Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  There was a wave from the departing submarine’s bridge. Richardson could not from the distance identify who this was, but it must be Keith. He waved back. Someone on the Manta’s bridge did the same. The tiny microcosm of the world which she and her crew constituted was now cut off, an entity all its own, a totally independent spaceship coursing toward the opening vastness, leaving behind the infrastructure that had created her and sent her forth. Save for the vital linkage of the radio, from this moment the Cushing and her crew were alone. The world was water, the land merely markings on a chart to be avoided as her navigators plotted the directions and distances she was to go.

  Richardson stood watching until the submarine had passed Southwest Ledge lighthouse, at the mouth of the Thames River, and was lost to view. Disquietude possessed him as he finally turned to reenter his quarters. This was certainly not the first time he had watched a departing ship until she was out of sight, nor the first time he had thought of the ridiculous old nautical adage that doing so brought bad luck. Why, then, did it rest like a weight in his mind?

  Buck Williams’ normal combination of jocular seriousness was for once totally absent. He was seated facing Richardson in the Commodore’s Office on board the Proteus, fingers holding the porcelain handle of a cup of black coffee in one hand, its saucer palmed in the other. There was a look of honest bewilderment on his features.

  “What I can’t understand,” he was saying, “is the priorities. The Manta’s a good boat. We don’t need much of a refit. I know you couldn’t give us priority until the Cushing got underway, and even though Keith never said a word I’ve got a pretty good idea of why. But that was three days ago. What’s holding things up now? We can easily finish our refit in the ten days we have left alongside. All we need from the tender is a little help with some of the bigger jobs. The Proteus can do it with her elbow.”

  “I know, Buck,” said Richardson.

  “That’s what I can’t understand. Yesterday the squadron engineer said he didn’t know when we’d have all our work done, but then he clammed up and wouldn’t talk. I was fixing to come up here anyway when you sent for me. We’ve never failed a commitment yet. We’re all keyed up to get into that North Atlantic barrier exercise we’re scheduled for. It’s the first time the Iceland-Faeroe barrier will have nukes in it, and I want to show what we can do!”

  Richardson was looking steadily at Buck, listening. Williams sensed he might be getting through to him, warmed to his topic. “We can make a whale of a difference,” he said. “Our assignment is to be the barrier backup, sort of like a safety man on football defense. The diesel boats in the barrier will be vectoring us to find the transitors. It will be easy to find the diesel transitors—they’ll have to snorkel and that’s when we’ll get them—but nailing the old Seawolf is going to be a problem, even if she is a mite noisy for these days.”

  “How do you propose to do it?” Richardson’s eyes had not wavered. There was an expression of ineffable sorrow on his face, something behind the shadow in his eyes that could not be stated. But Buck could not be sure, was in any case so wrapped up in his schemes that the question was irresistible.

  “Radio communication between barrier submarines has always been the big problem, and now that we’re in it the problem will be bigger. When you’re down listening below the thermal layer you can’t be at periscope depth transmitting information. So you have to break off listening and come up to where you can get a transmitting antenna out of water. By the time you’ve gone through all the procedural business to get a message off, half the time your contact is gone when you get back down there. It isn’t so bad with snorkelers, mainly because they have to move so slowly. But the Seawolf is as fast as we are. She’s a different story altogether. Ultimately we’re going to have to figure out a better way to make tactical contact reports. Maybe by releasing something through our signal ejector that floats up and broadcasts a taped message. Right now, though, we’ve been working on Keith’s old idea.”

  “Keith’s?”

  “Sure. Don’t you remember the communication procedure Keith and I worked out back during the war when you had to run that wolfpack for Commodore Blunt? It cut out a lot of the excess transmissions so that we could put out the important dope in a hurry. Well, before he left on this secret trip of his, Keith had some free time, and he and I dragged it out again. It’s perfect for what we need, and he helped me work up a vocabulary for the BarEx. There’s been a lot of changes in submarines and in communications too, since the war, but for fast passing of tactical dope between subs in a barrier . . .” Williams hesitated, stopped uneasily. The grave look on his superior’s face was disquieting. “What’s the matter, Rich?” he said, after a searching look.

  The two sat in silence for a moment. Richardson leaned forward with a decisive motion. “Buck, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the last few days, especially since Keith shoved off. I’m worried about him, because nobody knows what he might be getting into. If he runs into any kind of trouble up there under the ice”—Buck’s eyes flickered—“we’ve got to have a way to help.”

  “Under the ice, eh?” said Williams. “Keith never said, but I guessed that was it. Cushing will be the first missile ship up there, won’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty rugged for a shakedown cruise.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the worst time of year for ice, too. The greatest coverage. There won’t be many potential missile launch spots, if that’s what he’s supposed to look for.”

  “That’s part of it, Buck, but this is all classified stuff, so I can’t talk to you about it.”

  But Buck Williams was not to be put off. “I know he has a special bottom mapping rig attached to his fathometer, and that new bump on his forecastle has to be a closed-circuit TV. He might even have some of these new navigational beacons to drop here and there. The main thing, though, is whether he really could launch a missile on demand. He’ll have to have some way to clear the ice overhead, maybe a vertical running torpedo, or a mine that would float up and go off on hitting the ice. . . . What do the Russians think of all this? Or do they know about it?”

  Richardson’s face had, for the first time, the faintest suggestion of a smile. “Damn you, Buck, you always ask too many questions. I don’t know if the Russians know or not, and we can guess what they’ll think. But that’s not what’s worrying me. Suppose Keith breaks down up there? What can we do to help him?”

  “We’d have to send another submarine—Keith’s not in trouble up there, is he?”

  “No trouble so far as we know, Buck. But right now there’s nothing another boat could do if he did break down for some reason, except maybe surface through the ice—assuming he could, too—and pick up his people. That’s why I asked you to come on up here today, and that’s why I think we should send the Swordfish on that barrier exercise in your place.”

  Williams stared, wordless for once. “Now wait a minute,” he finally said. “Of course I want to be ready to help Keith, if he needs it. But he isn’t in trouble, and the chances are that nothing at all will happen. If something does, there’s a lot of submarines you could send. You could send planes with skis to land on the ice—that would be a lot faster than going up by water anyway. What can we do that some other nuke can’t do? Why scrub us from the BarEx just on the off-chance something might happen?”

  “We’re not scrubbing you, Buck. I was sort of hoping you’d volunteer. . . .”

  “Goddammit, Commodore—Rich, dammit—stop playing games with me. There’s something going on. What’s it got to do with us?”

  “Buck, I’m sorry. I’m asking you to take a lot on faith, and to give up something you’ve obviously put a lot of time and effort into already. It may all be for nothing, but if we’re needed, we’ll be needed badly, in a hurry. It’s true that another boat could probably do the job, but, frankly, I’d rather have you, because it’s Keith we’re talking about.”

  “Can’t you tell m
e anything at all? I’ve got so many clearances now they’d have a time squeezing another one in. . . .”

  “You’d be surprised, Buck. They can think up new classification categories anytime. Ever hear of the TPBR category?”

  Buck shook his head.

  “It means ‘Take Poison Before Reading,’ and it’s supposed to be funny. Anyway, maybe I can make you feel a little better about the rest of the mystery. How many nuclear submarines are fitted with stern torpedo tubes?”

  “Not many—now that you mention it there’re only the five in the Manta class, and the Triton. You can’t put stern tubes in a single-screw submarine. They’d have to shoot between the propeller blades, and that won’t work.”

  “That’s right. World War One airplanes had an interruptor mechanism to fire machine guns through their propellers, but a torpedo is too big. So none of the new single-screw boats have stern tubes. Have you ever towed another submarine?”

  “Once, in the old Sennet,” said Buck, “for a couple of hours. It was easy, after we got coordinated.”

  “You had to make up the tow rig to Razorback while lying to on the surface, start towing her and then dive together, right?”

  “That’s right. You read our report, then. I was exec, and that was the tricky part. We passed the ‘execute’ for diving and surfacing on the radio, and had to relay the rest of our messages on sonar through our escort, riding abeam. We couldn’t hear a thing astern on our sonar set.” Williams deliberately did not ask what his superior was leading up to. He could afford to be patient, now that Richardson was talking at last.

  “How would you take the Cushing under tow from under the ice pack?”

  This was it! This must be the problem! Buck could feel his excitement mounting, but he knew Richardson too well to let it show. At least, not just yet. “You mean without surfacing? I don’t think we could. We’d have to use divers, locking them in and out through the escape chambers, but I don’t think there’d be a Chinaman’s chance to rig the towline. It would be a bitch of a job, even in warm water, and even if everything was ready on deck before we went under the ice.”

  “Without surfacing, and without sending anyone out of the ship,” said Richardson. “I suppose we’d have to have some cold-weather divers along, just in case of absolute need, but the way to do it, if at all possible, is to make the contact submerged, hook on, and then drag her out all in one motion.”

  “Why not break through the ice and do it the regular way?”

  “Sure, if the ice is thin enough, but it’s not apt to be. Besides, that would be a mighty chilled working party. You’ve read Jim Calvert’s reports of his trips with the Skate, haven’t you? He said his crew just wasn’t acclimated to the cold. Their effectiveness was cut in half as soon as they got outside the ship, and got worse minute by minute. Your working party would be frozen solid in an hour.”

  In Williams’ eyes, Richardson seemed to have reached a decision of some kind. He rose to his feet, led Buck into his sleeping quarters in the adjoining compartment, unrolled a blueprint on the bed. “You may as well see this,” he said. “It’s designed for one of your after torpedo tubes. We’re building two of them in our machine shop right now.”

  Ever afterward, Buck Williams would remember this moment as one of the climactic ones in his relationship with Richardson at this period, rivaled by only one other, of very different character, a few weeks later. He studied the blueprint in silence, bending over the bed, aware only of Richardson’s measured breathing as he stood beside him. The open inner door of the torpedo tube was familiar enough. The side view of the tube was equally clear, but the rest was totally new to him. There was a circular steel thing labeled “Anchor Billet,” evidently sized to fit into the breech of the open torpedo tube and lock there. There were two lengths of chain, one with a heavy grapnel-like hook on one end, a tight coil of eight-inch cable, a strange football-shaped object with stubby wings labeled “Floating Paravane,” all shown separately in detail. And there was a composite sketch showing all the parts put together, the anchor billet at one end and the paravane at the other, with dotted lines around it to indicate the dimensions of the torpedo tube into which it would fit.

  Buck finished his inspection, turned to Richardson. “What is it?” he asked. “I see it fits our stern tubes—they’re shorter than our bow tubes, you know—but what does this thing have to do with Keith?”

  “It’s a contraption we hope will snag his anchor chain if he has it hanging down. You take off the inner door of one of your after torpedo tubes, slide this into it, and lock the anchor billet in place of the breech door. It’s watertight, of course, and will take full submergence pressure. When you open the outer door, the paravane streams out and upward, dragging this first chain with the hook and six hundred feet of premium nylon hawser. The other end of the cable is attached to the center of the anchor billet via the second chain. We’ve set the paravane vanes so that it will tow off to the side and a little above the submarine.”

  “Anybody ever use this before?” asked Williams.

  “Nope. We’ve only just now invented it. That’s where you and your ship come in. I’ve convinced ComSubLant that we need this capability, and we’ve been putting a lot of steam behind it these last few days. It’ll be ready for a trial in a couple of days more. We’ll do our first experiments with our own squadron rescue vessel, the Tringa. That way it will attract the least notice. She’ll lie to in deep water with her anchor hanging down twenty fathoms or so. You’ll come along underneath and off to the side just enough so that the paravane streams across her chain and snags it with this hook. This eight-inch cable hardly looks strong enough to tow a big ship like the Cushing, but the figures say it will, so long as you don’t go too fast. Probably there should be a strain gauge on the line, anyway. The main thing I’m worried about is the initial jerk.” Richardson was talking rapidly, with certitude in his voice. The speech had evidently been made several times already.

  “It’s time you were brought into this, anyway. I was about to ask permission to brief you. You’ll have to have the right amount of way on for the paravane to stream properly, and that’s a point we’ll have to check. Maybe that will be too fast, and the line won’t take the jerk when you make contact. However, picking up the catenary of the other ship’s chain will ease the shock. Nylon line is very elastic, as well as being the strongest line there is. Also, it floats and doesn’t absorb water. That will help. Since you’ll both be submerged there’ll be no wave action to worry about while you’re towing. That much we do know. But we have no experience in any of these other factors at all. This is what we have to find out.”

  Buck Williams’ puzzled look vanished as the idea sank in. “What a terrific idea!” he exclaimed. “Of course, if Manta or any older submarine were in trouble they’d have to have men topside to handle their anchor gear. . . .”

  “But all new submarines use a mushroom anchor operated from inside the hull. They can lower and raise it while submerged,” finished Richardson with a grin. “You want to give this rig a try?”

  “You could make a dozen passes and miss contact,” said Buck, “but once you do pick up the other ship’s chain you have only one shot. That’s the weak point in the scheme. There’ll be no way to rig a new line or make repairs. If you break the line, you’re dead.”

  “You won’t be able to take this anchor billet out of your torpedo tube breech if this hunk of chain is lying in the way of closing the outer door,” said Richardson. “But you’ll have another whole rig for your other stern tube. If you break that one too, it’s the other fellow who’s just found out he’s dead. It’s Keith up there, and if he gets into any trouble you’re the one who should go to help him.”

  Williams saw the smile slowly vanish from Richardson’s face, to be replaced by a look he could only describe as foreboding.

  9

  Montauk Point was well astern when Keith climbed down the ladders from Cushing’s narrow bridge, through the watert
ight hatch, and descended into the control room. “We’ll be diving in a minute,” he said to the men on watch. “What’s the sounding?”

  “Just on the fifty-fathom curve, Captain,” said one of them, his eyes close to the fathometer window through which could be seen a stylus tracing an exaggerated profile of the bottom. “Mark; fifty fathoms,” he said.

  “Control, this is bridge! Sounding!” the control room speaker blared the order from the officer of the deck above. The chief of the watch reached up to the speaker-control panel mounted above his station, pressed one of the toggle switches. “Fifty fathoms, bridge,” he called.

  “Is the diving officer ready in the control room?” said the loudspeaker.

  Lieutenant Curt Taylor leaned across the chief, pressed the toggle, spoke into the microphone. “I’m here, Howie. Ready below!” He turned to Keith. “I have the first watch, Captain. I’ll relieve Howie of the conn after we’re down.”

  Keith nodded. Jim Hanson had arranged all this several days ago. The report was unnecessary, and both of them knew it; but regular ship’s routine required the report to be made, inasmuch as the captain was in the control room. The control room watch, already on their stations, had gradually assumed an aura of expectancy. Keith could not have specified any particular attitude, but he had seen it many times. The way the men lounged at their stations told its own message: an orderly, professional readiness, apparent in the certitude with which they eyed the controls and gauges occupying every available inch of space on the compartment’s bulkheads and the curved skin of the ship as well.