Cold is the Sea

3

Admiral Brighting’s empire, carved out of an unlikely combination of Navy, industry and science, was the most complete and efficient Richardson had ever seen. A car met him very early Saturday morning at the Idaho Falls airport and took him immediately to “the site,” as his driver-escort referred to it. The site was nearly one hundred miles away, and the station wagon hurtled along at top speed, accelerator pressed to the floor, over a flat, hard-baked plain which stretched in all directions, as level as the sea, to a horizon any seaman must know was false. The road was obviously built for speed, though only two lanes wide. There was hardly a curve and only a single intersection, and during the entire trip, which took just minutes longer than an hour, they saw only two other cars, both of them headed in the opposite direction.

The road had but a single destination, and it came in sight while still some twenty miles distant, a square white dot poised on the horizon at the base of glowering, slate gray mountains. “That’s the prototype, or rather, the building it’s in,” said Rich’s companion. “It’s six stories high, and most folks can’t believe it’s that far away.”

At closer range, the dot grew into a graceless, windowless, sand-colored cube, dominating a number of lower buildings of industrial character. A tall chain-link fence surrounded the complex, and a cloud of steam rose from a broad, squat structure alongside the boxlike bulk of the prototype building.

“That’s the cooling pond,” said the driver, answering Richardson’s question. “We’ve been critical for three months. There’s not much heat going into it right now, though. At full power it steams up a lot more than this.” The speaker, who had introduced himself as Lieutenant Commander John Rhodes, officer-in-charge of the prototype, was a short, dark young man. He had not been talkative during the ride from the airport, and was clearly ill at ease. “Rhodes with E. G. Richardson,” he said to the guard at the gate, and instantly Rich felt he knew at least part of the reason for his discomfiture.

“Here’s where you’ll be staying, Mr. Richardson.” The car had stopped in front of one of a small group of quonset huts of wartime vintage. “I’ll help you with your luggage, and then I’ll take you over to the prototype and start you off. It’s warm in there, so don’t bother with a jacket or a tie.” The speech had been rehearsed. Admiral Brighting’s instructions must have been very specific. Rhodes tried to look squarely at Rich, but his gaze faltered. He was, clearly, having difficulty overlooking the thousands of Navy precedence numbers by which Rich was his senior. Until recently, his indoctrination had been all the other way.

“Fine, John,” said Richardson, searching for the way to start off his study period on the right note. “Look,” he said, “I’m here for one thing only, to learn everything you fellows can teach me. So why don’t we just knock off the rates for the time being — that will make things a lot simpler. My friends call me ‘Rich,’” he continued. “Is yours ‘Dusty,’ like all the Rhodes in the Navy?”

“Right — uh — Rich. Nobody calls me ‘John’ anymore. I guess I sort of like ‘Dusty.’”

“Okay, and don’t forget that ‘Rich’ business.” Rhodes’ handshake contained considerably more warmth than at the airport. “That goes for everybody else here, too, Dusty, and now that’s settled, is there time for me to shave before coming over?”

“I really don’t think so, Rich.” This time Rhodes’ eyes were unflinching, and again Richardson had the sense of a hidden message, some concealed urgency, behind the words.

Once in the prototype building, however, Richardson was surprised to discover only a duty section, a very small percentage of the total force, present. Rhodes had a small office suite opening directly into the cavernous interior housing Mark One, as the prototype reactor for the Nautilus was known, and there were desks for an assistant and two secretaries, all three vacant. The main room of the building, occupying almost all of its interior from concrete floor to metal roof, had the air of being full of activity even though few persons were present. Toolboxes, workbenches, storage lockers, equipment bins and boxes were everywhere. Mark One was festooned with steel ladders, catwalks, wire cables, steam piping and waterlines, the ordered confusion of the paraphernalia of many functions and many workers.

And, of course, Mark One itself, a horizontal cylindrical section of a huge submarine’s pressure hull projecting through the side of a tremendous circular steel tank the size of a big swimming pool and filled with light green seawater, instantly captured Rich’s attention. He had already read of the pool and seen a photograph of it, but the reality of the beige-colored pool walls, green seawater and dark gray hull cylinder was breathtaking. The purpose of the salt water, he knew, was to duplicate the radioactive shielding effect of the sea around the simulated submarine’s reactor compartment. The submarine hull section was identical to the Nautilus’ reactor and engine compartments, except that, for economy, only a single turbine and propeller shaft had been installed. The water level in the pool surrounding the reactor compartment was the same as it would be with Nautilus fully surfaced, since that was the condition of least shielding.

“There she is, sir — Rich. You’re to be here fourteen weeks and learn all about it. Then we’ll give you an examination, and if you pass it you’ll be a qualified reactor operator.” Dusty Rhodes was looking with proprietary satisfaction at the surrealistic monster. It was humming softly. Richardson thought he could detect the noise of ventilation blowers buried amid the other sounds, but the rest meant nothing to him. Rhodes answered his unspoken question. “We’ve been keeping her self-sustaining for the past couple of weeks. What you’re hearing are the electric turbo-generator sets, one of them, that is, and the main coolant pumps in slow speed. The main turbine isn’t running.”

Rich nodded his acknowledgment, though he was far from clear as to the information imparted. But it was then that Rhodes, his guard let down perhaps because of his companion’s ready acceptance of his role as a student, forgot himself. “You’ll have two days’ head start on the others,” he said. “The class won’t really begin until the other students get here Monday morning.” The moment he spoke the words Rhodes realized they were beyond recall, and the consternation he felt reproduced itself on his face. Richardson struggled to keep his sudden anger from showing.

Dusty Rhodes’ slip regarding the other students made little difference, Rich assured him. He would have known soon anyway, and he was too grateful for Admiral Brighting’s change of heart, whatever the cause, to quibble over his pettiness. Rich kept a second reason for silence to himself: whatever or whoever had changed Brighting’s mind — Joan maybe — was owed something too. But the internal anger remained until it was replaced on Monday by the pleasure of welcoming Keith Leone and Buck Williams. It had been years since they had been in the same duty area as Rich. Despite occasional correspondence, the closeness brought on by wartime service together had begun to dim. Now, magically, it was all restored. All three felt it, and Rich was forced a few times to emphasize that, as students under Brighting’s control, the old official relationship had no place on the site. Not until Richardson had spent several hours guiding his newly arrived friends in a thorough inspection of Mark One did he realize that there were no other new students. Keith, Buck and he were the entire class. It must have been organized and scheduled just for them.

“You’re here to participate in the actual operation of a submarine nuclear reactor,” Dusty Rhodes told them that first day. “The whole function of all this machinery is to turn that propeller shaft.” The four were standing on the floor of the mammoth enclosure—“room” was hardly the proper word — in which Mark One rested. “As I guess you know, we call this Mark One because Mark Two is the Nautilus herself. They were building her in Groton at the very same time they were building Mark One here out in the desert. Only, Mark One was kept a few months ahead. Everything was tested and proved out before its duplicate was allowed to be installed in the ship. All changes that were found to be needed here were automatically done there, too.”

It was obviously a speech that Dusty Rhodes made to every new group of trainees, but there was also a note of pride in his voice. It had been one of the extraordinary engineering feats of the time. Mark One was a monument to the genius of its designers and constructors, particularly that most demanding and irascible construction engineer of them all, Admiral Brighting. And now he, Lieutenant Commander Dusty Rhodes, had been entrusted with its total and exclusive charge.

“I don’t see any propeller, Dusty. How do you simulate the resistance of the water? Just turning a big thing sticking out of the end of a fake submarine hull isn’t the same. To get horsepower you have to do work.” Keith’s question was one he knew Rhodes would have the answer for.

“We thought of that, all right,” said Rhodes, picking up the cue. “When you get into your schedule, one of the things you’ll be learning about is the water brake. It duplicates propeller resistance. Makes the turbine think there really is a propeller out there — even puts thrust on the thrust bearing. There is some trouble with it, though. Since we’re not really driving a ship, what we really do — the work we do — is make heat. You’ll be calculating the BTUs before you’re through here. We make a lot of heat, and this damn things heats up too easy. We have to have a garden hose spraying water on the outside casing of the water brake whenever we stay at full speed for long.”

The others nodded their comprehension. One of the fine points, obviously, was that since the water brake was not an integral part of any submarine, a permanent and “engineered” solution for its overheating was not a matter of urgency or even concern, so long as the jury rig, the garden hose, solved the problem. After a moment, Rhodes went on. “What we do here is operate Mark One just like a submarine underway for a long cruise, and the trainees stand all the watches, along with the instructors. There’s usually several classes going on at the same time, in various stages of the program, so there’s trainees on nearly all the billets. The instructors fill in the rest of them. The only exception we make to shipboard routine is that the watches are eight hours long instead of four. Everything else is exactly like on board ship. We go through all the evolutions of starting, running, maneuvering and stopping, cope with simulated or real casualties to the machinery, do everything the Nautilus could do.

“We’ll put you fellows right into the system. The only thing different about you is that the normal trainee is here for a year, sometimes longer. So he drives in from Idaho Falls, or maybe Arco, wherever he lives, stands his eight-hours’ watch every day and goes home. Some of them have to be on night watches, but we keep most of the activity for the eight to four shift and leave things pretty quiet during weekends. You three are going to have to cram the whole year’s training program into the fourteen weeks you’ll be out here. So my orders are to fix you up with a place to sleep right here on the site, and you’re to spend all your time in Mark One, as if you actually were at sea.” He paused. “That doesn’t leave you much time free. You didn’t have any other plans, did you?”

“Nope.” Rich answered for the three of them.

“Good. You won’t find this site the most comfortable place in the world to live. The quonset huts aren’t bad, but we don’t have a mess hall. You’ll have to get your meals from the slot machines they have around, and things may get pretty stale for you, I’m afraid, but that’s the way it has to be. I even got vetoed on the idea of having you out to my place in the Falls some weekend, just for a change of scenery and a decent meal.”

“Thanks, Dusty,” Rich said, again instinctively speaking for all, “but really, we’d rather just stay right here. I’ve already had the benefit of one weekend all to myself wandering all over the machinery, and that’s the most valuable time. When there’s practically nobody here you don’t have to worry about interfering with others.” One of the things they would have to do, clearly, was to make their presence as easy for Rhodes as they could. His position under Brighting’s difficult leadership, subject to that prickly personality, must have its problems. No doubt he had already spent time wondering whether his three new trainees would add to them.

“Well, that’s good then,” Dusty was saying. “I’ll just give you our regular training schedule for our one-year course. Maybe you’ll want to shift some things around because you’ll only be here a quarter of the time, but you’re supposed to complete the entire program, stand all the watches outlined and turn in all the drawings of systems, just like the regular trainees. At the end, after you’ve finished all the requirements, we’ll give you a comprehensive test. If you pass it — you’ll pass it, all right, if you do everything on the training schedule — you’ll get a certificate of qualification as a nuclear operator. That’s the ticket everybody’s after. You can ask any questions you want, and we’ve got plenty of copies of the operating manual. The only rule is you’ve got to do all of the things, each one of you, yourself.”

Inside the building housing the prototype there was neither night nor day; electric lights kept the windowless cavern bathed constantly at the same level of illumination. The passage of time became a factor of how often one’s wristwatch had been around all the numbers, punctuated periodically by a weekend. Not that a weekend provided relaxation, except in a very particular way. Saturdays and Sundays, when there was only a duty section at the site, were the most valuable times of all because of greater freedom from interference. Gradually a routine emerged. Living on the site, never leaving it, the three trainees easily could be working in the prototype before the day’s workers arrived from Arco or Idaho Falls, and they always remained there until well after the second shift departed at midnight. Meals were haphazard, only a hasty sandwich or can of soup obtained from one of the many food dispensers for whose slots a ready supply of quarters was required. There was no time for relaxation; nor were there any diversions, not even reading material — except for the engineering manuals and operating instructions for Mark One. The best times were the short nightly conversations the three shared in their quonset hut, but even these had a tendency to become curtailed after a succession of eighteen-hour days spent crawling through the cramped innards of the submarine hull, or poring over blueprints.

Afterward, Richardson had trouble distinguishing any chronology pertaining to his time at the site, or the many memories which remained. Everything was compressed into a set of kaleidoscopic impressions. With no day and no night, there were only work periods and short hours of exhausted sleep. Since there were no women present during the evening and morning watches, it was possible to confirm the suspicion, after a few days, that the ladies’ rest room probably contained a cot. Here a person could lie down between particularly interesting evolutions of Mark One, or when he was totally beat, provided only that he was gone before any early arrivals for the day watch. And so, fortified by a few hours of fitful slumber (for fear of an unaccounted-for female), Keith, Buck and Rich often skipped their quonset hut bunks entirely.

Frequently, toward the end of their stay, they were not even aware of the change of shifts, except that new faces were at the various posts. Once, during a test for flux density under a new control rod program, Keith noted with mock dismay that they had not been outside the windowless prototype building for two and a half days, or even looked out an opened door, except to determine whether it was day or night (i.e., whether it would be safe to use the cot in the ladies’ room).

Through it all there was the uncomfortable realization that Admiral Brighting must have ordered Dusty Rhodes to make a daily telephoned report on their activities. More than once, Rich saw Rhodes’ honest face become troubled when they unexpectedly observed him speaking into the equipment, and invariably there would follow an episode of exaggerated warmth and high spirits which confirmed the idea that Rhodes was trying to square his conscience.

Midway through the time at the site, Richardson got into a telephone conversation, and therefore an angry exchange, with Admiral Brighting. The subject was the proposed construction of a cafeteria near the Mark One building, so that on-site subsistence would not have to depend on lunches and dinners brought from home or, as in the case of Rich, Keith and Buck, who never left the site for any reason, from one of the many sandwich-and-soup dispensing machines which must have been a bonanza for their concessionaire. The cafeteria had already been authorized. Dusty Rhodes had circulated a request for opinions as to the most desirable location for it. The three trainees, whose ideas Dusty had solicited as representative of one of the groups affected, had all responded with suggestions. A building contractor from Idaho Falls had appeared, and Rich had been one of several who had talked with him.

The denouement was begun by Rhodes, who appeared suddenly, on his hands and knees with an unusually long face, alongside the spot where Rich was lying on his back, under the outside skin of the Mark One simulated submarine, tracing one of the nonconforming hydraulic supply lines. In the Nautilus the line had, of course, been inside the submarine. For Mark One it had apparently been deemed unimportant that actual submarine practice be followed to such a degree of detail, an execrable decision which Richardson had decided was surely never made by Brighting.

“You’re wanted on the telephone in my office!” Rhodes shouted above the roar of the turbine in the hull overhead.

“Who is it? Tell him I can’t talk to him now!” Richardson had already spent hours tracing this particular system and understanding its function. He was out of sorts because of its inaccessibility, angry at the design stupidity revealed, furious at the necessity to inch his way on his back along the dirty, oil-soaked, evidently never-before-visited concrete underlayment beneath the engineroom.

“It’s the boss! He wants to talk to you right away! He’s already on the line, and he’s mad about something!”

“What’s he upset about, Dusty?” Rich had begun worming his way out of the corner into which he had wedged himself. “Is he mad at you or me?”

“Don’t know for sure, Rich. Both of us, probably.” Long since, Dusty Rhodes had become accustomed to using Richardson’s nickname. “It’s something about the cafeteria, but I don’t know what.”

“Well, nothing like finding out,” said Rich, brushing his coveralls and striding toward Rhodes’ office. “Richardson here,” he said on the phone.

“Please hold. The admiral wants to talk to you.” A female voice. Joan! But the line was open, no one on the other end. Protocol required a junior to wait on the telephone for the senior, and well-indoctrinated aides accomplished this automatically. Joan had gone to have Admiral Brighting pick up the connection. Too, she was doubtless carrying out careful instructions, for she had not tarried even for a moment’s personal greeting.

Brighting’s familiar expressionless voice, as usual, did not bother with salutation or any other of the ordinary preliminaries. “I thought you understood you were to keep your nose out of everything but your studies. Can’t you carry out a simple order, Richardson?”

“In what way have I not carried out all your orders, Admiral?” Rich knew enough about his difficult superior by this time to speak up directly. Failure to do so would be equated to acquiescence or confusion.

“Don’t try to play innocent. I hear you want to install a cafeteria at the site for the convenience of you and your friends.”

“Not so, Admiral!” Richardson was speaking rapidly. Admiral Brighting would not be listening long. “The cafeteria was approved last year. I was asked where I thought it should be located. So were a lot of others.”

“I don’t need any suggestions about the site from you, now or any other time! You’ll have your opportunity to give orders when you’re on board the Proteus. You have only one job out there, and I expect you to give it your full attention!” Richardson found himself holding a dead telephone.

Two days later, a downcast Dusty Rhodes handed Rich an official flimsy. It was a carbon copy of a one-sentence order canceling funding for construction of a cafeteria.

Vice Admiral Brighting’s arrival, several weeks later, was apparently part of a pattern long set. That is, it was unexpected. Rhodes was late driving in from Idaho Falls, the first time in Rich’s memory, and the reason became known when the passenger beside him was seen to be Brighting. Rhodes had received a telephone call at home the previous evening, directing him to be at the airport next morning.

All this, Rich learned later. His own awareness of the admiral’s arrival came from a sudden appearance in the lower level of the engineroom during a cold start-up procedure being carried out by Keith. Rich’s duties were to draw a steam bubble in the pressurizer in response to Keith’s instructions: a critically important function that allowed him only a brief surprised nod of recognition as he concentrated on his task. When Richardson straightened up, satisfied that the bubble had formed and was in accord with the specifications, the admiral had gone on.

There was, however, an atmosphere of approval left behind. Rich was grateful, as he thought about it later, that he had been observed carrying out an important evolution instead of, as so often happened, merely monitoring some static condition. Not until that evening did it occur to him that Brighting might well have timed his trip so as to be able to make a personal evaluation of a significant part of the training schedule.

Neither Keith, Buck Williams nor Rich had paid much attention to the other two quonset huts in the tiny complex of wartime surplus buildings. One of these, it developed, had been designated for Brighting’s exclusive use, and it was here that the three trainees found themselves summoned. To Rich’s surprise, there was no one else present. Not even Dusty Rhodes was there. The day shift had long since ended, and, no doubt carrying out specific orders, Dusty had climbed into his station wagon and driven off at his usual time.

The routine developed over the weeks by Rich and his companions involved spending all the night shift, a portion of the morning watch after midnight, and full time over weekends actually in the engineroom or reactor compartment of the prototype. At these times the reduced manning level made possible thorough and even leisurely study of the fascinatingly intricate mechanisms. During the day watch there was a steady schedule of operational drills to participate in, with result that there was little time for investigation of the “why” as well as the “how” of what was going on. This had to be done at night. Early in the game it had become necessary to set up a rigorous schedule of work and sleep if they were ever to be finished. Admittedly ambitious and several times revised, this schedule was now so tight that interruption of even a single night’s work would be directly reflected in a reduction of the six hours of sleep they had allotted themselves for “regular” nights (defined as not having critical evolutions forcing emergency use of the cot in the ladies’ lavatory). Admiral Brighting’s invitation was welcome but, like everything else about him, not without its cost.

Never had any of the three seen their chief so relaxed. The flat monotone speaking voice was unchanged, but now there was added a subtle difference, a puckish quality never before evident. “Now do you see what I’m trying to do?” he asked, looking mildly and yet shrewdly from one to the other.

“Yes, sir,” said all three together. Keith and Buck glanced toward Rich, willing him to continue the response.

“I think we do, Admiral,” Rich said. “None of us has ever been through a training period this tough, nor this satisfying.”

“It’s doing you a lot of good, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir. We’re learning the operational concepts of a totally new source of power, and a totally new engineering development. And we’re learning them more thoroughly than we’ve ever learned anything.”

“You admit all the training you’ve had before was wasted.”

“Not wasted, Admiral, but clearly not on a par—”

“You know it’s been wasted. You could have learned twice as much in half the time if you had been forced to put your mind to it. That’s the trouble with our Navy. People are more interested in organization charts than they are in what really counts. That’s why so many things break down. The designers and operators are all incompetent!”

Richardson felt they were being baited. There was a set to Admiral Brighting’s mouth, the manner in which he pursed his lips, that conveyed as much. But he could not be certain, decided to try another tack. “There’s one thing sure, and that is your nuclear power plants have been making records for reliability ever since the Nautilus went to sea. That ought to prove something.”

“They’ve been making records like that ever since Mark One went critical in 1953!” The words were words of pride, but the puckish look remained.

“Of course, but it’s when the Nautilus began to operate that everyone recognized it,” Rich began. As before, Brighting interrupted.

“That’s exactly the point, Richardson! You’re like all the naval officers. You’re not interested in real performance. What good is a four-hour full-power run? A twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour run would mean something, but what naval battle is going to be decided in four hours these days? A four-hour run doesn’t mean a thing!”

Richardson was about to expostulate that he had made no reference to the regular engineering performance standard, a four-hour run at full power, that in fact he had been about to point to the Nautilus as having far exceeded this on her first day at sea, but Brighting swept on without pausing. “Before Nautilus was even launched, her prototype, right here, made a full-power run the equivalent of crossing the Atlantic Ocean. No new power plant has ever been put to this sort of a test before. If some of them had, perhaps we’d have had fewer problems with some of our ships!”

The simulated transatlantic trip was, of course, well known throughout the nuclear power program. Every four hours the theoretically attained position had been marked on a chart. Mark One had been relentlessly kept at full power, her single turbine screaming its high whine, her reduction gears roaring, clouds of steam rising from the cooling pond, the water brake steadily rising in temperature so that it had to be bathed continuously in a spray of cold water to prevent failure of the simulated propeller, the enthusiasm of the prototype crew building to an emotional crescendo as the regularly plotted line on their chart approached the coast of Ireland. Some of the more conservative engineers, worried about breakdown of turbine, water brake, main bearings or the steam generators themselves, had counseled shutdown once the ability of the plant to attain its designated operating characteristics had been demonstrated. It was Brighting, monitoring the test from his Washington office, who had refused all such requests, assumed all responsibility, insisted the run be carried through to completion.

Predictably, Brighting’s detractors had pointed out that a breakdown at this early stage would have delayed the entire program, that such a severe test of new machinery was not good engineering practice under any circumstances. Some whispered their belief the test run was more for the personal aggrandizement of Brighting than for any other reason. No one mentioned the fact that the nuclear reactor, the heart of the entire nuclear power effort and the only really new, innovative item in all of Mark One, had flawlessly provided the energy source for the entire “trip” without difficulty of any kind. It had been fear for the other machinery, all of it standard off-the-shelf items, even the main turbine and the water brake, which had caused the concern of their manufacturers’ representatives.

Much of this Richardson had heard before, although without emphasis on the extraordinary performance of the nuclear plant. The familiar story as told by Brighting now sounded a different note. For the first time, Richardson was able to savor fully the vitally important view Brighting and his assistants took of their tests, their refusal to accept a halfhearted trial as adequate witness of performance to be expected or, realistically, to be demanded during the exigencies of war. Had submarine torpedoes been properly tested, the course of the war in the Pacific would have been vastly different, especially in the early stages. This was something no submariner who had lived through it could ever forget, or forgive. More recently, proving that not all designers in the Navy had learned the lesson, the new fleet submarines built during the early 1950s had been a hushed-up scandal; their diesels had been undependable, their torpedo control input erratic, their freshwater distilling apparatus farcically ineffective, their torpedo tubes a maintenance nightmare. The skipper of the first one to go to sea, an experienced wartime submariner, had furiously radioed in during her shakedown cruise that his new boat was a travesty not fit for service — with the shattering result that he was severely dressed down, nearly relieved of command, for excessive forthrightness. Many submariners, Richardson among them, had been incensed at the refusal of the Bureau of Ships to accept the obvious fact that the new class of submarines was a failure, and to move heaven and earth — or at least bestir itself — to fix them immediately.

But here, in the person of Admiral Brighting, was proof that with nuclear power old mistakes would not be repeated. And the three submarine officers learned also of another aspect of Brighting’s approach to engineering: like the commander of a ship at sea, he accepted full and complete responsibility for everything connected with his charge.

Admiral Brighting spoke for some time. Richardson was entirely unaware of the expressionless monotone he usually noticed, and certainly one would never have guessed that this articulate, actually eloquent person was renowned for his taciturnity. The strange, naïve expression, the one he had earlier termed “puckish,” was still there. Only now Richardson thought of it as a a look of exaltation, something he might have expected of a passionately idealistic young man. A flash of insight tugged at his senses, and suddenly Brighting was talking about the central question of all. “Have you figured out what you’re here for?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Buck. “We’re here to learn how to handle nuclear power.”

“That’s only part of it.”

Rich began, “Nuclear power in the years ahead—”

Brighting interrupted impatiently. “You’re like all the rest. You see everything as just small improvements on the stuff you’re used to. What do you think the Navy will be like in the years ahead?” He answered his own question. “This is the program for a totally new navy. We’re starting over. Suppose we had the Nautilus in World War Two — what do you think you could have done with her?”

“With the Nautilus and good torpedoes,” began Rich, “one submarine could have taken on the whole Japanese Navy. We’d not have had to worry about recharging our batteries, or evading at slow speed. We could have outrun almost any antisubmarine ship—” He would have gone on, but Brighting again broke in.

“You’re a piker, Richardson! Who cares about World War Two torpedoes? Did you ever think of a submarine that could stay submerged weeks or months? Or one that could blockade an entire nation by itself? How long could you stay submerged in the Eel? Twenty-four hours?”

The shift from weaponry to endurance to a global concept and then back to endurance had come rapidly. “Seventy-two, with everyone except a minimum watch turned in to conserve oxygen,” said Rich, “except I don’t think the battery could make it that long.”

“How long on the battery? And how far could you go?”

“We figured forty-eight hours at minimum speed, maybe a little more, if you started with a full charge and had all nonessential services secured. About a hundred miles.”

“What would you have done if you could stay down six months and go twice around the world without coming up? What if your submarine had been the size of a cruiser, with a load of missiles that could hit any target in the world from any position in the sea? What if your submarine could outrun any surface ship ever built?”

“We could have ended the war a lot quicker,” said Keith.

“We’re not talking about the last war!” A note of triumph, his own inconsistency brushed aside, sprang into Brighting’s voice. “Can’t you get that through your head? That’s the trouble with all you people. You can’t see beyond your previous experience. You have no imagination. We’re not even talking about the next war, either, or the one after that. We’re talking about the prevention of all war by total control of the sea! All of it, from above the surface down to the very bottom! We’re through with the Mahan concept of big fleets maneuvering around trying to outguess each other!”

The three submariners sat silently. Rich could feel the mind-expanding impact of Brighting’s vision. From the rapt, fascinated expressions on their faces, it was clear that Buck and Keith did too.

“We’re only in the early phases of the history of man,” Brighting went on, “and the key to development has always been the availability of power. But all power has always required consumption of oxygen, combustion somewhere in the process. With the exception of hydroelectric power, that is. The key to control of the sea in a manner similar to the way we control the land is to have adequate power. Mobile power, for the time being. The sea is the last and most limitless resource of man. It’s three-dimensional, and so is the air above it. For all these years, the surface of the sea has been the prize we were after, because it provided cheap transport, and livelihood. That’s what navies have been built for since year one. But not forever. The changes are coming fast. First mobile power, for new and wonderful ships. Then stationary power, with fantastic capability, on the land or in the sea, wherever power is needed.”

“You’re talking about an entirely new and different kind of a navy, aren’t you, Admiral?” said Richardson.

“Not just a new navy, Richardson! A whole new type of civilization! How long do you expect the world’s stocks of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — to last?”

“In 1945 I was reading that oil would last only fifty years or so, but we seem to be finding more oil all the time…”

“That’s true. But have you any idea of how much energy we are using, in just one year, just in the United States?”

“A lot…”

“A hell of a lot, Richardson. That’s something people aren’t thinking of these days, but one of these days they’re going to have to. Since 1957 the United States has expended more total energy than the whole world used up to then, ever since the beginning of time! What do you think of that!”

There was no answer expected. Rich, Keith and Buck merely stared at Brighting.

“Besides, do you know what’s happening to world population? Man’s been around for thousands of generations, but five percent — that’s a twentieth — of all the people who ever lived are living this minute! Now do you see what I’m trying to do?” The puckish look was gone. In its place were the pinched nostrils, the rigid posture, the glaring eyes of the zealot. Only the flat voice was the same. The whole bearing of the man had changed, almost instantaneously, without visible movement of any sort.

Later, Rich would wonder if Brighting had been acting a part. At the time, however, he could only notice the metamorphosis with astonishment, as Brighting continued. “The Navy is just the beginning. War, as you and I have known it, is over. Out the window. What will come next is a struggle to survive on earth. In a hundred years all the oil will be gone. That’s only three generations away. In ten generations all the rest of the fossil fuels will be gone.” The manner in which Brighting pronounced the words “fossil fuels” gave no doubt of the contempt in which he held the ordinary energy sources.

“What about tides, solar energy and the internal heat of the earth?” asked Buck.

The disdain in Brighting’s face was palpable. “Sure!” he said. “We’ve only been talking about all those great things for years. Where are they?” Again it was only a rhetorical question. He gave no time for an answer. “Nuclear power is here now. But it has its own engineering problems, like anything else. So people are afraid of it. They lack confidence in their own ability to control it. And they’re right. Most people are nice. Nice and friendly, like big puppy dogs. And they’ll never do things right if it’s easier to do them wrong. Nobody does things right unless he doesn’t dare do them wrong. He’s got to know he’ll be called to account.”

The pinched nostrils tightened another notch. No one spoke. “You fellows are supposed to be the best submariners in the Navy. That’s rot! Maybe you can handle diesel submarines, but they’re nothing. You’re worthless if you can’t discipline yourself to handle a nuclear power plant. That’s what you’re here for. This program is a lot bigger than just submarines or the Navy. Now do you see why I have to do things the way I do?”

There was a moment during which no one spoke. There was nothing to say. Again Brighting seized the initiative. “Good night,” he said, as he rose to his feet.

Buck Williams put the cap on the evening, as the three officers thoughtfully walked back to the prototype and their interrupted study program. Buck was always the irreverent one, the one given to the apropos comment which tore through obfuscation to expose gobbledygook, the non sequitur or the stupid — or, alternatively, to put things into balanced context. This time, after a minute during which the only sound was their own footsteps on the graveled walk, he did it with a single statement that encompassed what all three were thinking. “No wonder the Navy hates him,” he said, “and still lets him get away with it all. He’s a bully and a genius at the same time. Tonight we saw his genius side. We’re damned lucky to have him in our Navy, and we three are lucky to be working for him.”

The others said nothing. The crunch of their footsteps was loud in the chill desert night.