by Nevil Shute
The first trial worked satisfactorily at the first attempt. There was great satisfaction till the machine came out for the second trial, when the device failed to work for three successive runs over the battleship, functioning at the fourth attempt. On the third and last trial it worked at the second attempt.
The trawler went back to harbour, and the battleship steamed out to sea in the falling dusk, bound for some unknown destination. She had other things to do besides serving as a lay figure for the trials of a secret weapon. No other battleship was to be available for a fortnight; in the meantime trials were to go on with a cruiser.
As the trawler steamed back to harbour, Burnaby held a little conference with Legge and Hewitt in the reeling chartroom. “It works perfectly when it does work,” he said. “It’s a pity that it isn’t more reliable.”
Legge said, “That isn’t fundamental to it, sir. It can be made reliable as soon as we find out exactly what the forces are to operate it. But at the moment we’re trying to do the exploration without records, and with an explosive charge on board the aeroplane.”
Burnaby said directly, “Do you feel that we shall not be able to get it ready for service in this way?”
Legge said, “No, I don’t feel that. I think this way is far the quickest method of getting it ready for use in war. But I do think that we’re taking some appalling risks.”
Hewitt said, “We did decide to take them, after a good deal of thought.”
The civilian said, “I know. I suppose I’m not used to this sort of thing.”
Burnaby said, rather unexpectedly, “None of us are.”
It was practically dark when Legge and Hewitt got back to the aerodrome. Chambers was waiting for them there; together they went through the results with him. “The milli-ammeter went up over thirty-five on the first and third run of trial two,” he said, “and on the first of trial three. I switched off each time. I can’t see why it didn’t work all right the second run of trial two.”
There was a long silence. The civilian studied the pencilled sheet of the pilot’s notes carefully and methodically.
Hewitt said at last, “Does that mean anything to you Professor?”
The other said slowly, “I think so. I’d like to work upon this for a bit. It’s quite clear we want different modulation for the battleship, and while we’re at it we might drop the frequency a bit. How long did Burnaby say that it would be before we had a battleship again?”
“A fortnight.”
“That’s good. I think we should be able to be more reliable by then.”
Chambers turned to Hewitt. “A signal came through from the Dockyard about the cruiser, sir. They want to know if the trial tomorrow is confirmed.”
The wing commander turned to Legge. “Is that all right, Professor?”
“Is what all right?”
“To go on tomorrow with the cruiser.”
The civilian looked at them over his spectacles. “The current will rise quicker if it’s going up at all. That’s because of the smaller absolute size of ship, you understand. There won’t be much longer than two and a half seconds for throwing the switch.”
Chambers said, “If there’s two and a half seconds, that’s all right, sir. I had time to eat a banana today.”
“Two seconds is a very short time, Chambers,” Legge said seriously.
The pilot laughed. “It’s the hell of a long time when you’re sitting with your hand upon the switch, wondering what that bloody little needle’s going to do,” he said. “No, seriously, sir — I think it’s quite all right.”
Hewitt said, “You’re the sole judge of that, Chambers. If you feel that time is rather short, just say so, and we’ll have to tackle it some other way.”
The pilot said, “Two and a half seconds is quite long enough to throw that switch out, sir. As a matter of fact there is no other way to do this, is there?”
“Only by exploring and plotting the air all round a typical ship of this size.”
“Well, that’s absurd. I mean, it’d take a month of Sundays to do that. No, this is perfectly all right for me.”
They discussed it for a few minutes longer, sketching a little in pencil on a pad. Finally Hewitt said, “All right, we’ll have the ship tomorrow. I’ll make a signal to the Dockyard. We’ve got her till the end of the week.”
The pilot said, “That’s fine. We should be able to get somewhere with it in that time.”
They dispersed. Legge took the pilot’s notes and went back in his car to Southsea, driving slowly in the dark, with a new horror to sit by his side. To him, two seconds was a desperately short time. He was a man of middle age and his reaction times were getting longer with the years; it was difficult for him to place himself in the position of the pilot, who could operate the switch in one-fifth of a second. Disaster stared him in the face, and drove him to his calculations for the cruiser as soon as he got to his flat. The battleship problem was relegated to a corner of his mind. He had a shrewd idea now of the source of all their difficulties with that and he could see the means of overcoming them; when next they went out to a battleship the thing would work right every time. But that was now no longer of the first importance. In one night’s work he must now cover the ground of three months’ steady research on the cruiser if an accident were to be made reasonably impossible. No man living could do that, but he must do what lay within his power.
Immediately he settled down to work, with blueprints, pad, and calculating machine.
Chambers went back to the mess, and up to his bedroom. He had a little electric stove in his room at Titchfield that he had bought at the local ironmonger’s and had adapted furtively to work from the lighting circuit; it overloaded the circuit but warmed the room beautifully. He turned on this and tuned the wireless to the Columbia system; for a few minutes he listened to an agricultural expert answering queries about hog disease in Iowa. Then he got out the caravel, and spent a happy hour shipbuilding.
He dined in the mess, and played bridge for an hour or so, winning three and twopence. Then he drank a pint of beer and had a game of shoveha’penny with a flight lieutenant. By ten o’clock he was retiring to his room; he was sleeping quietly by eleven. He slept till after seven in the morning.
Mona, on her part, spent the evening in the bar, as usual. She was still vaguely dissatisfied, though less restless than she had been before Jerry had returned from Yorkshire. She still thought it would be nice to be in the perfumery department of a big shop, but you couldn’t do everything. She knew very well that matters could not be static now between Jerry and herself; she might end up as Mrs. Chambers or she might end up as Mrs. Smith; beside either avocation the perfumery paled into insignificance. If her life was in fact to be linked with Jerry’s she did not want his friends to know her as a girl that he had picked up in a shop. In a confused way she had certain social grades defined and ordered in her mind. She would do him less harm in his career if she married him as a barmaid than if she married from a shop, or so she thought.
These reflections mitigated the snack bar of the Royal Clarence to her. She was tired of the smell of beer and of the stickiness of vermouth, but she was able to bear with it phlegmatically.
That evening was fairly slack, being the middle of the week. In the seven months that had elapsed since the beginning of the war she had come to know a great many young naval officers by sight, habituées of the bar, young men serving on ships based upon the port who came there for a grill when their ships were in. That evening there was a little party of new faces, a lieutenant commander R.N., two lieutenants R.N.R. — men of thirty-five or forty, these, hard-looking toughs — and a young sub in the R.N.V.R. This party joined up with a little group of minesweepers; their gossip very soon told Mona that the newcomers were off a salvage ship.
The salvage men drank whiskey. They talked a good deal of the war in Finland, recently concluded; one of them had spent a good many years in Baltic ports. They talked of football pools, and of magne
tic mines and how to sweep them up. This last discussion was in very low tones, so low that the barmaid heard only a few words here and there. From that, by natural transition, they went on to German submarines.
A trawler officer said, “I was at Sheerness the first three months. The destroyers were at them every day, then. But it’s eased off now. Down here, we don’t get hardly any. One a week — not more.”
One of the R.N.R. salvage men said, “They’re still getting a good few around the estuary. Not like they were, of course, but still — a few. We picked up one of them off the Goodwins, ‘bout a month ago.”
“Picked it up?”
“Yah. Took it in to Dover.”
The trawlerman said, “Get any of the crew?”
The other shook his head. “There was plenty of them in it, but they were dead. It had been depth-charged all to hell — the hull was split in three places. We reckoned she’d been going home upon the surface in the night, and hit the sands about low water. Then up comes the tide before she can get off, and drowns the lot.”
The trawler man said, “What’s everybody drinking?”
He turned to Mona, “Same all round, Lady.”
She busied herself with the whiskies. Somebody else asked, “Did they learn anything useful from the submarine?”
“I don’t know about that. We went off on another job. I only know that there was one bloody funny thing we found.”
“What’s that?”
The man turned to the lieutenant commander. “Tell ’em about the torpedo tubes, sir.”
The naval officer smiled slowly. “Only one tube,” he said. “I went in at the first low tide to see if any of the tubes were loaded.”
One of the R.N.V.R. officers said, “Grisly sort of job.”
“Yes — it was rather.” He was silent for a minute, thinking again of that eerie journey through the black cavities of the dead submarine, flashing an electric torch before him. The structure had dripped salt water on him at each step; it had smelt abominably of fuel oil, salt water, chlorine, and corruption; it had been slippery and very dark.
He said, “I opened the back doors of all the tubes. One of them was full of fuel oil.”
“Fuel oil?”
The officer nodded. “I opened the door and it all came out, all over the floor and my boots and everything.”
One of the trawler men said, “How did that stuff get into a torpedo tube?”
The other laughed. “That’s not the end of it. What do you think came out with the oil?”
One of the R.N.V.R. officers, fingering his third whiskey, said gravely, “A nest of field mice.”
The naval officer said, “Well, you’re wrong. Most of a British rating’s kit.”
They all stared at him. “In the oil?”
“In the oil, in the torpedo tube. There was a hat, and a couple of jumpers, and a shirt, and a pair of bags, and a lot of Portsmouth City Council tram tickets, if you please. All sorts of stuff.”
They were incredulous. “But how did that get there?”
The salvage officer laughed. “It’s one of their tricks. They keep a tube full of fuel oil and British sailors’ stuff. If they get in a tight corner they discharge the lot, blow the tube through with the compressed air. We see a lot of oil and air come up and stop our depth charges. Then we see a British matloe’s hat floating in the oil, and we get all hot and bothered, and stop bombing altogether. And while we’re dithering about, he gets away.”
“How long have they been doing this?”
“God knows. We’ve only just cottoned onto it. This one on the Goodwins was the first definite case we found of it.”
Somebody said, “They’re up to any bloody sort of trick you like.”
Somebody else said, “I’ve heard of periscopes being stuck in a floating barrel, but I never heard of that one.”
Behind the counter the barmaid stood motionless, staring at them. It was the clothes that came up in the fuel oil that had decided the Court of Enquiry upon Caranx; Jerry had told her so. But for that they would have given weight to what he said about there being no identification marks. The officer had said that they had only recently come to realize the floating clothes to be a German trick. What if it had been going on some time? What if the submarine that Jerry had sunk had really been a German one, as he had thought?
She must see Jerry, and tell him.
The officers went to their meal, and she went on with her work, absently, in a dream. She served one gin and French to a subaltern who had asked for three beers, and she served two bottles of Guinness instead of two small whiskies to a couple of Marines. Then she broke a sherry glass.
Miriam said, “That’s the third glass gone this evening. Mr. Harries, he won’t half be cross.”
“Sorry,” said Mona. “I was thinking of something else.”
There was more in it than just the clothes. There were other funny things that she had heard. What was it she had heard about the slick, with oil all coming up? Porky something. Porky . . . Porky . . . Porky Thomas. That was the name. Porky Thomas had sailed through the slick with the oil coming up, but she couldn’t remember that he had said anything about clothes. But Porky Thomas had said it was just off Departure Point, and it wasn’t off Departure Point at all. She had asked Jerry that, and he had said it was much more towards the Island.
But some one else had said something about a submarine that had been sunk off Departure Point, surely? In a newspaper — a newspaper cutting about contraceptives. The one that that young officer had had — Jimmie . . . Joey . . . James — Mouldy James. That said a submarine had been sunk just off Departure Point, and on the same day, too. But Jerry was quite sure it hadn’t been anywhere near Departure Point. It seemed all nonsense, any way you looked at it.
Somebody asked for two beers and a gin and Italian. She served him correctly, and began to rinse some glasses. That newspaper cutting must have been all wrong. After all, it was only an American paper, and they weren’t half so good as English papers. Everybody knew that. It was obviously wrong, because it was wrong in another place as well. It said that Caranx broke into two bits when she was sunk, so that the bow and stern came up separately, both at the same time. That was all wrong in the paper; Jerry had told her just what happened. Caranx had sunk by going right up on one end, and going down straight, like that. The two ends never showed at the same time.
You couldn’t believe anything you saw in foreign papers, anyway. What with the different way of sinking and the different place, it might have been a different submarine, the way they wrote about it.
It might have been a different submarine.
She stood stock-still for a moment. That was probably the truth of it. They were sinking them the whole time. But then, Porky Thomas should have known, and all the officers that were talking about Porky Thomas, that same evening. Or was it the next evening? She had forgotten. Funny they hadn’t said about another submarine that had been sunk, the day that Jerry had sunk Caranx. And Mouldy James, he hadn’t seemed to know about it, either.
But that was quite silly. If nobody had known about a second submarine being sunk that day, who was it sunk it? Jerry hadn’t sunk two. Whoever sunk the second one must have known.
Well then, there couldn’t have been a second one at all. But then, that seemed to be all wrong, too.
A rush of orders came upon her then, and drove the matter from her mind. It was something terribly important that she must talk over with Jerry when she met him; she felt sure he would be able to resolve the puzzle for her, and explain what it all meant. In the meantime there was a crowd of thirsty officers to serve, and she must get on with her job.
She left the Royal Clarence at about a quarter past ten, and went home. Her father and her mother were still up when she got home, sitting in the little kitchen, one each side of the fire.
Her mother said, “We just had a cup of tea, dearie. Make yourself a cup; it’s still hot in the pot.”
She shook her he
ad. “I don’t mind a cup of cocoa.” But there was no cocoa, and she prepared to go upstairs to bed.
She paused at the foot of the stairs. “Dad,” she said. “You couldn’t sink a submarine without you knew it, could you?”
He took off his spectacles and stared at her. “Who couldn’t sink a submarine?”
“I mean, if a submarine got sunk, somebody would know who’d done it?”
“Should do, girl. Who’s been talking to you?”
She said, “Nobody special. It’s just what I heard in the bar. There was one sunk, and no one seems to know who sunk it.”
“Sunk in the Channel? In these parts?”
“Off Departure Point, they was saying.”
“Off Departure Point.” He ruminated for a while over this conundrum. “The only thing would be, if it had been sunk by another German submarine, by mistake, like. Nobody would know then who done it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that makes sense. It doesn’t matter. I was only wondering, because they was all talking about it.”
He said, “That’s the only way I knows as it could happen without anybody knowing.”
She went up to her room and got into bed, the problem still in the background of her mind. Jerry would put it right for her. It was five more days before she met him, unless the weather were to turn bad suddenly. But there was not much chance of that; in fact, it was unusually fine for the time of year.
Still, five days would soon go.
She slept.
Psychiatrists say that when you go to sleep with something on your mind, some difficult problem, your subconscious mind continues working at it all night through. Mona woke up at about three in the morning, and sat bolt upright in bed.
It wasn’t Caranx that Jerry had sunk. It was a German, a German with British sailor’s clothes in her torpedo tubes. Caranx had been the other one, sunk off Departure Point.
The pieces of the puzzle fitted then, each one of them in its own place. Jerry had been absolutely right when he had said he had seen no identification marks upon the hydrovanes. Of course he hadn’t; it was a German submarine, as he had thought. It was steering the same course as Caranx from Departure Point, perhaps to try and make its way into Portsmouth. But it was late; it couldn’t have known Caranx’s time schedule.