Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  As the Manta crept slowly around the complex, rising nearer the surface and then descending to inspect its bottom, its dimensions were determined to be approximately 120 feet in depth, roughly 80 feet in width overall. In composition it was four huge vertical cylinders, each some 35 feet in diameter, attached together by steel girders. Where it encountered the ice overhead, three sides of the square were evidently frozen into it, for there was no visible demarkation above, except that light came through the ice and not through the metal. But on the fourth side there was a large opening in the ice, in length and width many times the size of the two cylinders touching it, through which bright sunlight streamed in stark contrast to the dimness everywhere else.

  “What do you think, Buck? Ever see anything like this before?”

  “The only thing I can remember that looked like this was the grain elevator in my hometown. It had six silos, sort of roofed—silos! Silos! Could these be missile silos?”

  “Missile silos, floating in the Arctic Ocean! By God, that’s what they could be! Then that little polynya would be a resupply dock! Imagine the trouble they’re going to, to keep it ice-free! Buck, I think you hit it! This is the headquarters of that Soviet polar exploration expedition they were talking about in that lousy press release, and it’s really an intercontinental missile base! I’ll bet you five there’s an ice runway alongside it, too!”

  “We’ve got to report this as soon as we can, boss!”

  “Just as soon as we can. But we’ve got to be sure first. If we’re right, this will really shake up the powers down in Washington!”

  “This must be where that submarine was based, and we know he’s not coming back. Maybe we can ease on up and take a careful look! Then we’ll know!”

  “And take a batch of pictures through the periscope, too, to prove it! Our intelligence boys will love us for that!”

  “We’d better go to battle stations, boss. Whoever these people are, their history shows they’ll resent strangers taking pictures through the periscope!”

  “I was about to say the same, Buck. But don’t sound the alarm. Pass the word quietly in case they’ve got a sonar watch on.”

  Positioning the Manta in the center of the artificial polynya was easy; it was more than twice her length in both dimensions. The difficulty lay in bringing the submarine up slowly, using buoyancy only—with no way on she got no benefit from her control surfaces—and stopping her ascent at exactly the right depth. The periscope itself could be varied in height from the conning station deck to the overhead, thus giving the diving officer a few feet of flexibility in case Manta began to rise or descend unexpectedly. A person using the periscope could do it either lying on his stomach or standing, or anywhere in between so as to expose only the desired amount of the instrument. The big job was Clancy’s, for it took consummate skill to hold the great steel bulk of the submarine within five feet of the desired depth without motion of any kind.

  Tom Clancy was fortunately entirely equal to the task. With Buck at a half-crouch, the tip of Manta’s high periscope came one inch above the mirrorlike surface of the artificial lake. Buck spun it around swiftly, dropped it two feet below the surface. “I didn’t see anyone looking,” he said, speaking quickly, “but there’s a lot going on. I could see cranes, a hangar and several huts, all painted white or covered with snow. Quite a few people wandering around, too.”

  “Can I have a look?” Rich could not keep the eagerness from showing in his voice.

  “That’s what we’re here for! That and the camera!”

  Through the tiny prism at the top of the attack periscope, Rich was first conscious of the height of the ice all around: nearly ten feet above the surface, he estimated, high above the minimal periscope height he and Buck had determined was all they would risk. This was not an ordinary floe. The ice must extend five times that far below the surface. The Soviets had preempted an ice island for their missile station! Then he saw the hangar, a large, white, arched-roof building vaguely resembling the quonset hut which had been their quarters in Idaho. The elevated white booms of two large cranes were prominent against the sky.

  He was dictating his observations rapidly to two quartermasters and two yeomen as he swiftly traversed the periscope. Near the hangar he thought he could distinguish an aircraft, though of this he could not be sure for the height of the ice interfered, and it would not be wise to raise the ’scope higher for a better look. The structure enclosing the tops of the silos, white like all the other construction, apparently even with the ice surface, formed a portion of one side of the polynya. One silo door was open; he could see the twin halves standing vertically, parallel to each other. Extending for some distance below the water surface, and in the air up to the level of the ice ledge, the two silos nearest him were covered with metal siding, again white, but artfully camouflaged where it entered the water. At a distance it resembled the edges of the polynya. The smooth steel glistened in a non-icelike manner, however, and from nearby it looked more like the side of a ship, painted white, without portholes.

  Alongside the shiplike siding, mooring cleats—they could only be for submarines—had been built. They too had been painted white, but there were dark rope burns which proved they had been used. And, as Buck had said, there were numbers of people to be seen, all dressed in heavy clothing.

  Rich dunked the ’scope several times as he made his methodical traverse, and he maintained a constant monologue dictating his observations. The necessity of maintaining no more than an inch or so of periscope exposure in the calm waters of the artificial polynya caused him to vary his attitude from standing fully erect to squatting on his haunches, once lying flat on his stomach to bring the eyepiece of the periscope as near to the deck as was possible while Tom Clancy fought to keep Manta’s 3,000 tons of steel from drifting higher.

  It was with surprise that Rich noted, when he finally dunked the ’scope a little farther than usual and turned it over to the camera party, that he had been using it less than five minutes. The camera party itself, with four cameras ready and the arc of interest carefully defined, accomplished its mission in half a minute.

  Buck retrieved the periscope, spun it twice rapidly as he bounced around on his haunches, once inspecting the sky, then dropped it to the bottom of its well.

  “This has been mighty well done, Skipper,” he heard Richardson say, more loudly than necessary, so that he would be overheard by nearly everyone in the control room. “Now let’s get away from here and get off that message!”

  Rich might have gone on, was, in fact, preparing to say a few words in specific praise of Tom Clancy and his diving team, when all thought was abruptly reoriented by a thunderous crash! Manta’s deck seemed to buckle, then straighten. Richardson felt himself flung into the air, saved himself from falling by grabbing the guardrail around the periscope station, found it vibrating madly. Buck had also nearly been thrown off his feet, he noticed, and several of the men in the control room had truly been knocked down. The atmosphere in the control room was alive with particles of paint, dust and cork. Manta’s entire interior resounded like a huge steel drum.

  “All compartments report!” said Buck urgently to the battle stations telephone talker a few feet away. Rich found himself blessing the foresight which had led them to order the ship rigged for depth charge and the crew at action stations beforehand. Then the second depth charge arrived, if anything, closer than the first. And then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. . . .

  Nikolai Konstantinov Shumikin, commander of the First Soviet Arctic Free Missile Base, was seriously worried. For a time things had been going so well, and now, ever since he had sent Zmentsov back to prevent escape of the damaged American missile submarine, the sixth sense which had always served him had not been functioning. Number one, there had been a second very recent transmission in undecipherable code from somewhere nearby, and for this last one there was no clear explanation. Grigory Ilyich Zmentsov, skipper of the Novosibirsky Komsomol, had suggested t
he one before it must have been from a submarine sent from the United States to render assistance to the one they had so cleverly immobilized. The trapped vessel, the newest model of Polaris missile submarine, must not be permitted to escape. The Americans had no right to attempt to make the Arctic Ocean into a place from which they might shoot Polaris missiles! His own top-secret missile base, of course, was a very different thing. It was more like an extension of Russia’s land mass a little farther into the sea: perfectly legitimate, even if subterfuge had been necessary because of stupid treaties. But not a missile submarine! That was too much!

  His first report, praising the Novosibirsky Komsomol and her commander for so brilliantly carrying out his instruction to damage the American submarine in an apparent accident, had resulted in deserved praise for himself as well. It had been an extraordinary stroke of luck to have been forewarned of the expected appearance of the enemy sub, and to have had Grigory Ilyich and his specially configured Novosibirsky Komsomol ready. Reporting the loss of one of his aircraft as due to a weapon fired from the damaged submarine had given the Kremlin an excellent pretext for the decision to take the damaged vessel into custody, and it had also camouflaged the bombing run he had ordered. That had been necessary to prevent the enemy submarine from escaping. The intent, after all, had been only to drive her back under the ice once more, so that she could not further communicate with her headquarters, and this had been achieved. It was simply unfortunate that she had managed to surface and get those two initial messages off.

  Indeed, that had been the beginning of the bad luck that, somehow, had dogged him ever since. The second submarine had undoubtedly come in response to the call for help, but had been stupid enough to advertise her presence by sending a long message herself, from not many miles away. By great good fortune, Grigory Ilyich had actually been in Shumikin’s office when the radio messenger arrived to report interception of the transmission, and he had immediately ordered him to investigate. The Americans were really astonishing. Grigory had returned with the extraordinary report that somehow the second submarine, a smaller, older model, had actually managed to rig a towline to the first one and was even then in the process of extracting her from under his very nose! There had been no time to radio for instructions. He had had to make the decision on his own, and it had been a most difficult one, but it was the only one possible. It would not have been necessary to order the second submarine destroyed, had it not interfered by taking the first one in tow. He regretted the necessity of rewarding such ingenuity with death, but there had been no alternative.

  Grigory Ilyich had departed immediately, but he had not yet returned. That was four days ago. It was inconceivable that anything could have gone seriously wrong! Grigory himself had assured him that the towing sub was helpless to defend itself, and furthermore could not have that recent triumph of Soviet technology, the new force-field antitorpedo system which made all Soviet submarines practically immune to attack. Perhaps they had gotten farther away than Grigory had expected, or perhaps some other difficulty was holding him up. Submarines were delayed more frequently than other ships because of some unexpected problem. One had to be respectful of the implacable power of the sea, especially if one operated beneath its surface. All the same, it had begun to be worrisome.

  Three days ago the second of the two recent American messages had been brought to his office in the hangar, and this had caused Shumikin extreme concern. The direction-finding people had said it had been sent from farther away than the previous one. Perhaps the Americans had gotten much farther—had towed faster—than Grigory Ilyich had predicted they could. Perhaps they had actually given him the slip. But Grigory was persistent. He would continue the pursuit. He would find them eventually, even if he had to track them out past Greenland! But, then, how had the American submarine managed to break through the ice to send a message if it was still attached to a towline? And what was Grigory doing? Why had he not reported back? By this time he must have found them. He must be returning soon. The underwater beeper had been going continuously. He would have no difficulty homing on it. Where in the devil was he?

  For three days there had been a close watch kept on the lagoon. Shumikin would be informed the instant Grigory’s periscope was observed, or his sonar heard. It would be only a few steps from anywhere in his base to the silo-pier, and he could be there before the Novosibirsky Komsomol completed surfacing. Then he could set his mind at ease. Probably the delay was nothing important.

  He was still in this frame of mind when, late on the fourth day since Zmentsov’s departure, the expected messenger came. But the initial delight at seeing him instantly gave way to dismay. The man was excited. “There is a submarine! But it is acting strangely!” Shumikin had to force himself to walk to the observation post. He would have covered the short distance at a run, but it would not do to let his men see that he was anxious. On the way he learned that echo-ranging had been heard, but the vessel had seemed to become more distant instead of coming closer. Perhaps Grigory Ilyich for some reason could not hear the beeper and therefore was searching the area by sonar. This had happened once before, when the beeper had broken down, but that was not the case today. Now, the periscope had been sighted in the lagoon, but instead of rising high out of the water, as was Zmentsov’s custom, it remained very low and could be seen turning in all directions as though it were inspecting the place. At this point, the puzzled watch officer had sent for his superior.

  In the observation post, fortunately built for just this contingency, Shumikin was able to inspect the waters of the polynya through binoculars without himself being observed, and what he saw increased his apprehension. The periscope was indeed acting most strangely! It was going up and down at short intervals, turning in all directions and never exposing itself more than an inch or two above the water. When it was lowered beneath the clear surface he could see the tapered end, only a few feet under, poised, waiting, and then in a moment it would rise again to repeat the process. Nikolai Konstantinov Shumikin was no submariner, but the entire performance was disquieting. Grigory Ilyich would not behave like this unless something were seriously wrong! And then the full implication struck him with sledgehammer impact. Savagely, he turned on his officer of the watch.

  “Why was I not informed of this sooner?” he demanded in a fury. “Why was this submarine permitted to echo-range without my knowing of it?”

  The man was unable to answer. He had been expecting the Novosibirsky Komsomol, knew nothing about the possibility of another submarine being in the vicinity, had not been overly disturbed by the slightly different pattern of the echo-ranging, had not, in fact, become concerned at all until he had seen the periscope. Shumikin stamped his foot in rage, continued with the same furious anger. “Sound the alarm, you dolt! This is an enemy! Release the ready depth charges!”

  Twenty depth charges, in camouflaged racks at the far side of the polynya, could be released electrically. They had been carefully set deep enough so that their explosions would not damage the silos, nor the ice above them, hence they could not harm an interloper at shallow depth. A far more potent weapon lay in the torpedo room, built in the base of the mooring pier. There were two torpedo tubes, and a supply of the latest target-seeking torpedoes, similar to those carried by the Novosibirsky Komsomol.

  With the sounding of the alarm, furious activity struck the missile base. There had been planning, and drills. Now the base commander was thankful for his insistence on them. Other depth charges would soon be ready to be rolled into the lagoon, and the cranes could swing still others almost into its center. Numerous small guns and two large 100-millimeter anti-aircraft rifles would also be manned, although they would be useless unless the strange submarine surfaced. Most important of all, the torpedoes could be brought into action in three minutes from a standing start.

  At least a minute had elapsed since the first depth charge. They had all been set deep, but nevertheless the surface of the polynya was roiled with disturbed wat
er, and the periscope had disappeared. Shumikin grabbed the observation post telephone. “Sonar!” he barked, “Where is that submarine?”

  “It’s going away, Commander! Right after the depth bombs we heard it speeding up!”

  “Well, keep the contact! It was your negligence that let it come up on us without warning! You should have reported at once on the battle intercom! Don’t repeat your error or it will go very hard with you!”

  “We guarantee it, Commander! The error is regretted, but we did not know—” Shumikin banged the telephone down with irritation. He was in no mood to listen to excuses, especially when his subconscious told him there might be a certain amount of justification to them.

  He pushed the call for the torpedo room. “Torpedo!” he shouted in the same tone. “When will you clowns be ready with those fish?”

  “About a minute, Commander! We’re going as fast as we can!”

  “Very well! Hurry!” He slammed the phone into its cradle, leaped out of the observation post and ran toward the hatch leading down into the torpedo room. He was almost in a frenzy. He knew well what the strange submarine was up to. He knew as soon as he realized it must be an American. Already he regretted the depth charges. They had only alerted the enemy. It would have been better to surprise him with the torpedoes. Having detected the silo base, perhaps even having photographed it, the American submarine commander was undoubtedly hightailing it to find a place from which to inform Washington. This must be prevented at all costs! If these torpedomen were ever to beat their three-minute record, now was indisputably the time!