by David Poyer
The other didn’t answer. “But you ain’t gonna do that. You’re going to hang with the program and keep on collecting that little supplement. You’re going to keep on helping us out. And keep on helping yourself out, too. Right?”
The other didn’t answer for a time. Together, they listened to the far-off sound of laughter, of boisterous singing, the sudden screech of brakes far off.
“What do you want me to do?” the voice murmured at last.
WHEN the second man left, the first lingered at the bow, looking out at the hills. He considered going over to the club later. But then thought, No, it might be best not to.
He had a great deal to do and not a great deal of time left to do it in. Thinking of this, he took a notebook out of his back pocket and turned the flashlight on once more, ran down the list of names, checked his watch. Then clicked the light off again and stood pondering in the darkness.
And after a time, another shadow detached itself from the superstructure. It hesitated for a time, looking searchingly around at the forecastle, the pier, the distant hills. A match flared and lips drew nervously on a cigarette. Then it made its wary way up to the man, who waited casually for it to draw near, one boot propped on a chock, his upper body leaning easily forward on the lifelines, looking off toward the waiting shore.
20
AND three hundred feet aft, another man, balding and gawky in too-small scrub greens, stood too, blinking down at the inky tropic shadows, the dark hills, at a flashlight spot that someone shined on the pier for a little while from up forward, before it went out. And above everything were the stars, caught in the black cage of Barrett’s masts and antennas.
Hank Shrobo blinked slowly and pulled his glasses up, rubbed his eyes. The eyeballs felt like hot ball bearings. When did we get here? he thought. Was this Cuba?
He stood motionless for a few minutes, mind still seething with the convoluted syntax of computer language. But his eye muscles spasmed at the thought of reading another line of code.
Standing there, swaying-tired, he massaged his face and then his neck as his mind moved back again to square one. Sometimes that helped you break out of a logic jam, going back to the start. He needed some new ideas. Because right now, he was locked up solid.
Back when he’d come aboard, still feeling ill from the helicopter ride, he’d started in the DP center, the “computer room,” as the sailors called it. Already it sounded dated; soon there’d be computers in every room, and not long after most likely embedded in everyone’s skull. Trying to push the queasiness away, he’d settled on a stool as the men there gathered doubtfully around him. He’d caught the whisper behind him. “Shit. Who’s this? Mr. Peepers to the rescue?”
“So what’s the situation?” he asked the black man in dungarees, who stared at him, then turned to look at the monitor, as if he could talk only like that, face-to-face with the data.
“Well, we got a … major glitch here. I’ve been working this thing for four solid days. Thought I could patch code, but when I do the software runs okay one minute, then it wanders off into the weeds and the system locks up. Takes a full-system reboot to get it running again. I can’t make shit out of it.” He told Shrobo how they’d discovered it, about the missile shoot and the way everything had gone haywire. Told him how they’d found the bad code, corrected it, but then found more, not just in the Version 3 but in the older version, too.
He pondered this. “Did you run the module-level diagnostics that come with the op tape?”
“About fifty times. Every time it reports a different glitch. When I take the recommended action, the system just hangs solid.”
“Have you got the problem in other modules? The communications program, the satellite navigation program, the Link Eleven?”
“Haven’t gotten that far.”
“Have you taken the system down completely and reloaded it? I mean down all the way—cold start.”
“Mr. uh … Shrobo,” said one of the men in khaki, and Hank swiveled the stool slowly to him. “I’m Chief Dawson. This is Chief Mainhardt. And, ’scuse me, but we aren’t idiots. Every time we do that, it comes up clean for about an hour, then craps in the NTDS module.”
“I know you’re not idiots,” he’d said carefully. If only the compartment would quit rolling … “I just like to start the faultlocation logic from block one. Does it lock up in the same segment every time?”
“No, it jumps around inside the module.”
“Have you looked closely at the source code when it does?”
“Shit, Mr.—”
“Hank,” said Shrobo.
“Matthew,” said the black man. “Shit, Hank, we been banging our heads against CMS-2 so long, we’re about done in trying to do this manually.”
He thought about this for a while, looking around at the compartment, the memory units, the hulking gray slabs of the shock-mounted, water-cooled mainframes. CMS-2 was the standard Navy programming language. But the executive program itself was written in assembly language, computer-specific code, because it ran faster. It had to run fast because of everything it had to do: schedule and dispatch program modules, manage memory, service input/ output communications requests, as well as the internal stuff, the redundancy, fault tolerance and alternate configuration schemes built into the system architecture.
These men were just technicians, but they sounded competent. So he could assume it wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved by swapping cards or patching a few lines of code. He rubbed his face. It felt wet, though ice-cold air was blasting out of the ceiling. His stomach felt like he was still in the helicopter. That sensation of utter terror, then swinging around at the end of the line—
“Grab that swab bucket, quick,” said Dawson. “Get his head down. Take him out to the deep sink, Matt.”
When he felt better, he rested in the little broom closet, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve—there was nothing in the closet he felt like touching—and followed the one they called Matt back down the hall.
“Sorry I got sick.”
“No problem, Hank. Hey, call me Ted, okay?”
He looked rather shakily around the room. “Yeah, sounds like you got a problem. My box—there it is. I brought some software tools from the lab. Maybe we need to load those and take a look at this thing.”
“Okay by me.” Williams pulled a knife, sliced through the strapping tape.
As he loaded the program, Shrobo opened his briefcase and put on his working glasses. Thank God he hadn’t left them in his suitcase. He perched on the metal chair in front of the screen.
“Uh, you gonna be a while? We’re thinking of breaking for chow—”
“Go ahead,” he mumbled.
“Somebody better stay with him.”
“I’ll stay,” said Williams. “Bring me a sandwich. Chicken, if they got it. You want one, Hank?”
“Half the chicken sold in the United States is contaminated with salmonella,” Shrobo told him.
“Say what? That mean you don’t want one?”
“I prefer organic foods.”
Dawson said slowly, “Oh. What—you mean like liver?”
“No.” He swallowed again, wishing they’d abandon the subject. “Look, I’m not really hungry. You go ahead.”
When they finally left, he ran some of the test tools. Williams sat close to him, staring at the monitor. Occasionally he asked a question. Hank replied absently, tapping in commands, then twisting to watch the lights flicker across the face of the computer. He pulled a pad toward him and started jotting numbers in columns. “Huh,” he said at last.
“What’s that?”
“Take a look. See this segment here?”
“Uh-huh. What about it?”
“There’s something strange about it. Look at these pointers.”
Williams looked at it. “This pointer here,” Hank said, putting his finger right on one line.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“This WRITE instruction
here creams whatever instructions are in that location.” He swallowed again as the room and the console took a lean and his chair tried to skid away across the deck. “Do boats always roll like this?”
“Naw, this is nice’n calm tonight,” said Williams. “I better make us some fresh coffee. Sounds like it gonna be a long night. Or would you rather have a Coke?”
Hank thought of the herbal tea he’d tucked into his suitcase. “Yeah. Coke,” he muttered.
NOW, standing by the rail, Shrobo remembered that night and the long nights and days at sea after it. At first, he’d been intrigued, then entranced, then fatigued, and now he was starting to feel angry and bewildered. The loud warrant officer, Harper, coming in two and three times a day; and his boss, the serious-looking lieutenant; and twice the XO, the one with the Russian name. That didn’t bother him; he just shunted them off to one of the chiefs to explain things in one-syllable words. What disturbed him was that he couldn’t figure out how so many errors had gotten onto the tape.
The first thing he’d tried was to systematize what the sailors had already attempted randomly. He’d loaded the new Version 3.1 tape he’d brought, ran it for an hour, then done a diagnostic. To his surprise, it tripped over several bad segments, although this same tape had run perfectly back at Vartech. He marked them with break points and started patching line by line, comparing what was in the computer with the printed source listing. That had taken two days, stripping in correct code everywhere he found bad.
But today when he ran it, the computer had locked up on a section he knew he’d already fixed.
Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. That was what was so disturbing. The great Henry S. Shrobo, B.S. from Brigham Young, M.S. and Ph.D. in applied physics from Johns Hopkins, senior analyst for Vartech and sometime member of the JHU/APL Advanced Computer Architecture Working Group, stopped in his tracks by an elusive bug in an already-fleet-approved system architecture. If he couldn’t crack this one, he’d better start thinking about running an organic vegetable farm.
He stood staring out into the dark, no longer seeing the stars or the hills. The warm wind fanned his face, bringing the scents of the land. But he didn’t smell them.
Sometime later, the door opened behind him, and he started, surprised. “Sorry,” someone said.
“Matt?”
It was Williams, startled, too. “What you doing out here, Doc? Thought you’d be ashore.”
“Doc?” He didn’t see how they knew. He still hadn’t told them.
“‘Doctor DOS.’ You picked up a nickname, man.”
“Are we permitted ashore? I didn’t know.”
“Remember when they passed the word—‘Liberty call, liberty call’? That’s what it means.”
“Why are you here, then?”
Williams grinned painfully. “Duty section. Yeah, you get over and grab you a beer while you can.”
“I don’t drink. Maybe I’d better just stay aboard, get back to that bad code in the tracking module.”
“Jesus, Hank. You’re like one of those Guild Steersmen, aren’t you? Can’t get enough of that spice.” Williams punched his arm. “How about a workout?”
“I don’t think I’d be able to—”
“Be able to?”
“I’m not what you’d call a physical person.”
Williams punched his arm again. “We got us a nice weight room—machines and everything. Me an’ Baby J and some of the other dudes, we go down there every night, break a sweat. Get you down there for a couple weeks, I bet you’d be pressing two hundred.”
“Two hundred pounds?” He had to smile. “I don’t think so.”
“Give it a try. It’s organic, man. Like that good Navy chow.”
He had to laugh at that. He’d been appalled at the food on the mess decks. Milk and hardboiled eggs, that’s all he’d found that looked safe to eat. “Okay. Maybe a little exercise will clear my head.”
Taking a last breath of the sultry air, he followed the petty officer below.
21
THE next morning, Dan slumped nervelessly in the TAO chair, grateful for the cool dark. CIC was dim and quiet, the ideal place for a guy with the hangover of the decade.
He couldn’t remember it all, but he had to have had at least six planter’s punches with the fucking Venezuelans and four or five drinks playing dice after the other officers arrived. After that was a black curtain. He couldn’t remember where his bike was. Had he left it at the club? Like he had his motorcycle in Charleston? He didn’t think he could have kept it pointed straight all the way downhill to the pier.
Reveille had jerked him awake at 0400 with a feeling of horror at what he’d done to himself. He took one look at breakfast and had to leave and barf in the urinal. Fortunately, he had a break now as Barrett got under way.
How could he have done it again? Going into the club, he hadn’t planned to get drunk. He’d told himself, One martini with dinner. But that first one had softened his resolution, and the second had washed away any idea of restraint. After that, he’d just drunk and drunk, not caring what, just that the glass was heavy in his hand and then light and that there was another behind it.
I’ve got to stop drinking so much, he thought. Maybe cut out the hard liquor. It was stupid to get plastered the night before he had to think fast and make the right decisions.
Now he leaned forward. The big SSWC scope showed the land as a green fluorescence, the channel as jet studded with jade. They were second in the morning parade going out. Dahlgren led, then Barrett, Federación, Manitowoc, the LST, and last the oiler, USS Canisteo.
Lauderdale, the CIC officer, came by and Dan said, “Herb, what have we got this morning?”
“I taped a schedule up between your chair and the skipper’s, sir.”
He blinked at it. Right now, the bridge team was conducting a low-visibility piloting exercise. Offshore, they’d do test firing, engineering drills, a CON-1-EX—whatever that was—seamanship, tracking and electronic drills, and finish with general quarters for chemical, bacteriolocial, and radiological training before heading back in.
“Herb, this CON-one—”
“That’s a general quarters, then whatever they assign. Usually like rocket hits or shell hits, to get us spun up for damage control and casualty repair.”
One of the blue coveralls passed through, and the atmosphere seemed to chill. Dan recognized the senior instructor, Schwartzchild. He didn’t stop, though, just kept going, swinging his clipboard. Headed down to the engineering spaces, most likely.
“Coming up on the sea buoy,” said Chief Kennedy.
“Then what?”
“We’ll be coming left to one-three-seven and slowing to conform to the swept channel. Stand by—”
“Now secure the special sea and anchor detail. General quarters. General quarters. This is a drill. All hands, man your battle stations—”
Life jackets flew through the air to outstretched hands. Dan buttoned his collar and settled his helmet. Into the meat grinder, he thought. It was going to be a long morning.
THEY went from the swept channel transit to a main space fire drill, simulating a mine hit. Combat and Radio were tied down with system control, tracking, and electronic surveillance and countermeasures drills. The training team moved them along, not very fast yet, but without letup except for a half-hour lunch break. Dan kept chugging coffee and Cokes and gradually lost himself in the exercises.
In the afternoon, they moved farther offshore for tracking and comm drills with Dahlgren. At first, they were miles apart, then joined up for the seamanship exercises. When the 1MC called the replenishment detail to stations, Dan got a break to go out and observe.
The day was so bright it hurt his eyes, closed down from hours in the cave. The sky and sea blazed as one, luminous with tropical light, and the deck was baking-hot. He found a vantage point on the Harpoon deck as First Division rigged for under-way replenishment.
His first job in the Navy had been a
s first lieutenant. It felt strange to be looking on as they sweated and swore, frantically rigging for a high-line transfer as Dahlgren edged closer. He saw himself in Ensign Paul, saw old Harvey Bloch when he looked at Chief Giles. Over the young taut faces seemed superimposed those of his old division—BM1 Isaacs, “Popeye” Rambaugh, Petty Officer Pettus, the loose league of bad boys that called themselves the “Kinnicks.” As both ships steadied up into the wind, the sea went mad between them, leaping and frothing as the two hulls closed on it. Then the line-throwing gun cracked.
At 1400, they broke off and headed for their assigned firing area. Dan checked their coordinates carefully against the surface grid warning areas before requesting “batteries released” from Leighty. Shortly afterward, he heard the tapping of the .50’s as they fired the antimine exercise.
The GQ alarm bonged again at 1500 for the chemical and nuclear attack drill. The ventilation died as all over the ship intakes closed and fans stopped. The Kidds were the first U.S. ship class that could completely seal themselves off from outside air.
“Now contamination has been detected inside the skin of the ship. All hands don gas masks.”
They started heading back in at 1700, but the drills continued till they were pierside. When the 1MC announced, “Moored,” Dan took off his earphones and sagged in his chair. Maybe he could snatch a shower, lie in his rack for thirty seconds—
“Now all chiefs and officers assemble in the wardroom for postexercise critique.”
“OKAY, next, the chemical attack.”
Woollie sat and Chief Schwartzchild stood. He read off his clipboard with a poker face, every word the same inflection, so you couldn’t tell what was important from what wasn’t; you had to listen to it all. Dan, on the settee, made a note in his wheel book.
“It took seven minutes to set Zebra throughout the ship. Nonessential people were still present on weather decks. Ventilation was secured and Circle William was set expeditiously. The damage control assistant passed the word properly and the team was in appropriate dress. However, it did not exit the ship or carry out rescue or decontamination of the wounded. Overall grade, unsat.”