Cold is the Sea

4

“Captain! Wake up, Captain!” The voice using the unaccustomed salutation came from far away, from far back in the past. He was sleeping on the stool in Eel’s conning tower. The hand shaking him was Keith’s. The voice too. Richardson must have fallen more soundly asleep than he had expected. He rolled upright on the cot in the ladies’ room. “How long have I been out?” he asked, groggily.

“Not long. Probably only fifteen minutes. Buck and I were going to let you caulk off another half hour at least, but we think there’s an emergency on its way.”

“That’s right, sir! It’s a big one, I’m afraid, and you’re the only one here …” Buck was speaking from the other side of the cot.

Richardson’s mind subconsciously recorded the fact that both former subordinates were putting him into the role of years ago. Simultaneously his own habit asserted itself, framed the words for him as his quickening pulses for a precious second drove the blood into his brain. “Yes, what is it?”

“Reactor casualty, I think! There’s steam in the lower level, and all the dosimeter readings are climbing fast. Buck’s and mine have already gone way up the scale.” Keith pointed his pocket dosimeter, a penlike instrument with a frosted glass lens at each end, to the overhead light, squinted through it. “It says I got more than three-quarters of my allowed weekly dose of roentgens during the last half hour!” Hurriedly, he clipped it back into his shirt pocket as he followed Richardson and Williams to the door and down a steel stairway to the main floor.

“Why couldn’t this have waited a few more days,” Buck was saying. “Two weeks ago Brighting was here and everything was fine. Next week we’re supposed to take our end-of-course exams, and then we’re through, finished, on our way back to New London. After that the whole place can go to hell, for all we care!”

“Sure,” said Richardson, “except you’re not fooling anybody. You know you’re not going to let anything happen to our reactor if there’s anything you can do to stop it.”

“That’s why we were in such a hurry to call you, Skipper,” said Keith, catching up. “You’re senior man on board. If something is really out of line, it will be up to you to take charge.”

“Not so fast.” Richardson paused at the watertight door leading to the engineroom. “Old Brighting was pretty clear that when we came here we left our Navy rank somewhere in the Idaho desert. The regular engineering watch officer is in charge until Dusty Rhodes or somebody else shows up. We’re under his orders. There can’t be two bosses here.” He jackknifed through the steel doorway.

There was a crowd at the other end of the engineroom, around the watertight door leading to the reactor compartment. To Richardson’s surprise, among them were the three members of the reactor duty section and the engineering watch officer, a young-faced red-haired civilian employee named Baker. Baker was staring through the glass peephole in the steel door as Rich pushed his way through to him.

“What’s happened, Red? Did you abandon the reactor compartment?”

“Had to, Rich! All our dosimeters were way up! Couldn’t take a chance on staying!”

“Any idea what happened?”

“There’s steam in the lower level. I saw it through the periscope myself. Something has given way down there, is my guess!”

“Did you scram?” Richardson hissed the question to Baker alone. He already knew the answer, for the turbo-generator sets which provided power for the simulated submarine were still running. Unless the reactor had been shut down only during the past few seconds, less than a minute, they would no longer be getting steam.

“Not yet. Maybe I’d better. It just happened less than five minutes ago. Somebody noticed his dosimeter had climbed, and then we all checked our own and saw the same thing, and about the same time somebody looked in the lower level through the periscope and saw steam. But everything’s still running okay.”

“But Red, we can’t leave the reactor untended.”

“I know,” said Baker uncertainly. “I guess we should scram, but we were hoping to finish this test run tonight…” His voice dropped. He had been recently put in charge of a watch section and was known to be a good technician. Clearly, however, his training had not yet equipped him to make a decision of this magnitude.

Richardson dropped his voice to a low note meant for Baker only. “Have you called Dusty?”

“Uh, no. I guess I should…”

“Better do that right away. How long did it take your dosimeters to rise, and how high did they go?”

“Maybe five minutes, and they’re all pretty near the top. So it was a pretty healthy dose we all got.”

“If they didn’t hit the peg you didn’t get much radiation, Red. Have somebody collect the film badges and get them checked. That will give you a better idea of it. Tell someone else to call Rhodes. He’s got the responsibility for the plant and will have to take charge of this. It will take him more than an hour to get here, though, and we’ve got to decide what can be done before then.” Richardson still spoke in a carrying whisper. Unconsciously he had been giving orders, and equally unconsciously, Baker moved with alacrity to carry out the only sensible program that presented itself.

Richardson was staring through the glass eyeport in the door. It was not possible to look into the lower level of the reactor compartment where the steam leak existed, for that could be seen only through the two “periscopes” which penetrated the thick lead-and-plastic-shielded deck between upper and lower reactor spaces. There was a hatch in the deck, but no one could go into the lower level until the reactor had been shut down, and then only after residual radiation had died away. Everything that could be seen in the upper level was as it should be. Clearly, the only way anything could be discovered was to reenter the upper level and look through the two periscopes.

He had felt the quickened pulse before. There were chances to be taken, a risk for what might be gained, the problem of attaining the objective with danger to the fewest number of people. Or, what was the same thing in a different sense, how to use the maximum number of people with the minimum exposure to each individual. And suddenly, there it was. An idea. But first, something more had to be known about the problem.

“Baker,” he said. He nearly barked the name, realized too late he had reverted to type and used the man’s surname. Baker had been seeing to the film badges which, upon development in the lab, would accurately measure the degree of radiation received by each person.

“Yessir!”

“Red, I wasn’t aboard when the trouble started, and my dosimeter is still on zero. I’m going into the reactor compartment to take a good look through the periscopes, and I’ll watch my dosimeter at the same time. I’ll come back out here before it hits the peg at the top. We’ve got to find out where the steam is coming from.”

“It’s got to be in the primary loop, Rich. The radiation level went up at the same time as the leak was discovered. In fact, that’s how we found it.”

“Where in the primary loop? That’s the question. If we can find out which line is leaking, perhaps we might be able to do something about it.”

“Maybe we should scram out anyway. I hate to think of anyone going in there…”

“You told me you were in the upper level for five minutes yourself, just now, and your dosimeter didn’t even peg. You didn’t get as strong a dose as from an ordinary radium-dial wristwatch!”

Radium-dial watches had been banned from Mark One because their presence set off all the delicately tuned warning devices. Richardson could tell from the look on Baker’s face that he had got in a telling point. “Okay, sir, maybe we’ll have something from the film lab by the time you come back out.”

“Good, Red. Ask them to send down a new film badge for me, too, and we’ll send up the one I’ve got on to see how badly it got fogged.” Richardson spun the dogging handwheel, pushed open the submarine-style door, stepped inside. Directly in front of him, dominating the compartment, was the tall, cylindrical stainless-steel shell, on top of the reactor, which protected the control rod drive mechanisms and the tops of the control rod housings. On either side of the reactor compartment two large, heavily insulated domes projected through the floor and nearly touched the curved overhead. These were the steam generators, corresponding to boilers in a conventionally powered ship. From the tops of the two domes a pair of large insulated pipes passed through huge steam stop valves and then joined together in a single larger pipe which led aft to the engineroom. A profusion of smaller equipment, mostly control and monitoring panels, filled the remainder of the space except for the narrow walkway in the middle and around the reactor top.

Richardon’s first move was to inspect his dosimeter, which he held up, telescope-fashion, to the nearest light. The index was moving, but not perceptibly. That was good. The radiation level was at least well within human tolerance. Clipping the device back into his shirt pocket, he grasped one of the periscopes and looked down into it. Unlike a submarine attack periscope, which went up, had two magnifications and could measure range, this one went down through the deck and had no magnification at all. It combined all its far simpler controls in a single handle by which it could be swung around to permit inspection of about half the space beneath the deck, where the reactor itself, and all its principal components, were located. He had expected to find the place foggy with steam, but there was only a slight mist issuing from somewhere on the other side of the tremendous steel pressure vessel housing the reactor proper.

He moved to the other periscope, looked a long searching moment through it. The point of issuance of the steam, a tiny stream of vapor, could not be directly seen. There must be the tiniest of cracks in one of the auxiliary pipes, not a main one. The wisp of steam was issuing from its other side. It was what he had hoped to find. A leak in the primary loop itself could not be repaired without completely shutting down and draining it. Since it was a small subsidiary line, there might be some other way.

He seized his dosimeter, held it in his hand while still looking through the periscope, straightened up quickly to peer through it: good! It had mounted only about a quarter of the way up its scale.

Back to the periscope, twisting it slightly, focusing as carefully as he could set the eyepiece, following the faulty line as far as the instrument would let him see. At one point he crossed over again to the other periscope, identified the line he was inspecting, following it further. There was indeed a way!

“Red,” said Rich, once again back in the engineroom, “it’s a very small leak, a pinhole, and we can fix it.”

“How? How are we going to fix it without shutting down?”

“We’ll have to shut down, but not for long, and we can make a hot start. So we’ll not lose the test. The leak is in the demineralizer bypass, We’ll put a freeze on both sides of the leak, cut out the faulty piece of pipe, and cap both parts of the line. It’ll be out of commission, but we don’t need that bypass line much anyway. How many stainless-steel welders are on tonight with you?”

“Three, I think. Maybe now there’s a couple more qualified.”

“Okay, here’s what we do. As soon as the radiation in the lower level gets down to ambient we can go in there. Once the reactor is shut down we’ll have an hour or so to wait, and we’ll need that to get organized. By the time Dusty gets here we’ll be all ready to go, and if he okays it we’ll have her back on the line in a couple of hours. We can keep the pressurizer hot and keep the bubble in it. It’ll be hot working alongside it, but nobody will be in there more than about three minutes, and nobody will receive more than the allowable week’s radiation. The main thing to be really careful of is to stay out of the path of the leak. That’s hot in more ways than only one!”

Rich spoke swiftly and, as before, in a low tone. He could see Baker’s discouragement vanishing, his confidence and enthusiasm mounting. A period of hyperactivity came over the crew of Mark One. The entire group was assembled for a briefing on the procedure to be followed, and each individual’s part in it was assigned. A plan of the compartment, showing the line to be cut, was procured and posted. Each of the men designated to enter the lower level studied not only his own operation but those of the persons preceding and following him as well. Liquid nitrogen bottles were made ready. Molds were prepared to hold the frigid liquid around the faulty pipe at the selected points. Tools, clean coveralls, shoe covers, gloves and masks were taken from storerooms and laid out. Supplies of salt tablets were procured, to be swallowed in advance by those designated to enter the lower reactor compartment.

When Rhodes arrived at the site, after a high-speed dash over the lonely highway from Idaho Falls, he required only a briefing prior to putting through the obligatory telephone call to Admiral Brighting in Washingon.

Richardson, following a brief but detailed conversation with an anxious Dusty Rhodes, was first in the lower level, his job to mark the point of the leak he had spotted and the locations of the two freeze points. Maximum ventilation had been on for some time, exhausting the hot, confined air of the lower reactor compartment. Cool air, streaming through the hatch in the insulated deck separating the two levels, flapped the legs of his heavy white canvas coveralls as he descended the hot steel ladder, but, once inside, the heat of the steel surrounding him penetrated swiftly through his baggy coveralls and through his shoes, gloves, cloth helmet — actually a hood covering his entire head — and his face mask. He had been prepared for it, knew what to expect, carefully breathed through his nose only and through the gauze with which his mask had been stuffed. Nevertheless, he nearly lost consciousness when the wild, searing heat first went down into his lungs.

The piercing, high-pitched shriek of the main pumps, no longer shielded by the heavy deck through which he had descended, tore at his eardrums. He could feel the delicate membranes of his ears reacting, toughening, screeching their protests into his senses, bruising themselves, swiftly dulling their ability to respond. Too late to do anything about this now. It should have been foreseen. The hood and mask were not enough. He must specify earplugs for all those who followed him.

The hot air shriveled the tender mucous linings of his nose and throat with every breath as he drew it in. Instantaneously he could feel the droplets popping out of his sweat glands, collecting, trickling down under his armpits, down his chest and backbone until absorbed by his clothing. Quickly his undershirt, and the civilian sport shirt, were sodden, as were his trousers along the front of his thighs and at the top of his buttocks. His feet felt tight in his suddenly moist shoes. He was grateful for the warm sweat. It would help keep his body temperature down.

There was no time to lose. His part was vital. So were all the other parts, so carefully rehearsed, to follow. He must do precisely what had been scheduled; exactly that, no more, and certainly no less. The pain in his ears was less. Thank heaven for that! To reach the faulty demineralizer bypass he must crawl over a portion of the main coolant piping. An insulating mat had been dropped down the hatch before him. He gripped it, struggled upright, draped it over the nearly incandescently hot, foot-diameter pipe. Sliding over it, he crouched on hands and knees to crawl under a heavy cable channel, squeezed upright between the reactor pressure vessel and a smaller duplicate, the pressurizer. The heat from both, reflecting from the curved steel plates forming the bottom of the cylindrical hull, radiated through the thin asbestos lining of the work clothing protecting him. Down on hands and knees one more time to crawl under the thin bypass line itself (very carefully, so as to avoid passing before the crack with its still-issuing steam), he finally was able to sit upright facing the defective pipe, on the hot curved bottom of the reactor compartment. (This, at least, was at a more normal temperature, thanks to the tank of salt water on the other side of the simulated submarine hull.) Working rapidly, he removed two sections of colored tape from a coverall pocket and fumblingly, but very carefully, wrapped them around the pipe, two feet apart. This would mark one of the freeze points. He crawled under the bypass line once more, around to the other side of the pressurizer, again positioned himself before the pipe, this time on the other side of the leak, marked the other freeze point with two more pieces of tape.

By this time, Richardson was totally bathed in perspiration, his body as wet as if he had jumped, fully clothed, into the cooling pond. He had heard old Navy tales of men crawling into the firebox of a steaming coal-fired boiler to make emergency repairs. What he and the others were undergoing — or would soon be — was at least as severe a physical test, he thought, as he tortuously retraced his path through the packed compartment. It was only Admiral Brighting’s insistence that all components be accessible which had made it possible to reach the bypass pipe. Otherwise, left to the standard designers and contractors, it would not have been. But, even so, there could have been more than the barest minimum of space…

The upper reactor compartment was a cool heaven, and so was the engineroom, where Rich ripped off his mask and hood and then, more slowly, removed his wet coveralls. A lab technician seized his dosimeter and film badge, hurried them away for immediate inspection. Red Baker, several turns away from his own descent into the lower compartment, handed him a glass of cold water and another salt tablet. “Get earplugs!” Rich gasped to Dusty and to the man next scheduled to go below. Then, in greater detail, he began to describe to both what he had seen and done. The man, who by prearrangement had been watching through the periscopes, appeared to understand. But Richardson, who could feel himself talking, could hear nothing as he carefully mouthed the words.

Dusty Rhodes was swearing, the dead telephone handset still gripped tightly in his hand. “Damn him!” he spit out. “He’s the most inhuman human being I know! Here we’ve made an emergency repair to keep his reactor running, with his approval, mind you, and you know what old man Brighting just said to me?” He slammed the phone into its cradle. “He said we should have properly inspected that line before starting up this series of tests. Three weeks ago! How in the hell am I supposed to have done that? Maybe he’s a superman, but we’re not! We’re just ordinary naval officers trying to do a job right. He’s responsible for faulty construction, not me!” Rhodes’ voice trailed off. His trembling fist slowly unclenched.

Richardson grinned. “Did you tell him my ears are a lot better now, thank you?” he said. “The old man must have been a little tensed up himself.”

Rhodes slowly smiled back. “Maybe you’re right, Rich. Anyway, it does me good to yell back at him sometimes. After he hangs up the phone, that is. But seriously, what more does he expect of us? We went over the whole plant four months ago, just before you came. Every weld was radiographed. So was every pipe more than an inch in diameter. Those are his standing instructions, and we did it very carefully. But that steam leak wasn’t at a weld, and the pipe is less than an inch in diameter. It was a faulty piece of half-inch pipe, and it finally just gave out. Could have happened anytime!”

“I know,” nodded Richardson, “and you know how he’s always harped on manufacturer’s quality control. That crummy piece of pipe just plain rotted out. It should never have got through the vendor’s inspection. It might even be made of the wrong material. You’re going to send the piece we cut out back to Washington, aren’t you?”

“It’s gone already. He just now told me to send it, and I had the pleasure of telling him it’s already on the truck and gone. A little piece of pipe in a big lead box. That was before he began to chew me out.” Rhodes’ grin now matched Richardson’s. “I see what you mean. The old man was just warming up, I guess. I’d hate to be president of that pipe company, about now!”

Privately, Richardson had been mentally preparing himself for the telephone call from Brighting, who, reputedly, had spies everywhere in his organization, and throughout the Navy as well. Inevitably, the wizened admiral would discover Richardson’s role in the emergency, and no matter how Rich’s participation was described, it would be interpreted as a violation of his instructions. There would be one of those sudden summons to the telephone, the even-toned voice demanding an explanation to which its owner would not listen, the receiver crashing down, some sort of retribution exacted. Rich found himself thinking through the short speech he would be permitted. The admiral might not listen, but he could not avoid hearing. Perhaps a telling point could be forced into his consciousness.

But nothing happened for three days. Daily routine went back to normal. The emergency was relegated to its place in the machinery history book, reflected only in the procedure changes necessitated by the cut in the demineralizer bypass line. When the call came, Rich could feel his nervous system gearing up for the quick conflict — and was totally unprepared for the direction Brighting took.

“Richardson”—Rich thought he detected menace in the expressionless voice, afterward could never be sure—“do you know what the NEPA project is?”

“Why, yes, it stands for Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft…”

“Is that all you know? I thought you had an inquiring mind.” This, at least, was according to form. Rich had had ample training in how to handle it.

“I’ve not had any time to think of anything except Mark One since I came here.”

“You’re a Captain in the Navy. You’re supposed to have initiative. Do I have to hold your coat for you, too, besides telling you how to do your duty?”

“No, sir.” Anger bubbling to the surface.

“Rhodes will set it up for you. You and your friends go over to see it. Maybe you’ll learn something.” The telephone went dead.

“Why did he send us there?” asked Buck. The question had been hanging during the whole of the return trip. The drive to the Air Force site had been a welcome interlude, even though the hours involved would cost further curtailment of sleep from their schedules. It was the first time outside the compound for any of them since their arrival. “What did he send us for?” Buck repeated. “There’s nothing those guys could show us. They don’t have a reactor, or even a design for one that’s light enough for an airplane. They’ll never get their thing going. It’s a waste of time!”

“Maybe that’s what we were supposed to find out,” said Keith.

“They’ve done a lot of theoretical study and made a mockup of a lightweight reactor,” said Rich, thoughtfully, “and even that’s too heavy for an airplane. They can’t compare with Mark One, which is like a part of a whole operating submarine. I think you’re right, Keith. He wanted us to see the difference.”

“And see what a great person he is!” exclaimed Buck.

“It’s more than that,” began Richardson. “Maybe he was trying to do something for us…” But then he could not find ready words to articulate the unformed thought, left it uncompleted as they rode across the desert toward the looming windowless cube which housed Mark One.