Cold is the Sea

10

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

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

But for the better part of a week now, Peggy had not called. Laura was beginning to hope the careful speech she had planned might not be necessary. She hated the idea, had finally nerved herself to do it. There was no way out of it. She just had to tell Peggy that she simply could not discuss the subject of Keith’s possible retirement anymore. Merely saying this would be sure to offend the woman, possibly have repercussions on Keith’s relationship with Rich also, but this she would have to risk. “Look,” she would say, “I’ve told you all I can tell you. It’s Keith’s future, and yours. No one can make this decision for him.” She would enlarge on this theme briefly, then conclude, “Please don’t ask me about it anymore. Keith would resent it, I’m sure, if he knew, and so might Rich. And please don’t talk to Rich over Keith’s head. Rich would be furious if I did anything like that, and it must be the same with Keith!”

This morning, however, after a gap of five days, there had come the usual telephone call. Could Peggy stop in on the way over or back from her doctor in New London? This in itself was a variation; she had never mentioned a civilian doctor before. Perhaps she was seeing a private psychiatrist. Most Navy wives, Peggy included — up to now, at least — went to the infirmary in the base on the Groton side of the Thames River for ordinary ailments. Until now, Peggy had cited a shopping visit across the river, or a sick friend whose existence Laura had begun to doubt. Or maybe she had been seeing a “psych” all along, and only now was coming a little closer to telling the truth. If so, perhaps he was doing her some good.

Instead of offering morning coffee, as had been her habit, Laura changed the signals by inviting Peggy to a cup of tea in the late afternoon. Rich’s return automatically would put an end to the visit. Now they were sitting in the Richardsons’ small living room, a pot of tea and some cookies on the low coffee table between them.

“Keith’s been gone three weeks,” Peggy was saying as she replaced her cup on its saucer, “and already it seems like a year. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having him away at sea like this.”

“You know the old Navy story, don’t you?” Laura said. She was determined to keep the conversation light. “It’s a fair deal if you’re happy half the time. So in the Navy you get a sure thing, because your husband is at sea half the time. One way or the other, you can’t miss.”

“It’s all right for the men,” Peggy said, after a pause barely long enough to acknowledge the ancient joke. “They’re so wrapped up in their boats they can’t think of anything else. It’s the ones who have to stay home who suffer. The wives and kids.”

Laura recognized her inability to deflect the direction of her guest’s thought. Different pattern or not, Peggy was the same. With an inward sigh, she decided her next half hour would be dedicated to providing what solace she could. Perhaps that really was what Peggy needed. The speech, perhaps, could wait. The necessity to prepare for Rich’s return home would give her an excuse gracefully to extricate herself. “Nothing is perfect, Peggy,” she said. “At least our husbands have an exciting life and we share some of it. Just living in the same old place and doing the same thing over and over again for years can be pretty dull, too. I’ve read somewhere that there are far fewer divorces in the Navy than anywhere else, for example.”

“But that’s not the point. The point is that some people are ambitious, and that’s fine. The Navy needs them. They go to the Naval Academy, and then they’re in. They get promoted, and when they’re admirals they’re in charge. But people like Keith don’t have a chance. He’ll never be an admiral. He’ll be lucky if he makes captain!”

“That’s ridiculous, Peggy!” The flat statement would do no good. It got out before Laura could stop it. As she said the words, Laura knew she had already failed her earlier resolve. This was not the way she had planned to begin that speech.

“That’s all right for you to say, Laura. Your man is an Annapolis graduate. They look out for each other. Keith’s always going to be an outsider.”

“Are you trying to say you think Rich or anyone else in the Navy would count four years of undergraduate study at Annapolis as more important than the many more years of service since?” Laura put down her tea, leaned forward. There was no help for it. Maybe going over it one more time would do some good. Anyway, it would be mercifully short. “I happen to know Rich thinks Keith is tops. You’ve heard him say so, too. Many times. Keith can go as far as anyone else in the Navy. It’s really up to him, his ability I mean, and you, because you’re his wife and have a greater effect on him than anyone else.”

“I know you believe it’s all fair, Laura, but I’ve heard different from a lot of people.”

“What sort of people? In the Navy?”

“Sure. In the Navy and out of it. In the sub force, too.”

“The people who count aren’t saying that.”

“Are you kidding?” Peggy’s eyes were turned unblinkingly on Laura. “If you mean the admirals running the Navy, of course not. But they’re not the whole Navy anyhow. There’s a lot more of it out there, a lot more than some of those admirals ever heard of. You learn a lot from just listening to those others.” Peggy’s whole expression was triumphant. She had found her entry point. When Laura did not immediately reply, she pressed her advantage. “I’m not saying this kind of thing doesn’t affect the Annapolis boys, too. Ever hear of the Green Bowlers?”

“Sure,” said Laura, “but that was years ago, before the war, and its importance has been blown up a lot. The membership was secret. That’s why there’s been so much talk about it.”

“Right, except there’s more to it than you think. It’s not the only one, anyway. Most of them never did get found out. The whole game was to help each other, the other members of their own private little club, I mean. What I’m saying is that with in-groups like these looking out for each other inside the big Annapolis in-group, how can Keith ever make out when he’s not in any of the groups at all?”

“Look, Peggy, if you want Keith to retire from the Navy, that’s your business. Yours and Keith’s. I can’t help, either way.” Laura’s impatience showed in her voice and manner. It must have given Peggy exactly the opening she had been waiting for.

“Joan. Joan Lastrada. She helped Rich. Didn’t she, Laura? He knew her pretty well during the war, you know. She was in some kind of intelligence work then. Now she’s with Admiral Brighting. Didn’t Rich tell you he’d seen her there?” There was a silence in Laura’s mind, a blockage in the conversation process. There was a full tick in time before the words fell into place and conscious reaction was possible.

Peggy’s large, innocent eyes were turned full on. Laura saw the pupils dilate. There was the breath of unknown danger. Fight for control. Show nothing. Keep her own pupils from dilating. Another tick and tock of time. “Oh, sure. Joan was a wartime romance of Rich’s, before we were married, but of course I’ve never asked about her. He’d lost sight of her entirely, and then she turned up in Brighting’s office. But why bring her up? She can’t help Keith with this problem.”

“No, but you could. That’s what I mean.” There was something furtive, veiled, in Peggy’s expression. Her eyes were hidden now, her hands — the manicured fingers suddenly resembled red talons; perhaps she was pressing them together with greater than usual force — clenched together in her lap.

Danger. Treacherous path ahead. Caution flags flying. Forget what you’d decided to say. Don’t make any positive statements. Ask questions. At least, asking a question doesn’t commit anything. “What do you mean, Peggy?” Smooth, that’s it. Stay cool. This is a fencing match.

“It’s just — you know — he thinks so much of Rich. I’m sure the only reason he’s still in the Navy today is because of Rich. He wants to be like him. Probably he wants me to be like you, too, though he’s not said so.”

“I’ve already told you how much Rich thinks of Keith. But what does this have to do with me?” Laura was genuinely puzzled.

“Maybe Rich could talk to Keith when he comes back from this trip and explain how the Navy really works. Keith will believe it, then. He’ll have his twenty years this month. He should retire while he’s still young.” Peggy’s eyes were lifted, bored into Laura’s. “We women have to stick together,” she almost whispered.

The words were distinct, and they were said with deliberation. Suddenly Laura realized she knew nothing whatsoever about the mind behind Peggy’s too smooth face and studied demeanor. Peggy had controlled the conversation, driven it in the direction she wanted, and there was a clear hint of some kind of a threat behind her sudden words. Why had she brought up Joan so unexpectedly?

Laura had never told Rich how much she really knew, how well she actually understood the forces driving Joan, Rich and Jim Bledsoe, her first husband, during those tense war years. He had never discussed that phase of it, had never mentioned Joan. It was one of those basic understandings between men and women that have existed since the beginning. Intuitively, Laura knew his reticence was at least partly because of Jim, just as hers was. She would never forget how hard it had been to keep silent after that busybody wife of a senior officer, shortly after she and Rich had been married, told her that Joan had been involved with both of them.

Thankfully, she had managed it, and Rich had never suspected. Then, a few years later, she had got on a train alone in New Haven and found herself by chance sitting alongside Joan, of all people. There had been some strangeness at first, but that passed, and Laura evermore treasured that fortuitous, completely private, encounter. Years, prejudices and misconceptions had fallen away, and although their paths had not crossed again, she knew it sufficed for both of them for all time.

Not so with Peggy Leone. More properly, just the reverse. Something was wrong with her, with her thinking. Laura was secure with Rich, had always been. Why had Peggy brought up Joan? What lay behind her strange words about women sticking together? How much did she know or imagine of Joan’s wartime romance with Rich? Did she know there had also been an affair with Jim? What was she saying now?

“… thought a lot of Captain Blunt to name his son after him — why do some people say it’s because of his guilty conscience? I don’t see anything for Rich to feel guilty about. People ought to be forgetting those old rumors after all these years…”

Something congealed within Laura. “What are you talking about, Peggy?” Her voice was deeper than usual, nearly throaty. Of course she had heard the rumors about Blunt’s death aboard the Eel. There were always rumors when something unusual happened to people. Blunt had been Rich’s idol as a young naval officer. During Rich’s first years of submarine service in the Octopus, then later when Rich commanded the S-16 and the Walrus, and finally when he was given the Eel, Blunt had been strongly supportive. Rich had told her all about it. Then, during the latter stages of the war, Blunt had inexplicably changed. He had behaved irrationally, endangered the Eel during a near disastrous depth charging, had hurt his neck and then had suddenly died while inactively sitting in the wardroom during a furiously fought surface gun action. The Eel had brought his body back to Pearl Harbor, and the autopsy disclosed a brain tumor, aggravated by the injury and the stress of combat. The neck injury itself had been ruled out as the proximate cause of death, but there were those who said the Navy might have been covering up the true cause. Someone aboard the Eel might have done something to him during that terrible depth charging. Perhaps even Rich.

“Of course, I don’t believe a word of it, Laura. Nobody could who knows Rich even a little bit. But I thought you ought to know what they’re saying…” Peggy’s voice was pitched low, barely audible. “Most people won’t tell you this sort of thing,” she said. “That’s why a good friend … that’s why I felt I had to …” again she let her voice trail off.

Beware the bearer of evil rumor under the guise of friendship! There lies the quicksand! Peggy herself might have revived that old story. But why? What does she want? If she wants my help in her campaign to get Keith out of the Navy, this is not the way to go about it. I’ll not help her after this. All I want is just to get her out of here. Far away from here. Maybe that’s it. Get her out of New London, out of the Navy, that is, and Keith too, of course. But that’s stupid. She’s a stupid woman. This conversation is insane. Maybe she’s not right in the head. I’m the wife of her husband’s senior officer. I don’t have to listen to this drivel. Especially day after day, as I have. How to turn her around without activating her implicit threat? How to stop her without risking the intensification of rumor, the spreading, even the creation, of destructive, titillating gossip? Can she have the slightest idea of how harmful this could be to Rich, at this time of all times, with an admiral’s selection board in the offing?

She must. Obviously, she must. This must be her game. But it won’t hurt much if it comes only from Peggy. More people than I must know her for what she’s turned out to be. Cool head. Don’t show that it stings. Play it down. Don’t let her see how she has suddenly scared you. Don’t give her anything she can use. What to say?

“Don’t worry yourself about any of that idle talk, Peggy. Rich and I have heard it all, and so has the rest of the Navy. It doesn’t amount to anything. Commodore Blunt’s death” (for some obscure reason she felt his title should be attached to his name) “grieved Rich deeply. That’s why he decided to bring him back to Pearl instead of burying him at sea the usual way.” That’s enough. Now get off the subject. “And don’t concern yourself about Joan Lastrada, either. She’s a fine person, and a good friend of both of ours.” Enough of that subject, too. There’s sufficient truth in what she knows or guesses to keep the gossip mills grinding endlessly. Even Rich doesn’t know what I know, and I may never tell him. “But I can’t influence Rich’s official Navy actions, about Keith or anything else. He wouldn’t let me if I tried. What Keith does is only his business, and yours, of course.” Best hand her this placebo. “He’ll have plenty of chances to talk all this over with Rich if he wants to after the Cushing gets back from this trip. Keith will have to bring it up, though. Rich sure won’t. He feels very strongly about this sort of thing. If Keith wants to talk about it, he’ll tell him the very best he knows and thinks. But it will be up to Keith.”

“But you will speak to Rich, so he’ll know what Keith’s thinking.” It was an assertion of fact, not a question. “Keith sets a lot of store by his advice. This will be a very big decision for him.” Peggy was still looking at her with intensity. There was something she was trying to project without saying it. Laura could only interpret her manner as a nervous challenge.

With a decisive motion, Laura rose to her feet. “I’ll tell him what you’ve told me. What he does about it is up to him. He’ll be home in half an hour, and now I’ve got to get ready.” Peggy remained seated. Would a stronger hint of dismissal be needed? But Laura was saved from the necessity by the sight of a familiar auto entering their driveway. “Rich is home early,” she said with a mild note of surprise.

A moment later he came in through the back door, and she knew something was wrong, that he was upset to see Peggy, that, whatever it was, it would preoccupy him all evening to the exclusion of everything else, and that if it had to do with naval operational matters, he would tell her nothing.

The slight bustle attendant upon Peggy’s departure provided a respite. Laura could sense his urgency for her guest to leave, hoped Peggy did not. “What’s the matter?” she said as soon as they were alone.

“Nothing that we can’t fix, I hope,” he said. “That’s why I came home early. There’s nothing I can do on the Proteus right now, but there may be later tonight. I’ll probably have to spend the night aboard, so I’ll throw a few things in a suitcase…”

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Rich’s answer was proof that he could not. “What were you and Peggy Leone talking about?” he asked. To Laura’s sensitive antennas, tuned as she was to her husband’s sometimes uncommunicative moods, there was the slightest — barely the slightest — emphasis on Peggy’s married name, almost as though Peggy were the last person in the world he had expected, or wanted, to see.

“Just girl talk,” Laura said lightly. “She’s not been over for some time, so I asked her to stop by for a drop of tea.” Sometime soon, Laura knew, she would need to discuss the problem of Peggy and Keith, but now was not the time. There was a familiar look of concentration on his face, a preoccupation she had experienced often enough to have evolved her own method of dealing with it. Then intuition flooded her mind. “Is something the matter with Keith and the Cushing?” she said before she could stop herself.

The look on Rich’s face told her she had hit close to the mark. It also told her to ask no more.

It was quite dark as Richardson parked his car in the designated space near the Proteus’ forward gangway. He had succumbed to Laura’s suggestion of a hastily prepared supper before returning. The lights of the submarine tender were blazing brilliantly, especially those associated with her machine shop and the submarine service areas. The cargo entry ports had large soft lights rigged on a small boom projecting out over them, casting a diffused yet penetrating glow around the area. Similar lights were burning on the other side, where the submarines lay, encasing the entire ship and the sleek low-lying hulls she mothered with a small cocoon of brilliance which fought unsuccessfully against the surrounding night. From the distance, as his car approached New London’s State Pier, alongside which the tender was moored, Richardson was conscious of the general impression that the entire combined structure of tender, submarines and dock area was magically incandescent. As he approached, however, the lights divided into their individual sources, each causing the outlines of a portion of the component structure of the ship, the covered dock on one side and the submarines on the other, to stand out against the pressure of the supervening blackness as though, somehow, each possessed its own internal source of light instead of being only a reflection.

It did not seem real. There was a mystery to the entire scene. Proteus was moored bow in, the customary way. Her masts disappeared into nothingness overhead, her hull stretched out to nothingness alongside the deck. The submarines on her starboard side floated on nothing — which reflected shimmering light in certain places — and the sleek superstructures rising from their rounded hulls had their own forests of shiny retractable masts extending upward into black nothingness.

Reflections from the slab-sided Proteus and the rounded hulls of the submarines contrasted strongly with the dullness of the large wooden warehouse which dominated the pier. Yet, though the profusion of luminescence seemed to spring from inexhaustible energy, and the large lights glowed everywhere, it was not enough to drive the blackness very far. It hovered above, on both sides, and ahead and astern. It seemed poised to close back in, and its gloominess seized Richardson as he approached the accommodation ladder, returned the sentry’s salute at its foot, and heard Proteus’ loudspeaker system announce his arrival: “Squadron Ten! Squadron Ten!” Slowly, his suitcase in his left hand, he climbed the twenty-seven varnished steps to the gangway opening in the ship’s rail. Buck Williams, alerted by the speaker, was waiting.

“We’ll be fully provisioned and ready to leave by day after tomorrow if you need us, Commodore,” said Buck.

“Are there any problems? What about the two rigs?”

“No strain there. Your Proteus gang will have them both made up again and ready by tomorrow night. They’ll make that change in the hook by then, too.”

“Good,” said Richardson. The two had disengaged themselves from the obligatory attentions of Proteus’ officer of the deck, were walking toward Richardson’s cabin. The gangway messenger had already disappeared with the suitcase in that direction. “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Buck,” he went on, “but there’s not much choice after that message from Keith.”

“Thank God we got this little invention of yours built, Commodore, and a chance to try it out. At least there’s something we can do. But maybe there won’t be any need. Maybe it will all turn out okay after all.”

“Maybe,” said Richardson. “I don’t suppose there’s been any new message.”

“Not from Cushing. There’s one from ComSubLant, but all it does is confirm what he told you on the telephone, that you’re operational commander.”

The two officers reached Richardson’s door, with “ComSubRon 10” emblazoned over it on an engraved brass plate. It was ajar. His suitcase stood in the center of the floor. Wordlessly he pushed Williams inside, shut the door, began turning the combination on his desk safe. He opened it, pulled out an unfolded message flimsy, laid it on the top of his desk. Williams closed in beside him, also reading it. For a moment neither spoke. It was as if, by the intensity of their concentration on the paper, they could elicit some additional word, some further meaning, that Keith might have put there.

Williams broke the silence. “When it first came in, both of us said that message isn’t like Keith. It tells us practically nothing about his propeller, except that it’s damaged. He’s left out everything we need to know.”

“I’ve been thinking about that too,” said Richardson, “but that’s not quite true. The information about the collision came at the end of the message instead of the beginning.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Buck. “You’d think the dope on that would be the first thing on his mind instead of the last thing.”

“How about an add-on.”

“Add-on?” Buck was incredulous. “What do you mean, Commodore?”

“ ‘Rich.’ We’re by ourselves.”

“Okay. Rich. But what’s this about the collision being an add-on?”

“It’s a guess. Encoding a message is the hard part. That and writing it as carefully as you can. The cipher system Keith used is designated for operational situations and generally calls for simple operational precedence. Operational Immediate at the most. If there’s anything secret in a message, the whole message is supposed to be ciphered in a secret code. Keith goes even a step beyond that. He labels the last part ‘top secret.’ But this message isn’t in a top-secret code. It’s in an ordinary code. But he sticks the words ‘top secret’ on both sides of the secret part, right at the end of the message, and sends it Urgent, the very highest priority.”

“That’s true,” said Buck very seriously. “A collision with a foreign sub is a pretty obvious top-secret thing, and pretty urgent, I’d say. It’s enough to spoil your entire day…”

Richardson did not even notice Buck’s characteristic frivolity. “Keith would have had plenty of time to get the message ready before trying to break through. He and his coding board probably spent half the day getting ready to broadcast the minute the Cushing got her antenna above the ice. It would have been all encoded and sitting in the radio room. The first part is a routine report on conditions. Then suddenly he breaks into something really secret and really urgent. I think he added on that last bit hurriedly. The collision could have happened a very short time ago, maybe only minutes before that message got on the air!”

“You think that’s why he made it so short?” Buck’s seriousness was genuine now.

“That’s what I’m guessing. It’s the first thing we’ve got from him since his report that he was about to go under the pack. You’d think he’d have had a lot more to say. It’s my guess he scrubbed at least half of what he had there at first.”

“Why shorten an already written and coded message, though? Why not just add on what he wanted, or make up a whole new one?”

“Time. That’s got to be the reason. It’s much quicker to crank up a coding machine that’s already set up with the original code than to break out a different code book and set it up with a whole new one. And he made it short because he didn’t want to transmit for very long.”

“But why not, boss? The other sub must be damaged too. It’s probably trying to surface to get off a message to its headquarters too. Just like Keith. What difference does that make? Keith doesn’t have to bother them, and they don’t have to bother him, either. In fact, they should help each other.”

“Not so fast, Buck. Two boats have collided under the ice. That’s a lot of bother, right there. It’s bound to annoy that Russian skipper a little.”

“So, he’s unhappy. So’s Keith. So’s everybody.”

“Maybe he’s not all that unhappy?”

“Who’s not? Keith? … Oh, you mean the other skipper. How do you know he’s a Russian?”

“All I’m doing is guessing. The Arctic Ocean is as big as the whole United States. If the only two subs tooling around up there have a collision, that’s one hell of a big coincidence. One sure thing is that Keith’s doing a lot of guessing too. One of the instructions in his operation order was to remain undetected at all costs. Another was a warning to be alert for possible unfriendly reaction to his presence there.”

“What right do the Russians or anybody else have to object to his being there? It’s international waters, just as much as any other ocean!”

“Sure. But one whole half of it borders on their country, and they’ve been running ships through it along their northern coast for a long time. They’ve got the biggest icebreakers in the world keeping the channel free in the winter.” Richardson turned suddenly, picked up his suitcase, walked with it into his sleeping room, opened it decisively on the bed, began to transfer its contents into a drawer.

“So you figure they think they own it?” said Williams, following.

“They might. Nobody has ever competed with them. The Nautilus, Skate and Sargo have been up there, we’ve sent some exploring teams out on the ice and nowadays we fly over it all the time. But that’s about it. It figures they won’t like our putting a ballistic missile submarine up there.”

“If that’s the way Keith’s thinking, that would account for his trying to be on the air as little as possible, I guess,” said Buck. “At least, that would make it harder for the Russians to locate him by DF-ing his transmission, if they have a direction-finding station up there. Do you think he’ll send another message?”

“Yes, I sure do. Another short one, and he’ll send it at the best radio propagation time. That’s why I’m sleeping aboard tonight. Another message would add a lot to what we know, and he knows that, too. But he’d like to avoid as much as possible of the preliminary procedure signals.” Richardson abruptly changed the subject. “Did you find out how this message was routed?”

“Radio Asmara. Relayed on landline to Washington. We got our copy from the Pentagon and had it decoded even before ComSubLant, down in Norfolk. What difference does it make how it got here?”

“None. But remember, with a message this important, Keith was probably in his radio room when it was sent. Radio Asmara, eh?” The cadence of Richardson’s sentence slowed perceptibly.

“It’s one of our main communications stations serving the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean,” ventured Buck, aware that Richardson knew this as well as he.

“It’s a quarter of the way around the world from here. Keith must have had the devil of a time getting through,” said Richardson musingly, as he closed the empty suitcase, shoved it into a corner.

“Is that why you think he made the message so short? But he couldn’t have known it would have to go through Asmara before he opened up!”

“Maybe he did at that, Buck.” The younger officer felt his senior’s measured gaze. “He knew he’d have to raise some very distant station and start with a lot of procedure signals. So there would be a lot of lost time before he could even get to the main part of the message.”

“So?”

“So maybe someone might try to jam his transmission! That would be another reason to make it short!”

Comprehension on Williams’ face, but still a question. “Why didn’t he say so, then? He’d want us to know that, if he expected it, wouldn’t he?”

Richardson’s voice dropped a half-octave, as he answered. “Security, Buck. They didn’t get that submarine up there overnight! This wasn’t all just an unhappy accident. I’m guessing it wasn’t, and I think Keith is guessing the same thing. At least, it might not be. If it isn’t, they’ve been reading our mail for a long time. And it stands to reason, if the collision was deliberate, that was no ordinary submarine!”

“Good Lord.” Buck expelled the words not as an exclamation but almost as a sigh. “So you figure maybe they sent whatever is up there because they knew Keith was coming into the Arctic Ocean?”

“Only a guess, I said.”

“You’re reading an awful lot into this little message, Rich.”

“The next installment from Keith will tell a lot more. That’s why I figured I’d better spend the night aboard. He’s going to send another message, and he’ll time it for when we’re in darkness. If we can intercept his transmission direct, instead of depending on some shore station to relay it, we might learn quite a bit just from the way he sends it.”

Buck was silent for a short moment, then said musingly, “He’ll know we’ll be anxious for his follow-up message, all right, but why should he wait with sending it? We’d get it sooner with another relay through Asmara or Guam, or somewhere, than if he waits till we’re in darkness and there’s a chance of giving it to us direct.”

“Sure. But it’s Keith up there, and he knows we’re down here. What would you be thinking, right now, if you were in his shoes?”

“Well, I guess it’s obvious I’d be hoping my friends in New London would rally around.”

“You know damn well they would, Buck. And you’d also know that Keith and I would be having this very talk, right about now, and would be sitting in our radio room when your message comes over the air. And you’d also know that we’d figure you’d be in yours.”

“I see what you mean,” said Buck, slowly. “That’s just what he’ll do.” Then a thought struck him. “Do you think we could talk to him by voice?”

Richardson hesitated before answering. “No. At least, not for anything really important. Maybe our single side-band set can reach him, and hear his, but what could we say that’s worthwhile? Any real information he wants to send will come coded, in the right code this time, and by CW.”

“Coded dots and dashes are fine, Rich, but just think what it will do for Keith and his whole crew if we can talk to him by voice!” Buck was speaking rapidly now, throwing all he had into it. “We don’t know anything at all about what kind of shape he’s in. He’ll tell us in his next message. He’s probably already got it drafted. What he and his whole outfit want to hear is that we’re right in there with them, and using every resource the Navy’s got. There’s no rule against voice, is there?”

“No — voice doesn’t have the range CW has. But you can’t encipher voice. No voice code is secure. If our guess is right there’s bound to be an army of unfriendly communication types monitoring everything that goes on the air in that area.”

Buck could sense his superior’s desire to be convinced, could hardly wait to press the argument. “I’m talking about morale, boss, not security. We don’t need to say anything at all that refers even to where they are, or what they’re doing. Don’t you think Keith knows us well enough to read between the lines of whatever we say to him?”

Weakening, Rich nodded at the justice of this point. However, he persisted. “The problem is that we’ll be making him transmit a second time. If they’re monitoring the Arctic, maybe with direction finders, we’re making it that much easier for them to locate him. We’ve no idea what they’re up to. I agree it will be good for his morale — and ours, too — if we can come up on voice with him. And he is in international waters, and has every right to send anything he wants. But if there’s something funny going on it would be wrong to make him send a lot of procedural transmissions to establish the voice contact.”

Satisfied that he had won, Buck nodded in his turn. “That’s no problem, boss. The call-up procedure and all that, I mean. We can get around that easy. We’ll use our old wolfpack code. He’ll be sitting there in his own radio room and hear it himself, and it’ll work like a charm!”

Richardson felt his own enthusiasm beginning to match that of his junior. “You did say that you and Keith had resurrected that old wolfpack code of ours. How would you use it?”

“We wait for him to send the next message, right? We hear it come in, right in our radio shack. The minute he gets the receipt from the shore station working him, we break in with the wolfpack code and tell him what we’re up to. He won’t have to come back at us on CW, and there’ll be no prelims on voice either. Then we shift right over to the single side-band set and talk to him. He won’t transmit one single syllable until he opens up to answer, and he’ll not have to do that if he doesn’t want to.”

“Looks like you’re planning for us to break a couple of our communication rules, Buck, but it sounds good. The most important thing of all, though, will be that message he’ll be sending. No interference with that, and no making him repeat on voice what he’s already put in the message!” He stopped, then continued, “I want to get on top of that right away, as soon as it comes in. Do you want to help me be the decoding board?”

“You know you couldn’t keep me away, Skipper,” said Buck with a warm smile. “But do you think a broken-down old submarine skipper and squadron commander will be able to run one of those new coding machines?” The smile of anticipation on his face belied the words.

“Then you’d better take over one of the division commanders’ staterooms and get what sleep you can. When the message comes in we’ll be up for quite a while, working on it. Maybe you should tell Cindy you’ll not be home tonight.”

Buck grinned. “I did already,” he confessed.

The ship intercom phone buzzed on the bulkhead above Richardson’s steel bed. He reached for it swiftly, alertness awakening throughout his body.

“Commodore, this is Radio. We’re intercepting a message from the Cushing to NSS Annapolis. He’s coming in loud and clear.”

“Call Commander Williams in ComSubDiv One-oh-One’s room. I’ll be right up!” He slammed the telephone into its cradle, jammed his feet into slippers, ran out the door in his pajamas.

Buck, barefooted, carrying his shoes, arrived in the radio room only seconds after he did. Evidently he had been sleeping in his underwear, had delayed only to pull on his trousers.

There were three crewmen there, one a supervisor. “I called you as soon as the message started coming in, Commodore,” the senior said with a hint of pride in his accomplishment. “We’re copying it at two stations.” He indicated the two radiomen seated at their typewriters, earphones on their heads, clacking the keys with measured simultaneous cadence as their eyes stared miles beyond the radio receivers banked directly in front of them.

“Have you another set of earphones?” Richardson knew there must be, automatically reached out his hand. Buck Williams, he saw, likewise could hardly contain his eagerness.

“Yessir. But we can only plug you in at one station.” The supervisor handed Richardson a single set of earphones, swiftly plugged in the other end of the six-foot cord. Rich fumbled with the headpiece, detached one of the earphones from its clip, handed it to Buck, put the headpiece with now a single earphone to his head. Buck, crowding close to be within range of the wire attached to his earpiece, held it to his near ear. The earpieces were fitted with earmuff-type coverings to cut out extraneous sound. Both men cupped their hands over their unused ears, strained to blot out all other sensation.

XVTMW, said the radio waves. PLTMV ZAWLN MMPTL XZBKG — the rhythm was steady, hypnotic. Glancing over the shoulder of one of the radiomen, Williams could see the encrypted message forming before his eyes. There were already three lines of type, ten five-letter groups per line, all neatly columnar, the letters coming one by one as the distant operator hammered them out with his radio key. Like many officers, Williams had learned Morse code early in his career. He had never become as good at it as the radiomen who dealt with it every day, but he could recognize the letters, although not fast enough to receive a message at normal transmittal speed.

“Dash-dot-dash-dot,” went the faint signal. The letter C. C appeared on the paper as the radioman hit the typewriter key. Then a single dash, the letter T. Then three more: o. Holding both hands, one with an earphone, to his head, Buck could visualize the distant operator, far to the north, beating out the dots and dashes as rapidly as he could, yet well aware that a rhythmic swing, and steady, precise formulation of the letters was vital to accurate receipt. He was obviously a professional. Buck would have described him as having a “copperplate hand,” meaning that the dots and dashes were crisply distinguishable, the spaces between them always the same, the spaces between letters slightly longer but also exactly the same, the spaces between groups longer yet but still unvarying. Keith must also, at that very moment, be hunched in a chair alongside his radio operator, a spare set of earphones on his head, following his radio transmission with his ears and with his mind. He would hear the signals streaming out from his ship, imagine them crossing the frozen ocean, bouncing at least once off the ionosphere and finally coming within range of the tall, huge antennas across the Severn River from the Naval Academy. There, the so-carefully-tuned receivers would amplify them back into the audible range to be copied. In his own receivers he would hear also the much fainter notes of the distant station as Annapolis responded to his call and indicated readiness to receive the message. He would listen as his radiomen confided his enciphered letters to the aether, hear the procedure signals calling for repeats of doubtful passages if any, finally hear the R for receipt that indicated the shore station now assumed responsibility for the message and its delivery to the addressees. Not until a message of this importance had cleared completely would Keith himself — short of urgent matters elsewhere — leave his radio room.

But would Keith know that his two closest friends were similarly occupied, that they had lain in wait to intercept his expected second message, had carefully planned to be in the Proteus’ radio room to hear it directly, from his own transmitters? It was what Keith himself would do were the situation reversed, and if he was anywhere within reach of the proper receivers. But there was no way Keith could be sure that Rich and Buck, his most immediate associates, had monitored the ship-to-shore frequency and were taking his message directly, that they were at that moment directly connected to him by the tenuous, invisible, fragile radio waves emanating from his own radio room. For that matter, he expected Buck to be at sea in the already-begun barrier exercise.

But, beyond doubting, the hope would have been in his mind. Positive confirmation would be a tremendous booster to morale. If possible it should be done. How to alert him?

“Chief,” Buck said to the radio supervisor, speaking in a low voice so as not to interrupt the concentration of the men receiving the message, uncovering his left ear as he did so, “Chief, is your transmitter on this frequency?”

“Yessir. The Commodore had us do that this afternoon — I mean yesterday. But we don’t have the power to reach the Cushing where she’s at.”

“You mean we don’t have the power of a big shore station. We can hear Cushing okay, and we have bigger transmitters than she has. So she ought to be able to hear us.”

“Sometimes it works,” said the supervisor doubtfully, “but the Cushing didn’t know which shore station in the whole world would be the one that could hear her message. You never know that.”

“Sure, but maybe she aimed it at us, Chief. She picked a time when we’d be in darkness. Maybe she’s hoping we would think of putting this watch on her frequency.”

“Annapolis answered her call-up, sir,” the chief radioman said earnestly. “All we’re doing is copying her message. There’s no way she could know we’re on the circuit. Since we’re in port, we’re not allowed to use the ship-to-shore frequency. Even if we did open up as soon as she’s finished with NSS, we might be just enough off-frequency from her that she won’t hear our weak signal.”

“I know,” Buck said, containing his impatience. “But if we can hear him, isn’t right now the best chance we’ll ever get for him to hear us?”

“Where is he at, sir?”

“Oh. Sorry, Chief.” Buck quickly covered his near breach of security. “Anyway, he’s in about the same longitude as we are, and so is Radio Annapolis. So that means the radio conditions in this north-south line right now are at their best, and we ought to be able to work him direct ourselves.” Richardson had become an interested and approving onlooker, Buck noticed.

It would be necessary to disregard the rule against transmitting while in port. Proteus’ transmitter, already on the frequency, would be fine-tuned to Annapolis’ transmissions. Then, as soon as Annapolis receipted to the Cushing, Proteus, acting as though she were another ship at sea waiting for the circuit to clear, would open up with the cryptic call signs of the old wolfpack code. These would mean nothing to anyone, not even Cushing’s radio operator (unless Keith had prepared him for this eventuality) but they would to Keith, if he were there and heard them, or even if he only saw them appear on his radioman’s typewriter log sheet. Keith would be there. He might even be hoping for something like this to happen.

The problem was whether Keith could afford to stay on the surface long enough for more messages. He had to have surfaced through the ice to transmit this message coming in. Those were his own beeps and key clicks they were hearing, faint and weak because of the distance but clear and distinct, nevertheless, and they proved that at that moment, at least, he was on the surface. Unless Cushing was in immediate danger, he would stay surfaced long enough to hear the receipt signal from Annapolis, probably would stay longer if not under pressure to submerge again. On the other hand, he might have to go down immediately — if the damaged Cushing was able to dive — and if that happened the only way to get a message to him would be the one already used: the long-wave low-frequency radio transmitter system based at Cutler, Maine, designed for communication with submerged submarines.

Richardson had uncovered his free ear also. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “What do we send him?”

Buck showed him the message he had written. “Here it is. He’ll spot this for the wolfpack code as soon as he hears it.”

“KE RI BU C5” read Richardson aloud. “I remember the code was in two-letter groups. But why do you think he’ll be able to decode it on sight? He won’t have the code with him in the radio room.”

“He won’t need it. That’s the beauty of it. It’s designed to be used between people who know each other well. The first three groups are the first two letters of the names we use for each other. For Keith, just that much will do a lot.”

There was pleasure in Richardson’s voice as he acknowledged the truth of Buck’s statement. Then he asked, “But what’s this c5?”

“Once Keith catches on that we’re trying to communicate something via the old wolfpack code, he’ll know it means crystal system number five. Single side-band is frequency-controlled by crystal. So this whole message tells him we’re here in the Proteus radio room — somebody’s radio room, anyway — that we want to talk to him on single side-band radio, and which sets of crystals to use. He and I spent quite a bit of time working these out for that barrier exercise. He’ll understand exactly what we’re saying to him. We’ll be using one crystal, on its frequency, and he’ll be using a different one and come back at us with a different frequency.”

There was a drop in Richardson’s voice. “Remember, Buck, voice isn’t secure. Don’t get your hopes up too high about what we can tell him. Any ideas about what we can do to help him from down here will have to go in a classified encoded message. Matter of fact, we told him about your towing hookup rig in our answer to his first message. We’re monitoring the scheds right now to pick up the transmission.”

“I know, and I checked on that too, a little while ago.” Buck had moved closer to Richardson, dropped his voice until he was practically whispering. “Our answer hasn’t been sent out yet. That’s one of the troubles with our system. There’s so many messages to send that they haven’t got to it yet. It’s been hours since he sent his first message, and now here’s the second, and still he’s not received an answer to the first one. When it does go on the air, it will take him an hour or so to decode it, besides. It’s just too slow!”

Richardson said nothing, and after a pause Buck went on. “You’re boss, and you’ll do the talking, but we’ve got to tell him something! Just say we’re not sitting here on our ass while he’s got a problem! You don’t have to say anything classified!”

Williams’ entreaty was having its effect, bolstered by Richardson’s own natural desire. “The Russians might be able to find Keith’s transmissions if they’re continuously searching the entire spectrum. If they hear us down here they’ll have no idea who we’re talking to.” He was talking to himself. “But if they’ve got a frequency scanner anywhere near where he is, when he opens up they’ll zero in on him right away.”

“And a lot of good may it do them! Keith has all the right in the world to use his radio!” Buck waved the message pad. “They’re nearly finished transmitting. The group count’s solid. Can I give the chief the go-ahead? I’ve already briefed him. We’ve got to break right in on CW before the Cushing closes down.” With Richardson’s nod of assent, Buck handed him the earphone, seized the chief radioman by the arm, began talking earnestly to him.

“He’s already got his transmitter on the frequency,” Buck reported a moment later with a smile of pleasure, “and he knows exactly what to do. Says every time he’s listened on a circuit he’s thought of how he could get something across to one of the other operators, if only he’d be allowed to try. He’s getting set right now. As soon as NSS sends a receipt he’ll zero beat with them. That will put him exactly on with NSS, and therefore with the Cushing. They’ll hear him, too, and out of curiosity they’ll listen to see what’s coming off. Then they’ll hear the chief send our little message five times and shut down. Keith will both see it on paper and hear it in his earphones, and that ought to do it.”

“You’re sure he won’t answer and alert anyone listening that it was meant for him?”

“He won’t answer,” said Buck with a confident grin. “That’s not in the code. I mean, it’s in the code not to do that, ever. He invented it, remember. He won’t send another thing on CW. ‘c5’ gives him both crystals. We wait a little while, then open up on voice, that’s all. If he heard our CW transmission he’ll simply set up his own radio, and wait. The next thing we hear from him will be his own voice, with no warning to anyone, when he answers us.”

There was a change in the smooth cadence of the incoming message. The last few letters were drawn out, lengthened by the tiniest of fractions. Then the distant transmitter fell silent. Rich, Buck and the chief swung simultaneously to the two operators. Both were counting the coded groups they had been receiving. The chief seated himself at a third operating station, fingered the transmitting key, looked inquiringly at Richardson.

“Go ahead,” said Rich. “Open up as soon as Annapolis sends the R. I’ll take responsibility for breaking the rule.”

“Whoever Keith had on the key was a damn good operator,” said Buck. “I’ll bet NSS doesn’t need many repeats. Maybe not any. Our men seem to have it solid. NSS should too.” He put both hands to his head, pressed the earpiece hard against one ear. Richardson, he saw, was doing the same.

W7ST 130642 DE NSS went down on two radio typewriters. The signal was much louder than the one they had been hearing. There was a slight pause, then a prolonged, positive, dot-dash-dot, the letter R, sent with all the finality that could be mustered in a single monosyllabic note. Instantly they heard a faint tap from the distant station. Cushing’s operator had barely touched his key, acknowledging, in the unwritten code of professional radiomen, that he had been fully serviced. His next move would be to turn off his transmitter. His message had been sent and receipted for, and there would be no further use for it.

Proteus’ chief had, however, swung into action himself. One hand on his tuning dial, the other on his transmitter key, he sent a single long dash, varying his frequency slightly. It took only a second or two, but it was already beginning to seem too long to Buck when the man released his key, apparently satisfied. Then, without preamble, he began to send the eight letters, four groups of two, over and over without pause. Five times Rich and Buck mentally recorded the four two-letter groups. Five times the radiomen at the receiving stations typed the short message. Then, as unceremoniously as it had begun, the transmission was finished. The chief was already looking for the next order. Buck made the sign of cutting his own throat, the chief reached into the recess of his operating station, and with a loud cachunk the transmitter power hum abruptly stopped.

AA DE NSS, the radiomen typed, and a moment later, K. “Unknown station using this net, identify yourself.” There was a faintly querulous note to Radio Annapolis’ normally steady tone. AA DE NSS, it sent again, and then, after a nearly imperceptible pause, ZKA ZKB. One of the radiomen jerked out a well-used pamphlet which had been stuffed between receivers at his station, flipped it open. Rich and Buck crowded to read over his shoulder. He ran his thumb down the margin. ZKA first. “I am net control,” read the procedure signal entry. Immediately below, ZKB—“You are required to request permission to use this net.”

Buck and the chief were smiling. There was an upward twitch also to Richardson’s mouth as he said, “Don’t answer. I suppose we’ll have to confess someday, just to keep them from apoplexy down in Naval Communications in Washington. But we’ll worry about that some other time. What now, mister communications wizard?”

“We wait long enough for Keith’s people to set up his SSB set, and then we pick up our hand mike and start talking. If he heard our wolfpack transmission, he’ll be there.” Buck’s pleasure at Richardson’s compliment was evident.

The radio supervisor and one of his assistants were bustling about one of the radio sets ranged on the shelf above the operating positions. “Do you want to take it here?” he asked, addressing both Rich and Buck. “We can pipe it either to the bridge or to the Commodore’s Office.”

“Here’s fine,” said Rich. “If we have any problems, we may need your help.”

“Okay, sir,” said the chief, handing a microphone on the end of a wire to Richardson. “You can give me back that headset. You’ll not be needing that. Just press this button on the mike and talk across it, not directly into it. You’ll hear him on our speaker when you let go the button. Use normal voice procedure.”

Rich fingered the microphone, looked it over carefully. The button was on the side convenient to his thumb. “Are we all ready? Has he had enough time?” he asked.

“Yessir. Go ahead.” The chief still had his eyes on his equipment. Buck only smiled, nodded his head.

Richardson pressed the button, let go. A faint buzz came from the bulkhead-mounted speaker above the radio set. He could sense the powerful carrier wave emanating from the antenna on the tender’s foremast, spreading instantaneously, in a huge ellipse oriented north and south up to and partway through earth’s Heaviside Layer. A portion of it, now much weakened by distance over the frozen Arctic, would come within reach of the Cushing’s antennas and thence to the receivers in her radio room.

This had, in fact, already happened, and with the speed of light. Keith’s receiver, if turned on and properly tuned to the right frequency, had already heard the unmodified note Rich had transmitted by pressing the button.

He pressed it again, held the microphone to one side of his mouth. “Keith,” he said, “this is Rich. Buck is here too. Do you read me? How are you, old man?” He released the button, heard the squelch come off the bulkhead speaker.

The chief radioman had his fingers on the receiver dials, sensitively and carefully moving them. There was a faint crackle. He turned past the spot again, more slowly yet. There were words, high-pitched, faint, surrounded by static, but words nevertheless. More gentle adjustment of the dials.

“—and clear,” the distant voice, suddenly distinct, said through the speaker. “How me? Over.” It was Keith. Richardson felt a peculiar sensation on his skin. Keith was speaking slowly, distinctly, to give his words maximum readability over the thousands of miles of frozen sea, tundra and ordinary land it must cover. He must be in his own radio room, therefore well below the ice even if Cushing were somehow entirely surfaced.

Richardson squeezed the mike button. “We hear you the same, Keith. Buck’s here with me. There’s an answer already on the way to your first dispatch, and we’ve just intercepted your second. Can you stay up on voice? Over.”

“Negative, Rich. There’s too much activity over the equator.” Rich caught the sharp glance from Buck, grimaced understandingly in return. “Our second message explains it better. It’s great to hear you, though. Over.” Keith spoke rapidly, now that communications had been established. There was just enough emphasis on the word “great” to accentuate the undercurrent of anxiety in his words.

“That’s okay, Keith. We just want you to know we’re with you, and will keep this circuit up on our end. Anytime you want to use it, open up and we’ll be here. Over.”

Keith evidently had begun talking even before Rich enunciated the final word. “—help a great deal,” his voice said. “There’s not much time—” There was a short pause, someone saying something in the distance, words unintelligible, then Keith’s voice again, speaking even more rapidly. “Got to go. Thanks for calling. I’ll come back to you when I can. Out.” There were both urgency and finality in his voice.

“He’s under a lot of pressure, Buck,” said Rich gravely. “Something’s really wrong up there.”

“We hardly got a chance to talk at all. I was hoping there’d be enough time to say more than just ‘hello,’ ” said Williams, betraying his own concern by speaking nearly as rapidly as Keith. “Should we tell him we’re on our way to help him? He might be able to hear us even if he can’t answer.”

“No. He’s signed off. That’s telling us something, right there. Probably he’s already retracting antennas and flooding tanks. No point in adding any more complication to his life right now. Let’s take this message of his and decode it. That’s the most useful thing we can do.”

Buck hesitated an instant, then said, “Shall I leave instructions up here about guarding the voice frequency? I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Okay, Buck, thanks,” said Richardson. “I have the key to the coding room down in my safe. Tell the chief to set up a continuous watch on voice and CW both, and call one of us if they hear anything. Also, they should record all transmissions on tape, especially if we’re not there to hear them. The squadron office has a tape recorder. Have them get it up here and be ready to use it.”

Setting up the coding machine was an unfamiliar exercise for both officers, although both had been well versed in an earlier model. An added complication was the necessity of implementing a totally new top-secret code, extracted from the code room safe. Much reference to the printed instructions and many false starts were necessary before the machine finally began to type out intelligible copy. Richardson and Williams, their heads nearly touching, read the words as they appeared from under the typing bar.

“This CHARLIE JULIET business is silly,” muttered Buck as the first words appeared. “What good is a code name in a ciphered message?”

Rich did not answer. The next few words engaged his full attention. He could feel Buck Williams’ heavy breathing, only inches away.

Richardson broke the silence. “Buck, this is a real emergency! I’d call Norfolk right away, but there’s only a duty officer and a communication watch on, and anyway they’ll not have Keith’s message decoded yet. How quick can you pull your ship together and get out of here?”

“Tomorrow, like I said. But we’re not on any emergency basis.”

“Go down right now and check the critical items. Be back here in an hour. We can have a quick breakfast while we talk it over and get ready to phone Norfolk. Put your crew under emergency notice, but don’t tell anyone why. I’ll see what the Proteus can do to speed up getting the two towing rigs ready. By that time they’ll have decoded the message and rushed it to Admiral Murphy, and he’ll be anxious to talk to us and Washington both.”

Reveille was sounding aboard the Proteus as they locked the steel door of the coding room behind them.