Up Periscope

by Robb White

  The depth gauge hand kept moving down.

  Ken had heard the Shark crying during the depth charging. Her voice was almost human in its agony.

  But now she cried in greater pain. As though the bones of her skeleton were being broken, she made sudden and awful cracking sounds; she groaned and sobbed as the pressure of the dark sea grew greater by millions and millions of pounds.

  Pat, lying on the deck beside Ken, crossed himself slowly as the needle of the depth gauge reached the limit of its travel.

  The Shark went down and down and down. Suddenly Ken saw a thing that fascinated him. Somehow, in the center of the room, the deck was rising up above the level of the slime. Watching it, he couldn’t understand it. But there it was, a hump of the deck above the gunk.

  Then he did understand it. The pressure on the hull was now so great that it was buckling the deck in the center.

  And down.

  Carney’s voice sounded far away as he whispered, “Listen.”

  The peeping of the enemy sonar had changed in tone and in loudness. Now it was a dim, faint, plaintive pip pip pip.

  And, as they went on down, the peeping grew dim, diffuse, irregular.

  Then it stopped.

  “This is a good boat,” Carney said, as though to himself.

  The temperature was now a fantastic one hundred and forty degrees. The bulkheads were literally running with water. Ken’s vision was so blurred that when he heard Carney’s voice and tried to look at him Carney’s figure seemed gigantic —it seemed to fill the whole conning tower—a huge, dim, soaking—majestic—figure.

  “Level off, Si. All ahead a half.”

  “Atmosphere tests three per cent, Captain,” the talker said. “Sixteen men are out cold.”

  Carney only nodded.

  The boat crept on, slow against the enormous pressure.

  “Forward torpedo room reports only one man on his feet, Captain.”

  Carney nodded again.

  The talker said, “The Chief of the Boat is—” Then he slumped over.

  Carney pulled his head up out of the slime and took the phones off, putting them on himself.

  As though in a dream, Ken heard Carney say, “Stand by to surface.”

  The deck tilted upward, sending a wave of the terrible ooze flowing down on him. He pulled his head up above it and then pulled Pat’s up too.

  Soon, through the sound loud-speaker, they could hear a faint, steady roar. For a long time Carney stood listening to it and turning the dial of the sonar.

  At last, in a whisper, he said, “Thank God. Rain.”

  The roar of the rain grew louder and louder as the boat crawled up from the depths.

  Carney stopped it at sixty feet and raised the periscope. After walking it all the way around, he said, “Cant see a thing. Raining hard. Down periscope. Bring her up until just the bridge hatch is clear so we can get some air.”

  Ken heard the water sluicing off the bridge and then the hard, almost metallic pounding of the rain.

  “Open the hatch.”

  Air—cold, wet, sweet air—poured down. Rain—to them like a shower of jewels, like life itself—fell on them through the open hatch.

  The radarman said, “Bogey, Captain. Distance ten thousand, bearing one eight two.”

  Carney, the blue draining from his face, turned to Doherty. His eyes were, for the first time, hard and cold. “Bring her up. Open main induction. All ahead flank.”

  “What are you going to do, Skipper?” Doherty asked.

  “First,” Carney said, “let’s get some more water between us and those cans. Then we’ll recharge batteries for the rest of the night with all engines. Then we’ll go back and knock off that cruiser we missed.”

  Ken heard the main induction slam open and then the pulse and roar of the diesels starting.

  The talker, his face still faintly blue, said, “Radio reports a dispatch, Captain. We’re action, urgent.”

  Carney turned to Ken. “Can you break it, Ken?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  In the radio shack Ken worked the coding board. The urgent dispatch read:

  SHARK PROCEED TO PEARL STOP TRIGGER AND SEA WOLF NOW ATTACKING CRUISER YOU LEFT STOP NICE SHOOTING CONGRATULATIONS STOP.

  Ken phoned that one up to the bridge.

  He was suddenly so tired that he could barely keep his eyes open. Thinking hazily back, he realized that for more than seventy hours he had had no sleep at all.

  As he started to get up, Shelton pushed another message toward him.

  He had completely forgotten that one. Slumping down again on the wastebasket, he went to work, the slides on the board hard to move with his listless, clumsy fingers.

  Slowly the message emerged from the meaningless code groups:

  COMSUBPAC SENDS TO LIEUTENANT (J.G.) BRADEN STOP MISSION ACCOMPLISHED STOP WELL DONE STOP.

  The words meant nothing to him at all. His mind, so dulled by exhaustion, could only grasp that the message required no decision by Carney, no action on the part of the Shark.

  Lurching to his feet, he didn’t even see the message fall and sink into the slime as he staggered on to his cabin. With his last measure of strength he climbed up to his high bed and fell into it.

  After a while Willy, a trayful of sandwiches in his hands, looked into the cabin. He was about to wake Ken up when Carney came by. “Ssssh,” Carney said, “let him sleep.”

  Willy let the curtain drop back into place. “I hear were going back to Pearl, Skipper. We through?”

  Carney nodded. “Yeah, Willy, Pearl. He did his job.”

  “I’ve been wondering,” Willy said. “What job did he do, Captain?”

  Carney looked at him. “A whale of a job, Willy.”