HMS Ulysses

CHAPTER NINE FRIDAY MORNING

THE FOG, Tyndall saw, was all around them now. Since that last heavy snowfall during the night, the temperature had risen steadily, quickly.

But it had beguiled only to deceive: the clammy, icy feathers of the swirling mist now struck doubly chill.

He hurried through the gate, Vallery close behind him. Turner, steel helmet trailing, was just leaving for the After Tower. Tyndall stretched out his hand, stopped him.

"What is it, Commander?" he demanded. "Who fired? Where? Where did it come from?"

"I don't know, sir. Shells came from astern, more or less. But I've a damned good idea who it is." His eyes rested on the Admiral a long, speculative moment. "Our friend of last night is back again." He turned abruptly, hurried off the bridge.

Tyndall looked after him, perplexed, uncomprehending. Then he swore, softly, savagely, and jumped for the radar handset.

"Bridge. Admiral speaking. Lieutenant Bowden at once!" The loudspeaker crackled into immediate life.

"Bowden speaking, sir."

"What the devil are you doing down there?" Tyndall's voice was low, vicious. "Asleep, or what? We are being attacked, Lieutenant Bowden. By a surface craft. This may be news to you." He broke off, ducked low as another salvo screamed overhead and crashed into the water less than half a mile ahead: the spray cascaded over the decks of a merchantman, glimpsed momentarily in a clear lane between two rolling fog-banks.

Tyndall straightened up quickly, snarled into the mouth-piece. "He's got our range, and got it accurately. In God's name, Bowden, where is he?"

"Sorry, sir." Bowden was cool, unruffled. "We can't seem to pick him up. We still have the Adventurer on our screens, and there appears to be a very slight distortion on his bearing, sir, approximately 300... I suggest the enemy ship is still screened by the Adventurer or, if she's closer, is on the Adventurer's direct bearing."

"How near?" Tyndall barked.

"Not near, sir. Very close to the Adventurer. We can't distinguish either by size or distance."

Tyndall dangled the transmitter from his hand. He turned to Vallery.

"Does Bowden really expect me to believe that yarn?" he asked angrily.

"A million to one coincidence like that, an enemy ship accidentally chose and holds the only possible course to screen her from our radar. Fantastic!"

Vallery looked at him, his face without expression.

"Well?" Tyndall was impatient. "Isn't it?"

"No, sir," Vallery answered quietly. "It's not. Not really. And it wasn't accidental. The U-pack would have radioed her, given our bearing and course. The rest was easy."

Tyndall gazed at him through a long moment of comprehension, screwed his eyes shut and shook his head in short fierce jerks. It was a gesture compounded of self-criticism, the death of disbelief, the attempt to clear a woolly, exhausted mind. Hell, a six-year-old could have seen that... A shell whistled into the sea a bare fifty yards to port.

Tyndall didn't flinch, might never have seen or heard it.

"Bowden?" He had the transmitter to his mouth again.

"Sir?"

"Any change in the screen?"

"No, sir. None."

"And are you still of the same opinion?"

"Yes, sir! Can't be anything else."

"And close to the Adventurer, you say?"

"Very close, I would say."

"But, good God, man, the Adventurer must be ten miles astern by now!"

"Yes, sir. I know. So is the bandit."

"What! Ten miles! But, but-----"

"He's firing by radar, sir," Bowden interrupted. Suddenly the metallic voice sounded tired. "He must be. He's also tracking by radar, which is why he's keeping himself in line with our bearing on the Adventurer. And he's extremely accurate... I'm afraid, Admiral, that his radar is at least as good as ours."

The speaker clicked off. In the sudden strained silence on the bridge, the crash of breaking ebonite sounded unnaturally loud as the transmitter slipped from TyndalFs hand, fractured in a hundred pieces.

The hand groped forward, he clutched at a steam pipe as if to steady himself. Vallery stepped towards him, arms outstretched in concern, but Tyndall brushed by unseeingly. Like an old spent man, like a man from whose ancient bones and muscles all the pith has long since drained, he shuffled slowly across the bridge, oblivious of a dozen mystified eyes, dragged himself up on to his high stool.

You fool, he told himself bitterly, savagely, oh, you bloody old fool!

He would never forgive himself, never, never, never! All along the line he had been out-thought, outguessed and out-manceuvred by the enemy.

They had taken him for a ride, made an even bigger bloody fool out of him than his good Maker had ever intended. Radar! Of course, that was it! The blind assumption that German radar had remained the limited, elementary thing that Admiralty and Air Force Intelligence had reported it to be last year I Radar, and as good as the British. As good as the Ulysses's, and everybody had believed that the Ulysses was incomparably the most efficient, indeed the only efficient, radar ship in the world. As good as our own-probably a damned sight better. But had the thought ever occurred to him? Tyndall writhed in sheer chagrin, in agony of spirit, and knew the bitter taste of self-loathing. And so, this morning, the payoff: six ships, three hundred men gone to the bottom. May God forgive you, Tyndall, he thought dully, may God forgive you. You sent them there... Radar!

Last night, for instance. When the Ulysses had been laying a false trail to the east, the German cruiser had obligingly tagged behind, the perfect foil to his, Tyndall's genius. Tyndall groaned in mortification.

Had tagged behind, firing wildly, erratically each time the Ulysses had disappeared behind a smoke-screen. Had done so to conceal the efficiency of her radar, to conceal the fact that, during the first half-hour at least, she must have been tracking the escaping convoy as it disappeared to the NNW., a process made all the easier by the fact that he, Tyndall, had expressly forbidden the use of the zig-zag!

And then, when the Ulysses had so brilliantly circled, first to the south and then to the north again, the enemy must have had her on his screen-constantly. And later, the biter bit with a vengeance, the faked enemy withdrawal to the south-east. Almost certainly, he, too, had circled to the north again, picked up the disappearing British cruiser on the edge of his screen, worked out her intersection course as a cross check on the convoy's, and radioed ahead to the wolf-pack, positioning them almost to the foot.

And now, finally, the last galling blow to whatever shattered remnants of his pride were left him. The enemy had opened fire at extreme range, but with extreme accuracy, a dead give-away to the fact that the firing was radar-controlled. And the only reason for it must be the enemy's conviction that the Ulysses, by this time, must have come to the inevitable conclusion that the enemy was equipped with a highly sensitive radar transmitter. The inevitable conclusion! Tyndall had never even begun to suspect it. Slowly, oblivious to the pain, he pounded his fist on the edge of the windscreen. God, what a blind, crazily stupid fool he'd been! Six ships, three hundred men. hundreds of tanks and planes, millions of gallons of fuel lost to Russia; how many more thousands of dead Russians, soldiers and civilians, did that represent? And the broken, sorrowing families, he thought incoherently, families throughout the breadth of Britain: the telegram boys cycling to the little houses in the Welsh valleys, along the wooded lanes of Surrey, to the lonely reek of the peat-fire, remote in the Western Isles, to the lime-washed cottages of Donegal and Antrim: the empty homes across the great reaches of the New World, from Newfoundland and Maine to the-far slopes of the Pacific. These families would never know that it was he, Tyndall, who had so criminally squandered the lives of husbands, brothers, sons-and that was worse than no consolation at all.

"Captain Vallery?" Tyndall's voice was only a husky whisper. Vallery crossed over, stood beside him, coughing painfully as the swirling fog caught nose and throat, incinated inflamed lungs. It was a measure of Tyndall's distressed preoccupation that Vallery's obvious suffering quite failed to register.

"Ah, there you are. Captain, this enemy cruiser must be destroyed."

Vallery nodded heavily. "Yes, sir. How?"

"How?" Tyndall's face, framed in the moisture-beaded hood of his duffel, was haggard and grey: but he managed to raise a ghost of a smile. "As well hung for a sheep.... I propose to detach the escorts, including ourselves, and nail him." He stared out blindly into the fog, his mouth bitter. "A simple tactical exercise, maybe within even my limited compass." He broke off suddenly, stared over the side then ducked hurriedly: a shell had exploded in the water-a rare thing-only yards away, erupting spray showering down on the bridge.

"We, the Stirling and ourselves, will take him from the south," he continued, "soak up his fire and radar. Orr and his death-or-glory boys will approach from the north. In this fog, they'll get very close before releasing their torpedoes. Conditions are all against a single ship, he shouldn't have much chance."

"All the escorts," Vallery said blankly. "You propose to detach all the escorts?"

"That's exactly what I propose to do, Captain."

"But, but, perhaps that's exactly what he wants," Vallery protested.

"Suicide? A glorious death for the Fatherland? Don't you believe it!"

Tyndall scoffed. "That sort of thing went out with Langesdorff and Middelmann."

"No, sir!" Vallery was impatient. "He wants to pull us off, to leave the convoy uncovered."

"Well, what of it?" Tyndall demanded. "Who's going to find them in this lot?" He waved an arm at the rolling, twisting fog-banks. "Dammit, man, if it weren't for their fog-buoys, even our ships couldn't see each other. So I'm damned sure no one else could either."

"No?" Vallery countered swiftly. "How about another German cruiser fitted with radar? Or even another wolf-pack? Either could be in radio contact with our friend astern, and he's got our course to the nearest minute!"

"In radio contact? Surely to God our W.T. is monitoring all the time?"

"Yes, sir. They are. But I'm told it's not so easy on the V.H.F. ranges."

Tyndall grunted non-committally, said nothing. He felt desperately tired and confused; he had neither the will nor the ability to pursue the argument further. But Vallery broke in on the silence, the vertical lines between his eyebrows etched deep with worry.

"And why's our friend sitting steadily on our tails, pumping the odd shell among us, unless he's concentrating on driving us along a particular course? It reduces his chance of a hit by 90 per cent, and cuts out half his guns."

"Maybe he's expecting us to reason like that, to see the obvious."

Tyndall was forcing himself to think, to fight his way through a mental fog no less nebulous and confusing than the dank mist that swirled around him. "Perhaps he's hoping to panic us into altering course, to the north, of course, where a U-pack may very well be."

"Possible, possible," Vallery conceded. "On the other hand, he may have gone a step further. Maybe he wants us to be too clever for our own good. Perhaps he expects us to see the obvious, to avoid it, to continue on our present course, and so do exactly what he wants us to do... He's no fool, sir, we know that now."

What was it that Brooks had said to Starr back in Scapa, a lifetime ago?

"That fine-drawn feeling... that exquisite agony... every cell in the brain stretched taut to breaking point, pushing you over the screaming edge of madness." Tyndall wondered dully how Brooks could have known, could have been so damnably accurate in his description. Anyway, he knew now, knew what it was to stand on the screaming edge...

Tyndall appreciated dimly that he was at the limit. That aching, muzzy forehead where to think was to be a blind man wading through a sea of molasses. Vaguely he realised that this must be the first, or was it the last?, symptom of a nervous breakdown... God only knew there had been plenty of them aboard the Ulysses during the past months...

But he was still the Admiral... He must do something, say something.

"It's no good guessing, Dick," he said heavily. Vallery looked at him sharply-never before had old Giles called him anything but "Captain" on the bridge. "And we've got to do something. We'll leave the Vectra as a sop to our consciences. No more." He smiled wanly. "We must have at least two destroyers for the dirty work. Bentley, take this signal for W.T. 'To all escort vessels and Commander Fletcher on the Cape Hatteras...'"

Within ten minutes, the four warships, boring south-east through the impenetrable wall of fog, had halved the distance that lay between them and the enemy. The Stirling, Viking and Sirrus were in constant radio communication with the Ulysses, they had to be, for they travelled as blind men in an invious world of grey and she was their eyes and their ears.

"Radar-bridge. Radar-bridge." Automatically, every eye swung round, riveted on the loundspeaker. "Enemy altering course to south: increasing speed."

"Too late!" Tyndall shouted hoarsely. His fists were clenched, his eyes alight with triumph. "He's left it too late!"

Vallery said nothing. The seconds ticked by, the Ulysses knifed her way through cold fog and icy sea. Suddenly, the loudspeaker called again.

"Enemy 180ø turn. Heading south-east. Speed 28 knots."

"28 knots? He's on the run!" Tyndall seemed to have gained a fresh lease on life. "Captain, I propose that the Sirrus and Ulysses proceed south-east at maximum speed, engage and slow the enemy. Ask W.T. to signal Orr. Ask Radar enemy's course."

He broke off, waited impatiently for the answer.

"Radar-bridge. Course 312. Steady on course. Repeat, steady on course."

"Steady on course," Tyndall echoed. "Captain, commence firing by radar. We have him, we have him!" he cried exultantly. "He's waited too long! We have him, Captain!"

Again Vallery said nothing. Tyndall looked at him, half in perplexity, half in anger. "Well, don't you agree?"

"I don't know, sir." Vallery shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know at all. Why did he wait so long? Why didn't he turn and run the minute we left the convoy?"

"Too damn' sure of himself!" Tyndall growled.

"Or too sure of something else," Vallery said slowly. "Maybe he wanted to make good and sure that we would follow him."

Tyndall growled again in exasperation, made to speak then lapsed into silence as the Ulysses shuddered from the recoil of 'A' turret. For a moment, the billowing fog on the fo'c'sle cleared, atomised by the intense heat and flash generated by the exploding cordite. In seconds, the grey shroud had fallen once more.

Then, magically it was clear again. A heavy fog-bank had rolled over them, and through a gap in the next they caught a glimpse of the Sirrus, dead on the beam, a monstrous bone in her teeth, scything to the south-east at something better than 34 knots. The Stirling and the Viking were already lost in the fog astern.

"He's too close," Tyndall snapped. "Why didn't Bowden tell us? We can't bracket the enemy this way. Signal the Sirrus: 'Steam 317 five minutes.' Captain, same for us. 5 south, then back on course."

He had hardly sunk back in his chair, and the Ulysses, mist-shrouded again, was only beginning to answer her helm when the W.T. loudspeaker switched on.

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge-----"

The twin 5.25s of 'B' turret roared in deafening unison, flame and smoke lancing out through the fog. Simultaneously, a tremendous crash and explosion heaved up the duck-boards beneath the feet of the men in the bridge catapulting them all ways, into each other, into flesh-bruising, bone-breaking metal, into the dazed confusion of numbed minds and bodies fighting to reorientate themselves under the crippling handicap of stunning shock, of eardrums rended by the blast, of throat and nostrils stung by acrid fumes, of eyes blinded by dense black smoke.

Throughout it all, the calm impersonal voice of the W.T. transmitter repeated its unintelligible message.

Gradually the smoke cleared away. Tyndall pulled himself drunkenly to his feet by the rectifying arm of the binnacle: the explosion had blown him clean out of his chair into the centre of the compass platform. He shook his head, dazed, uncomprehending. Must be tougher than he'd imagined: all that way-and he couldn't remember bouncing. And that wrist, now-that lay over at a damned funny angle. His own wrist, he realised with mild surprise. Funny, it didn't hurt a bit. And Carpenter's face there, rising up before him: the bandages were blown off, the gash received on the night of the great storm gaping wide again, the face masked with blood... That girl at Henley, the one he was always talking about-Tyndall wondered, inconsequently, what she would say if she saw him now... Why doesn't the W.T. transmitter stop that insane yammering?... Suddenly his mind was clear.

"My God! Oh, God!" He stared in disbelief at the twisted duckboards, the fractured asphalt beneath his feet. He released his grip on the binnacle, lurched forward into the windscreen: his sense of balance had confirmed what his eyes had rejected: the whole compass platform tilted forward at an angle of 15 degrees.

"What is it, Pilot?" His voice was hoarse, strained, foreign even to himself. "In God's name, what's happened? A breech explosion in 'B' turret?"

"No, sir." Carpenter drew his forearm across his eyes: the kapok sleeve came away covered in blood. "A direct hit, sir, smack in the superstructure."

"He's right, sir." Carrington had hoisted himself far over the windscreen, was peering down intently. Even at that moment, Tyndall marvelled at the man's calmness, his almost inhuman control." And a heavy one. It's wrecked the for'ard pom-pom and there's a hole the size of a door just below us.... It must be pretty bad inside, sir."

Tyndall scarcely heard the last words. He was kneeling over Vallery, cradling his head in his one good arm. The Captain lay crumpled against the gate, barely conscious, his stertorous breathing interrupted by rasping convulsions as he choked on his own blood. His face was deathly white.

"Get Brooks up here, Chrysler-the Surgeon-Commander, I mean!" Tyndall shouted. "At once!"

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge. Please acknowledge. Please acknowledge." The voice was hurried, less impersonal, anxiety evident even in its metallic anonymity.

Chrysler replaced the receiver, looked worriedly at the Admiral.

"Well?" Tyndall demanded. "Is he on his way?"

"No reply, sir." The boy hesitated. "I think the line's gone."

"Hell's teeth!" Tyndall roared. "What are you doing standing there, then? Go and get him. Take over, Number One, will you? Bentley-have the Commander come to the bridge."

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge." Tyndall glared up at the speaker in exasperation, then froze into immobility as the voice went on. "We have been hit aft. Damage Control reports coding-room destroyed. Number 6 and 7 Radar Offices destroyed. Canteen wrecked. After control tower severely damaged."

"The After control tower!" Tyndall swore, pulled off his gloves, wincing at the agony of his broken hand. Carefully, he pillowed Vallery's head on the gloves, rose slowly to his feet. "The After Tower. And Turner's there! I hope to God..."

He broke off, made for the after end of the bridge at a stumbling run.

Once there he steadied himself, his hand on the ladder rail, and peered apprehensively aft.

At first he could see nothing, not even the after funnel and mainmast.

The grey, writhing fog was too dense, too maddeningly opaque. Then suddenly, for a mere breath of time, an icy catspaw cleared away the mist, cleared away the dark, convoluted smoke-pall above the after superstructure. Tyndall's hand tightened convulsively on the rail, the knuckles whitening to ivory.

The after superstructure had disappeared. In its place was a crazy mass of jumbled twisted steel, with 'X' turret, normally invisible from the bridge, showing up clearly beyond, apparently unharmed. But the rest was gone-radar offices, coding-room, police office, canteen, probably most of the after galley. Nothing, nobody could have survived there.

Miraculously, the truncated main mast still stood, but immediately aft of it, perched crazily on top of this devil's scrap-heap, the After Tower, fractured and grotesquely askew, lay over at an impossible angle of 60ø, its range-finder gone. And Commander Turner had been in there...

Tyndall swayed dangerously on top of the steel ladder, shook his head again to fight off the fog clamping down on his mind. There was a heavy, peculiarly dull ache just behind his forehead, and the fog seemed to be spreading from there.... A lucky ship, they called the Ulysses. Twenty months on the worst run and in the worst waters in the world and never a scratch.... But Tyndall had always known that some time, some place, her luck would run out.

He heard hurried steps clattering up the steel ladder, forced his blurred eyes to focus themselves. He recognised the dark, lean face at once: it was Leading Signalman Davies, from the flag deck. His face was white, his breathing short and quick. He opened his mouth to speak, then checked himself, his eyes staring at the handrail.

"Your hand, sir I" He switched his startled gaze from the rail to Tyndall's eyes. "Your hand! You've no gloves on, sir!"

"No?" Tyndall looked down as if faintly astonished he had a hand. "No, I haven't, have I? Thank you, Davies." He pulled his hand off the smooth frozen steel, glanced incuriously at the raw, bleeding flesh. "It doesn't matter. What is it, boy?"

"The Fighter Direction Room, sir!" Davies's eyes were dark with remembered horror. "The shell exploded in there. It's, it's just gone, sir. And the Plot above..." He stopped short, his jerky voice lost in the crash of the guns of 'A'turret Somehow it seemed strangely unnatural that the main armament still remained effective. "I've just come from the F.D.R. and the Plot, sir," Davies continued, more calmly now. "They, well, they never had a chance."

"Including Commander Westcliffe?" Dimly, Tyndall realised the futility of clutching at straws. "I don't know, sir. It's-it's just bits and pieces in the F.D.R., if you follow me. But if he was there-----"

"He would be," Tyndall interrupted heavily. "He never left it during Action Stations..."

He stopped abruptly, broken hands clenched involuntarily as the high-pitched scream and impact explosion of H.E. shells blurred into shattering cacophony, appalling in its closeness.

"My God!" Tyndall whispered. "That was close Davies! What the hell!..."

His voice choked off in an agonised grunt, arms flailing wildly at the empty air, as his back crashed against the deck of the bridge, driving every last ounce of breath from his body. Wordlessly, convulsively, propelled by desperately thrusting feet and launched by the powerful back-thrust of arms pivoting on the handrails, Davies had just catapulted himself up the last three steps of the ladder, head and shoulders socketing into the Admiral's body with irresistible force. And now Davies, too, was down, stretched his length on the deck, spreadeagled across Tyndall's legs. He lay very still.

Slowly, the cruel breath rasping his tortured lungs, Tyndall surfaced from the black depths of unconsciousness. Blindly, instinctively he struggled to sit up, but his broken hand collapsed under the weight of his body. His legs didn't seem to be much help either: they were quite powerless, as if he were paralysed from the waist down. The fog was gone now, and blinding flashes of colour, red, green and white were coruscating brilliantly across the darkening sky. Starshells? Was the enemy using a new type of starshell? Dimly, with a great effort of will, he realised that there must be some connection between these dazzling flashes and the now excruciating pain behind his forehead. He reached up the back of his right hand: his eyes were still screwed tightly shut.... Then the realisation faded and was gone.

"Are you all right, sir? Don't move. We'll soon have you out of this!"

The voice, deep, authoritative, boomed directly above the Admiral's head. Tyndall shrank back, shook his head in imperceptible despair. It was Turner who was speaking, and Turner, he knew, was gone. Was this, then, what it was like to be dead, he wondered dully. This frightening, confused world of blackness and blinding light at the same time, a dark-bright world of pain and powerless-ness and voices from the past?

Then suddenly, of their own volition almost, his eyelids flickered and were open. Barely a foot above him were the lean, piratical features of the Commander, who was kneeling anxiously at his side.

"Turner? Turner?" A questioning hand reached out in tentative hope, clutched gratefully, oblivious to the pain, at the reassuring solidity of the Commander's arm. "Turner! It is you! I thought-----"

"The After Tower, eh?" Turner smiled briefly. "No, sir, I wasn't within a mile of it. I was coming here, just climbing up to the fo'c'sle deck, when that first hit threw me back down to the main deck... How are you, sir?"

"Thank God! Thank God! I don't know how I am. My legs... What in the name of heaven is that?"

His eyes focusing normally again, widened in baffled disbelief. Just above Turner's head, angling for'ard and upward to port, a great white tree trunk stretched as far as he could see in either direction.

Reaching up, he could just touch the massive bole with his hand.

"The foremast, sir," Turner explained. "It was sheared clean off by that last shell, just above the lower yardarm. The back blast flung it on to the bridge. Took most of the A.A. tower with it, I'm afraid-and caved in the Main Tower. I don't think young Courtney could have had much chance... Davies saw it coming, I was just below him at the time. He was very quick-----"

"Davies!" Tyndall's dazed mind had forgotten all about him. "Of course!

Davies!" It must be Davies who was pinioning his legs. He craned his neck forward, saw the huddled figure at his feet, the great weight of the mast lying across his back. "For God's sake, Commander, get him out of that!"

"Just lie down, sir, till Brooks gets here. Davies is all right."

"All right? All right!" Tyndall was almost screaming, oblivious to the silent figures who were gathering around him. "Are you mad, Turner? The poor bastard must be in agony!" He struggled frantically to rise, but several pairs of hands held him down, firmly, carefully.

"He's all right, sir." Turner's voice was surprisingly gentle. "Really he is, sir. He's all right. Davies doesn't feel a thing. Not any more."

And all at once the Admiral knew and he fell back limply to the deck, his eyes closed in shocked understanding.

His eyes were still shut when Brooks appeared, doubly welcome in his confidence and competence. Within seconds, almost, the Admiral was on his feet, shocked, badly bruised, but otherwise unharmed. Doggedly, and in open defiance of Brooks, Tyndall demanded that he be assisted back to the bridge. His eyes lit up momentarily as he saw Vallery standing shakily on his feet, a white towel to his mouth. But fie said nothing.

His head bowed, he hoisted himself painfully into his chair.

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge. Please acknowledge signal." "Is that bloody idiot still there?" Tyndall demanded querulously. "Why doesn't someone-----?"

"You've only been gone a couple of minutes, sir," the Kapok Kid ventured.

"Two minutes!" Tyndall stared at him, lapsed into silence. He glanced down at Brooks, busy bandaging his right hand. "Have you nothing better to do, Brooks?" he asked harshly. "No, I haven't," Brooks replied truculently. "When shells explode inside four walls, there isn't much work left for a doctor... except signing death certificates," he added brutally. Vallery and Turner exchanged glances. Vallery wondered if Brooks had any idea how far through Tyndall was. "W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge. Vectra repeats request for instruction. Urgent. Urgent."

"The Vectra!" Vallery glanced at the Admiral, silent now and motionless, and turned to the bridge messenger. "Chrysler! Get through to W.T. Any way you can. Ask them to repeat the first message."

He looked again at Turner, following the Admiral's sick gaze over the side. He looked down, recoiled in horror, fighting down the instant nausea. The gunner in the spon-son below-just another boy like Chrysler-must have seen the falling mast, must have made a panic-stricken attempt to escape. He had barely cleared his cockpit when the radar screen, a hundred square feet of meshed steel carrying the crushing weight of the mast as it had snapped over the edge of the bridge, had caught him fairly and squarely. He lay still now, mangled, broken, something less than human, spreadeagled in outflung crucifixion across the twin barrels of his Oerlikon.

Vallery turned away, sick in body and mind. God, the craziness, the futile insanity of war. Damn that German cruiser, damn those German gunners, damn them, damn them!... But why should he? They, too, were only doing a job-and doing it terribly well. He gazed sightlessly at the wrecked shambles of his bridge. What damnably accurate gunnery! He wondered, vaguely, if the Ulysses had registered any hits. Probably not, and now, of course, it was impossible. It was impossible now because the Ulysses, still racing south-east through the fog, was completely blind, both radar eyes gone, victims to the weather and the German guns. Worse still, all the Fire Control towers were damaged beyond repair. If this goes on, he thought wryly, all we'll need is a set of grappling irons and a supply of cutlasses. In terms of modern naval gunnery, even although her main armament was intact, the Ulysses was hopelessly crippled. She just didn't have a chance. What was it that Stoker Riley was supposed to have said-" being thrown to the wolves "? Yes, that was it-" thrown to the wolves." But only a Nero, he reflected wearily, would have blinded a gladiator before throwing him into the arena.

All firing had ceased. The bridge was deadly quiet. Silence, complete silence, except for the sound of rushing water, the muffled roar of the great engine-room intake fans, the monotonous, nerve-drilling pinging of the Asdic-and these, oddly enough, only served to deepen the great silence.

Every eye, Vallery saw, was on Admiral Tyndall. Old Giles was mumbling something to himself, too faint to catch. His face, shockingly grey, haggard and blotched, still peered over the side. He seemed fascinated by the sight of the dead boy. Or was it the smashed Radar screen? Had the full significance of the broken scanner and wrecked Director Towers dawned on him yet? Vallery looked at him for a long moment, then turned away: he knew that it had.

"W.T.-bridge. W.T.-bridge." Everyone on the bridge jumped, swung round in nerve-jangled startlement. Everyone except Tyndall. He had frozen into a graven immobility.

"Signal from Vectra. First Signal. Received 0952." Vallery glanced at his watch. Only six minutes ago! Impossible!

"Signal reads: Contacts, contacts, 3, repeat 3. Amend to 5. Heavy concentration of U-boats, ahead and abeam. Am engaging.'"

Every eye on the bridge swung back to Tyndall. His, they knew, the responsibility, his the decision-taken alone, against the advice of his senior officer, to leave the convoy almost unguarded. Impersonally, Vallery admired the baiting, the timing, the springing of the trap. How would old Giles react to this, the culmination of a series of disastrous miscalculations, miscalculations for which, in all fairness, he could not justly be blamed... But he would be held accountable. The iron voice of the loudspeaker broke in on his thoughts.

"Second signal reads: 'In close contact. Depth-charging. Depth-charging. One vessel torpedoed, sinking. Tanker torpedoed, damaged, still afloat, under command. Please advise. Please assist. Urgent. Urgent!'"

The speaker clicked off. Again that hushed silence, strained, unnatural. Five seconds it lasted, ten, twenty, then everyone stiffened, looked carefully away.

Tyndall was climbing down from his chair. His movements were stiff, slow with the careful faltering shuffle of the very old. He limped heavily.

His right hand, startling white in its snowy sheath of bandage, cradled his broken wrist. There was about him a queer, twisted sort of dignity, and if his face held any expression at all, it was the far-off echo of a smile. When he spoke, he spoke as a man might talk to himself, aloud.

"I am not well," he said. "I am going below." Chrysler, not too young to have an inkling of the tragedy, held open the gate, caught Tyndall as he stumbled on the step. He glanced back over his shoulder, a quick, pleading look, caught and understood Vallery's compassionate nod.

Side by side, the old and the young, they moved slowly aft. Gradually, the shuffling died away and they were gone.

The shattered bridge was curiously empty now, the men felt strangely alone. Giles, the cheerful, buoyant, indestructible Giles was gone. The speed, the extent of the collapse was not for immediate comprehension: the only sensation at the moment was that of being unprotected and defenceless and alone.

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings..." Inevitably, the first to break the silence was Brooks. "Nicholls always maintained that..."

He stopped short, his head shaking in slow incredulity. "I must see what I can do," he finished abruptly, and hurried off the bridge.

Vallery watched him go, then turned to Bentley. The Captain's face, haggard, shadowed with grizzled beard, the colour of death in the weird half-light of the fog, was quite expressionless.

"Three signals, Chief. First to Vectra. "Steer 360ø. Do not disperse.

Repeat, do not disperse. Am coming to your assistance.' "He paused, then went on: "Sign it,' Admiral, 14 A.C.S.' Got it?... Right. No time to code it. Plain language. Send one of your men to the W.T. at once."

"Second: To Stirling, Sirrus and Viking.' Abandon pursuit immediate. Course north-east. Maximum speed.' Plain language also." He turned to the Kapok Kid. "How's your forehead, Pilot? Can you carry on?" "Of course, sir."

"Thank you, boy. You heard me? Convoy re-routed north-say in a few minutes' time, at 1015. 6 knots. Give me an intersection course as soon as possible."

"Third signal, Bentley: To Stirling, Sirrus and Viking:' Radar out of action. Cannot pick you up on screen. Stream fog-buoys. Siren at two-minute intervals.' Have that message coded. All acknowledgements to the bridge at once. Commander I"

"Sir?" Turner was at his elbow.

"Hands to defence stations. It's my guess the pack will have gone before we get there. Who'll be off watch?"

"Lord only knows," said Turner frankly. "Let's call it port."

Vallery smiled faintly. "Port it is. Organise two parties. First of port to clear away all loose wreckage: over the side with the lot-keep nothing. You'll need the blacksmith and his mate, and I'm sure Dodson will provide you with an oxy-acetylene crew. Take charge yourself.

Second of port as burial party. Nicholls in charge. All bodies recovered to be laid out in the canteen when it's clear... Perhaps you could give me a full report of casualties and damage inside the hour?"

"Long before that, sir... Could I have a word with you in private?"

They walked aft. As the shelter door shut behind them, Vallery looked at the Commander curiously, half-humorously. "Another mutiny, perhaps, Commander?"

"No, sir." Turner unbuttoned his coat, his hand struggling into the depths of a hip-pocket. He dragged out a flat half-bottle, held it up to the light. "Thank the Lord for that!" he said piously. "I was afraid it got smashed when I fell... Rum, sir. Neat. I know you hate the stuff, but never mind. Come on, you need this!"

Vallery's brows came down in a straight line.

"Rum. Look here, Commander, do you-----?"

"To hell with K.R.s and A.F.O.s!" Turner interrupted rudely. "Take it-you need it badly! You've been hurt, you've lost a lot more blood and you're almost frozen to death." He uncorked it, thrust the bottle into Vallery's reluctant hands. "Face facts. We need you-more than ever now-and you're almost dead on your feet-and I mean dead on your feet," he added brutally. "This might keep you going a few more hours."

"You put things so nicely," Vallery murmured. "Very well. Against my better judgment..."

He paused, the bottle to his mouth.

"And you give me an idea, Commander. Have the bosun break out the rum. Pipe 'Up spirits.' Double ration to each man. They, too, are going to need it." He swallowed, pulled the bottle away, and the grimace was not for the rum.

"Especially," he added soberly, "the burial party."