Cold is the Sea

14

Unlike Keith, Rich and Buck planned no ceremonial inspection of the edge of the ice cap. Manta simply remained deeply submerged and at high speed, aware of the approximate location of the southern boundary of the cap from ice patrol reports, and specifically, as she passed under it, from her upward-beamed fathometer — and went immediately from the domain of light and air to that of darkness and ice. Henceforth she would be confined to her stored oxygen and waste removal capabilities. After a final recharge of air from the surface, a regular schedule was begun of bleeding oxygen into the ship from her storage bank of compressed oxygen and eliminating carbon dioxide and the sinister carbon monoxide through absorption and burning. The daily slow depletion of oxygen, causing lassitude and discomfort during the couple of hours preceding the snorkel period when the air was changed, became a thing of the past. “We’re keeping the oxygen above twenty percent by volume, and we figure we can stay completely submerged for thirty days,” said Buck. “After that, we might have a problem. We could stretch things some by bleeding good air out of one of our compressed air banks while we’re pumping it down with our compressors into a different one.”

“You trying to teach me some new submarining, old man?” Rich grinned at Buck over their afterdinner coffee cups. “Seems to me, in the dim dark ages of the diesel boats, we used to do that to save the compressed oxygen. We had to pay for oxygen out of our ship’s quarterly allotment back then, not like now. You modern submariners don’t know what it was like, in the bad old days.”

“You go right straight to hell, Commodore. We’re doggone glad we don’t. And so are you, very respectfully, sir, and all that.” The best part of the day was at hand. The strenuous and sometimes ingenious drills were over, the air in the confined hull was sweet and invigorating, the evening movies were being set up in the wardroom and crew’s mess hall. Everything was as it should be. The entire calculations of strain on the towing gear, from initial contact to the steady-state towing phase, had been gone over. The devices themselves had both been inspected, their few moving parts lubricated, the strain gauges tested. They had suffered no deterioration from their week in the slimy cold of the stern torpedo tubes, were as ready as they could be.

To the gratification of Rich and Buck, the new settings on the reactor controls had worked out to twenty-three percent increased power, and with everything wide open the Manta had actually logged almost twenty-four knots, beyond the capability of the electronic log to measure. Speed had been computed from propeller rpm. Following the test run, however, and except for short periods during certain of the new drills, they had decided to continue at the old speed and keep the new power in reserve for use when and if the situation demanded it.

By this time, Manta’s course was due north. There were less than a thousand miles to go to reach the Cushing’s estimated position at grid Golf November two-nine. Tomorrow Buck would shift navigational plot and the inertial navigation system to the polar grid.

“We’re nearly there, Buck,” Rich said after a moment, the easy smile on his face fading slightly. “We should be making contact with Keith within forty-eight hours. I’ve got to admit the whole thing’s beginning to build up in my mind. It’s been a great trip up to now…” He paused. His face grew more serious. “I mean, it’s been really relaxing. But do you feel like a movie tonight? I sure don’t.”

“Me neither,” said Buck, “but I wasn’t going to say so. We’ll be trying this thing out for real day after tomorrow. But we ought not cut the wardroom off from movies just because we don’t want one — why don’t we get another cup of coffee, and I’ll tell them to go ahead without us.”

Prior to Manta’s departure from New London, a carefully drafted priority message had been sent to Keith via the special low-frequency station in Maine in the hope that even though unable to transmit, Cushing was still able to receive signals through her underwater antenna. At Donaldson’s insistence, Rich himself had drafted the message. Coded in Washington before transmittal (in deference to the hour, the CNO had offered to have this done by his own coding board), the message conveyed the purpose of the Manta’s voyage, details of the submerged hookup, and the procedures required of the Cushing. On the day of Manta’s projected arrival, Cushing was directed periodically to echo-range on her active sonar, blow a police whistle on her underwater voice communication set or release an air bubble through her main ballast tanks, all in a complicated time sequence. She was to keep this up, precisely as specified, until further instruction.

In the meantime, with her receiving senses at maximum alert, Manta would patrol the vicinity of Cushing’s last known grid position and home in on the noises: a combination of locating device and recognition signal. Once the two submarines were at close range, conversation was authorized over the UQC in plain language and at minimum volume. Keith was to have ready and transmit directly to Rich, by voice, an already enciphered message stating his condition and, most specifically, any information he might have regarding the aircraft the Russians claimed to have lost in his vicinity. Then, before doing anything else, the Manta was to seek a polynya in which she could surface to relay the message.

Not until then would Manta be free to begin the hookup and extraction operation. Although acting as a radio relay link had initially been Rich’s suggestion, he had privately argued strenuously against requiring the additional delay the message would involve. “If the Cushing’s in the shape we think most likely, without propulsion but otherwise okay, there’ll be a good chance of getting both ship and crew out of there. If that’s true, and nothing else is changed, then the idea of abandoning ship and scuttling her will be put on standby, right? Then why waste time? If there’s any kind of skulduggery going on, as soon as whoever’s doing it realizes there may be a chance of our getting them out …”

But this argument he had lost. Admiral Donaldson shook his head, interrupted him. “I know exactly what you’re saying,” he said, “but I’ve got my orders, too. This came right from the National Security Council to the Joint Chiefs. This is an affair of state, now, and they want answers just as soon as they can get them. Sorry, Rich, but that has to stay in the message, and it’s a direct order to you.”

“Don’t they see this puts Keith and his crew in even greater jeopardy?” Rich said desperately, momentarily forgetting he was speaking with the Chief of Naval Operations, the highest officer on active duty in the Navy. He was thinking only of the possibility of the lengthy sonar or radio transmissions being overheard, of their arousing curiosity (he almost said “the enemy’s curiosity”) and then allowing time for possible inimical reaction. He recovered himself in confusion. “Sorry, Admiral, But look. Whatever happened that made Keith go off the air so suddenly came right after his long second message. Direction-finding is a fact of life in radio communications. We’ve got to figure they have the capability, whoever they are. They could have DF-ed him and homed in on him. Maybe they even homed in on our single side-band talk, but that was so short it’s less likely, especially with the frequency shifts we made. Now we’re telling him to make a long transmission on the UQC, the most easily detected sonar there is!”

Admiral Donaldson was listening gravely, nodded slightly as Richardson spoke.

Encouraged, Rich continued with even greater urgency. “If they pick it up, they’ll know there’s another sub there. And then the Manta has to go find a thin place in the ice cover, break through, and repeat the same thing on the air. Even if they don’t pick up the low-power UQC, there’s nothing secure about our ship-to-shore frequency. If they DF-ed him then, they’ll DF us too. We’ve got to expect they’ve got a direction-finder. Either way, they’ll know another sub has got up there, or else that the Cushing has repaired things enough to do it herself. They’ll be alerted that something’s going on. If their sub is still around, and if the collision was no accident, it will join the party for sure!” Richardson suddenly realized he had raised his voice, dropped it precipitantly. Thank God they had closeted themselves privately to compose the message!

“I know it, Rich,” said Donaldson steadily. “Don’t apologize for telling me what you think. I was in the war too, remember, and we had to think this way all the time. If I can get the JCS to lift the requirement, I’ll get a message off to you right away, but for now this is the way it’s got to be.”

But no message had ever come. Without doubt, Donaldson had made the effort. He must have been turned down. The information must be considered vital. Rich could not help wondering if the NSC planning-group functionary who had demanded it had any concept of the cost it might exact.

Richardson said nothing to Buck of his misgivings, nor did he mention his private protest to Donaldson on the subject. With the slow fading of the hope that a message would arrive negating the requirement, he realized he must try to dismiss the problem from his mind. All the more so since there was nothing he could do about it. He concentrated on the pleasure of being at sea on an extended voyage, on the companionship of Buck and his officers, on the sheer joy of seeing a magnificent combination of men and machinery running faultlessly, apparently effortlessly, doing the daily drills demanded of it with precision and élan. He concentrated also on the necessity of keeping every sense alert, every possible situation analyzed in advance, every conceivable contingency prepared for, in anticipation of the trial that lay ahead. It had been difficult at first, but he had managed it.

Then gradually, as the magic of the submarine and its extraordinary capabilities — so different from those he had been accustomed to for so many years — enfolded him, the tension evoked by the interview with Donaldson drifted away. Not entirely away, but into the recesses of consciousness. There it remained, only occasionally to be brought out and examined. Donaldson was not given to unconsidered, impulsive action. At least, not in these later years. Why, then, had he contrived to make it seem as though sending Rich along with Buck had been an afterthought, almost a whim of his own? And if, as Rich now had begun to suspect, Admiral Donaldson had intended to do this all along, there must be some important function for Rich to perform.

But what? He had received no instructions whatever, unless those strange words the admiral had used on board the Proteus, later reinforced by his additional comment in the Navy sedan as the two rode to the airport, were to be so considered.

Finding the Cushing proved not an easy task. She was not where she was supposed to be, not at Golf November two-nine — at least, according to the Manta’s navigation, checked and rechecked. It was necessary not to alert the Soviets, if their submarine happened still to be in the area, or if they were listening in another way. There was, too, the worry about collision with the other sub or, for that matter, with the Cushing, if somehow the notorious capriciousness of sonar expressed itself at just the wrong time and in the wrong way. One could not simply go blundering ahead at full speed.

Keith almost certainly had not been able to move his ship. Without propeller or emergency propulsion, she must be immobile under the ice, probably resting with the top of her sail against the underside. If she was not in the position reported by Keith, it must be because of drift due to currents and ice movement. She could not be far away. A few miles at most.

Manta began circling the datum, plotted at Cushing’s position as last reported, at slow speed, listening intently at the designated times for evidence of her presence. She made two complete circles two miles in diameter, then slowly changed the circle into an ever enlarging spiral, at maximum submergence depth.

Richardson was beginning to curse himself for not having selected a signal frequency at least twice as rapid when, at long last, the first faint beeps on the active echo-ranging sonar were heard. “He wasn’t on for long, only about three pings,” Jeff Norton reported, breathlessly. “I was right there in the sonar shack. It was right on time, but we didn’t get a good bearing because he quit too soon.”

“What’s the approximate direction?” Buck asked the question quietly, well aware that the primary requirement he had laid on his sonar crew had been to obtain the bearing of anything they heard. He had not directed Jeff to be in the sonar cubicle, but was not surprised that Manta’s communications officer, also sonar officer, had taken it on himself to be present at that critical instant. Buck’s astonishment was over the fact that an accurate true bearing had not been obtained.

“Southwest. But the three beeps came in so fast and were so faint that we hardly heard them. We could barely make them out on our scope. I’m awfully sorry, Captain. They definitely were from the southwest quadrant, but that’s all I’m really sure of.” Norton was clearly abashed by his failure, and by his skipper’s disapproval.

“Maybe he’s a lot farther away than we thought,” Rich muttered. “That would account for their faintness and missing a couple of pings.”

“Make your course southwest by grid,” Buck said to the OOD. “Increase speed to ten knots. In half an hour we’ll be five miles closer to him.” He consulted his watch. “The next signal is air blowing. It’s due in thirty-two minutes and will last ten seconds.”

Nothing was heard at the appointed time, nor at the next, twenty-seven minutes later, when the police whistle was scheduled. “We’ll continue as we are for the next period,” Buck said. “That will be another fifteen minutes, and we’ll be twelve miles nearer to him, if that was Keith we heard. Then we’ll circle again, if we don’t pick up anything.” Rich was nodding his approval. The next signal scheduled was the whistle again, but the one following that, in forty-three minutes, was to be echo-ranging at long scale, five pings at maximum gain.

It had been assumed that the pings of the active echo-ranging sonar would most likely have the greatest range, be heard from the greatest distance. On hearing them, Manta would send her own ping simultaneously with the termination of Cushing’s fifth, beamed in the direction from which that signal had been received, and start a stopwatch the instant the transmission was cut off. Cushing would have started a stopwatch with the cutoff of her own fifth ping, would stop it with receipt of Manta’s, and transmit a single short sixth ping to stop the Manta’s watch. Sound travels 1,600 yards per second in water. Since a round trip by sound was involved, the time in seconds on their stopwatches, multiplied by 800 yards, would give each submarine the approximate distance to the other. Once bearing and distance had been determined, closer approach would be facilitated by air blowing or the whistle, until finally the Cushing would “talk” the Manta into close proximity.

With forty-three minutes to wait, again Richardson’s impatience caused him to curse the long time delays he had built into the system, forgetting the purpose: to make their function less obvious to a chance listener. At minimum speed, Manta slowly described several complete circles in the water. She was as though suspended in space. Above, below, in all directions, nothing but water. Hundreds of feet above, a solid, impervious sheet of ice, twenty feet thick or more, but irregular, some places thinner than others. Below, thousands of feet below, the floor of the Arctic Ocean, slimy with the primordial ooze of aeons, split into two deep basins by the Lomonosov Ridge. North, east, south or west, whether on polar grid chart or any other, an area the size of Australia, or the United States. Manta: a tiny blob of life, of protoplasm, the size of a particle of dust, or sand, launched into an olympic-sized swimming pool in search of another dust-sized particle of life.

When there were only five minutes left to wait, Buck, Rich and Jeff Norton all crowded into Manta’s cramped sonar room, leaning over the operator’s shoulder, trying not to press into his needed working space. Norton held a stopwatch in his hand; the sonarman, Rich noted, held another. Rich and Buck stared at their wristwatches. “Half a minute,” said Buck. There was a twenty-four-hour clock attached to the sonar room bulkhead. It had been synchronized with the ship’s chronometers, as had the watches worn by Rich, Buck and Jeff Norton, and carefully reset to Greenwich Mean Time. It had been necessary to hold the clock mechanism so that the second hand would also be on GMT, and now the benefit was apparent. Keith would also have done this, would probably start his pings on the second.

Norton made a snapping motion with his forearm precisely as the twenty-four-hour clock reached sixteen hours, twenty-eight minutes and zero seconds, started his stopwatch. The second hand crawled slowly around its dial. Rich had stopped breathing. So had everyone else in the tiny compartment. The second hand was at seventeen when a spoke of light appeared on the dial of the sonar receiver. Norton stopped his watch, and simultaneously a faint but clearly recognizable ping filled the compartment.

“Seventeen seconds and a fraction,” said Norton. “Make it seventeen and a half.”

“Sh-h-h-h; don’t talk!” whispered Buck.

The spoke had vanished, leaving a decaying fluorescence where it had been on the tube. Then it reappeared, along with the amplified but still faint ping, reinforcing and brightening the same spoke, went out again, came on again. Rich could see the sonarman orienting his transmitter, softly fingering his hand keying button with his right hand, holding the stopwatch in his left. Simultaneously with the cessation of the fifth ping, and its light-spoke, he punched his hand key and started his stopwatch. A brilliant white spoke in the dark red sonar scope dial overlaid and dwarfed the dimmer one from the distant station. The receiver had been automatically blanked while the signal was being sent, but its reverberations filled the room the moment the key was lifted. One could hear the sound signal beaming out, traveling 1,600 yards per second toward the source of the five sequential incoming pings.

Jeff Norton had reset his watch, started it again at the same time as his sonarman, was figuring on a scrap of paper. “If Captain Leone had his watches zeroed on GMT the way we did,” he said, “and if he sent his first ping out exactly on the dot, he’s twenty-eight thousand yards away; fourteen miles.”

Buck smiled at him, nodded. “Good thinking, Jeff. We’ll be able to check it when we hear his sixth beep.” Deep feelings of relief were stirring within him. There had been only five pings. The other station — other submarine, it must be, could only be, another submarine — had stopped with five. It must be the Cushing. Keith. And he must have received the message, therefore knew they were on their way, was expecting them, was therefore okay. Rich, standing there so impassively, must internally be feeling the same. How could he keep such a poker face?

The sixth ping from the other ship would certainly identify her as the Cushing. It came. “Thirty-six seconds,” said Jeff. He consulted the watch held by his sonarman. “He’s got the same. Thirty-six seconds — they lost one second somewhere. That’s twenty-eight thousand eight hundred yards, just under fourteen and a half miles.”

“Close enough for government work,” said Buck genially, wanting to make up somewhat for his earlier rebuke. “Maybe he sent his first ping half a second early. That would do it, wouldn’t it?”

“Yessir.”

Richardson was already leaving the sonar room. Buck began to follow, turned back. “Jeff, that was real good work. And Schultz”—he clapped the sonarman on the shoulder to attract his attention away from his dials and earphones. Palmer Schultz, a freckled “middle-aged” youth, anywhere from twenty to thirty-five years old, twisted the near earphone, with its covering of soft rubber and sound-absorbing fiber away from his left ear, half turned toward Buck. “Beautiful job, Schultz. We’re going to close him now. That’s the Cushing, we’ve no doubt. I want you to log everything you hear from that bearing as we go on in. But keep your regular search all around going, too. I need to know everything that happens in the water. Do you know what you’re supposed to hear from the Cushing, and when?”

The Chief Sonarman nodded assent, his eyes straying back to the darkened, hooded instrument which was Manta’s ears and, sometimes, her only link with the whole universe outside the machinery-crammed cavern of her hull. Norton also nodded, several times, well realizing Buck’s words were meant for him as well.

“All stop!” said the OOD. “All back one-third — all stop!” The bow planesman twisted the annunciator knobs in the console in front of him.

“Answered all stop, sir,” the bow planesman reported, adding after a moment, “I have no control on the depth, sir. She’s not answering the bow planes.”

“That’s as it should be,” responded Lieutenant Tom Clancy, Manta’s engineering officer, at the moment on watch as officer of the deck and diving officer. “Speed indicates zero. Stern planes, do you have control?”

The stern planesman, seated beside the bow planesman in front of the diving console, pushed his control lever all the way forward, then brought it back into his lap. “No, sir,” he said as he returned it to the center upright position. “She’s not answering stern planes.”

“Put your planes on zero,” ordered Clancy. “Report depth changes every foot. Chief Mac”—addressing the grave chief petty officer seated to his left before a five-foot-long array of gauges, switches, dials and machinery controls—“I want to stay at this depth, one hundred-fifty feet, zero bubble. Operate your ballast control panel to hover, reporting each one hundred pounds of ballast change.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the chief, whose name was McClosky. He flipped one of the tiny levers on the panel, waited a few seconds while he scrutinized one of his dials, flipped it back. “Flooded two hundred pounds into auxiliary,” he said. “Trim looks good. Fore and aft trim looks right on.”

“It ought to be,” Clancy answered. “We worked on it enough.” He turned around to face Richardson and Williams, who were watching from the periscope station behind him. “All stop, Captain,” he reported. “Speed zero. I think we have a stop trim. Depth, one-five-zero feet.” There was a suggestion of professional pride in his voice. The newer attack subs, and all the missile submarines, were fitted with automatic hovering gear. With Manta, it had to be done by hand. Doing it well bespoke someone who knew his ship, and his business.

“Good, Tom,” answered Buck. To Rich he said, “I guess that’s it, Commodore. By plot we’re within a quarter of a mile of the Cushing. The Gertrude’s turned all the way down. You should be able to talk with Keith now, but she shouldn’t carry over a mile or so. I’ll keep the ’scope up while you do, and if we drift any nearer maybe we can see her. If she’s up against the ice there’ll be plenty of clearance to pass right under her, even with the ’scope up.”

Richardson held the UQC microphone in his hand, at the end of a short extension cord. He fingered the button on its side. So much depended on what he would find out in the next few minutes! He raised it to his mouth, pressed the button, spoke into it. “Keith, old man,” he said, unconsciously speaking softly. “This is Rich. Do you read? Over.” He let go the button, could hear the reverberations as his voice was carried by the sound waves. There was a rushing noise, as though there were something being physically dragged through the water. In a sense this was true, for the slow-moving sonar transmission left echoing reverberations throughout its passage. The UQC was omnidirectional; that is, like an ordinary radio broadcast station, whatever transmissions it made were in all directions all the time. There was no security in it, and no directivity, but under the circumstances it was the best medium for communication.

Perhaps he should have used the Cushing’s official voice call (Northern Lieutenant) and the Manta’s (Flat Raider). He had decided against them as unnecessary. Were there some fleet operation involved, with other ships also needing the UQC, they might have been. Without deliberate intent, he had leaned his head against the UQC speaker, mounted on the after bulkhead of the periscope station, was concentrating his attention on the answer he was willing it to give. Thus, when it came, sooner than he expected, the clipped semimechanical voice which sounded so much like Keith’s spoke loudly right into his ear.

“Rich! Skipper! It’s so good to hear you! I read you loud and clear, how do you read me? Hello to Buck, too. Thank God you guys have showed up. We’re about to go stir crazy over here! Over.” There were worlds of relief in Keith’s voice, distorted and mechanized though it was by the less-than-optimum reproduction of the speaker. No doubt it was matched by every man aboard, as many as possible of whom had probably congregated within hearing distance of Cushing’s UQC.

Buck’s broad grin of happiness must be mirrored by his own, Richardson felt. He could not see much of it — just the lower part — for Buck’s forehead and eyes, the entire upper portion of his face, were covered by the rubber eye guard of the periscope, as, his shoulder muscles bulging, he slowly turned it around. The rest of the control room crew, Tom Clancy, Chief McClosky, the planesmen, who had dared a quick glance over their shoulders, several others, not on watch, who had found an excuse to be present, all had glad expressions on their faces.

Soon the work of making the submerged hookup would begin, but first it would be necessary to carry out the preliminaries so specifically ordered. “Keith, obviously you received the message from ComSubLant. Do you have the one from CNO? Do you have your message ready?” Again the sensation of his words traveling slowly through water, dissipating rapidly in the vastness of the ocean.

“Affirmative to both, Skipper. Our message is a long one. Two hundred sixty-three groups. Can it wait till we’re out from under the ice? We’ve hardly been able to budge since the collision, and we’re pretty itchy. Over.”

“Sorry, Keith. Orders. But if you couldn’t budge, how did you get so far from the reference position? Over.”

“We tried some gliding and made a few miles, I guess. It’s all in the message. You’ll break it, won’t you? Over.”

“Affirmative. We’ll relay it just as you give it to us, but in the meantime we’ll be breaking it too. Are you ready to pass it over?”

“That’s affirmative, boss. Stand by to write.”

“Standing by.” Richardson closed a small switch which had been taped to the side of the UQC speaker. At Jeff Norton’s suggestion, wires had been led to Manta’s radio room and a spare speaker put in parallel with the UQC. The switch merely turned on a small light near the extra speaker. The two radiomen on watch had been instructed to copy everything they heard on their speaker whenever the light was on. They had, of course, been avidly listening already.

A new voice took over the UQC, Howie Trumbull, according to Jeff, reading in measured cadence the gibberish of the encoded message. Each letter was spoken phonetically, as were the numerals and letters of the heading. To guard against errors, Jeff Norton was then required to fetch the message from the radio room and read it back, using the same slow voice procedure. During the whole of the laborious interchange, Rich and Buck listened to it from the periscope station in the control room.

The entire exchange took two hours to complete.

“This is crazy,” grumbled Buck. “Here we’ve been half a day looking for a lead or polynya to break through — with shallow enough ice, that is, so it won’t be an all-fired emergency — and all we’ve seen is solid ice cover, twenty feet thick. We can go anywhere we want, in any direction, so long as we don’t try to go too far down, and not too far up. We’ve got a seven-hundred-foot layer of clear water to roam around in, and we’ve found the Cushing but we’ve not found a way to get that message relayed. Everything is go to try to snake her out of here, but we can’t because of that dumb message! There’s nothing in it that’s so damned important it couldn’t wait. We could have made the hookup and have her twenty miles away from there by now!”

“Ours is not to reason why,” said Rich.

“Tennyson also said someone had blundered, right?”

“Yes, back in Balaclava or wherever it was. But they didn’t know in Washington what we know now. In fact, they don’t know yet. It’s important for them to know about that plane and the bomb, and that some kind of long-planned operation is going on up here. Also, remember how ComSubPac had all the subs report in right after the cease-fire in 1945? That was so he’d know for sure who was still okay as of then. One reason was to make any possible Japanese skulduggery a little tougher to do. So, this message tells Washington the Cushing is still alive.”

“Okay, sure, Skipper. But all the same, I’d feel better if we were on our way with her. That Gertrude is the most easily detected sonar there is, even with the gain way down. If the Russians were smart enough to lower a good sonar set through a hole in the ice, even from pretty far away, they might have picked up something. And then when we open up on radio, if we ever get to, they’ll know for sure something’s cooking.”

“Can’t help it, Buck. But aren’t you the one who made me a speech about the Arctic being a free ocean, so we shouldn’t worry about what anyone else thinks or wants?”

“That was before we knew the Russians had really tried something. That bomb was not very friendly.”

“Neither was the collision.”

“Do you really think that was deliberate?”

“No way of ever telling. They’ll always claim it was an accident. Keith was smart, and damned ingenious, to get as far away from the scene of the crime as he did.”

Buck grinned a worried grimace. “Ingenious is right! Who ever thought you could glide a submarine?”

“Well, it’s no way to move very far. Not for a submarine as big as the Cushing. But one of the little research subs was designed to travel that way. It had big planing surfaces, of course. So far as I know it’s never been built, but the theory sounded as if it might work. It’s amazing, though, how far Keith managed to move that big boat of his.”

“Ship.”

“Ship.”

After spending several hours in the control room, hoping, perhaps rather naïvely, that a usable polynya would turn up quickly, Rich and Buck adjourned to Buck’s stateroom, leaving a special watch on the ice detector, with specific and careful instructions. Two changes of watch later, with the idea beginning to intrude that perhaps at least one of them ought to try to get some sleep, they felt the ship heel suddenly. Buck had already reached for the telephone handset on the bulkhead over his bunk, when the call bell rang. “Captain? This is Jerry. We’ve just passed under a possible. I’ve marked it on the DRT, and we’re turning now to go back to it.”

“We’ll be right there.” Buck replaced the telephone as Rich got to his feet, and the two walked swiftly to the control room.

“It’s the best one I’ve seen,” said Jerry Abbott, “but it’s not all that good. Here’s the fathometer trace.” He was holding a piece of paper just removed from the ice detector. Buck and Rich scrutinized it closely. “About six feet thick,” said Abbott. “As a guess, the thin spot was about an eighth of a mile long along our track.”

“Yes.” Buck looked up. “We heading back for it now?”

“Yessir. I made a Williamson turn, and we’ve slowed way down.”

“Good,” said Buck. Turning to Richardson he asked, “What do you think, Commodore?”

“This is the first reasonable opportunity, isn’t it? Maybe, in the next couple of days, we might find a better one, but I’m with you. I’d like to get this message off and go back to the Cushing as quick as we can. Did you tell me your sail can push up through six feet of ice?”

“That’s what the Electric Boat Division designers say.”

“The Manta’s your boat, so it’s your decision, Buck. But if you’re asking me, I say let’s give the EB designers a test of their product.”

“Good!” said Williams. “I say the same.” Abbott had been an interested listener. “Do you have the conn, Jerry?” Buck asked.

“Affirmative, Skipper.”

“All right. Put us right under the polynya at all stop, dead in the water, and catch the best trim we can get. I’ll take over the conn when you’re ready, and we’ll bring her right on up.”

“Tom asked to be called if we’re going up, sir. He wants to take over the dive.”

“Okay. Call him. Also alert radio, and have the topside crew get ready with ice-clearing tools. Be sure they’re dressed for the cold.”

The routine regularity of the submerged watch gave way to an orderly bustle of preparation. In a very few minutes movement stopped and quiet returned. Buck, looking through the periscope, maneuvered into the center of the thin-ice area, using Manta’s propellers sparingly and methodically, taking his time. Finally ready, he looked inquiringly at Richardson, who had stood quietly watching nearby, received his quick nod of assent, spoke to Clancy. “Tom, blow forward and after groups slowly. Bring us up flat. Remember, there’s probably a layer of fresh water under the ice, so we’ll be losing buoyancy as we get closer to it. Try to keep us moving upward at the same rate.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Clancy, who had already been thoroughly briefed on the vagaries of specific gravity of seawater under the polar ice cap. He turned to Chief McClosky, who also had come on watch for the occasion, said, “We want to keep the bubble on zero as we come up, Mac. Blow forward group. Blow after group.” The chief flipped the two toggles, kept his hands on them. There was the sound of air blowing into tanks. Clancy and he huddled together watching the gauges. “Secure after group!” said Clancy. McClosky, anticipating the order, instantly moved the left toggle to the shut position. Another second, two seconds. “Secure the air!” McClosky snapped shut the other toggle. The submarine had assumed half a degree down angle, but the bow now was rising faster and she was on an even keel again. “Ninety feet,” called out Clancy, vectoring his voice in Buck’s direction. “Zero bubble.”

Buck was still watching through the periscope. “Looks good, Commodore,” he said. “I’ll drop the ’scope at eighty feet.”

“Eighty-five feet,” said Clancy. “Rising steady. Zero bubble. Eighty-two feet. Eighty-one. Eighty feet.”

“Down ’scope,” said Buck, folding up the handles. The quartermaster on watch hit the periscope hoist control lever, and the precious instrument dropped into its well. “It looked about ready to hit the ice,” said Buck with a grin, “but I knew we had at least ten feet of gravy. It was kind of scary, though. Busting the ’scope against the bottom side of the ice would be a little hard to explain back in New London.”

Rich’s answering smile was testimony to his full appreciation of the situation, as well as his confidence in Buck.

“Seventy-five feet,” said Clancy. “She’s going up a little faster, now.” Perhaps a little more air had been used than absolutely necessary. The air bubbles in Manta’s ballast tanks would expand with the reduced pressure due to decreasing depth, and their resulting buoyant volume would increase. Simultaneously, the reduced salinity would have a contrary effect. Balancing the two opposing factors was a nice exercise in judgment.

“We’ll hit the ice at around fifty feet,” said Buck. “With six feet, maybe more, to break through, we’ll feel it. It’ll be a pretty solid jolt.”

Tom Clancy was calling out the depths. “Sixty-five feet,” he said. “Sixty feet.”

“Rig in bow planes,” ordered Buck. Unlike the Cushing, whose sailplanes could not be rigged in and consequently had been designed to elevate to ninety degrees and slice through the ice as the ship came up, Manta had the older design of bow planes in the forward superstructure which were always housed when the ship was on the surface. Were the entire superstructure of the submarine to break through the ice, a distinct possibility if its resistance proved to be less than expected, the planes would almost surely be damaged if they were rigged out and struck the underside of the ice flat.

“Bow planes rigged in,” reported McClosky.

“Fifty-five feet,” said Tom Clancy. “Fifty-four. Fifty-three. Fifty-two. Fifty-one. Fifty feet!”

Crunch! A tremendous washboiler sound of suddenly stressed metal. Manta’s deck seemed to drop away from them, her sturdy hull twanging, the myriad gauge dials in the control room vibrating in jangled disharmony. There was squeaking and moaning of steel girders, a heavy scraping noise, the sound of huge fingernails scraping a rough surface.

“Fifty feet,” said Clancy, reading from the large-scale depth indicator on the diving stand. “Fifty feet … just under fifty now … she’s going on up now … forty-nine and three-quarters … forty-nine, forty-eight … she’s moving right on up now, Captain. Forty-seven, forty-six, forty-five. Top of the sail is through, sir. Permission to blow all ballast?”

Buck, who with Rich had been following Clancy’s depth reports on the small-scale depth gauge in the periscope station, was hastily putting on cold-weather gear. “Blow all ballast!” he ordered, echoing Clancy’s request. “Let me know when the upper hatch is clear.”

“No way I can tell you that for sure, Skipper,” said Clancy with a grin of satisfaction. “We could have scooped up a tubful of ice on the bridge. It could be packed tight. I’ll tell you when it’s out of water, though.”

“Are all diving officers as persnickety on details as mine?” Buck asked Rich with a relieved grin of his own. Successful passage of Manta’s first test in the Arctic ice had infected him too.

“I sure don’t know as to that,” answered Richardson with mock gravity, “but I can remember a certain torpedo officer who was every bit as persnickety. How he ever got to be skipper of a nuclear boat I’ll never figure out!”

“Now, Commodore, you please be quiet about that pore ole nuke skipper, you hear? Can’t have my boys getting the wrong idea, you know!” The success of the moment was to be savored, even though fleetingly. Buck adjusted his face mask, spoke hurriedly to Jerry Abbott, stepped to the ladder leading into the hatch trunk, squeezed his bulky garments through the opening, began to climb through the lower hatch.

“Skipper,” said Buck savagely, “do you know how much good useful time we’ve wasted getting that damn message off?”

“I know.”

“Just about a full day. More than twenty hours! First we couldn’t find a thin place to break through. Then when we finally got up, there was so much ice driven down into the openings on the top of the sail that the antenna couldn’t be raised. But before we could get someone out there to work on it, we had about an hour’s chopping of ice on the bridge to clear away that huge chunk of ice on top of the sail so that a man could even reach the place. Then, when finally we got the antenna up, we couldn’t get anyone to answer our call-up. I got so cold waiting up there I couldn’t take it anymore and had to send for Jerry to take over. You’d have thought ComSubLant or somebody would have had every shore station in our whole system alerted!”

“It probably wasn’t ComSubLant’s fault, Buck. Radio conditions were bad, that’s all. Probably because the sun’s above the horizon now.”

“Maybe it wasn’t his fault. But then when we finally got Radio Guam to answer — think about that one, Guam! — they said we’d have to wait with our message because it didn’t have enough priority!”

“That was our own fault. We should have raised Keith’s priority. We did, after we got the word.”

“Well, okay. But we shouldn’t have had to do it. If Keith’s message was so important, better arrangements should have been made to get it by those who wanted it. Anyway, after three more hours fiddling around poking up through the ice like a damn black lighthouse, beating our brains out on the radio, sending repeats over and over again, finally we get the receipt and can go back down and begin what we came up here for.”

“I don’t blame you for feeling frustrated, Buck,” said Rich. “I feel the same way. I tried to argue Admiral Donaldson out of making us do this, but I couldn’t. It was a JCS order. Anyway, now it’s done. They’ve got their message, and we’re free to do our stuff.”

“I suppose I should look at it that way too,” said Buck morosely, “but I’ll sure feel better after we’ve got the Cushing out of this place. Whatever goes wrong I’ll blame on this delay, I know that.”