a harsh coughing and bent his head. He looked up again, his eyes wandering once more over the circle of now-anxious faces, then turned abruptly away.

"We won't forget you," he murmured indistinctly. "I promise you, we won't forget you." He splashed quickly away, out of the pool of water, out of the pool of light, into the darkness at the foot of the ladder.

Ten minutes later, they emerged from "Y" turret. The night sky was cloudless now, brilliant with diamantine stars, little chips of frozen fire in the dark velvet of that fathomless floor. The cold was intense.

Captain Vallery shivered involuntarily as the turret door slammed behind them.

"Hartley?"

"Sir?"

"I smelt rum in there!"

"Yes, sir. So did I." The Chief was cheerful, unperturbed. "Proper stinking with it. Don't worry about it though, sir. Half the men in the ship bottle their rum ration, keep it for action stations."

"Completely forbidden in regulations, Chief. You know that as well as I do!"

"I know. But there's no harm, sir. Warms 'em up-and if it gives them Dutch courage, all the better. Remember that night the for'ard pom-pom got two Stukas?"

"Of course."

"Canned to the wide. Never have done it otherwise... And now, sir, they need it."

"Suppose you're right, Chief. They do and I don't blame them." He chuckled. "And don't worry about my knowing, I've always known. But it smelled like a saloon bar in there..."

They climbed up to 'X' turret-the marine turret, then down to the magazine. Wherever he went, as in 'Y' magazine, Vallery left the men the better for his coming. In personal contact, he had some strange indefinable power that lifted men above themselves, that brought out in them something they had never known to exist. To see dull apathy and hopelessness slowly give way to resolution, albeit a kind of numbed and desperate resolve, was to see something that baffled the understanding.

Physically and mentally, Nicholls knew, these men had long since passed the point of no return.

Vaguely, he tried to figure it out, to study the approach and technique.

But the approach varied every time, he saw, was no more than a natural reaction to different sets of cirr cumstances as they presented themselves, a reaction utterly lacking in calculation or finesse. There was no technique. Was pity, then, the activating force, pity for the neart-6reaœ-ing gallantry of a man so clearly dying? Or was it shame, if he can do it, if he can still drive that wasted mockery of a body, if he can kill himself just to come to see if we're all right-if he can do that and smile-then, by God, we can stick it out, too? That's it, Nicholls said to himself, that's what it is, pity and shame, and he hated himself for thinking it, and not because of the thought, but because he knew he lied... He was too tired to think anyway. His mind was woolly, fuzzy round the edges, his thoughts disjointed, uncontrolled. Like everyone else's. Even Andy Carpenter, the last man you would suspect of it-he felt that way, too, and admitted it.... He wondered what the Kapok Kid would have to say to this... The Kid was probably wandering too, but wandering in his own way, back as always on the banks of the Thames. He wondered what the girl in Henley was like. Her name started with 'J', Joan, Jean, he didn't know: the Kapok Kid had a big golden 'J' on the right breast of his kapok suit, she had put it there. But what was she like? Blonde and gay, like the Kid himself? Or dark and kind and gentle, like St. Francis of Assisi? St. Francis of Assisi? Why in the world did he-ah, yes, old Socrates had been talking about him. Wasn't he the man of whom Axel Munthe...

"Nicholls! Are you all right?" Vallery's voice was sharp with anxiety.

"Yes, of course, sir." Nicholls shook his head, as if to clear it.

"Just gathering wool. Where to now, sir?"

"Engineers' Flat, Damage Control parties, Switchboard, Number 3 Low Power room-no, of course, that's gone, Noyes was killed there, wasn't he?... Hartley, I'd appreciate it if you'd let my feet touch the deck occasionally..."

All these places they visited in turn and a dozen others besides-not even the remotest corner, the most impossible of access, did Vallery pass by, if he knew a man was there, closed up to his action station.

They came at last to the engine and boiler-rooms, to the gulping pressure changes on unaccustomed eardrums as they went through the airlocks, to the antithetically breath-taking blast of heat as they passed inside. In 'A'boiler-room, Nicholls insisted on Vallery's resting for some minutes. He was grey with pain and weakness, his breathing very disH.U. 161 F tressed. Nicholls noticed Hartley talking in a corner, was dimly aware of someone leaving the boiler-room.

Then his eyes caught sight of a burly, swarthy stoker, with bruised cheeks and the remnants of a gorgeous black eye, stalking across the floor. He carried a canvas chair, set it down with a thump behind Vallery.

"A seat, sir," he growled.

"Thank you, thank you." Vallery lowered himself gratefully, then looked up in surprise. "Riley?" he murmured, then switched his glance to Hendry, the Chief Stoker. "Doing his duty with a minimum of grace, eh?"

Hendry stirred uncomfortably.

"He did it off his own bat, sir."

"I'm sorry," Vallery said sincerely. "Forgive me, Riley. Thank you very much." He stared after him in puzzled wonder, looked again at Hendry, eyebrows lifted in interrogation, Hendry shook his head. "Search me, sir. I've no idea. He's a queer fish. Does things like that. He'd bend a lead pipe over your skull without batting an eyelid-and he's got a mania for looking after kittens and lame dogs. Or if you get a bird with a broken wing-Riley's your man. But he's got a low opinion of his fellowmen, sir."

Vallery nodded slowly, without speaking, leaned against the canvas back and closed his eyes in exhaustion. Nicholls bent over him.

"Look, sir," he urged quietly, "why not give it up? Frankly, sir, you're killing yourself. Can't we finish this some other time?"

"I'm afraid not, my boy." Vallery was very patient. "You don't understand.' Some other time' will be too late." He turned to Hendry.

"So you think you'll manage all right, Chief?"

"Don't you worry about us, sir." The soft Devon voice was grim and gentle at the same time. "Just you look after yourself. The stokers won't let you down, sir."

Vallery rose painfully to his feet, touched him lightly on the arm. "Do you know, Chief, I never thought you would... Ready, Hartley?" He stopped short, seeing a giant duffel, \ coated figure waiting at the foot of the ladder, the face below the hood dark and sombre. "Who's that? Oh, I know. Never thought stokers got so cold," he smiled. j "Yes, sir, it's Petersen," Hartley said softly. "He's coming with us."

"Who said so? And-and Petersen? Wasn't that------?"

"Yes, sir. Riley's-er-lieutenant in the Scapa business... Surgeon Commander's orders, sir. Petersen's going to give us a hand."

"Us? Me, you mean." There was no resentment, no bitterness in Vallery's voice. "Hartley, take my advice, never let yourself get into the hands of the doctors... You think he's safe?" he added half-humorously.

"He'd probably kill the man who looked sideways at you," Hartley stated matter-of-factly. "He's a good man, sir. Simple, easily led-but good."

At the foot of the ladder, Petersen stepped aside to let them pass, but Vallery stopped, looked up at the giant towering six inches above him, into the grave, blue eyes below the flaxen hair.

"Hallo, Petersen. Hartley tells me you're coming with us. Do you really want to? You don't have to, you know."

"Please, Captain." The speech was slow and precise, the face curiously dignified in unhappiness. "I am very sorry for what has happened------"

"No, no!" Vallery was instantly contrite. "You misunderstand. It's a bitter night up top. But I would like it very much if you would come. Will you?"

Petersen stared at him, then began slowly to smile, his face darkening with pleasure. As the Captain set foot on the first step, the giant arm came round him. The sensation, as Vallery described it later, was very much like going up in a lift.

From there they visited Engineer Commander Dodson in his engine-room, a cheerful, encouraging, immensely competent Dodson, an engineer to his finger-tips in his single-minded devotion to the great engines under his care. Then aft to the Engineers' Flat, up the companionway between the wrecked Canteen and the Police Office, out on to the upper deck. After the heat of the boiler-room, the 100ø drop in temperature, a drop that strangled breath with the involuntary constriction of the throat and made a skin-crawling mockery of "Arctic clothing," was almost literally paralysing.

The starboard torpedo tubes-the only ones at the standby, were only four paces away. The crew, huddled in the lee of the wrecked bosun's store-the one destroyed by the Blue Ranger's shells-were easily located by the stamping of frozen feet, the uncontrollable chattering of teeth.

Vallery peered into the gloom. L.T.O. there?"

"Captain, sir?" Surprise, doubt in the voice.

"Yes. How are things going?"

"All right, sir." He was still off-balance, hesitant. "I think young Smith's left foot is gone, sir-frostbite."

"Take him below-at once. And organise your crew into ten minute watches: one to keep a telephone watch here, the other four in the Engineers' Flat. From now on. You understand?" He hurried away, as if to avoid the embarrassment of thanks, the murmurs of smiling gladness.

They passed the torpedo shop, where the spare torpedoes and compressed air cylinders were stored, climbed the ladder to the boat-deck. Vallery paused a moment, one hand on the boat-winch, the other holding the bloody scarf, already frozen almost solid, to mouth and nose. He could just distinguish the shadowy bulkiness of merchantmen on either side: their masts, though, were oddly visible, swinging lazily, gently against the stars as the ships rolled to a slight swell, just beginning. He shuddered, pulled his scarf higher round his neck. God, it was cold! He moved for'ard, leaning heavily on Peterson's arm. The snow, three to four inches deep, cushioned his footsteps as he came up behind an Oerlikon gun. Quietly, he laid a hand on the shoulder of the hooded gunner hunched forward in his cockpit.

"Things all right, gunner?"

No reply. The man appeared to stir, moved forward, then fell still again.

"I said,' Are you all right?'" Vallery's voice had hard, i ened. He shook the gunner by the shoulder, turned impatiently to Hartley.

"Asleep, Chief! At Action Stations! We're all dead from lack of sleep, I know-but his mates below are depending on him. There's no excuse. Take his name!"

"Take his name!" Nicholls echoed softly, bent over the I cockpit. He shouldn't speak like this, he knew, but he couldn't help it. "Take his name," he repeated. "What for? His next of kin? This man is dead."

The snow was beginning to fall again, cold and wet and feathery, the wind lifting a perceptible fraction. Vallery felt the first icy flakes, unseen in the darkness, brushing his cheeks, heard the distant moan of the wind in the rigging, lonely and forlorn. He shivered.

"His heater's gone." Hartley withdrew an exploratory hand, straightened up. He seemed tired. "These Oerlikons have black heaters bolted to the side of the cockpit. The gunners lean against them, sir, for hours at a time... I'm afraid the fuse must have blown. They've been warned against this, sir, a thousand times."

"Good God! Good God!" Vallery shook his head slowly. He felt old, terribly tired. "What a useless, futile way to die... Have him taken to the Canteen, Hartley."

"No good, sir." Nicholls straightened up also. "It'll have to wait.

What with the cold and the quick onset of rigor mortis-well, it'll have to wait."

Vallery nodded assent, turned heavily away. All at once, the deck 'speaker aft of the winch blared into raucous life, a rude desecration that shattered the chilled hush of the evening.

"Do you hear there? Do you hear there? Captain, or notify Captain, to contact bridge immediately, please." Three times the message was repeated, then the 'speaker clicked off.

Quickly Vallery turned to Hartley.

"Where's the nearest phone, Chief?"

"Right here, sir." Hartley turned back to the Oerlikon, stripped earphones and chest mouthpiece from the dead man. "That is, if the A.A. tower is still manned?"

"What's left of it is."

"Tower? Captain to speak to bridge. Put me through." He handed the receiver to Vallery. "Here you are, sir."

"Thank you. Bridge? Yes, speaking... Yes, yes... Very good.

Detail the Sirrus... No, Commander, nothing I can do anyway-just maintain position, that's all." He took the handset off, handed it back to Hartley.

"Asdic contact from Viking" he said briefly. "Red 90." He turned, looked out over the dark sea, realised the futility of his instinctive action, and shrugged. "We've sent the Sirrus after him. Come on."

Their tour of the boat-deck gun-sites completed with a visit to the midships' pom-pom crew, bone-chilled and shaking with cold, under the command of the bearded Doyle, respectfully sulphurous in his outspoken comments on the weather, they dropped down to the main deck again. By this time Vallery was making no protest at all, not even of the most token kind, against Petersen's help and support. He was too glad of them. He blessed Brooks for his foresight and thoughtfulness, and was touched by the rare delicacy and consideration that prompted the big Norwegian to withdraw his supporting arm whenever they spoke to or passed an isolated group of men.

Inside the port screen door and just for'ard of the galley, Vallery and Nicholls, waiting as the others knocked the clamps off the hatch leading down to the stokers' mess, heard the muffled roar of distant depth-charges-there were four in all-felt the pressure waves strike the hull of the Ulysses. At the first report Vallery had stiffened, head cocked in attention, eyes fixed on infinity, in the immemorial manner of a man whose ears are doing the work for all the senses. Hesitated a moment, shrugged, bent his arm to hook a leg over the hatch coaming. There was nothing he could do.

In the centre of the stokers' mess was another, heavier hatch. This, too, was opened. The ladder led down to the steering position, which, as in most modern warships, was far removed from the bridge, deep in the heart of the ship below the armour-plating. Here, for a couple of minutes, Vallery talked quietly to the quartermaster, while Petersen, working in the confined space just outside, opened the massive hatch-450 Ibs. of steel, actuated by a counter-balancing pulley weight-which gave access to the hold, to the very bottom of the Ulysses, to the Transmitting Station and No. 2 Low Power Room.

A mazing, confusing mystery of a place, this Low Power Room, confusing to the eye and ear. Round every bulkhead, interspersed with scores of switches, breakers and rheostats, were ranged tiered banks of literally hundreds of fuses, baffling to the untrained eye in their myriad complexity. Baffling, too, was the function of a score or more of low-power generators, nerve-drilling in the frenetic dissonance of i their high-pitched hums. Nicholls straightened up at the foot of the ladder and shuddered involuntarily. A bad place, this. How easily could mind and nerves slide over the edge of insanity under the pounding, Insistent clamour of the desynchronised cacophony. Just then there were only two men there-an Electric Artificer and his assistant, bent over the big Sperry master gyro, making some latitude adjustment to the highly complex machinery of the compass. They looked up quickly, tired surprise melting into tired pleasure. Vallery had a few words with them-speech was difficult in that bedlam of sound-then moved over to the door of the T.S.

He had his glove on the door handle when he froze to complete stillness. Another pattern had exploded, much closer this time, two cable lengths distant, at most. Depth-charges, they knew, but only because reason and experience told them: deep down in the heart of an armour-plated ship there is no sense of explosion, no roar of erruption from a detonating depth-charge. Instead, there is a tremendous, metallic clang, peculiarly tinny in calibre, as if some giant with a giant sledge had struck the ship's side and found the armour loose.

The pattern was followed almost immediately by another two explosions, and the Ulysses was still shuddering under the impact of the second when Vallery turned the handle and walked in. The others filed in after the Captain, Petersen closing the door softly behind him. At once the clamour of the electric motors died gratefully away in the hushed silence of the T.S.

The T.S., fighting heart of the ship, lined like the Low Power Room though it was by banks of fuses, was completely dominated by the two huge electronic computing tables occupying almost half the floor space.

These, the vital links between the Fire Control Towers and the turrets, were generally the scene of intense, controlled activity: but the almost total destruction of the towers that morning had made them all but useless, and the undermanned T.S. was strangely quiet. Altogether, there were only eight ratings and an officer manning the tables.

The air in the T.S., a T.S. prominently behung with "No Smoking" notices, was blue with tobacco smoke hanging in a flat, lazily drifting cloud near the deckhead, a cloud which spiralled thinly down to smouldering cigarette ends. For Nicholls there was something oddly reassuring in these burning cigarettes: in the unnatural bow-taut stillness, in the inhuman immobility of the men, it was the only guarantee of life.

He looked, in a kind of detached curiosity, at the rating nearest him. A thin, dark-haired man, he was sitting hunched forward, his elbow on the table, the cigarette clipped between his fingers a bare inch from his half-open mouth. The smoke was curling up, lacing its smarting path across vacant, sightless eyes oblivious to the irritation, the ash on the cigarette, itself almost two inches in length, drooping slightly.

Vaguely, Nicholls wondered how long he had been sitting there motionless, utterly motionless... and why?

Expectancy, of course. That was it-expectancy. It was too obvious. Waiting, just waiting. Waiting for what? For the first time it struck Nicholls, struck him with blinding clarity, what it was to wait, to wait with the bowstring of the nerves strung down at inhuman tension, strung down far beyond quivering to the tautened immobility of snapping point, to wait for the torpedo that would send them crashing into oblivion. For the first time he realised why it was that men who could, invariably it seemd, find something com-plainingly humorous in any place and every place never joked about the T.S. A death trap is not funny. The T.S. was twenty feet below water level: for'ard of it was 'B' magazine, aft of it 'A' boiler-room, on either side of it were fuel tanks, and below it was the unprotected bottom, prime target for acoustic mines and torpedoes. They were ringed, surrounded, by the elements, the threat of death, and it needed only a flash, a wandering spark, to trigger off the annihilating reality... And above them, in the one in a thousand chance of survival, was a series of hatches which could all too easily warp and lock solid under the metal-twisting shock of an explosion. Besides, the primary idea was that the hatches, deliberately heavy in construction, should stay shut in the event of damage, to seal off the flooded compartments below. The men in the T.S. knew this.

"Good-evening. Everything all right down here?" Vallery's voice, quiet and calm as ever, sounded unnaturally loud. Startled faces, white and strained, twisted round, eyes opening in astonishment: the depth-charging, Nicholls realised, had masked their approach.

"Wouldn't worry too much about the racket outside," Vallery went on reassuringly. "A wandering U-boat, and the Sirrus is after him. You can thank your stars you're here and not in that sub."

No one else had spoken. Nicholls, watching them, saw their eyes flickering back from Vallery's face to the forbidden cigarettes, understood their discomfort, their embarrassment at being caught red-handed by the Captain.

"Any reports from the main tower, Brierley?" he asked the officer in charge. He seemed unaware of the strain.

"No, sir. Nothing at all. All quiet above."

"Fine!" Vallery sounded positively cheerful. "No news is good news." He brought his hand out from his pocket, proffered his cigarette case to Brierley. "Smoke? And you, Nicholls?" He took one himself, replaced the case, absently picked up a box of matches lying in front of the nearest gunner and if he noticed the gunner's startled disbelief, the slow beginnings of a smile, the tired shoulders slumping fractionally in a long, soundless sigh of relief, he gave no sign.

The thunderous clanging of more depth-charges drowned the rasping of the hatch, drowned Vallery's harsh, convulsive coughing as the smoke reached his lungs. Only the reddening of the sodden hand-towel betrayed him. As the last vibration died away, he looked up, concern in his eyes.

"Good God! Does it always sound like that down here?"

Brierley smiled faintly. "More or less, sir. Usually more."

Vallery looked slowly round the men in the T.S., nodded for'ard. 'B' magazine there, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"And nice big fuel tanks all around you?"

Brierley nodded. Every eye was on the captain.

"I see. Frankly, I'd rather have my own job-wouldn't have yours for a pension... Nicholls, I think we'll spend a few minutes down here, have our smoke in peace. Besides,", he grinned, "think of the increased fervour with which we'll count our blessings when we get out of here!"

He stayed five minutes, talking quietly to Brierley and his men.

Finally, he stubbed out his cigarette, took his leave and started for the door.

"Sir." The voice stopped him on the threshold, the voice of the thin dark gunner whose matches he had borrowed.

"Yes, what is it?"

"I thought you might like this." He held out a clean, white towel.

"That one you've got is, well, sir, I mean "Thank you." Vallery took the towel without any hesitation. "Thank you very much."

Despite Petersen's assistance, the long climb up to the upper deck left Vallery very weak. His feet were dragging heavily.

"Look, sir, this is madness!" Nicholls was desperately anxious. "Sorry, sir, I didn't mean that, but-wdl, come and see Commander Brooks. Please!"

"Certainly." The reply was a husky whisper. "Our next port of call anyway."

Half a dozen paces took them to the door of the Sick Bay. Vallery insisted on seeing Brooks alone. When he came out of the surgery after some time, he seemed curiously refreshed, his step lighter. He was smiling, and so was Brooks. Nicholls lagged behind as the Captain left.

"Give him anything, sir?" he asked. "Honest to God, he's killing himself!"

"He took something, not much." Brooks smiled softly. "I know he's killing himself, so does he. But he knows why, and I know why, and he knows I know why. Anyway, he feels better. Not to worry, Johnny I"

Nicholls waited at the top of the ladder outside the Sick Bay, waited for the Captain and others to come up from the telephone exchange and No. 1 Low Power Room. He stood aside as they climbed the coaming, but Vallery took his arm, walked him slowly for'ard past the Torpedo Office, nodding curtly to Carslake, in nominal charge of a Damage Control party.

Carslake, face still swathed in white, looked back with eyes wild and staring and strange, his gaze almost devoid of recognition. Vallery hesitated, shook his head, then turned to Nicholls, smiling.

"B.M.A. in secret session, eh?" he queried. "Never mind, Nicholls, and don't worry. I'm the one who should be worrying."

"Indeed, sir? Why?"

Vallery shook his head again. "Rum in the gun turrets, cigarettes in the T.S., and now a fine old whisky in a 'Lysol' bottle. Thought Commander Brooks was going to poison me, and what a glorious death! Excellent stuff, and the Surgeon Commander's apologies to you for broaching your private supplies."

Nicholls flushed darkly, began to stammer an apology but Vallery cut him off.

"Forget it, boy, forget it. What does it matter? But it makes me wonder what we're going to find next. An opium den in the Capstan Flat, perhaps, or dancing girls in 'B' turret?"

But they found nothing in these or any other places, except cold, misery and hunger-haunted exhaustion. As ever, Nicholls saw, they-or rather, Vallery-left the men the better of their coming. But they themselves were now in a pretty bad state, Nicholls realised. His own legs were made of rubber, he was exhausted by continuous shivering: where Vallery found the strength to carry on, he couldn't even begin to imagine. Even Petersen's great strength was flagging, not so much from half-carrying Vallery as from the ceaseless hammering of clips frozen solid on doors and hatches.

Leaning against a bulkhead, breathing heavily after the ascent from 'A'magazine, Nicholls looked hopefully at the Captain. Vallery saw the look, interpreted it correctly, and shook his head, smiling.

"Might as well finish it, boy. Only the Capstan Flat. Nobody there anyway, I expect, but we might as well have a look."

They walked slowly round the heavy machinery in the middle of the Capstan Flat, for'ard past the Battery Room and Sailmaker's Shop, past the Electrical Workshop and cells to the locked door of the Painter's Shop, the most for'ard compartment in the ship.

Vallery reached his hand forward, touched the door symbolically, smiled tiredly and turned away. Passing the cell door, he casually flicked open the inspection port, glanced in perfunctorily and moved on. Then he stopped dead, wheeled round and flung open the inspection port again.

"What in the name of-Ralston! What on earth are you doing here?" he shouted.

Ralston smiled. Even through the thick plate glass it wasn't a pleasant smile and it never touched the blue eyes. He gestured to the barred grille, indicating that he could not hear.

Impatiently, Vallery twisted the grille handle.

"What are you doing here, Ralston?" he demanded. The brows were drawn down heavily over blazing eyes. "In the cells-and at this time! Speak up, man! Tell me!" Nicholls looked at Vallery in slow surprise. The old man-angry! It was unheard of! Shrewdly, Nicholls decided that he'd rather not be the object of Vallery's fury.

"I was locked up here, sir." The words were innocuous enough, but their tone said, "What a damned silly question." Vallery flushed faintly.

"When?"

"At 1030 this morning, sir."

"And by whom, may I inquire?"

"By the Master-At-Arms, sir."

"On what authority?" Vallery demanded furiously.

Ralston looked at him a long moment without speaking. His face was expressionless. "On yours, sir."

"Mine!" Vallery was incredulous. "I didn't tell him to lock you up!"

"You never told him not to," said Ralston evenly. Vallery winced: the oversight, the lack of consideration was his, and that hurt badly.

"Where's your night Action Station?" he asked sharply.

"Port tubes, sir." That, Vallery realised, explained why only the starboard crew had been closed up.

"And why-why have you been left here during Action Stations? Don't you know it's forbidden, against all regulations?"

"Yes, sir." Again the hint of the wintry smile. "I know. But does the Master-At-Arms know?" He paused a second, smiled again. "Or maybe he just forgot," he suggested.

"Hartley!" Vallery was on balance again, his tone level and grim. "The Master-At-Arms here, immediately: see that he brings his keys!" He broke into a harsh bout of coughing, spat some blood into the towel, looked at Ralston again.

"I'm sorry about this, my boy," he said slowly. "Genuinely sorry."

"How's the tanker?" Ralston asked softly.

"What? What did you say?" Vallery was unprepared for the sudden switch.

"What tanker?"

"The one that was damaged this morning, sir."

"Still with us." Vallery was puzzled. "Still with us, but low in the water. Any special reason for asking?"

"Just interested, sir." The smile was wry, but this time it was a smile. "You see------"

He stopped abruptly as a deep, muffled roar crashed through the silent night, the pressure blast listing the Ulysses sharply to starboard.

Vallery lurched, staggered and would have fallen but for Petersen's sudden arm. He braced himself against the righting roll, looked at Nicholls in sudden dismay. The sound was all too familiar.

Nicholls gazed back at him, sorry to his heart for this fresh burden for a dying man, and nodded slowly, in reluctant agreement with the unspoken thought in Vallery's eyes.

"Afraid you're right, sir. Torpedo. Somebody's stopped a packet."

"Do you hear there!" The capstan flat speaker was hurried, intense, unnaturally loud in the aftermath of silence. "Do you hear there!

Captain on the bridge: urgent. Captain on the bridge: urgent. Captain on the bridge: urgent.