The Watch Below

by James White

  They had been intelligent, his father had said, but their level of technology had not been high enough for them to survive.

  VI

  Approximately eight days after Gulf Trader had been torpedoed -- Wallis had tried to sleep that number of times and this was the only yardstick he had -- the doctor and himself returned from checking the contents of Number Six to find that in their absence the dark-haired girl had come to suddenly and had begun to ask questions. Dickson, who had been lying in the dark so as to conserve his flashlight batteries, had been so startled that he had both dropped the flash and lost the spanner with which he was supposed to signal for the doctor. As a result he had had to answer, as reassuringly as possible, the panicky questions of a girl who was still in pain from her burns and who had just awakened into the frigid, terrifying darkness of a sinking ship.

  But Dickson had done very well.

  While he was reporting the conversation to the doctor and Wallis it became obvious that he had given the girl a fairly true account of their predicament, but that the truth had been shaded so optimistically as to be almost unrecognizable. Wallis could understand Dickson's reasons for doing this, but it was beginning to look as if the girl had got the impression that their present situation was more ridiculous than dangerous.

  Dickson concluded, ". . . and she tells me that she is Second Officer Wellman. As yet I have been unable to discover her first name -- I'm a very slow worker, you know, and shy with girls. Would you mind shining your light over here so that she can see how youthful and clean-cut I am?"

  Blinking against the light of the doctor's torch, the Wren officer turned her head towards Dickson's stretcher. She said painfully, "Somehow I didn't expect you to be bald."

  "That is my bandages, ma'am," said Dickson firmly. "And you're not supposed to make me laugh. Internal injuries, you know."

  "Oh, I'm sorry," said the Wren; then, "My first name is Jennifer. Friends call me Jenny."

  "Mine is Adrian," said Dickson. "For this reason I prefer to be called 'Hey, you.'"

  While the conversation had been going on the doctor moved until his mouth was a few inches from Wallis's ear. In a sarcastic whisper he said, "I've a feeling we're intruding on something or other. Shall we go out and come in again later?"

  It was several minutes before the girl spoke directly to the doctor or himself, and Wallis thought he understood why. For a very long time Dickson had been to her merely a disembodied voice in absolute darkness describing the horror of their position in such reassuring terms that somehow she had not become uncontrollably afraid, and now the need to see this person was so overwhelming that it far transcended simple curiosity. But eventually she began to talk to Radford and himself and they learned a good deal about her and the other Wren officer.

  The blonde girl was called Murray, Margaret Murray. They were in Communications together and had been on a course designed to make the Service language and abbreviations of the R.N. and U.S.N. a little more comprehensible to each other with a view to aiding future combined operations.

  That was the only reference she made to the future, and she did not mention the present or past at all. It was natural to suppose that the memory of the first torpedoing and being tied to the raft in the burning-oil-covered sea was too recent and too horrible for her to want to dwell on it, but Wallis got the impression that she was quite satisfied with the present and future as depicted to her by Dickson and that she had no inclination to look for a more detailed, and perhaps less optimistic, picture from anyone else.

  That "night" as Wallis settled down to worry himself to sleep it seemed to him that his cold and clammy bed was fractionally more comfortable and their many problems just a little less insoluble. It was difficult to understand why this should be so. Perhaps the fact that Jenny Wellman had begun to register more strongly as a young, good-looking girl than one of the two hitherto unconscious patients had something to do with it. Men tended to feel protective towards girls, especially injured, nice-looking girls, and they also tended to show off a bit -- in this instance to display more confidence and optimism than was normal under the circumstances. There was also the feeling of sympathy which made men want to hide the worst from them until the last possible moment. Not to mention the fact that an outward show of confidence very often inspired the real thing.

  But unpleasant facts did not disappear simply because someone felt like showing off in front of a girl. Sooner or later these unpleasant facts would bring about their deaths. For the chance of being spotted and rescued was a remote one. An aircraft seeing their long gray shadow in the sea would report it, but as a menace to navigation rather than a ship with survivors still on board. It was even more unlikely that they would drift aground and be left high and dry at low tide. If they touched land at all it was likely to be on the rocky Irish or Scottish west coasts during a winter storm, when they would tear open their bottom. And while it was true that they would never die of starvation -- they would die of thirst before they ran out of air -- it was almost certain that they would all drown long before any of these other fates overtook them.

  It wasn't a time, Wallis thought, to feel even a little optimistic. . . .

  After they had all had the usual freezing cold breakfast and the patients were seen to, Wallis went to Jenny Wellman's bed and explained the functions and purpose of the torch and spanner, adding that he was going to take Dickson away from her for a short time. When he saw her expression he told her that they would only be two tanks away and that they needed Dickson's more detailed knowledge of the ship's construction to aid them in a possible method of escape -- and if she liked she could keep the flashlamp switched on all the time they were away.

  A few minutes later when they were in Number Seven, Wallis said seriously, "Last night before I got to sleep I had an idea, but I couldn't mention it in front of Miss Wellman without -- "

  "I quite understand," said Dickson, equally serious. "It wasn't suitable for discussion whilst ladies were present. . . ."

  "Dickson!" began Radford. He breathed heavily through his nose several times but did not say anything else.

  Patiently, Wallis went on, "This is a matter we should try to take seriously. Both of you must realize that we are sinking. Gradually, of course, because the hull is showing no indication as yet of a dangerous increase in pressure even though we have stopped feeling the waves. But it is only a matter of time before we reach the point where water pressure from above will force us deeper whether we remain airtight or not.

  "I've heard of it happening to subs which dived too deep," Wallis continued. "They couldn't get up again even though they weren't holed and there was nothing mechanically wrong with them; as a result, they kept on going down until pressure caved in their hulls. At present our situation is that of being trapped inside an outsize submarine which is unpowered and sinking, but slowly. Somehow we must increase our buoyancy before we reach the point of no return."

  The doctor was watching Wallis silently. Dickson moved the flashlight slightly but made no comment either.

  "Down here we are not in a position to lighten ship by dumping cargo," Wallis resumed, "because we can't open the tanks without flooding them. But if we go back to the submarine analogy and consider how a sub does it -- that is, by taking on water as ballast in order to sink and by blowing it out again with compressed air to rise -- we might work out something using the storage spaces adjacent to the tanks. Most of them must be filled with water by now, but if some of that water could be forced out again we should rise."

  "I don't know," said Dickson suddenly. All trace of levity had gone from his voice. He went on, "A sub has high-pressure pumps for that work. Can we build a pump from the odds and ends available here, in time to do us any good? And aren't we short enough of air as it is?"

  Wallis said, "I wasn't going to use pumps -- even if we could make them I'm doubtful myself about the time. And I wasn't going to use air. Maybe this idea isn't feasible, so before I go into it I'd like more det
ails of the ship's construction. You were Trader's first mate for three years while up to now I've been concerned only with the modifications to the tanks . . ."

  . . . And if there hadn't been so many modifications , Wallis added silently to himself, we would be lying on the bottom now like any other torpedoed ship and none of us would have these problems to face . . . .

  The idea for an anti-submarine tanker had very likely originated with some overworked character who had had a hard day in his small back room and too many cheese-and-onion sandwiches for supper. He had dreamed of a sort of super escort vessel sailing within the body of a convoy instead of bouncing around on the fringe. The hold of this anti-submarine capital ship would be packed with special Asdic gear that could be lowered through the ship's bottom so as to avoid interference from the nearby convoy and escorts. A simple device in the engine rooms of the convoy's own ships would produce a distinctive and easily identifiable engine sound which, if there were any confusion, would eliminate friendly traces from the plot.

  The souped-up listening devices would be ultrasensitive and highly directional and the length of Gulf Trader would give a base line that would allow them to pinpoint any U-boat closely approaching the convoy before signaling the enemy's position to one of the escorts. If the U-boat were to come too close and there were no escort available to head it off in time, Gulf Trader would have mounted new, and as yet untested, Y-guns which could heave a depth charge for a distance of three or four miles. Not even the wildest of optimists expected accuracy over this distance, but it was thought that a U-boat commander faced with someone trying to bracket him with depth charges, especially when there was neither sight nor sound of an escort nearby, would be sufficiently perplexed to dive below periscope depth and perhaps go away altogether. In either event there would be enough time for a conventional escort to make contact and do its work.

  Wallis had been relieved of his destroyer command and had been given the new ship with the promise of promotion to full commander when she was commissioned. He had not been asked what he thought of the idea generally, merely told that he was to try it out. He very much doubted that their lordships, or any senior Naval officer for that matter, would have given the idea a second thought if the situation in the North Atlantic had not been truly desperate. As things were, however, they had to try everything or anything once, no matter how crazy it might sound: like trimming a 35,000-ton tanker to sail like a submarine. . . .

  Although a small part of his mind had wandered away from the subject for a few seconds, Wallis had continued talking, and now he summarized his requirements.

  "The compartments will have to be fairly large," he said, "and placed so that we can check their degree of flooding by tapping on the tank walls -- we want to know if our efforts are having any effect, and if not when to try elsewhere. The compartments should be watertight on the top sides so that pressure will force the water downward and out, and the pocket of gas remaining will keep the water from entering again. If the top or upper walls of a compartment are open, then the gas will escape and the water will stay where it is.

  "We'll use acetylene instead of air," Wallis continued, "because we already have it under pressure in tanks, making high-pressure pumping unnecessary, and we have no other use for it anyway. The tricky part will be drilling a hole in the tank wall and inserting a hollow, tapering plug with a valve at the wide end. We can manage the plug, but ramming it into place while the hole is emitting a high-pressure stream of water will be hectic. Once that is done, however, we can clamp the acetylene tank to the hollow plug and open both valves until it is empty -- "

  "This isn't an objection," the doctor broke in quietly, "but have you thought of what would happen if we were found and our rescuers used cutting torches on the walls of a compartment filled with pure acetylene?"

  "Boom," said Dickson, grinning again.

  Wallis shook his head. "We can always tap out a warning in Morse. I'm much more concerned with our present lack of buoyancy, Mr. Dickson."

  The mate was silent for a moment; then he said, "Very well. The fore and aft coffer dams and the bilges, in order of accessibility. The intercostals between the tank floor and the actual hull structure -- it's like a single-layer egg box running the length of the ship, with the walls in each division containing a three-foot hole to allow access for cleaning out the bilges and for the purpose of saving weight. The upper edges of these holes are about a foot from the roof of their compartments; so there could be a considerable volume of gas trapped there if necessary. And if you pumped in too much it wouldn't go to waste, it would simply bubble into the next piece of the egg box and be trapped there.

  "After the bilges," Dickson went on, "there are the storage spaces and ballast tanks on each side of Numbers One, Four, and Seven. Some of these are likely to be more watertight than others, so I would have to point out their exact position to you. This would mean lugging me over a pile of cargo, and maybe shifting some of it; therefore, the coffer dams and intercostal spaces would be less trouble to begin with."

  When he had stopped speaking Wallis took Dickson's flashlamp from him and directed the beam around the walls of the tank. He said, "You've been very helpful, Mr. Dickson, but I'm afraid we'll have to modify your order of priority. The for'ard coffer dam is too badly damaged by the torpedo which hit the forepeak. I don't approve your second idea, for two reasons. One, because the air-filled spaces in the ship are all well below the weather deck, so that we must already be in a dangerously top-heavy condition and an increase of buoyancy at keel level could very easily roll us over. The tanks would remain watertight if this were to happen, but the odd pockets of air trapped about the ship would spill out and our rate of descent would increase. Two, the gas trapped in the intercostals would be constantly forced upwards by water pressure so that there would be the danger of contaminating our air with acetylene. This poison gas would be right under our feet. It is very difficult to spot and seal off a gas leak compared to one of water, and if our aiir was contaminated there is no way of replacing it.

  "That is why we'll use the aft coffer dam first," Wallis continued. "The gas will be injected as low as possible, will bubble to the top, and there will always be a water seal to keep the acetylene from getting back to us.

  "But in case the dam isn't airtight up top or it doesn't give a sufficient increase of buoyancy," he added, "maybe you could point out a few likely compartments here in Seven. The doctor will mark the places with chalk while I start looking for the hardware we'll need."

  He stopped abruptly. The tank around them was reverberating to the sounds of frantic banging, the sounds a heavy spanner might make against a metal deck. And above the noise, growing louder and more piercing with each second that passed, there was the sound of screaming. The doctor snatched the flashlamp from Dickson's hand and hurried aft.

  "It isn't Jenny," Dickson said out of the darkness, the anxiety in his voice making it sound like a question rather than a statement. "It must be the other girl. . . ."

  VII

  Wallis moved carefully towards the starboard wall of the tank until the workbench there stopped him, then groped around the top of it until he found the spare lamp. He spent a longer time finding a place to prop it so that its beam would illuminate a useful area of bench, but after that he did not waste any time at all because he had spent most of the previous night thinking about what he had to do and the material available for doing it.

  From the sick bay in Eleven the sounds made by the Murray girl continued to reach them, quieter now and interspersed with the gruffer, reassuring noises made by the doctor and the low voice of Miss Wellman backing him up. Jenny might just as easily have joined the other girl in screaming her head off instead of helping the doctor calm her down, but she hadn't. Wallis thought that he approved of Miss Wellman.

  "When you were moving the light around," Dickson said suddenly, "I couldn't help noticing that. . . that . . ." He stopped, then finished helplessly, "What on earth have you bee
n doing to the generator?"

  Wallis was silent for the few minutes it took him to check the outer diameter of the acetylene tank nozzle against the business end of the handsome, chrome-plated water faucet which had originally served, with about a dozen just like it, in the temporary washroom in Number Three. Being designed for temporary or emergency use, the other end of the tap tapered gradually so as to accommodate several different diameters of pipe, which was exactly what Wallis needed. But to fit the tap to the acetylene tank he would first have to remove the aesthetically beautiful curve which directed the water downwards.

  "Sorry, I was thinking," said Wallis. He put the faucet into the vice, found a hacksaw, and went on, "The doctor and I have been working on an idea for producing light and heat. As you know, this generator is a temporary affair used to light the tanks during the early modifications and until they could be linked to the ship supply. The engine which runs it is working but can't be used because it wastes air and produces carbon monoxide. But we've been experimenting with gearing arrangements which would allow us to operate the generator manually -- or to be more accurate, by pedaling it with the feet. That framework built around it is to take the two people operating the generator.