The Circle

by David Poyer

  “Soon’s we put down our forks.”

  “I guess that does it except for Murphy and Johnson, and they’ll be down after they’re relieved.”

  “Pleased to meet you all,” said Dan to the wardroom at large. Despite getting stuck with the mess treasury, a thankless job of nit-picking and bookkeeping, he felt warmed by their welcome.

  “You married, Dan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Kids?”

  “First due in February.”

  “Good grief.”

  “She don’t expect you back by then, I hope.”

  “Like they say, you got to be there for laying the keel, but not for the launching.”

  He grinned wordlessly and let it wash over him.

  “Hey ’Fredo! Captain coming down?”

  “He say he come down.”

  The redheaded ensign, Dan had already lost his name, said, “We’ll give him five more minutes, then we’ll—”

  The forward door opened and Packer came in. The executive officer was behind him. Bryce was the only one in the room wearing a tie. Ohlmeyer ducked his head, glancing around in real or feigned embarrassment. The captain said nothing; either he hadn’t heard the remark or he ignored it. He pulled out the chair at the head of the table and nodded to the assembled officers.

  The table sat in a ripple movement, by seniority. Dan wedged himself into the chair at the foot, directly beneath the portrait. He had eight inches between the table and the bulkhead. When he looked up, the captain was staring at him over the silver. They were face-to-face, ten feet apart, with the others ranked on either side. “Who’s this?” asked Packer. “Didn’t I see him on the bridge?”

  “This is the new man I called you about, sir. Daniel Lenson, Mr. Sullivan’s replacement,” said Norden.

  “Sully’s not coming back?”

  “No, I don’t think the Flamer will rise again this time,” said Bryce, smiling.

  “That so? Well, welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Packer lowered his attention to a bowl of mucky-looking stuff the steward slid in front of him. Mabalacat delivered along both sides, two plates at a time. Dan got his last. It was a spicy potato soup that tasted better than it looked. He sipped at it, glancing up furtively to observe the captain.

  “Jimmy John,” Bryce had called him, but Dan had a feeling no one called him that to his face. He was by no means the tallest at the table, but there was no question of his domination of it. It showed in the hushed tones the others used in the face of his silence. Now he was capless, Dan saw dark hair, but eyebrows the color of the silverware. He ate slowly, his attention on the soup. The tension he’d thought he saw on the bridge seemed to be gone.

  The main course arrived. “What’s this called, ’Fredo?” said Bryce.

  “Knockwurst, sah.”

  “No. This.”

  “Boiled cabbage, sah. You like?”

  “Yes, it’s tasty. Real down-home. Let me have some more of that, on the side.”

  “So where you from, Dan?” said a man midway up the table. Lenson swallowed rapidly, groping for the name. Pockmarked cheeks, tired eyelids, a swatch of black hair plastered across his forehead. Talliaferro, pronounced Tolliver, the engineer. First names? He decided it would be okay over food. “Pennsylvania, Ed.”

  “Whereabouts? Out west? I’m from Bradford.”

  “Uh, not really, it’s near Philly.”

  “Okay, hotshot check! You ready to take over my watch section, Lenson?” asked another man, a jaygee.

  The others chuckled. He hesitated self-consciously. Should he act cocky? Confident but modest? While he was debating it, he lost his chance; the captain turned to the operations officer, Evlin. “Al, you got the Gap Filler directive copied yet?”

  The senior lieutenant dabbed at his lips with a napkin. “It’s in mimeo, Skipper. Distribute it right after lunch.”

  “I want everybody familiar with it before we get to the exercise area. We can waste a lot of time up there if we screw up the runs. I want them to know it cold.”

  “I’ll see to that,” said Bryce, smiling around at the table.

  “Was there anything else hot in that traffic they handed up before we got under way?”

  “Nothing new, sir.”

  “Ed, how’s that port shaft sound now?”

  Talliaferro shoved his plate aside. “I think we got her in shape, sir.”

  “The steering unit? And number-two generator?”

  “Like I say, we got her running again. But once we clear coastwise traffic, I’d like to kick her up to flank for an hour and get a stethoscope on a couple things.”

  “Good idea. Let’s combine a full-power run and crash-back with a shakedown general quarters tomorrow, Ben, say around oh-nine hundred.”

  “Will do, Captain,” said Bryce, looking alert and jovial.

  Norden coughed into his fist. “Could we possibly hold that till after lunch, sir? Deck division’s putting fresh paint down aft. I’d like it to dry before people run through it.”

  “Rope it off,” said Bryce, not waiting for Packer to answer.

  “Aye, sir.” Norden glanced down the table at Dan, as if to say, I tried.

  The steward raked in the empty dishes and dealt dessert: bread pudding. When the captain was done, he pushed the plate back and began packing his pipe from a leather pouch. That seemed to be a signal. The others folded their napkins and crossed silver on their plates. Mabalacat returned with coffee.

  “Gentlemen, Mr. Evlin tells me he’ll have the operation order for this little excursion available sometime this afternoon. Let me summarize it, just to put everybody in the picture—including our new ensign.” Packer’s eyes lingered on him.

  “We were pulled early from overhaul for this assignment. Squadron Ops says it was authorized at the Chief of Naval Operations level, via the type commander. Morton, that’s the Pac-side test ship for the AN/SQS-thirty-five IVDS, reported performance degradation during cold-weather operations in the Chukchi Sea. Before COMCRUDESLANT signs off on a fleetwide buy, they want to check the figure of merit in heavy-sea, cold-weather operations.

  “That’s where we come in, as the prototype installation. We’ll be heading up north of the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap to play convergence-zone ops with Pargo, a nuke attack boat. She’ll be coming out of the Northern Fleet op area. She’s up there now playing hide-and-seek with the Soviets around the Kola Peninsula. Estimated time out is three weeks, if all goes well. But I’ll tell you now, much as I know everybody wants to get back to their families, doing this right has priority.

  “The idea is to test the thirty-five B under the most demanding conditions any ship’s likely to hit in wartime. So make sure you’re ready for rough weather. If there’s a storm up there, I intend to head for it, and I’ll stay in it as long as I can.”

  The men nodded. Packer paused. He lighted his pipe thoroughly, using a butane lighter set high, then went on. “I had a talk with the commodore when we got these orders. He wanted to shift the fish to a newer ship. But operational demands in Southeast Asia mean the fleet’s spread thin. Dewey and Beary were held over in the Med for that reason. I told him we could respond to the tasking.”

  Some of the officers leaned their elbows on the table.

  “So we’re on the line for it. It goes without saying that we aren’t in the best shape for the North Atlantic in winter. However, this is the kind of mission that would be demanded of us in wartime, and I judge we can do it. If there’s anyone here who disagrees, I’d like to know about it.”

  No one moved. “Well then,” said Packer, from behind a thickening smoke screen, “we should have reasonable weather for the first few days. I want to get as much topside work done as we can. And be sure your gear’s secured for sea. We can expect heavy weather and ice north of the Circle this time of year.

  “Any questions?”

  Men stirred, but no one spoke. Dan watched the engineering officer lift his coffee
, his brows worried. He was kind of worried himself. He wasn’t sure he understood what the captain was talking about. Then he thought, Well, I guess I’ll find out.

  “XO, anything to add?”

  “Not much, sir,” said Bryce. “So, this won’t be a Caribbean cruise. But I’ve always said, there’s nothing a crew can’t overcome if they work hard and keep their cool. That shouldn’t be too tough, north of Iceland this time of year.”

  He chuckled, but no one joined him. Mabalacat moved round the table, refreshing coffee from a battered silver server. One by one, the officers excused themselves; the captain acknowledged with a nod. Dan got up when Norden did, but on his way past, Evlin leaned his chair back to bar his passage. “Say, Dan.”

  “Yes, sir?” Some instinct warned him to be formal with the senior department head. Precise diction. Short brown hair and mustache. Wire-rimmed glasses.

  “We’ll be revamping the watch bill now you’re here. You’ll be standing junior officer of the deck. We’re in three sections. You’ll be in my section, which means—” Evlin consulted his watch.

  “First dog, mid,” said Norden.

  “Right. You’ll stand your first watch from sixteen hundred to eighteen hundred, then come on again at midnight to four.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said, cheerily enough, but he felt his spirits sag. He’d been up since four; he was already tired, and it looked like a long afternoon ahead. Now what sleep he managed tonight would be broken. Disappointment struggled with eagerness and apprehension. His first underway watch. For a moment he imagined the OOD fallen, himself in charge, saving the ship.

  As he followed Norden down the passageway, he stepped back, as he had on the pier, taking a moment in the midst of experience to reflect.

  He’d seen Ryan from stem to stern, from keel to bridge. Had seen the crew in microcosm: the sailors, chief, wardroom; had been admitted for a moment into the mind of the captain. He’d felt her climates, from the roaring swelter of the engine room to the air-conditioned clatter of Radio Central, smelled fuel oil and insecticide, deck wax and electricity, men’s sweat and paint. Almost three hundred men, crowded into a steel box the length of a football field but only a quarter as wide. In some eyes, he’d read dedication, competence, and respect. In others, barely repressed violence.

  Ryan was not yet his. Only with work and time would he win his share in her, as crews in the old days won shares in prizes. He wasn’t sure why this meant so much to him. But he knew what he wanted of USS Reynolds Ryan. He wanted to be tested, and to succeed. To be part of her. To belong.

  “This swab locker’s yours,” said Norden, banging open a door stenciled I DIV CLNG LKR. “And it’s a shithouse. The deck’s rusting out. See that? Reason is, the spigot’s busted. And it’ll keep rusting till it’s fixed. And it won’t get fixed till somebody takes responsibility for making it happen.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll get on it right away.”

  3

  Latitude 40°–51′ North, Longitude 66°–30′ West: 200 Miles East of Cape Cod

  SHIVERING in a blast of freezing wind, Lenson stared openmouthed into the immensity of space. Above the midnight sea, the Milky Way was a double rainbow of silver. A billion stars blazed down on him. They had no resemblance to the feeble candles seen from land. These were brilliant and unwinking, cold and close and terrifying as the eyes of God.

  He stepped back, grunting as sore feet brought him back to the unyielding deck. After evening meal, Cummings had grabbed him to transfer the mess records. Then Norden kept him busy signing custody cards till it was time for watch. But the eagerness that had come now and again all that day closed his throat again as he leaned with Mark Silver over the glowing circle of the surface search radar.

  The jaygee’s finger traced the edge of a continent. They gazed like gods on the flaring brightness of mountains, the writhing shadows of bay and valley, the glowing masses of islands. Nantucket, Block Island, the cruel hook of Cape Cod leapt into fluorescent brilliance under the rotating beam, faded slowly, then leapt up anew, twenty times a minute.

  Silver muttered into his beard. The rush of wind through the pilothouse, the hiss of radios drowned it. “What’s that?” Dan asked.

  “I said, ‘contact “Romeo.”’” The offgoing junior officer of the deck’s finger lifted, and Dan saw a separate luminescence, focused and hard compared to the inchoate sprawl of land. “Range, eighteen thousand yards, past CPA ’n’ opening. ‘Sierra’s’ up here, course two-six-zero, speed then, just about at CPA at thirteen thousand yards, time zero-five.”

  The lieutenant (jg) rattled on, so fast he couldn’t follow. Courses and speeds and times, radio frequencies, the status of engines and pumps and generators. When he asked for a repeat, Silver glanced up, the whites of his eyes gleaming weirdly in the phosphor flicker. “What’s the matter, Lenson? Haven’t you read the night orders?”

  “No, sir,” he mumbled.

  “From now on, read them before you tell me you’re ready to relieve. True wind’s from one-two-five at twelve, sea state two—”

  At last Silver handed over the bulky night glasses, the badge of office, with the reluctance of a priest blessing a dying mafioso. A shadowy figure stood beside the gyro, outlined against the stars. Silver told it, “I’ve been properly relieved by Mr. Lenson, sir.”

  “Very well.” The shadow’s voice was even, clearly enunciated, as if he’d learned English from a book.

  Dan swallowed. “This is Ensign Lenson,” he began, saluting in the dark although he didn’t have to, then realized he had it wrong. “I mean, sir, I have the watch as JOD.”

  “Very well,” said the shadow again. The bridge was so quiet he felt Ryan trembling as she drove over three-foot seas. “Mr. Silver, you may lay below.”

  Silver left the bridge, exhaling noisily. Someone, one of the enlisted men, chuckled in the darkness.

  Dan was too anxious to notice. He lingered near the radar, wondering what to do. Lieutenant Evlin had both the “deck,” the overall responsibility for, and the “conn,” the actual control of the ship. He flipped the straps of the binoculars over his neck, felt the weight settle in. He paced a few feet to and fro, reviewing the layout of the bridge and its manning under way.

  Steaming independently, a destroyer had ten men on watch topside. The officer of the deck, or OOD, was in charge. The junior OOD acted as his assistant and makeelearn. There were two senior enlisted men, or petty officers. Of these two, the quartermaster was a skilled navigator; he kept a log and plotted the ship’s track. The boatswain’s mate passed word, struck bells, and supervised six nonrated men. Of these, one acted as helmsman, both steering and ringing up engine orders. Three were lookouts, to port, starboard, and aft, supplemented in fog by another in the bow. They stood watch in the open, scanning sea and sky. Another seaman manned a phone circuit, relaying reports from CIC. Finally, a messenger cleaned up and fetched coffee and did the hundred other chores nine people who outranked him could think up in the course of four dragging hours.

  “Sir,” said the phone talker suddenly, “CIC reports a new contact, ‘Tango,’ bearing zero-seven-zero, range twenty-five thousand, course one-nine-zero, speed ten; CPA three thousand yards at one-five-zero true, time four two.”

  The shadow stirred. “Have him on radar yet, Lenson?” said the even, precise voice.

  Dan started, then fumbled with unfamiliar dials. The green world between his hands shrank and expanded, dimmed and flared. “Uh, yes sir, I think this is him.”

  “Mark it. Use the grease pencil on the string.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “See if you can pick him up visually. No, the other wing, you won’t see anything to starboard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The port wing was open to the sky. He tripped on a coaming as he came out. Then stood motionless, dazzled by the lavender afterimages the screen had printed on his retina. The wind found him as he waited and thrust icy fingers under the col
lar of his jacket. He shivered, fumbling the binoculars to his eyes.

  He couldn’t see a thing through them. Even the stars were blurry and distorted!

  Then he realized Silver had set them for his nearsightedness. He calmed down and zeroed them while he did the math. Three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, with due north at zero-zero-zero true. The radar bearing had been zero-seven-zero, which would be forty degrees left of Ryan’s course. He steadied his elbows on the rail and searched slowly on either side of the bearing.

  There: Two yellow sparks shimmered close together on the black curve of the sea. The right-hand one was lower. The approaching ship’s starboard side should be to him. He took a bearing with the port pelorus. According to CIC, she’d pass in front of Ryan, assuming both ships held course and speed. There should also be a colored side light—green for starboard, red for port. At twelve miles? He thought it through again, took another bearing, then went back inside.

  “Got her?”

  “Yes sir. Starboard bow aspect, slow right bearing drift. Too far for side lights yet.”

  “Very well. Keep an eye on her.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Dan checked the radar again. The two ships that had passed during Silver’s watch were sliding aft, off the screen. He made a second mark on “Tango’s” pip, grease-penciled a line to it from the first, and extended it. If they both held course, the pip should go down that trace.

  “What’s CPA look like?” came Evlin’s voice.