The Circle

by David Poyer

  He was thinking this when the lieutenant turned to the man at the wheel. His pale blue eyes were overlaid with annoyance. “Mind your helm, Coffey.”

  “Am, sir. Seems sloppy.”

  “Doesn’t respond?”

  “Some kind of give in it. Like it ain’t hooking up right.”

  “You on the port system?”

  “Port pump, port synchro.”

  “Shift to starboard.”

  “Shift steering to starboard, aye.” The helmsman bent, flipped switches, straightened. He grasped the wheel again and a puzzled expression took his face. He moved it right, then left.

  “Lost steering!”

  The OOD had his glasses halfway to his face. “Shift back to port system,” he said instantly. “Fo’c’sle, prepare anchor for letting go. Jay-oh-dee, take a look astern, see if there’s anybody coming up the channel. Chief, how much water to starboard, beyond the buoys? You”—he pointed to Dan, who flinched—“crank twelve, get an auxiliaryman up here right now.”

  The bridge exploded into activity. The captain came in from the wing, lips compressed. Dan found a sound-powered phone on the bulkhead behind him. As he spun the crank, three men began shouting at once.

  “Fo’c’sle reports ready for letting go!”

  “You have two hundred yards to shoal water to right of the channel, over a mile to the left.”

  “Port pump on. Rudder still doesn’t respond!”

  “Freighter up channel, coming around the point. Maybe a mile back.”

  The lieutenant reached above his head without looking. “All engines stop,” he said, and pushed a button twice.

  “After steering answers.”

  “Engine room answers, all stop.”

  “Sir,” said Dan, “the auxiliaryman’s on his way.”

  “Very well,” said the lieutenant, speaking rapidly yet calmly, still looking ahead. The captain stood beside him, his pipe in his hand. “After steering, steer by indicator. Helmsman, indicate left standard rudder.”

  “Indicate left standard, aye.”

  “Is she answering? We have a buoy ahead, Mr. Norden. Have you shifted control aft?”

  “Yes sir, just shifted.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Dan could see the buoy clearly. It was perhaps a quarter mile ahead. Ryan coasted toward it, driven through the water by momentum even though its screws were slowing. The bridge was so quiet, he could hear the gulls screaming as they rose from the black steel of their resting place.

  “After steering says, she’s not answering.”

  The captain had his mouth open, but the lieutenant was already in speech. “Port engine back full. Starboard engine ahead full.”

  “Port engine back full, aye! Starboard engine ahead full, aye! Engine room answers, port back, starboard ahead full!”

  “Very well. What’s the freighter doing?”

  “Still bearing down on us, sir.”

  Norden reached up again. The horn ripped through their ears. One long blast. Another short. Another short. He was talking on the intercom as the last blast died. “Signal Bridge, OOD. Hoist ‘not under command’ as soon as possible.”

  “Signal Bridge, aye.”

  The deck shuddered. The buoy disappeared beneath the rise of the bow. The ship began to pivot, twisted by her opposed screws, but very slowly. The bridge was silent. A ship’s horn droned somewhere astern, three long blasts, the tone deeper than theirs. Dan tensed, waiting for the collision.

  The buoy appeared to starboard and walked down the side of the ship about twenty yards off. Sea-gull scat stained the rusty sides. It moved heavily, thrusting itself in and out of the sea as it heaved on its submerged chain.

  “Straighten her out now, damn it,” said the captain in a low voice.

  “All engines, ahead one-third.”

  The engine-order telegraph pinged as the lee helmsman racked the handles back and forward. “All engines, ahead one-third. Engine room answers, ahead one-third.”

  “Where’s the goddamn freighter?”

  “Coming up the port side, Captain.”

  The merchant came into view, crowding the line of red buoys. It swept by them, an orange cliff of hull, stacks of containers, haze whipping off her stack. A tiny figure in a yellow windbreaker looked down on them. VERTICORE, PANAMA CITY, read the stern. “He didn’t slow much,” said Lieutenant Norden.

  “It’d cost him money,” said Captain Packer. “I bet he never backed one rpm, the bastard.”

  “Sir!”

  “What?” said both men at once.

  “I think—I have steering back, on the port pump.”

  “Test it,” snapped Norden.

  The sailor whipped the wheel left and right, arms bulging under rolled-up denim, studying the rudder indicator. “Helm answers, sir.”

  “Steer two-one-zero.”

  “Two-one-zero, aye.”

  The destroyer rolled to the freighter’s bow wave. The men braced themselves against gear, some reaching up to a brass rail that ran the width of the bridge.

  The captain ignored the motion, riding it out on wide-planted legs. Dan’s first impression of him, on the wing, had been of imperturbability. He observed the captain closely now, from the side.

  James Packer was of moderate height, no more than forty. Under crisply pressed khaki, his chest and shoulders were those of a stevedore or truck driver, one who earned bread by heavy work. Under the gold-crusted visor his face thrust forward from forehead to jaw, with prominent, almost Indian cheekbones, gray eyebrows above round ridges of brow, wide angry mouth. Dan saw now that the impassivity of his first impression was a mistake—or a mask. Something less indurate was showing now.

  His teeth clamped on the stem of a short pipe, fists clenched, Packer was scowling after the receding stern of the freighter.

  He turned his head a moment later, searching for some instrument on the bulkhead, and saw Dan watching him. Both men dropped their eyes. Dan felt embarrassed, as if he was watching a man wake from a sleep he had every right to think unobserved.

  Packer stayed out on the wing the rest of the way out the channel. When the sea buoy fell astern, he went below. Norden took off his hat the moment the skipper left the bridge. Most of the enlisted did the same. He blew out and grinned across the pilothouse at Dan. “Almost put the fenders over for that one.”

  “You did all right, I thought.”

  “Like they say, as long as you remember port’s left and starboard’s right, it’s not that hard to drive a ship. Something’s wrong with that frigging steering. But the skipper says there’s no way he’s putting out a fail-to-sail report.… You our new ensign?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on up here, get acquainted. Mark, you ready to take her?” A black-bearded jaygee elbowed himself off the radar console. “Mr. Silver has the conn,” Norden announced.

  The helmsman and lee helm carried on by rote, chanting out their course and speed. Norden stepped aside. Up close, Dan saw that his chin bristled with pale stubble. He was six inches shorter than Lenson. As they shook hands, he kept an eye on the sea. The slight-boned hand was strong. “I’m Rich Norden. Weapons officer. You’ll be working for me as first lieutenant.”

  “Yes sir, that’s what I understand from the XO.”

  “You met him already?”

  “Yes, sir, in his stateroom, just before we uh, cast off and got under way.”

  It sounded a little too salty to Dan, but Norden just said, “He sucker you into one of his cigars?”

  “Oh … yeah. I can still taste it, in fact.”

  “Those things are probably old as this ship. At least as old as the exec.”

  “Yeah, they didn’t seem too fresh.”

  “Met the skipper?”

  “Not officially.”

  “You ought to pretty quick, not go wandering around his ship like the horse with no name.” Before Dan could reply, he had spun a crank
; something squawked beneath their feet. “Cap’n, Lieutenant Norden here. We got a new ensign waitin’ to meet you.”

  Pause. Dan looked out over the bow. Plowing steadily ahead at fifteen knots, the destroyer was emerging from the embracing hills into a wide bay. At its far end, sparkling with sunlight off deep blue, the jagged rim of the open Atlantic underlined the sky.

  Norden clanged the handset back into its holder. “He’s got some kind of manual to read. Says he’ll catch you later today.” He craned his neck to check the gyrocompass, then relaxed again. Silver was by the chart table, muttering in his beard to the equally hirsute quartermaster chief.

  “So, they told you much about this cruise?”

  “Not much, sir.”

  “Call me Rich. Except on watch, and in front of the enlisted. Well, we’re out for three, four weeks, going to test the widget. You seen it? On the stern?”

  “I didn’t notice anything special.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of shit on deck first time you see us, I guess. It’s new. Close-hold information: a towed body on eight hundred feet of cable. Gets down under the thermo layer, where the subs hide. We’re going up north of the Arctic Circle, give it a workout under operating conditions. Know much about sonar?”

  “Not much.”

  “Better learn. We do a lot of antisub work.” His eyes tightened, the first crow tracks incongruous above the freckled cheeks of a boy. “But it gets harder for her every year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Norden’s answer was to draw his lips back in a grimace. After a moment, he glanced at Silver, who had his head up again, and jerked his thumb toward the wing.

  In the sun, it was almost warm. Norden pushed back his cap and rubbed his forehead. The freckles ended at his cheeks and nose; the cap band left a red line on fair skin. “Look at that,” he said, lifting his chin at the horizon.

  They were leaving the land behind. Its forested and rocky arms were flung wide, like a woman releasing a dove. Distance had softened pine green and earth brown to the hazy blue of a Turner. The old ship creaked, nodding to a ground swell. From time to time it rolled a few degrees, just enough to make their shadows lean on the wooden grid of the deck. The stacks breathed with a muffled roar, jetting a whiskey-colored haze. On the forecastle, chipping hammers clanged, slow, deliberate, like picks against stone. From aft came a warning bell, faint and trivial against the immensity of sea and sky.

  “You superstitious?” Norden asked him.

  “Me? I guess not.”

  The weapons officer groped in his pocket, then leaned over the splinter shield. The coin spun free of his thumb, twinkling in the sun, and they watched the glint arc out and down. Dan watched it sink for a long time beneath clear blue, winking like a star, before the white roar of the bow wave swept over it.

  “Sailors used to offer silver to Poseidon at the beginning of a voyage.”

  “You believe in that?”

  “Believe? Hell no, I’m a devout atheist.”

  “I get it.” Lenson looked back at the land, thinking that those men, too, had left behind expectant wives, babies, and not for weeks. For years, in ships a quarter the length of this one. In his pocket, his fingers touched a milled edge. He took it out, drew back his arm, and threw.

  Tradition … yet he lived in an age of contempt for whatever had endured. The Academy had cast him in a mold honored by time. But sometimes he wondered whether the alloy had changed.

  He saw the coin moved outward, and for a moment saw it simultaneously in four different ways. It was a gift to the gods, in whom he did not believe. It was a link to the men who’d blazed the road he traveled now. It was a remnant of primitive neurosis, a sop to forces that heeded no curse or prayer. And at the same time, he saw simply a moving mass losing its horizontal acceleration component as gravity took hold, bending its world line like a fishing rod.

  It met the sea, and he could not tell which way of seeing was the truth, or even closest to it.

  “What did you mean, Rich?”

  “About what?”

  “You started to say something about the ship.”

  “Oh, that.” Norden shook his head. “Let’s talk about it later. There anything I can help you with personally, get you started off right?”

  “Uh—how about uniforms? I notice they’re kind of mixed—”

  “That’s because we were getting under way. In port, it’s generally winter blue, the blue shirt and tie. Under way, we wear wash khakis, long sleeves, open collar. Where we’re going, you might want to wear blues on watch just ’cause they’re warmer. Is your stateroom okay? Where have they got you?”

  “A little place back aft. Three other bunks in it.”

  “That’s Boy’s Town. Junior officer bunkroom. Only seniority or death gets you out of there.”

  Dan looked at him sidewise. His department head had lifted his closed eyes to the cold sun. He envied Norden’s air of mastery. He remembered how swiftly and correctly he’d maneuvered when the steering went out, all the things he’d borne in mind and anticipated. Yet he was friendly, easy to talk to. He suddenly felt hopeful. Norden would take care of him.

  “Norden—that sounds familiar. Isn’t there a trophy at the Academy—”

  “Yeah, the Norden Cup. Best essay on tactics.”

  “And an Admiral Norden—”

  “Been a couple of them. First one was my great-grandfather. Spanish-American War. None of that goes down too good with our worthy exec.”

  “Commander Bryce doesn’t seem to like Academy guys much.”

  “You caught that?”

  “He made it real easy to pick up on.”

  “Fortunately, we’re not alone. There’s a sizable class of people in there with us. But I think this is what principally hacks him off at me.”

  Dan studied the picture. A fair, rather aloof-looking young woman; Norden, grinning, in a sports jacket and tie; an older child, a boy, fair-haired like his parents; a baby. They were all smiling. The baby was brown. “Lin and I just adopted her. Gabriela. She’s Mexican. Cute, huh?”

  “She’s a sweetheart.”

  “Never thought I’d sign up for two of ’em. But having a family changes a lot of things. Having someone else to live for, not just yourself.”

  He was about to ask Norden what exactly it changed when the 1MC said, “Now secure the special sea detail. Set the normal underway watch. On deck, Watch Section One.”

  “About time.” Norden set his cap again. “Let’s get me relieved, then we’ll give you the fifty-cent tour.”

  With a last look at the receding shore, Dan followed him inside.

  2

  THEY clattered down the outside ladder from the pilothouse. “What’ve you seen so far?” Norden called back.

  “Just the XO’s office, the bunkroom, and the bridge.”

  “I’ll give you a thorough look at her, then. Know much about this class?”

  “Read about it in Jane’s. World War Two construction.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He was about to say more—he’d memorized it—but the blond lieutenant had begun opening doors and talking rapidly. Radio central. Radar equipment room. Crypto room. Teletypes clattered behind closed doors. They dropped another level into a passageway so narrow, men turned to slip past them. Dan braced himself against a bulkhead as it tilted slowly. From a nest walled by filing cabinets and pigeonholes, a monklike face blinked out over the platen of a gray Royal. “Seaman Vogelpohl,” said Norden. “Department yeoman. Vogel, this here’s our new First Divoh.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  Norden continued down the passageway, talking over his shoulder. “They built her in Seattle in ’44. She’s three hundred ninety feet long. Forty feet, ten inches beam. Twenty-two hundred fifty tons nominal displacement, thirty-five hundred full load. Crew of two hundred eighty. Two General Electric geared turbines with sixty thousand shaft horsepower from four six-hundred-poun
d oil-fired Babcock and Wilcox boilers. Range, three thousand miles at cruising speed. Flank speed, thirty-two and a half knots. At least when she was new.

  “We got the standard four-department breakdown aboard: operations, weapons, engineering, supply. I’ll introduce you to the department heads at lunch.

  “Okay, our department, weapons. They built her with six five-inch guns, torpedo tubes, forty and twenty-millimeter, but that’s changed over the years. We got four five-inchers left, torpedoes, and the Asroc—antisubmarine rockets, that’s the box launcher between the stacks. The pad aft was for these little radio-controlled helicopters they were playing with a few years ago, but they didn’t work out. Kept flying off over the horizon and nobody ever saw them again.”

  “They must have been smaller then.”

  “Helicopters?”

  “The crew.” Dan looked at the overhead, noting the crust of cracked paint and painted dirt on the foot-thick bundles of cable that lined it. “Everything’s so cramped.”

  “You get used to it. But you’re right, it isn’t as roomy as the new destroyers.”

  “Was she in the Pacific?”

  “Okinawa. Caught a kamikaze on the stern. It took the cap off the after stack and wiped out one of the quad forties. Killed six guys. They mothballed her when the war was over, then dragged her out again for Korea. She’s been steaming ever since.”

  They threaded their way past sailors lined up for haircuts, past the galley. As soon as Dan was sure he was lost, Norden hauled up a spring-loaded scuttle in the deck.

  As it clamped shut above them, he caught his breath at the sudden crush of humid heat. It was like being wrapped in a blanket soaked in boiling water. Noise battered his ears. The handrail burned his palms. It led down and down, debouching at last on a slick steel grating. “Forward fire-room,” Norden shouted over the din. “Also known as Number One. Two boilers here, two more in the after fireroom, Number Two. You can cross-connect them to either set of turbines for split plant operations. You got all this at the Academy, right?”