Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  Keith’s voice was changed with the distance and with his attempt to shout from a position closer to the sea pressure gauge. But it was still intelligible, still Keith. Rich felt Buck’s arm around his shoulders, put his own arm around Buck’s neck. Subconsciously, both of them felt the presence of other men, other members of Manta’s crew, many members of the Cushing’s crew. Rich felt Buck’s quiet, shaking grief, knew his own was communicating itself to Buck. There were soft noises of anguish from others in the control room, but otherwise silence, except for many men, breathing as quietly as they could. Never had the silence been so absolute. Never had a packed control room, packed with the crews of two submarines, been so still. Even the breathing was stifled, muted, kept shallow so as not to bother anyone. In the distance, a far corner, someone let out a tiny wail, “Oh, God—!” It might have been a prayer. It was savagely shut off. A vicious elbow in the ribs, or a firm hand over the mouth.

  Keith had said not to answer, but Rich had to say something in the momentary silence of the UQC. He cleared his throat, swallowing the lump that was in it. “Keith,” he said. He had to force his voice to work. By sheer will he overrode the clutch in it. “Most of your crew is here with me. They’re all blessing the best submarine skipper they ever had, and the best friend they ever had. Their hearts and minds are with you at this time. Those who traveled in deep waters with you are with you still.” He released the button, heard the strange traveling sound of the carrier beam as the message went out, attenuating, in all directions. But also down.

  “. . . hundred pounds. That’s amazing, Rich! Eleven hundred! Who could have thought—twelve hundred! Tell Peggy I love her! Tell Ruthie the last thing her dad did was to think of her. Thirteen hundred! Something’s given way down aft! I think she’s going! Good-bye! Thanks for all! Fourteen . . .”

  A smashing roar came over the UQC speaker—Keith had been holding the button down—and then it was silent. But everyone in the Manta heard the awful, shattering, crushing implosion when the fantastic sea pressure, at whatever depth Cushing had reached, burst the stout, unyielding, high-tensile steel into smithereens. Embrittled under pressure, yet standing rigid, firm against millions of tons of overpressure, when finally it gave way the thick, armor-quality steel split into thousands of pieces, ranging in size from tiny fragments to tremendous solid plates weighing tons, all of them driven inward with velocity beyond comprehension. And the sea followed instantly, with a voice like thunder, compressing the air to one one-hundredth of its previous volume and raising its temperature high into incandescence.

  Keith, Jim, Curt, Larry and Stewart did not suffer, nor did they even feel pain. Awareness ceased instantaneously, when their bodies ceased to exist.

  Great sections of steel curved in various shapes to fit the exigencies of Cushing’s designers, now broken in every conceivable way but still curved, fluttered down through the black water like leaves falling from a tree in autumn. When they came to rest they covered a wide expanse on the bottom of the Fletcher Abyssal Plain. Under them, deeply buried in the ancient ooze of the bottom, were the resting places, for all time, of the two halves of the Soviet nuclear submarine Novosibirsky Komsomol, and the Cushing’s reactor, which sank swiftly in one piece because of the immense pressure it had been built to contain.

  18

  There was a new compulsion in the Manta as she raced for the edge of the ice pack, where the ice would be thinner, the probability greater of being able to break through to send a message. For the better part of a day, Rich and Buck labored over its wording. They must report the loss of the Cushing, give the names of the men lost with her, tell of the battle with the intruding submarine, and describe their suspicions that there was some sort of a Soviet base, not far away, near enough for the submarine they had sunk to have gone there for instructions. The Cushing might well have been originally very near it, since Keith had reported seeing aircraft apparently orbiting just over the horizon, and landing and taking off.

  The message, encrypted in the highest classification code available on board, ended with terse naval jargon, UNODIR PROCEEDING RECON GUARDING VLF ONE HOUR NOON GREENWICH: Unless otherwise directed, Manta would try to locate the base and discover its nature and purpose. Once a day, at noon Greenwich Mean Time, she would come to as shallow a depth as possible, at minimum speed, to listen to the very-low-frequency radio circuit for any instructions. Otherwise, the Manta would most likely be at deep submergence and unreachable by any means of communication.

  Thirty hours were required to find an area where the ice cover was thin enough to break through. Buck directed his course to pass as nearly as possible through the same spot where the relayed message from the Cushing had been sent, but it was not found. Doubtless they passed within a short distance of it, but there was no indication of any thinning of the ice pack on the upward-beamed fathometer, nor any sign of discontinuity of the ice pack as the Manta cautiously circled the area with her periscopes up. Finally, it had been necessary to punch through ten feet of cover with the submarine’s bow, elevated at a steep angle so as to take the shock of the contact with her strongest ice-breaking capability. Then Manta came back around and, more gently this time, shouldered her way through the shattered slot in the ice with her sail. When the message was at last cleared—it had carried the highest possible priority prefix—she went deep and headed toward the place indicated on Jerry Abbott’s plot.

  Buck Williams, sitting at the head of the wardroom table, was wagging his head. He and Richardson had adjourned there to study Jerry’s work, leaving the exec free to continue the incredibly complicated task of organizing living, sleeping and messing arrangements for an influx of nearly double the crew of the Manta.

  Jerry had plotted backward every known movement of the enemy submarine, as Buck had instructed, but he had had to make a number of assumptions, some questionable at best. And there had been no opportunity to get anything from Keith. Fortunately, Keith had given an estimated position of the aircraft he had seen in his last message, the one transmitted via the Manta. How long ago had that been? Less than two days. A decoded copy lay on the table.

  “I hate even to look at this,” growled Buck, clutching one hand into a fist while he tapped the paper with the other. “This little piece of paper cost Keith his life! I hope they choke on it down in Washington! Do you really think Admiral Donaldson will get it across how much this has cost? Will he ram it into the people responsible?”

  “If I know him, he certainly will. The lives of eleven damn good men, not to mention a brand-new submarine, is a stiff price tag. He won’t let that pass easily. But, of course, all they can do is be sorry.”

  “The very least they could do is send the people who insisted on this message up to New London when we hold the memorial service! They ought to be made to sit in the front row!”

  “They’d better be incognito and sit in the back, as far as I’m concerned.” Rich paused. “But right now we’ve got to figure out what’s going on up here. Those guys are no little exploration party on the ice! There’s a lot more than that going on!”

  After several hours of study, frequent interrogations of Jerry Abbott and many cups of coffee, an “indicated circle of probability” was decided on. It was twenty-five miles in diameter, circular since it was only the locus of centers of possibilities. As soon as it was reached, a slow, methodical, crisscross search of the circle would be begun, with both periscopes up looking for anything unusual. The area of practicable view was so tiny that Rich and Buck quickly realized they could pass nearly directly under the spot they were seeking without seeing it. Active sonar, which might increase the size of the area being searched at any moment, was ruled out.

  “I don’t think we should echo-range,” Rich told Buck. “They could be listening. There could be another sub around. Anything.”

  “We really don’t have any idea of what we’re looking for,” grumbled Buck, as the second day of fruitless search drew toward its end. By agreement, he and Rich were
alternating periods of wakefulness, except that both found themselves haunting the radio room during the daily VLF listening stint, and both enjoyed the afterdinner coffee hour, now reconvened in Buck’s cabin.

  “The main thing that worries me, Buck, is that for some reason we’ll be ordered out of the Arctic, or run out of oxygen or CO2 absorbent. With all the Cushing people aboard, that’s going to be a problem very soon. We’ll find out what’s going on if we’re able to look for a while. We just have to have enough time.”

  “Do you think Washington knows what we’re doing, Skipper?”

  “They’re just as curious as we are. If they call us off, it will be because they have to. That’s what I’m worried about.”

  But no orders arrived. Cutler, which could be heard clearly, carried only a single message for them. Prosaically addressed to COMTASKGRU 83.1, it merely acknowledged receipt of Rich’s previous message and added the perfunctory, “Submit written report upon arrival Conus.”

  The place was found by an unexpected means, by the sonarman on watch, midway of the third day. “I think I’m hearing a beacon,” he reported.

  Schultz, instantly on the scene, confirmed it. “It’s very distant. It sounds like one of those homing beacons divers use. It’s a standard intermittent buzz. You can only hear them a mile or so!”

  “It’s for that sub to home in on!” said Buck. “He navigates to a mile or so of this place, picks up this little thing, and homes in on it!”

  “So will we, after we’ve made a couple of complete circles around it. After that, I want to pass under with the periscopes up, starting as deep as we can use them. Now that we’ve found their base of operations, whatever it is, it’s up to us to find out everything we can about it!” Rich’s logic was unassailable, and Buck found himself apologizing for hinting at a shortcut.

  Moving slowly and deliberately in the dead-silent condition, Manta made not two but three complete circuits around the sound source, at different depths, plotting and recording every scrap of information that could be obtained. Finally, with Rich’s approval, Buck ordered her two periscopes raised and told Tom Clancy to gradually increase depth to 185 feet. “Any deeper, and the hoists won’t hold them up, boss,” he said. “They’ll still be hard to turn when we get down there, but at least we’ll not have to wait while they creep out of the wells.”

  Rich smiled morosely as he received the report. Neither he nor Buck was far from the memory of Keith’s last moments, which hung, cloudlike, over everything.

  Nor, for that matter, was anyone else aboard. Merely the fact of the Manta’s extraordinarily crowded condition was a constant reminder. Jerry Abbott had made the fairest possible division of sleeping spaces, eating schedules and “standing hours.” Since a man occupies less useful space in the vertical posture, everyone was required to be physically on his feet twelve hours out of every twenty-four. Wherever possible Cushing crew members were put on watch with their opposite numbers in Manta’s crew, again only to reduce congestion. But there were many, the missile department crew for example, who had no counterparts in the Manta. And all of them, despite sincere effort, were constantly in the way. Not that anyone complained. Men had died to make their safety possible.

  Manta’s control room, at least, was kept moderately clear, most particularly in the vicinity of the sonar shack, the periscope station and the diving station. With extra personnel available, there were two quartermasters on watch with a third detailed to maintain a most complete notebook log of all activities. One quartermaster was assigned to assist at each periscope. “How much longer to pass under?” asked Buck, without taking his eyes from the eyepiece.

  “Two minutes fifteen,” said his quartermaster. “Dead ahead. A hair on the port bow.”

  “Tell Mr. Abbott to pass directly under, if he can.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “. . . How long now?”

  “Ninety seconds . . . sixty . . . thirty . . . twenty, fifteen . . .”

  Richardson had no idea when it was that he first realized he was looking at something. Though clear, the water was dark, for there was very little light penetrating the ice cover, and out of the deep formlessness of the shadowed water, solidity slowly emerged. It was the color of water, bespoke regularity, and rigidity, a gradual gathering together of vague nothingness in the sea until there was something, square and angular, huge and sinister. And close. Very close! Rich realized he was looking with his line of sight elevated, quickly swiveled it downward, saw what he took to be a square bottom, flipped up the handles, reached for his periscope hoist lever.

  “Down periscope!” rapped out Buck, snapping up his control handles. His startled tone caused his quartermaster to jerk the hoist lever, and his periscope shot downward. The man managed to push the lever back toward Raise, to brake the fall, barely in time to bottom the periscope without damage.

  Rich’s “Down ’scope!” was almost simultaneous with Buck’s. As he instinctively grabbed for the lever, he felt his own quartermaster already there, pulling it for him, getting the heavy tube down swiftly and safely.

  “Left full rudder!” shouted Buck. “Take her down fast!” The whoosh of air and the rush of water into negative tank pervaded the control room. He made a show of wiping the sweat off his forehead. “Did you see what I saw, boss?”

  “I think so. What do you think it was?”

  “It was mighty big, that’s all I can say!”

  “I think we’d have passed under it, but it sure scared me,” said Richardson. “Damn good thing we were going so slow!”

  “That’s for sure!”

  “What was it, Skipper?” asked Abbott, standing on the main deck outside the periscope circle rail. “An iceberg?”

  “No. Too regular for that. Something straight up and down in the water!”

  “That’s what I saw, too, Buck! I thought I could see the bottom of it, though—could you?”

  “Negative, I had my ’scope turned up. All I saw was something suddenly awfully big and awfully close!”

  “The bottom looked squared-off to me. It was man-made, all right!”

  “Did it move, or look as if it could move?”

  “Passing three hundred. Give me a depth, Captain!” said Clancy, calling from the other side of the periscope station. “I need speed, or permission to blow the tank.”

  “Blow negative now, Tom,” said Buck swiftly, “and vent the pressure easy. Try to hold whatever depth you can stop her at.”

  The noise of blowing air. Then the flood valve clanked shut, and a great quantity of air, at pressure corresponding to the depth of water, began to vent into the ship. Rich and Buck had to swallow several times before their sinus passages felt normal. “I don’t think that thing was mobile, Buck. That was no seagoing shape. Let’s come on around and ping on it. We’ll have to chance nobody will hear us. Maybe that will give us an idea of what it is.”

  At half-a-mile range and depth of three hundred feet, Manta made several complete circuits of the strange object, pinging first strongly, then progressively less so. Finally Schultz had his equipment down to minimum power, the ping barely perceptible as it went out, almost inaudible when the echo returned. And gradually, the outline of what they were looking at so painstakingly came clear.

  Rich recognized it first. “It’s a cylinder, Buck! Four cylinders, rather, fastened together in some way and standing upright in the water!”

  “That’s what it looks like, all right! I’ve never heard of anything like this! Have you?”

  “No. Not ever. It must be floating in the sea, but it doesn’t look as if it were intended to be mobile.”

  “Not with that shape,” said Buck. “How big do you make it?”

  “No idea—yes, we do too have a guess. If the bottom really was a little above the tops of our periscopes, that would put it at a hundred twenty feet or so. From the sonar picture it’s about two-thirds that in width.”

  “And the top’s got to be frozen in the ice pack! If it can�
�t move, it’s got to be!”

  “That makes sense, Buck. But what is it?”

  “Let’s close in again till we can see it, boss,” begged Buck. “Maybe that will give us the clue. Besides, if anybody heard us pinging, the quicker we get this over with, the better.”

  “Agreed!”

  The water was remarkably clear, but the dim light filtering through the bumpy underside of the ice pack was barely sufficient to outline the huge structure. The control room had been darkened, leaving only red lamps glowing at the important stations. Buck and Rich kept their faces firmly pressed against the rubber buffers at the periscope eyepieces, the better to acclimate their eyes to the tenebrous half-light. Forty feet above them, at the tops of the periscopes, they turned their two glass orbs from side to side, elevated and depressed the prisms inside, and gradually the amorphous thing took shape. There was an impression of massive strength, vertical steel solidity held together with an intricate interlocking of rugged girders, combined with a much more delicate tracery of smaller lines running in every direction. At several places steel ladders could be distinguished. The entire structure—or structures, for there seemed to be four principal elements of equal size—was painted sea gray. It was relatively new, for as yet there had been very little growth on the surfaces. Here and there black lettering could be seen featuring the occasional “reversed” characters of the Russian alphabet. Other areas, irregular in shape, were most likely merely abrasions, or rusted places.