Cold is the Sea (28 page)

“You think they're looking for him?” Hanson asked the question in a low voice, standing alongside Keith as he began swiftly rotating the periscope.

“Probably.” Keith answered without taking his eye from the eyepiece, leaning to his left as he let the weight of his body help spin the periscope. He stopped suddenly, straightened up slightly, began swiftly manipulating the periscope controls. Then, very rapidly, he spun the instrument around twice, stopped on the same bearing, looked for a long instant and flipped up the handles.

Jim Hanson, his hand on the control handle, pulled it toward him. “What do you see?” he asked as the periscope dropped away.

“There's three planes out there circling around something.”

“How far?”

“On the horizon. Maybe a little beyond. Probably about where you saw the first one.”

“You think they're looking for the boat that hit us?”

“That would be pretty fast work. Could be, I s'pose, but I'd be a little surprised if they're out looking for him this soon. We've not even got an answer to our message yet.”

“Could you make out the markings?”

“No. But I'm glad we had enough white paint to cover everything that came up through the ice. I'm not too anxious for them to find us. Not yet, anyway, especially if they're out here for some other reason.” Keith paused. “Listen,” he resumed, “I don't want to use the periscope any more than we can help. It increases the chances they'll spot us on their radar. But we've got to keep a watch on them. So there'll have to be a topside lookout. Get a watch set up right away. He'll need heavy-weather gear, and a heater in the bridge cockpit. Also, have him keep a white sheet or tablecloth wrapped around his head and upper body.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Hanson.

Keith was grateful for the reversion to official language. Jim Hanson's questions had begun to be uncomfortable. Although Jim was his most trusted subordinate, he had known him only during the year or so of the ship's precommissioning and training period. Such questions Keith might have asked of Rich, as his executive officer, because the relationship had been going on so much longer and was so much deeper. Or, they might have been required during combat, when one of an exec's duties was to inform himself of everything his commanding officer knew and thought. Keith's eyes followed Jim as he left the periscope platform to see about organizing the lookout watch. It was the first time he could recall having been even mildly displeased with him.

And then the idea introduced itself that, for Jim, it was the nearest thing yet to a combat situation. Jim was doing exactly what Keith had done, many times before. The difference was in the nature of the antagonist. Jim's questions, in fact, were nearly the same ones Keith had asked of Rich. And suddenly Keith wondered why he had had such feelings in the first place. Could
it, perchance, be the result of his own inadequacies? For he could already feel, growing within him, still held rigidly beneath the level of conscious recognition, the dread of what he was going to discover when at last the propeller could be inspected.

With the secondary propulsion system gone and the main propulsion out of commission, either with propeller blades crumpled or the shaft so far out of line that it could not be used, there would be no way of moving the
Cushing
. He and his ship and crew were trapped in the Arctic, as surely as those old wooden whaling ships! He dared not even drop out of the frozen lead in which he had surfaced, for fear of not being able to return to it!

Drafting the second message had been done with speed and urgency, yet it had taken well over an hour. And there were many discarded pieces of paper, carefully collected by Trumbull for destruction by burning. This process, too, reminded Keith of the many wartime moments when he had participated in the same thing: the drafting and redrafting; the poring over words and phrases; the painstaking distillation of every drop of meaning, accidental, possible or intended; the equally painstaking concern over how every word would—or could—be interpreted by the recipients. The effort to compress as much meaning as possible into the fewest words, knowing they would be subjected to the same process by those to whom addressed, and by many others besides.

After careful observation of the aircraft in the distance, Keith decided they were engaged in some activity centered in the vicinity where he had first seen them, not searching the area in general. There was, however, at least one plane continuously in the air, or so it seemed, for there had been only a few periods of any length during which none was visible. During the first one, a work party managed to chop a small hole in the ice behind the rudder and confirmed, from what they could see through the clear, still water, that the propeller had been badly damaged. But reappearance of a plane, albeit still on the horizon, caused Keith to countermand dispatch of the diver—the man had already gone to the bridge in his rubber suit and breathing gear—and hurriedly call back his men from the ice. Thereafter he had been more cautious. An hour later he had progressed no farther than
thinking about sending out a new group when another aircraft sighting nullified the idea once more.

Timing of the second message had been exactly as Rich and Buck had surmised, planned so that it could go out while there was the best chance of reception on the east coast of the United States. The certainty that his first message must have galvanized his friends into tense attention awaiting his second had even translated into the likelihood they would try to intercept it direct, in
Proteus
' radio room. And, just as Rich and Buck guessed, Keith was in his own radio room, earphones plugged into the circuit, while his second message was being sent out. There had been a perceptible thrill as he recognized the sudden, but not totally unexpected, interposition of a new station on the circuit transmitting his own wolfpack code.

Setting up the single side-band radio was swiftly done. There was a rush of sibilant reverberation as the initial transmissions were made. Chief Radioman Melson had his fingers on the fine-tuning dial, rotated it ever so slowly. Suddenly, as though it were from a ship close aboard, instead of thousands of miles away, Richardson's voice boomed over the radio room loudspeaker. “Buck is here, too. . . . How are you, old man?” There was a nuance of meaning in the words deeper than the mere formalities. In a guarded sort of way Richardson was asking how Keith—and his ship—really were.

Keith had not thought about security. The order to go to voice communication was sufficient, so far as he was concerned, and only now, sensing Richardson's own reticence at speaking out plainly, did the possibility of interception by unwanted listeners cross his mind. They would need special equipment, able to monitor the entire frequency spectrum, but undeniably it could be done if the need had been anticipated.

Thinking fast, he said into his microphone, “This is Keith. I read you loud and clear. This is Keith. I read you loud and clear. How me? Over.” He said the brief message twice. It would not do to use the name of his ship over voice radio, but his own first name would be all right. Rich had done the same.

The ship's telephone rang in the radio room. Melson picked it up, answered, held it out to Keith. “For you, sir.”

“This is the OOD on the bridge, Captain. We've got a plane in sight again.”

“Keep me informed,” said Keith. “Be ready to submerge if it heads this way!” Keith dropped the handset. Richardson's voice on the speaker was saying, “Can you stay up on voice? Over.”

“Negative, Rich. There's too much activity over the equator. . . .” Rich and Buck would understand. Maybe he was being a little coy, but there was no point in calling the attention of a chance listener to his position.

Suddenly there were two loudspeakers going at once. Richardson's next transmission was paralleled by the ship's general communication system. Jim Hanson's voice. “Captain, this is Jim. I'm on the bridge. That plane is closer than ever before. It's on a steady bearing. I think it's headed this way!”

Rich was saying something about maintaining a watch on the voice circuit. Keith had already begun a reply. Perhaps the plane had a direction finder, was homing in on his transmissions! Hurriedly he closed out the conversation, speaking quickly. His voice, he knew, would transmit its own sense of exigency. Rich and Buck, for the time being, would have to be satisfied with that.

The control room was but a step away, through a bulkhead. For the barest instant he debated going to the bridge himself. No. Jim's presence was already increasing the load up there by one. If it became necessary to dive, another extra person would slow down the process of clearing the bridge and getting everyone below. Worse, encumbered as everyone was with heavy clothing, he might be caught in the hatch trunk and jam up the process inextricably. He picked up the periscope-station mike, pressed the button for the bridge. “Jim, I'm in conn. What's it like now?” Jim would recognize his voice. No need to go through the obligatory call-up procedure.

Jim must have had his hand already on the speaker switch, automatically overrode Keith when he pushed it. His amplified voice filled the control room as Keith was uttering the last few words. “It's out of sight now. Still steady bearing, though. Maybe it's not heading this way.” There was relief in Hanson's voice, and yet uncertainty, too. The plane was still some distance away, perhaps still beyond the horizon, flying low. . . .

An old memory clicked in Keith's mind. The pupils of his eyes
dilated as the impact sank in. The plane was flying low. There was malevolent intent in that. It might be on an attack run! “Clear the bridge!” he yelled into the microphone, the fingers gripping it suddenly clenched, the blood driven out of his fingernails. “Take her down!”

With his other hand he pushed the handle controlling the hydraulic periscope hoist. As the bright metal tube slithered silently up from the periscope well he could sense the quick bustle of the control room crew standing up to their stations, their practiced hands waiting for the orders that would open vents, let air out of tanks and send the powerless
Cushing
deep into the icy sea.

Two blasts of the diving alarm. Jim Hanson had sounded it from the bridge after making sure the heavily bundled lookout and the OOD had gotten into the hatch trunk. He would be the next-to-last man down, would render assistance as necessary as the Officer of the Deck dogged the hatch. Already the lookout, red of face (what could be seen of it), skin puffed from the cold, bulky in the heavy clothing under his white sheet, had appeared in the control room. A quick look to the left, to the ballast control panel. Its operator was in the process of flipping the last of the switches controlling the main vent valves.

The base of the periscope appeared at the top of its well, dragging with it the big tubular radar section. Keith had chosen the radar periscope because of the superior optics its larger head-size accommodated. He grabbed the handles as they appeared, snapped them down, with a single smooth motion put his right eye to the eyepiece and swung the 'scope around to the previously noted bearing of the aircraft. The periscope height would permit him to see what the uneven ice denied to Jim Hanson on the bridge.

Just as he had thought! The plane was flying as low as it could, almost brushing the ice, lifting just enough to give clearance to occasional hummocks and piled-up drifts. It was headed directly for the
Cushing
. Its two whirling propellers were plainly visible. So was the fixed landing gear, with large broad skis instead of wheels. Fortunately, the bridge watch had been alert. Possibly the plane had been sighted before beginning its run in. Whatever the sequence of events, and their cause, now it was down on the deck, headed directly toward him. There was only one way to
interpret this hazardous style of flying. The plane was trying to remain concealed. Only a professional military pilot would fly this way, and only if his intentions were not friendly!

Keith noticed that his periscope was lower, the ice surface nearer. He hazarded a swift look aft. Yes, the rudder had vanished, leaving a neat hole in the ice shaped to its cross section and the smaller hole his men had cut directly abaft it, which had not been visible as long as the rudder protrusion was in the way. He could not depress the periscope optics enough to see whether
Cushing
's sail was still visible, and he did not try. The diving officer, or Jim Hanson, whom he could sense now standing beside him on the periscope station, would in any event report depths as the ship submerged, and he could calculate the disappearance of his sail by himself. The plane was closer, although he had been looking in another direction less than ten seconds. How long would it take to get here? How fast was it coming? How far away?

Answers to all these questions were by guess and estimation only.
Cushing
, with no way on, was dropping very slowly. During the war
Walrus
and
Eel
had customarily dived in seconds, often in less than half a minute, using the combined full diving capabilities of speed, sharp down-angle, and a boat deliberately ballasted heavy.
Cushing
was four times the displacement of
Eel
, and she had no power. Even if she had, she could not have used speed to leave her niche in the ice. She was going down excruciatingly slowly.

“What's the depth?” he snapped, without taking his eye from the periscope. He would lower it as soon as the sail was under, but now that
Cushing
's presence had been detected he might as well use it as long as he could.