The Med

by David Poyer

  Wronowicz stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. That’s right. Now look.” He pointed to the bottom of the bearing. “Friction bearings are just hollow rings, like a woman’s—well, like a wedding ring. They’re lined with soft metal, and the shaft of the gear rests on that, inside a collar. See? Now, in a gear case like this, every time you torque up you change where the shaft pushes on the collar. So first thing we did was shut down, let everything cool to get the stresses out of it, so each gearshaft rests right at the bottom of its bearing.”

  They nodded, solemn and intent. The ship rolled, and they all put their arms out, bracing themselves without looking away from him. He went on. “Now, these pinion bearings are split rings. You can get them out, all right, unbolt the cover and then roll ’em out from underneath, but only if there’s no weight on them. So what we got to do?”

  “Lift the shaft,” said Steurnagel.

  “Right. How?”

  “Jeez.” He thought about that, then looked up at the overhead. “Uh … another chainhoist?”

  “Right track, but way too small. What’s this shaft weigh?”

  “A lot.”

  “You ought to know that,” said Wronowicz. “Anybody know? Polock?”

  “Not me.”

  “Blaney?”

  “Twenty tons.”

  “Holy Moses,” said Wronowicz. “You been studyin’, for a change?”

  “Some, Chief.”

  “About time. No, chainhoist won’t take forty-two thousand pounds. So we got to do better. How? You know that, Blaney?”

  “No, Chief.”

  “Well, I’m still a little ahead, then. Here’s how: We’re gonna use hydraulics.”

  “Chief,” said one of the men behind him, and he turned, annoyed at being interrupted, and saw Ensign Callin. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at them.

  “Did you want something, sir?”

  “I wanted to see how much longer this is going to take, yeah. The captain’s on my neck up there every fifteen minutes for progress reports.”

  “We’re working on it, sir.”

  “Well, let’s concentrate on getting it done, Chief, not on school call. You can train your men later, after the landing. Okay?”

  Wronowicz didn’t answer, just looked up at him, and after a second or so the ensign turned away for the ladder. He turned back, though, just as he reached it. “Anyway … how much longer?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “We’re going in at dawn. You know we got to have full power then.”

  Wronowicz nodded. The tension between the two men, chief and officer, was like a rope strained to breaking. One more word, he was thinking, and I’m going to say it. I’m going to tell this fuzz-cheeked kid just where he can stick it.

  He fought it down just once more, the ten thousandth time in twenty-two years of enlisted service; but this time it was a closer call than it had ever been before. There might not be much more forbearance left in him.

  “You better get back up to the bridge,” he said.

  Callin looked startled; the men behind the chief were silent. The ship began its tilt, the ladder slanting, making the ensign snatch for the handrail. He opened his mouth, then closed it, seeing something in the chief’s averted face, and then swung himself up the ladder and disappeared.

  “Chief?” said Steurnagel tentatively. “You said, hydraulics?”

  “Yeah … hydraulics, yeah.” Wronowicz took a deep breath. Forget Callin, forget the landing. Just fix the fucking shaft. “Okay, you worthless sons of sea cooks, move! Polock, I want that Hamilton ram broke out and set up over there, ready to go under the shaft. Mason, we’re going to need some bridge beams, at least two inches thick, and some good thick planks from the damage control locker. Steurnagel, break out the scrapers and bluing, and clear off that bench over there. Move, assholes! Move! Move! Move!”

  They scattered, and Wronowicz leaned against the turbines, studying the naked gears; and then his gaze lifted, toward the ladder. He licked his lips. Just one drink, just a single short nip. Just to cut the taste of oil. He had a sudden image of the bottle. Nestled half-full under his mattress, only two decks up, a minute away, and then back down to work again.…

  And against that vision, another, of marines struggling in the surf, and the waiting mouths of guns …

  He slammed the sledge viciously into the solid steel of the bearing cap.

  * * *

  At eleven that night he leaned back from the disassembled gear and wiped a trembling arm across his forehead. His skin was black with oil and blood thinned with sweat dripped from his knuckles. Behind him, leading aft, the gratings had been ripped up to expose the shining length of the propeller shaft. From under it protruded baulks of timber, steel beams, wedged deckplates. The men around him lifted sweat-streaked faces as he reached for a clean rag, wiped oil and shavings from a six-inch metal ring, and held it to the light.

  “There,” he muttered. “See it?”

  Within the steel, several parallel gouges marred the perfect smoothness of silvery lining. Beside him, the first-class nodded.

  “Got the scrapers sharpened?” the chief asked him.

  “Put a man on it an hour ago.”

  “Get ’em out. We want to get this thing running by dawn, we got a lot to do. Blaney, wake up!”

  The fireman started guiltily, then his smile came back full force; but he, too, looked tired, and his “Right, Chief,” was barely audible.

  “If you’re so wiped out, run up and get us a pot of fresh joe out of the engineering office. If there ain’t any get some from chief’s mess; tell the senior chief I sent you. The thicker and blacker the better.”

  “Right.”

  “And some cinnamon buns, if they got any left,” Wronowicz shouted after him, then turned his attention back to the bearing. “Stewie, we’re in luck. See how these gouges are deepest in this quadrant? If we can scrape them out just right, we can seat the shaft on a smooth area when it takes power. It’ll shimmy some at low speeds but at flank it’ll smooth out.”

  “Won’t that give us too much play?”

  “We can bump metal to take that up. I think. And jack the oil pressure as high as she’ll go. It’s only got to take it for a few hours. After that, nobody topside gives a shit.”

  The decking began to slant under his feet, and both he and Steurnagel grabbed for the bearing. The men grabbed for handholds, and above their heads, as the ship tilted farther and farther, the gray mass of casing stirred uneasily in its web, the ropes popping and creaking as they tautened.

  “Goddamn filthy weather … got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tighten up on this vise, I’ll hold it in place.”

  “How tight you want it?”

  “Bear down, damn it. I don’t want it moving around while I’m working on it. Where’s Polock? I want him to start polishing that shaft while we’re doing this. A fine stone and oil, some emery cloth, get all that old babbitt off—”

  “Already on it, Chief,” the second-class called.

  “Good … now, where’s that bluing?”

  “Over here.”

  “Hit that light there.”

  As they reeled toward the workbench, grasping at pipes and stanchions as the ship staggered again, one of the younger men turned aside and began suddenly to retch into the bilges.

  “Seasick?” said Steurnagel. “Keep a close eye on what comes up.”

  “Yeah?” The sailor raised a white face, unsteady eyes. “Why?”

  “Just watch it. You see a little puckered red thing come up, grab it. That’s your asshole.”

  Wronowicz ignored them. He had heard that one too many times before, and just now, with the men giving them all they had for twenty hours straight, it even seemed cruel. Especially since his own stomach was threatening mutiny. It sure is rolling hard, he thought, and then dismissed it as the lamp snapped on over the workbench. He blinked in its glare, bending his dripping
face close over the steel ring. The vise held it secure as he probed at the gouged metal and then dabbed bluing out of a can and brushed it over the babbitt in a thin, even layer. He gave it a minute to dry and then selected one of the scrapers, delicate rounded blades scalpel-sharpened to cut metal. He stared at the scarred surface of the bearing, working it out in his mind. Tired, Christ. This was a shoreside job, not something you did on a rolling destroyer at night. He needed an inside micrometer and feeler gauges, not his eye. But that was all he had, eye and experience, twenty-two years of it. That was all; and just for a moment, standing there ready to begin, he thought that this was it, what he had trained for all that time; and then he thought beyond Kelly Wronowicz; this was it for real for a lot of people.

  It was up to him.

  He bent into the flood of light. His hands had been shaking, but somehow they steadied, now that they had to be steady, and with infinite care peeled off the first thin silver spiral.

  * * *

  At midnight he straightened, put his hands to the small of his back, and leaned for a moment against the bulkhead. He felt dizzy, sick with the confined motion of the ship, two days without sleep.… “Polock,” he grunted, not opening his eyes. “He got that polishing finished?”

  “Lemme check,” said Steurnagel, starting up from where he had watched every move the chief had made. He was back in a minute, to find Wronowicz sitting on the deck, his head in his hands. “He says it’s as smooth as he can get it … say, you all right?”

  “Yeah. Here, gimme a hand up. Unjack that vise. Let’s give it the old fit test.”

  The other men stirred from half-sleep as he carried the bearing aft. Holding it delicately he split the rings apart and worked the bearing on. It had to fit perfectly, perfectly, or the vibration would begin and once begun grow and grow, the spinning shaft scouring off metal like a power grinder until the bearing wiped again, overheating, and the shaft warped or the babbitt melted or the whole box came apart in whirling shards. At full speed there was too much power to give it more than a ten-thousandth of play. Too tight, though, and it wouldn’t go on at all … he breathed out gently as the collar slipped over the end of the shaft. “Oil,” he said. “Gimme a shot of it right along the shaft, where she’s going to fit.”

  The bearing stuck, halfway down the shaft. He stared at it, whispered curses. Five more hours, four, till they went in … he turned savagely to Polock, behind him. “You polished this shaft, you said?”

  “Yeah, chief. I used the emery, like you said, first rough, then the finest we got. Polished it down—”

  “Shut up. Steurnagel, gimme that sledge.”

  “A hammer, chief?”

  “Gimme it, goddammit!”

  He held the tool at the outer edge of the bearing, and felt the sweat start anew from his forehead, break from the roots of his thinning hair. His beard itched. You didn’t force a bearing. That was against all the manuals, all the training. It had to slide on slick as hundred-dollar head. But the time was past for the rules; there were no hours to take it off and blue and file and fit again. It had to fit right now, and if it didn’t there was no use trying again. He could strip the babbitt right off doing this. He could—

  He quit thinking about it and gave the bearing a preliminary tap before hauling the maul back to swing; and then dropped it clattering to the deckplates. The ring had slid inward a full inch. He set the toe of his boot against it and it eased smoothly inward, a thin drip of oil purling from around the shaft, and seated in the gearframe. He and the first-class looked at each other, then at the shaft, and then back at each other again, and they were both smiling; not grins, though they both realized how incredible it was that it fit, but the tired smiles of tired men.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Steurnagel. “I don’t believe you got it that close by eye.”

  Neither did Wronowicz, but that wasn’t the kind of thing a chief admitted. “Yeah, it takes some experience,” he said coolly. “Now, you people, let’s get hot. We only got about four hours to get this sucker back together and ready for power.”

  “Less than that,” said Ensign Callin from behind them. “Is it fixed?”

  Wronowicz felt the tension in himself instantly, as if he were taking an electric charge through the shaft he still rested his hand on. “It’s fixed, yeah,” he said, not turning around. “You better go tell the captain.”

  “I will. But we’ve got to have flank speed available earlier than H-hour, just to catch up.”

  The ship began her tilt, a little bit faster than usual, the way she did before a good roll, and all three of them recognized it and glanced around for handholds. “Less than four hours?” repeated the chief, looking back at the torn-up deckplates along the shaft. “No can do, no way. These guys just did the impossible, getting the casing off and the shaft blocked as fast as they did. And getting this to fit”—he waved at the bearing—“was just plain cockeyed luck. Tell Captain Foster we’re in business, but if he gets it any earlier than four I’ll eat my anchors.”

  “I’m not telling him that.” Callin’s chin set itself; he looked down at the squatting men from all the height of a single gold bar. “You know, Chief, you’re way out of line talking like that. If we got it fixed, let’s get it back together. Seems to me two and a half, three hours is plenty of time to get those deckplates back in place and—”

  “Jesus Christ,” Wronowicz muttered.

  Behind him the men stilled. “Chief, take it easy,” murmured Steurnagel. Wronowicz ignored him. He wasn’t taking this crap from Callin anymore. They had to have it out sometime, and this was as good a time as any for a showdown. If it went in his record, too fucking bad. He stood up slowly, wiping the oil from his hands with a gesture that must have looked menacing, because Callin backed away a step.

  “Ensign Callin. You have given me one ration of lip too much. Lieutenant Jay, the captain, they know they got the best chief in the fleet in their engineroom. These engines run, and when they break we fix ’em, even without a tender, without even parts. See? And they get fixed without you. I didn’t see you gettin’ your white gloves dirty down here.”

  “I had the watch,” said the ensign. His face had paled slightly but he still, Wronowicz thought, looked game. He glanced at the men, at the carefully remote faces they had instantly put on when Wronowicz stood up. “And look, Chief, in front of the division isn’t the place to—”

  “You’re criticizing me in front of them, I’m going to tell you you’re wrong in front of ’em.” Wronowicz paused; he wanted to choose these words carefully. Then his finger lanced out. “Now Jay and Foster trust me and I deliver. You trust me and I’ll deliver for you. But if you keep up this carping bullshit”—Wronowicz paused, enjoying the dramatic effect, the gaping men—“why, I’m just liable to lose heart. And then things are liable to break down. And you’re liable to have to explain to the captain why the engines ran fine till you took over. Unless you can make them run by yourself.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Chief.” Callin was angry now, he saw, no longer surprised but mad; but he didn’t back off or bluster; he stood there toe to toe. Something in Wronowicz stood apart, watching them both. Yes, he might make a good officer of this one. “You made your point. I know you did a damn good job tonight, you and the men. But—hell, if you can fix it earlier, the marines would sure appreciate it.”

  The ship slanted farther, and then, just when it seemed to hang at the farthest edge of it, thirty-five or forty degrees of roll, the men half-hanging from bulkheads and stanchions and catwalk rails, something else hit the ship. A rogue wave, Wronowicz thought, and even as he thought it he was wrapping his legs around a stanchion. This would be a bad one.

  It was. Ault seemed to lose her grip on the sea, like an old car hitting a curve with bald tires. Tools broke free and leapt toward the far bulkhead. Four big drums of lubricant freed themselves suddenly from the angle irons where they had been stowed since leaving the States and came rumbling across the engineroom. T
he ship tipped further, further, and he shot a glance at the clinometer on the bulkhead forward. Fifty degrees! His eyes met Steurnagel’s. A can rolled, sure, but there was a point where a ship did not come back. You never knew just where it was, though, until that fatal instant when she kept on going over.

  “Chief! Look out!”

  Wronowicz snapped his head to see the gear casing lunge toward him, then quiver, brought up short. With the ship almost on her side, its weight had left the chainhoist; it was hanging now only by the steadying ropes, and as he watched, the second one parted with a bang, and the whole immense weight of it lunged again toward him. The last rope on that side tautened, just for a moment, and then it, too, snapped. The ship staggered, paused, then began its roll back to port, but he saw immediately that the one remaining line would never stop that mass of steel once it started back.

  “Clear out!” he screamed at the men opposite, forgetting the argument. Callin was staring hypnotized at the gigantic pendulum. “Get away from it!”

  The last line broke and the beast was free. The men scattered as it accelerated, taking energy from the roll. Piping crumpled like foil as it drove into the turbines, slowing it not at all. A cloud of vapor burst from a shattered steam line, a hot blinding cloud through which the gear cover, like a wounded elephant, reappeared as the ship rolled again, headed back for the starboard side. At them. He grabbed the ensign’s shirt, tearing it as he jerked Callin backward, and they came up against a generator. Metal dug into his back as the gear went by, fanning them with the hot breath of its passage, and severed a condensate line; a geyser of boiling water showered the deck-plates. It hit the port side with a clang that deafened them all, denting a gouge into the thin plating that formed the shell of the ship, then reeled back to starboard as Ault careened again. A man screamed and ran from its path; to his horror Wronowicz saw thin streams of seawater burst through the bright edges of the gouged hull, joining into spurting fountains. Callin huddled against him, his eyes on the juggernaut that next destroyed a hundred-and-fifty-pound auxiliary line, triggering a deafening roar of live steam into the air. Wronowicz intuited as much as heard his shout: “Chief! It’s tearing the ship apart!”