To avoid the wolfpack area the convoy route saw it steering northeast to a point just off Cape Farewell, Greenland and then turning gradually east to pass beneath Iceland to eventually sail north of Ireland, taking the narrow strait to pass the Clyde. At this point the convoy would disperse, with ships heading to any number of destination ports in the UK.
Two small destroyers from the British-Canadian Halifax Escort Force, Assiniboine and Saguenay, led the convoy out, then returned to Halifax a day later when the sole trans-Atlantic escort HMS Ausonia arrived to take up the duty on June 10. Oddly, Ausonia was not a warship by trade, but a large 14,000 ton ocean escort liner originally built by the Cunard line in 1921 and requisitioned and fitted out as an armed merchant cruiser when the war broke out.
She was given eight 152mm guns, four on each side, and a pair of 76mm guns with one fore and aft. A slow ship at just 15 knots, Ausonia could waddle along with the large pack of merchantmen, but looking after 50 ships was a tall order for her Captain, Horace Norman of the Royal Navy. There wasn’t anything he could do if they did encounter a submerged U-boat, and if a German raider were to come upon the convoy, the ship might try to look imposing with her size and give the impression that there was, indeed, a large British heavy cruiser present in escort.
This was just the dilemma Captain Norman found himself in on June 12th as he steamed in the van of the large 50 ship formation arrayed behind him in six wide rows of six to nine ships each. The sea was calm that day, the slate grey sky low, shrouding the horizon with clouds that made sighting potential threats a chancy affair. No one from the watch called the sighting, but the Captain had been watching the sea off his port bow when he saw what appeared to be a ripple of green lightning and a strange phosphorescent glow. Thinking he was seeing the onset of a sudden squall, his eye strayed to the nearby barometer, which raised an eyebrow. It read an even 30 millibars of pressure, approaching fair weather conditions, so he instinctively reached out and gave it a tap to see if the needle might be stuck, yet it remained unmoved.
“Have a look there, Mister Bates,” he said quietly to his Executive Officer. “I thought we were to have even seas and quiet skies for another 48 hours.”
Bates noted the odd light on the horizon. “Squall brewing up?” He raised his field glasses, taking a closer look without much concern. “It’s very odd, sir. St. Elmo’s fire?”
“More like ball or sheet lightning, yet no sound of any thunder, and the color is very strange.”
“It is, sir. Should we signal LDI and MAC that there may be rough weather ahead?” He was referring to the two call signs for the convoy Commodore and Vice Commodore steaming in the first line behind them.
“They undoubtedly can see what’s going on, but do note it for the log: 21:30 hours, sighted squall line on port horizon.” He looked about as if to survey the conditions behind him, seeing the convoy steaming sedately in those long slow lines. In this northern latitude the sun would not set for another two hours and a half moon was already up, but glowing through the clouds on another heading. So that peculiar lighting wasn’t a moonrise, he thought, and the sun was low to the west, and certainly not off our bow.
“Might it be an aurora, sir?” Bates was still watching through his field glasses.
“Never saw one so low on the horizon like that,” said Norman.
“Well, sir. It doesn’t look like anything to be concerned about.” But the longer he watched the more that trouble on the horizon loomed as a possible threat in his mind, and he soon saw something there that finally alarmed him, an odd angular shadow in the light.
“Perhaps we should send up to the mainmast to see if the watch has anything, sir.”
“Go ahead and call up, but we can see it as plain as day from here.”
Bates indulged himself, walking to the voice pipe up and asking about the contact. A minute passed before he heard a voice calling back, and now he was concerned.
“Ship sighted, Captain! Right at the edge of that squall.”
Now it was Captain Norman reaching for his field glasses, his eyes lost in the rubber cups as he squinted and adjusted the focus. Damn if it wasn’t true, he thought. Damn my eyes, there’s something there, a shadow crowned with lightning, and it looks big. He knew in his bones this was a warship.
“Mister Bates,” he said quickly, “pipe the W/T and report ship sighted, a warship, identity unknown. Give our position and ask if we’re getting a new escort. Otherwise I’m afraid we’ve an uninvited guest this evening. The ship will come to battle stations.”
“Aye sir. Battle Stations, and piping to W/T now.”
“Notify LDI and MAC and tell them we’re investigating. The convoy may have to come twenty points to starboard. Helm, port ten and ahead full.”
“Port ten, aye sir, and full on.”
The ship’s alarm was sounding and they could hear the scramble of heavy boots on the decks below. Men were already rushing to man the 76mm bow gun and he knew the same was happening on the larger 5.7 inch guns to port and starboard. Well, he thought, I hope to god you are not what you appear to be. They had heard nothing about any imminent threat from a German surface raider when they left port three days ago to link up with the convoy. The last information he had was that the British were busy with the final evacuation of Norway, and in fact, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were reported off the Norwegian coast on the 9th of June, but there was no way those ships could be here today.
“Mister Bates, signal that ship by light and wireless. Request identification.” The Captain knew that if this were a German raider he would likely get his answer with a salvo of 11-inch shells. In that event he had few options here. He would come about and present his broadside to the enemy, firing with four 152mm guns in the hope he might run the enemy off, but he did not think they would run, not when they did have better guns and a nice fat big target like Ausonia. Behind him the convoy would have to scatter, and he knew that even now the Commodore was tensely watching the situation, ready to give that order at the instant hostilities opened. Then it would be every man and ship on its own, like sheep scattering to flee from a prowling wolf.
That’s what the shadow looked like now, large, dark and threatening as Ausonia came around to have a good look at the contact, her nose pointed at the threat and search lights flashing, lamps fluttering, the fingers on the wireless keys tapping out their fitful messages.
Bad weather was now the least of Captain Norman’s worries.
Chapter 5
Fedorov stared at his data, clearly perplexed. They were not where they had hoped to be, in 2021. Chief Dobrynin had called up to the bridge, but in the business of all that was then underway, a Mishman was holding the line.
“Look there, Fedorov, what do you make of that?” The Admiral was pointing to the Tin Man Display, and when Fedorov looked up for the first time his eyes widened with surprise.
“My god, sir. Look! That ship is flying British colors!”
“That did not escape my notice,” said Volsky.
“And it’s a White Ensign, sir, which was used exclusively by the Royal Navy.”
“So the next question is obvious. What is a Royal Navy ship doing here in the Sea of Okhotsk? And that certainly does not look like a modern warship. Could it be that our shift failed and we remain in the 1940s?”
Now Rodenko spoke to say the Fregat radar was recovering rapidly. “We have radar out to near maximum range sir. A very rapid recovery this time. The odd thing is that we should be getting landform returns from Kamchatka to the east, we were only about a hundred kilometers west of the peninsula when we initiated the shift. There are elevations there as high as 1900 meters and we should be seeing them clearly at this range. What we do have is landforms to our north, and I’m sending the data to navigation for a digital map match.”
The Admiral immediately looked for Fedorov, who was already working on plotting their position in time. Now he called up the data Rodenko had sent him and the computer’s response immed
iately gave him a sense of foreboding.
“This is impossible,” he said aloud, “impossible!”
Hearing that, the Admiral knew enough to put caution at the forefront of his thinking. Yet he retained his composure, looking to the Helmsman and issuing a quiet order. “The ship will come full about and ahead two thirds.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Mister Nikolin, signal that ship in the same Morse code standard you received. Simply bid them farewell, please.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Now if you would be so kind, Mister Fedorov.” Volsky swiveled his chair and looked to the navigation station, seeing Fedorov still looking at the screen map with a shocked expression.
“Sir,” he said haltingly. The Admiral’s last order to Nikolin rattled in his mind in an odd moment of serendipity just as he realized what he was looking at. “That is Cape Farewell! We’re sitting about 220 kilometers south of Greenland! According to that radar plot our position is 57.51 by -45.24. Our longitude is identical to what it was at the time of our shift, but our latitude…Why we’ve move half way around the earth, a full 200 degrees to the west! We’ve moved in space!”
“Calm yourself, Mister Fedorov. I need you to think. How could this have occurred?”
Fedorov thought for a moment, his eyes still scanning the data he had been keying on sun and moon data. Now an idea occurred to him and he put his estimated sun and moon positions into the computer again for this new position in space and asked it to display all dates where those two bodies would be in this position. He soon saw what he feared.
“Admiral, the sun-moon configuration at this location would be valid for 1940-June 12 to be exact. We’ve shifted alright, but in space this time. It’s as if the procedure simply picked us up on the 11th in the Pacific and then dropped us here a day later…Yes…” The light of a sudden discovery flashed in his eyes. “That it! The only thing that makes any sense here is the earth’s rotation. It’s as if we moved into some null zone in time, but only for a brief moment. In that interval the earth rotated and then we manifested again, on the exact same longitude but half way around the earth!”
“Good lord,” said Volsky. “You mean to say we disappeared, but did not move in time?”
“No sir, it was as if we were simply suspended in time, then dropped into this present again when we just manifested. It’s a wonder we made a safe landing here. Another few degrees to the west and we would be sitting in Canada on dry land!”
“Thankfully the surface of the earth is mostly water,” said Volsky, but now we are in the pot again, and from the looks of this radar contact and that ship out there it is starting to heat up. Any further trouble, Mister Nikolin?”
“No sir. They just signaled farewell back.”
“Mister Fedorov…Please open your history books and kindly find out what is going on here.”
“Fifty ships in the Sea of Okhotsk did not make any sense in the world, sir, particularly with one of them flying a Royal Navy Ensign. But here they make perfect sense, on this day and in this year, if my calculations are accurate.”
“Then what have we just encountered here?”
Fedorov smiled. “I’ll have your answer in just one moment, sir.” He pulled out a pad device and opened an application, poking at the screen briefly as he set up a search. Then he spoke into the pad’s microphone. “Display convoy data for June of 1940.” He waited, his eyes afire as he scanned the screen. “Let’s see what we have… HG-33, Gibraltar to Liverpool…There! It has to be this one, HX-49 out of Halifax. I can even get the convoy route data from U-boat dot net. I’ve got their entire database here.” He had that information soon after and smiled, looking at the Admiral with satisfaction.
“The route crosses our present position, sir. We’ve just shifted half way around the world and almost landed right in the middle of HX-49, Halifax to Liverpool. And that-” he pointed at the Tin Man where it was still tracking the ship that had been signaling them. “That is the auxiliary cruiser Ausonia. It was the only escort assigned to the convoy on this day according to my data.” He put the pad down, folding his arms with a smile.
“Well our resident historian does not fail us,” said Admiral Volsky, amazed at how Fedorov had quickly ascertained their position in time. “And it appears that your history has not failed to skip a beat either, at least not this segment. But apparently our new control rod needs a little remedial work. Did we hear from Dobrynin yet?”
“Sir,” offered the Mishman, “I have him standing by.”
“Put it on the overhead speaker please.”
“Admiral?”
“Go ahead Chief.”
“We have a bit of a problem, sir…”
* * *
“They’re turning away, Captain,” said Bates as he watched the distant contact through his field glasses. The odd lights at the edge of the sea had glimmered for a time, then faded away. Now the day looked much as it did before, with no sign of threatening weather and relatively calm seas. The only danger on their horizon was the shadow of that distant ship, which Captain Norman was fully prepared to challenge by putting Ausonia in harm’s way. That was why he was there, the sole sheep dog guarding the flock should the wolves appear-and this one looked dangerous.
So it was with some relief that the W/T room sent up a message that the ship had sent them a single word: Farewell, as it turned away. He could have pressed the matter or even fired a warning shot to insist on a proper identification, but why tempt the devil, he thought? The ship obviously had a very good look at us, and I don’t think they were at all fooled by our mass or intimidated by our challenge. Ausonia has but one single stack aft, and she doesn’t present a silhouette anything like that of a real heavy cruiser. They will soon realize we are a sheep in wolves clothing, to switch things around. But why would they break off if this was an enemy ship? Could they be simply opening the range before engaging us?
Might they be biding their time to vector in a nearby wolfpack? It seemed unlikely that any German subs would be this far out, but it was not impossible. What was really going on here? Why didn’t they send their call sign and ship ID if they were friendly? Could it be a Royal Navy ship on a special mission? If so they might not want their position or identity known. Farewell… Well here we are just south of that cape and ready to make our turn east. He looked at his Executive Officer.
“They appear to be moving off.”
“Yes, sir, that they are. Shall we pursue?”
“What, at fifteen knots? No, mister Bates, I think we’ll leave well enough alone for the moment. We’ve sent our sighting report, now I think it best if we make our turn east. If that is a German ship it may be passing the convoy heading and speed along as well. Signal the Commodore-twenty points to starboard and we’ll come round to zero-six-zero. And tell them to be especially vigilant for the next several hours in case we get more unexpected visitors.”
“Very good, sir. Right away.”
If anything happens, thought Captain Norman, it will happen after sunset in the dark. That’s when we’ll have to keep a sharp eye. It’s going to be a long and sleepless night.
* * *
Either there was nothing left of that world they were trying to reach in their own time, or else time had sullenly refused to let them leave without seeing the consequences of their misdeeds, but the ship had not moved but a few minutes in time. They were still marooned in the past, trapped in the web of the war where they had sailed and fought so many times. Yet the odd thing in Fedorov’s mind was the ominous fact that they had come here at a time before that of their first arrival in the Norwegian sea so long ago. Then it had been late July of 1941, and now they were here a full year earlier in mid June of 1940. The realization that they had also obviously moved in space was most unsettling. In a meeting of the senior officers with Dobrynin they discussed the situation to determine what they might do.
“I do not know what happened, Admiral,” said the Chief, “but this shift sounde
d nothing like any of the others. Clearly the rod does something, but the sound was all wrong. No matter what I did to try and control the shift, it held steady.”
“It did move us in time,” said Fedorov, “yet only for a brief moment. Then it returned us, and in that moment the earth had rotated 200 degrees. So it is that we find ourselves in the Atlantic, still a year before the time when we first moved here.”
“Very odd,” said Kamenski. “These control rods were even more enriched with the substances that we suspect as being responsible for these time displacements, yet the result is obviously quite different.”
“And quite dangerous,” said Volsky. “Fedorov says we might have landed on dry land! It appears only by chance that we were dropped into the sea again. What about Kazan?” They had been so busy with that initial contact that they completely forgot about the submarine.
“Our automated signal activated as planned, Admiral,” said Nikolin. “We have not yet received a response.”
“Kazan was using Rod-25,” said Fedorov. “Old faithful.”
“So where might it be? Could Tasarov hear them if they were close by?”
“Possibly, sir, but they would certainly hear us…Unless they are in the Sea of Okhotsk, which is where I fear they remain now. Rod-25 has never exhibited this behavior. It always shifted in time, but there was never a spatial variance.”
“So I do not think we can expect to see Gromyko and Kazan any time soon,” Volsky shrugged.
“No sir,” Fedorov put it bluntly. “They could be half a world and decades away by now. Only a long range short wave transmission could possibly reach them now, just as we called the ship all the way from the Caspian before.”
“I could try this, Admiral,” Nikolin volunteered.
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