Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  Perhaps he should have used the Cushing’s official voice call (Northern Lieutenant) and the Manta’s (Flat Raider). He had decided against them as unnecessary. Were there some fleet operation involved, with other ships also needing the UQC, they might have been. Without deliberate intent, he had leaned his head against the UQC speaker, mounted on the after bulkhead of the periscope station, was concentrating his attention on the answer he was willing it to give. Thus, when it came, sooner than he expected, the clipped semimechanical voice which sounded so much like Keith’s spoke loudly right into his ear.

  “Rich! Skipper! It’s so good to hear you! I read you loud and clear, how do you read me? Hello to Buck, too. Thank God you guys have showed up. We’re about to go stir crazy over here! Over.” There were worlds of relief in Keith’s voice, distorted and mechanized though it was by the less-than-optimum reproduction of the speaker. No doubt it was matched by every man aboard, as many as possible of whom had probably congregated within hearing distance of Cushing’s UQC.

  Buck’s broad grin of happiness must be mirrored by his own, Richardson felt. He could not see much of it—just the lower part—for Buck’s forehead and eyes, the entire upper portion of his face, were covered by the rubber eye guard of the periscope, as, his shoulder muscles bulging, he slowly turned it around. The rest of the control room crew, Tom Clancy, Chief McClosky, the planesmen, who had dared a quick glance over their shoulders, several others, not on watch, who had found an excuse to be present, all had glad expressions on their faces.

  Soon the work of making the submerged hookup would begin, but first it would be necessary to carry out the preliminaries so specifically ordered. “Keith, obviously you received the message from ComSubLant. Do you have the one from CNO? Do you have your message ready?” Again the sensation of his words traveling slowly through water, dissipating rapidly in the vastness of the ocean.

  “Affirmative to both, Skipper. Our message is a long one. Two hundred sixty-three groups. Can it wait till we’re out from under the ice? We’ve hardly been able to budge since the collision, and we’re pretty itchy. Over.”

  “Sorry, Keith. Orders. But if you couldn’t budge, how did you get so far from the reference position? Over.”

  “We tried some gliding and made a few miles, I guess. It’s all in the message. You’ll break it, won’t you? Over.”

  “Affirmative. We’ll relay it just as you give it to us, but in the meantime we’ll be breaking it too. Are you ready to pass it over?”

  “That’s affirmative, boss. Stand by to write.”

  “Standing by.” Richardson closed a small switch which had been taped to the side of the UQC speaker. At Jeff Norton’s suggestion, wires had been led to Manta’s radio room and a spare speaker put in parallel with the UQC. The switch merely turned on a small light near the extra speaker. The two radiomen on watch had been instructed to copy everything they heard on their speaker whenever the light was on. They had, of course, been avidly listening already.

  A new voice took over the UQC, Howie Trumbull, according to Jeff, reading in measured cadence the gibberish of the encoded message. Each letter was spoken phonetically, as were the numerals and letters of the heading. To guard against errors, Jeff Norton was then required to fetch the message from the radio room and read it back, using the same slow voice procedure. During the whole of the laborious interchange, Rich and Buck listened to it from the periscope station in the control room.

  The entire exchange took two hours to complete.

  “This is crazy,” grumbled Buck. “Here we’ve been half a day looking for a lead or polynya to break through—with shallow enough ice, that is, so it won’t be an all-fired emergency—and all we’ve seen is solid ice cover, twenty feet thick. We can go anywhere we want, in any direction, so long as we don’t try to go too far down, and not too far up. We’ve got a seven-hundred-foot layer of clear water to roam around in, and we’ve found the Cushing but we’ve not found a way to get that message relayed. Everything is go to try to snake her out of here, but we can’t because of that dumb message! There’s nothing in it that’s so damned important it couldn’t wait. We could have made the hookup and have her twenty miles away from there by now!”

  “Ours is not to reason why,” said Rich.

  “Tennyson also said someone had blundered, right?”

  “Yes, back in Balaclava or wherever it was. But they didn’t know in Washington what we know now. In fact, they don’t know yet. It’s important for them to know about that plane and the bomb, and that some kind of long-planned operation is going on up here. Also, remember how ComSubPac had all the subs report in right after the cease-fire in 1945? That was so he’d know for sure who was still okay as of then. One reason was to make any possible Japanese skulduggery a little tougher to do. So, this message tells Washington the Cushing is still alive.”

  “Okay, sure, Skipper. But all the same, I’d feel better if we were on our way with her. That Gertrude is the most easily detected sonar there is, even with the gain way down. If the Russians were smart enough to lower a good sonar set through a hole in the ice, even from pretty far away, they might have picked up something. And then when we open up on radio, if we ever get to, they’ll know for sure something’s cooking.”

  “Can’t help it, Buck. But aren’t you the one who made me a speech about the Arctic being a free ocean, so we shouldn’t worry about what anyone else thinks or wants?”

  “That was before we knew the Russians had really tried something. That bomb was not very friendly.”

  “Neither was the collision.”

  “Do you really think that was deliberate?”

  “No way of ever telling. They’ll always claim it was an accident. Keith was smart, and damned ingenious, to get as far away from the scene of the crime as he did.”

  Buck grinned a worried grimace. “Ingenious is right! Who ever thought you could glide a submarine?”

  “Well, it’s no way to move very far. Not for a submarine as big as the Cushing. But one of the little research subs was designed to travel that way. It had big planing surfaces, of course. So far as I know it’s never been built, but the theory sounded as if it might work. It’s amazing, though, how far Keith managed to move that big boat of his.”

  “Ship.”

  “Ship.”

  After spending several hours in the control room, hoping, perhaps rather naïvely, that a usable polynya would turn up quickly, Rich and Buck adjourned to Buck’s stateroom, leaving a special watch on the ice detector, with specific and careful instructions. Two changes of watch later, with the idea beginning to intrude that perhaps at least one of them ought to try to get some sleep, they felt the ship heel suddenly. Buck had already reached for the telephone handset on the bulkhead over his bunk, when the call bell rang. “Captain? This is Jerry. We’ve just passed under a possible. I’ve marked it on the DRT, and we’re turning now to go back to it.”

  “We’ll be right there.” Buck replaced the telephone as Rich got to his feet, and the two walked swiftly to the control room.

  “It’s the best one I’ve seen,” said Jerry Abbott, “but it’s not all that good. Here’s the fathometer trace.” He was holding a piece of paper just removed from the ice detector. Buck and Rich scrutinized it closely. “About six feet thick,” said Abbott. “As a guess, the thin spot was about an eighth of a mile long along our track.”

  “Yes.” Buck looked up. “We heading back for it now?”

  “Yessir. I made a Williamson turn, and we’ve slowed way down.”

  “Good,” said Buck. Turning to Richardson he asked, “What do you think, Commodore?”

  “This is the first reasonable opportunity, isn’t it? Maybe, in the next couple of days, we might find a better one, but I’m with you. I’d like to get this message off and go back to the Cushing as quick as we can. Did you tell me your sail can push up through six feet of ice?”

  “That’s what the Electric Boat Division designers say.”

 
; “The Manta’s your boat, so it’s your decision, Buck. But if you’re asking me, I say let’s give the EB designers a test of their product.”

  “Good!” said Williams. “I say the same.” Abbott had been an interested listener. “Do you have the conn, Jerry?” Buck asked.

  “Affirmative, Skipper.”

  “All right. Put us right under the polynya at all stop, dead in the water, and catch the best trim we can get. I’ll take over the conn when you’re ready, and we’ll bring her right on up.”

  “Tom asked to be called if we’re going up, sir. He wants to take over the dive.”

  “Okay. Call him. Also alert radio, and have the topside crew get ready with ice-clearing tools. Be sure they’re dressed for the cold.”

  The routine regularity of the submerged watch gave way to an orderly bustle of preparation. In a very few minutes movement stopped and quiet returned. Buck, looking through the periscope, maneuvered into the center of the thin-ice area, using Manta’s propellers sparingly and methodically, taking his time. Finally ready, he looked inquiringly at Richardson, who had stood quietly watching nearby, received his quick nod of assent, spoke to Clancy. “Tom, blow forward and after groups slowly. Bring us up flat. Remember, there’s probably a layer of fresh water under the ice, so we’ll be losing buoyancy as we get closer to it. Try to keep us moving upward at the same rate.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Clancy, who had already been thoroughly briefed on the vagaries of specific gravity of seawater under the polar ice cap. He turned to Chief McClosky, who also had come on watch for the occasion, said, “We want to keep the bubble on zero as we come up, Mac. Blow forward group. Blow after group.” The chief flipped the two toggles, kept his hands on them. There was the sound of air blowing into tanks. Clancy and he huddled together watching the gauges. “Secure after group!” said Clancy. McClosky, anticipating the order, instantly moved the left toggle to the shut position. Another second, two seconds. “Secure the air!” McClosky snapped shut the other toggle. The submarine had assumed half a degree down angle, but the bow now was rising faster and she was on an even keel again. “Ninety feet,” called out Clancy, vectoring his voice in Buck’s direction. “Zero bubble.”

  Buck was still watching through the periscope. “Looks good, Commodore,” he said. “I’ll drop the ’scope at eighty feet.”

  “Eighty-five feet,” said Clancy. “Rising steady. Zero bubble. Eighty-two feet. Eighty-one. Eighty feet.”

  “Down ’scope,” said Buck, folding up the handles. The quartermaster on watch hit the periscope hoist control lever, and the precious instrument dropped into its well. “It looked about ready to hit the ice,” said Buck with a grin, “but I knew we had at least ten feet of gravy. It was kind of scary, though. Busting the ’scope against the bottom side of the ice would be a little hard to explain back in New London.”

  Rich’s answering smile was testimony to his full appreciation of the situation, as well as his confidence in Buck.

  “Seventy-five feet,” said Clancy. “She’s going up a little faster, now.” Perhaps a little more air had been used than absolutely necessary. The air bubbles in Manta’s ballast tanks would expand with the reduced pressure due to decreasing depth, and their resulting buoyant volume would increase. Simultaneously, the reduced salinity would have a contrary effect. Balancing the two opposing factors was a nice exercise in judgment.

  “We’ll hit the ice at around fifty feet,” said Buck. “With six feet, maybe more, to break through, we’ll feel it. It’ll be a pretty solid jolt.”

  Tom Clancy was calling out the depths. “Sixty-five feet,” he said. “Sixty feet.”

  “Rig in bow planes,” ordered Buck. Unlike the Cushing, whose sailplanes could not be rigged in and consequently had been designed to elevate to ninety degrees and slice through the ice as the ship came up, Manta had the older design of bow planes in the forward superstructure which were always housed when the ship was on the surface. Were the entire superstructure of the submarine to break through the ice, a distinct possibility if its resistance proved to be less than expected, the planes would almost surely be damaged if they were rigged out and struck the underside of the ice flat.

  “Bow planes rigged in,” reported McClosky.

  “Fifty-five feet,” said Tom Clancy. “Fifty-four. Fifty-three. Fifty-two. Fifty-one. Fifty feet!”

  Crunch! A tremendous washboiler sound of suddenly stressed metal. Manta’s deck seemed to drop away from them, her sturdy hull twanging, the myriad gauge dials in the control room vibrating in jangled disharmony. There was squeaking and moaning of steel girders, a heavy scraping noise, the sound of huge fingernails scraping a rough surface.

  “Fifty feet,” said Clancy, reading from the large-scale depth indicator on the diving stand. “Fifty feet . . . just under fifty now . . . she’s going on up now . . . forty-nine and three-quarters . . . forty-nine, forty-eight . . . she’s moving right on up now, Captain. Forty-seven, forty-six, forty-five. Top of the sail is through, sir. Permission to blow all ballast?”

  Buck, who with Rich had been following Clancy’s depth reports on the small-scale depth gauge in the periscope station, was hastily putting on cold-weather gear. “Blow all ballast!” he ordered, echoing Clancy’s request. “Let me know when the upper hatch is clear.”

  “No way I can tell you that for sure, Skipper,” said Clancy with a grin of satisfaction. “We could have scooped up a tubful of ice on the bridge. It could be packed tight. I’ll tell you when it’s out of water, though.”

  “Are all diving officers as persnickety on details as mine?” Buck asked Rich with a relieved grin of his own. Successful passage of Manta’s first test in the Arctic ice had infected him too.

  “I sure don’t know as to that,” answered Richardson with mock gravity, “but I can remember a certain torpedo officer who was every bit as persnickety. How he ever got to be skipper of a nuclear boat I’ll never figure out!”

  “Now, Commodore, you please be quiet about that pore ole nuke skipper, you hear? Can’t have my boys getting the wrong idea, you know!” The success of the moment was to be savored, even though fleetingly. Buck adjusted his face mask, spoke hurriedly to Jerry Abbott, stepped to the ladder leading into the hatch trunk, squeezed his bulky garments through the opening, began to climb through the lower hatch.

  “Skipper,” said Buck savagely, “do you know how much good useful time we’ve wasted getting that damn message off?”

  “I know.”

  “Just about a full day. More than twenty hours! First we couldn’t find a thin place to break through. Then when we finally got up, there was so much ice driven down into the openings on the top of the sail that the antenna couldn’t be raised. But before we could get someone out there to work on it, we had about an hour’s chopping of ice on the bridge to clear away that huge chunk of ice on top of the sail so that a man could even reach the place. Then, when finally we got the antenna up, we couldn’t get anyone to answer our call-up. I got so cold waiting up there I couldn’t take it anymore and had to send for Jerry to take over. You’d have thought ComSubLant or somebody would have had every shore station in our whole system alerted!”

  “It probably wasn’t ComSubLant’s fault, Buck. Radio conditions were bad, that’s all. Probably because the sun’s above the horizon now.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t his fault. But then when we finally got Radio Guam to answer—think about that one, Guam!—they said we’d have to wait with our message because it didn’t have enough priority!”

  “That was our own fault. We should have raised Keith’s priority. We did, after we got the word.”

  “Well, okay. But we shouldn’t have had to do it. If Keith’s message was so important, better arrangements should have been made to get it by those who wanted it. Anyway, after three more hours fiddling around poking up through the ice like a damn black lighthouse, beating our brains out on the radio, sending repeats over and over again, finally we get the receipt and can go back do
wn and begin what we came up here for.”

  “I don’t blame you for feeling frustrated, Buck,” said Rich. “I feel the same way. I tried to argue Admiral Donaldson out of making us do this, but I couldn’t. It was a JCS order. Anyway, now it’s done. They’ve got their message, and we’re free to do our stuff.”

  “I suppose I should look at it that way too,” said Buck morosely, “but I’ll sure feel better after we’ve got the Cushing out of this place. Whatever goes wrong I’ll blame on this delay, I know that.”

  15

  “Keith,” said Richardson over the UQC, speaking softly with the transmitter set at minimum gain, “do you have our dispatch about towing procedure? Any questions? Before trying the hookup we want to look you over through the periscope. What is your heading and exact depth, and where’s your anchor?” The words reverberated out along the carrier wave, could be heard dying in the distance.

  “Affirmative on the dispatch, and three cheers, no questions. We’re against the ice. Depth seven-three feet. Anchor’s housed. Ship’s head one-two-eight,” responded Keith Leone’s voice seconds later.

  “Okay, old man. Just keep a zero bubble. We’ll pass under you with the ’scope up and take a good look. There’s enough light coming through the ice.”

  “Roger. We’ll keep our anchor housed until you give us the word to lower away.”