Dust on the Sea (23 page)

They had had nothing to do with starting the war, nor, for that matter, had he, nor had Bungo Pete. Perhaps, as Blunt had once suggested, he spent too much of his time thinking about the lifeboats. Was that why he had wished to rush to the aid of Les Hartly and the
Chicolar
? Was he still impelled to rush headlong into danger in order to satisfy his unconscious craving for absolution? If so, perhaps Blunt was right. He had no right to risk his men or his ship to fulfill some inner psychological compulsion of his own.

He waited in the conning tower until the dive was complete, and
Eel
was cruising quietly at periscope depth. Suddenly he felt tired. Keith had been standing silently in the after part of the conning tower alongside Buck Williams, facing the now quiet TDC. Neither had said a word to him. Perhaps they had some inkling of the inner turmoil which possessed him.

“Keith,” he said in a low voice, “secure from battle stations. Set the regular submerged watch. I'm going below.”

He swung himself onto the ladder leading to the control room, went down with his back to the ladder, his heels on the rungs, supporting himself from falling by hands on the opposite side of the hatch coaming.

In the control room, Al Dugan obviously wanted to say something. He beat him to it. “Al,” he said, “Keith has the conn in the conning tower. We'll be securing from battle stations in a minute. He'll turn over to you.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Al. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Captain?”

“What is it?”

“We have a problem coming back, Captain; it's the hydraulic system. I didn't want to bother you about it before with all that was going on, but she's recycling fast again. If we're going to have a few hours, I'd like to turn to on it with a couple of men. We'll have to put the planes in hand power, and secure the plant. You won't be able to use the periscopes for several hours.” Dugan's normally stolid face was clearly worried.

-
  
5
  
-

A
l Dugan's plan of attack on the hydraulic system was to isolate all of its parts and methodically inspect each one. “We're lucky to have that fellow Lichtmann aboard, Captain,” he said. “Our boat was built in Portsmouth, and
Nerka
at Mare Island. She was an earlier boat than this one, but Mare Island builds to Portsmouth designs, and it turns out he was
Nerka
's hydraulic plant expert. Starberg and Sargent are pretty good at it too; so we've got our three best men on it, and we'll go at it systematically. There must be something basic wrong with it.”

“How long will it take you to put the plant back in commission if we need it? If we can't use the periscopes, we'll be in trouble if something turns up.”

“Depending upon which part we take down, we should be able to get the vital parts of the system working again in an hour. To find the problem, though, may take several days. I'd like to begin with the periscope hoists, and that's why I thought maybe we could go deep for a while. I'll let you know if we strike any trouble. We'll have it ready for surfacing by sunset for sure.”

“Okay, Al. Let me know if there's anything at all anybody else can do to help.” He felt a deep yawn arising from the depths of his being. Going deep for a few hours would give the whole crew a rest. He wanted nothing so much as to surrender to the demands of sleep.

Blunt, as usual, was sitting in the wardroom, unlighted pipe in his mouth.

“Commodore, we're going to have to stay below periscope depth for a while. I'm turning in. You should do the same,” said Rich.

“I'm not sleepy,” said Blunt. “You go ahead. I'll call you if anything turns up.”

So far as anything turning up in any way connected with
Eel
, Rich thought, he had better be informed of it before Blunt, who was, after all, sort of an official passenger, not involved with the operations of the ship. But it was a small matter, not worth worrying about. He removed his outer clothing, climbed in his bunk, and was instantly asleep.

Al Dugan awakened him several hours later. “We think we may have
found at least some of the trouble in the system,” said the engineer. “The accumulator ram may be scored again—she's not holding pressure like she ought—but the main trouble seems to be in the overload bypass system. This new design has a complicated valving setup. I think some of the valves are sticking. We don't know which ones, though.”

The clock on Rich's stateroom bulkhead was indicating nearly noon. “I must have been asleep quite a while, Al. What shape do you have the plant in now?”

“Well, we're still checking some of the parts, but unless we find anything more, we'll have to go with what we've got. We'll have it ready to surface by sunset,” Al promised.

It was with gratitude for a long comfortable rest that Richardson brought
Eel
to periscope depth several hours later, and, just at sunset, took a careful look around through the periscope. Nothing was in sight. The sea was flat, calm as before. The murky gray atmosphere was unchanged.

The worrying in his mind had been growing stronger as the uneventful day wore to its close. The overcast sky reflected his mood. “Keith,” he said, “be sure Rogers has the radar all peaked up before we surface. I want to see if we can pick up the
Whitefish
and
Chicolar
radars on ours. No telling where they'll be. Both ought to be north of us, I think.”

As it grew dark, the familiar surfacing routine took place and Richardson was on the dripping bridge. “There are no stars, Keith,” he called down the hatch. “You'll have to work on dead reckoning.” This had been anticipated. No stars had been seen through the periscope either. Keith clicked the bridge speaker button from the conning tower twice.

The deep rumble of two main engines recharging the battery and providing steerageway was always comforting to hear.
Eel
settled into her surface cruising routine. Another night of tense watchfulness in enemy waters lay ahead. It felt almost better this way than to be submerged deep below periscope depth, with 'scopes inoperative because of lack of hydraulic pressure. Rich looked up at the shears. On their after side, just above the topmost periscope support bearing, the slotted oval dish which was the radar antenna rotated ceaselessly. Evidently it was seeing nothing, not even the radar of another submarine, for otherwise it would have been searching right and left of the suspect bearings, looking for confirmation in short, jerky sweeps.

“Permission to come on the bridge and dump trash and garbage!” a shout from the conning tower. Part of the surfacing routine. Since the
captain was on the bridge, permission for such matters had to be sought from him—an authoritarian obligation he would abdicate the moment he passed below. Buck Williams cast a quick look at his skipper, received a nod in return.

“Permission granted to dump trash and garbage,” Buck called down the hatch. In a moment two men dragging filled gunny sacks behind them appeared on the bridge. The OOD and skipper moved out of their way to permit them clear passage to the cigarette deck, where the two men in a practiced maneuver flung each sack in turn clear of the side and into the water. “One more coming up, Bridge. A juicy one.” There was someone in the conning tower boosting the sacks up to the bridge. A little more gingerly, the third sack was carried aft, thrown overboard also. Wiping their hands on their shirts, the two men stood for a minute, sucking in deep lungfuls of the salt-laden air, then in turn went below.

Richardson waited a few more minutes. Still no sign from the radar. It was now completely dark. The visibility was less than the previous night, perhaps five miles. Surely by now
Whitefish
and
Chicolar
would be surfacing.

“Going below, Buck,” he said abruptly. He reached for the rail above the hatch to the conning tower, with distaste found it covered with a slimy, sticky substance. “Buck,” he said sharply, “get this rail wiped off, and have some words with the cook. One of the garbage detail always ought to have a rag with him and wipe the rails down when they're finished. Otherwise somebody is sure to slip and hurt himself sometime. Especially if we make a sudden dive.” He realized there had been a slight irritation in his voice, more than he wanted to show.

Rogers looked up as Richardson approached the radar console. “No contact,” he said. “Nothing at all. No pips. No sweeping radars. Just lots of grass, and land to the northeast.”

“We're too far away to pick up any of those tincans who were depth-charging
Chicolar
last night,” Keith said, “unless they've decided to head down this way. But if conditions are right, we should be able to see one of the other boats' radars as far as fifty miles, maybe more.”

“I know,” Rogers said. “Except you can't figure out these atmospheric conditions. Just now we got contact on land over sixty miles away which Mr. Leone says must be Quelpart. I've never seen this kind of range on this radar. It's got to be atmospherics!”

Suddenly he looked closer at the radar, crowding alongside Keith, also bent over the unhooded dial. “Mark!” he said. “Look at that!”

Richardson moved in. The sweeping wand rotated slowly clockwise,
passed the 6 o'clock position, the 9 o'clock position, and then, nearly at 12 o'clock, it was broken into a series of short dashes. “There it is,” all three men said almost simultaneously.

“Steady on it, Rogers,” said Keith. “Give us a bearing!”

In obedience to Rogers' manipulation of the control handle, the moving wand steadied, swept back and forth over the area it had been crossing, was broken again into dots as the unseen outline of another sweeping wand far off the scope to the north intersected it.

“Who is it?” asked Rich.

“Don't know, sir,” said the radarman. “If he steadies on us maybe we can exchange calls.”

The alien wand continued its periodic sweeps for several minutes, then at last hesitated uncertainly, swept jerkily back and forth, finally beamed directly at the wand emanating from
Eel
.

“There he is, sir. He's on us now,” said Rogers. “Shall I give him the recognition signal?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

The code name for each submarine was her skipper's nickname, and its initial letter had been settled on for radar recognition purposes. A standard radio-telegraph key, shorting out the transmitter, made it possible to key the radar pulses. Deliberately Rogers pushed the key three times, holding it down for approximately one second the first time, five seconds the second, and one second the third.

On the 'scope
Eel
's wand suddenly vanished, came back on, was interrupted for a longer period, came back on, vanished for a third time, and then returned to its normal intensity: a dot, a dash, a dot; the letter R in Morse code.

They waited a full minute. “Send it again, Rogers,” said Rich. Once again the radarman tapped the radio gate key. Again they watched. At last there was an answering interruption from the alien radar—a dot and two dashes.

“That's a W for ‘Whitey,'” said Keith. “I'll bet
Whitefish
has just surfaced.”

The feeling of disquiet in Rich's mind was stronger. “Resume your normal radar search, Rogers,” he said. “See if you can pick up
Chicolar
. He should be to the right of
Whitefish
.” For several minutes the trio stood in front of the radar, inspecting it carefully whenever it swept over the northern arc, but nothing was seen.

Dinner in the wardroom was a gloomy affair. At the conclusion of the meal Keith excused himself from the wardroom, returned a moment later. He shook his head slightly as he looked, gravely and unblinkingly, at his skipper.

“Commodore,” said Rich slowly, “I'm worried about the
Chicolar
. We've been unable to raise her. We have the
Whitefish
okay—she's up somewhere to the north of us—and I figure that
Chicolar
ought to be up there too, but she hasn't come in yet.”

“There are lots of reasons why Les Hartly may not have been able to check in with us yet, Rich,” said Blunt. “There's no cause to worry, at least not yet.”

“He may be in trouble, Commodore,” said Richardson.

Blunt said nothing, puffed his pipe impassively. He was sitting exactly where he had been all day, exactly where he had placed himself after the convoy action of the night before. For all Richardson knew, he might have sat in the same place all day long.

“Commodore,” he said, “anything could have happened. They were caught on the surface, remember. They might even be on the bottom and unable to surface.”

Blunt palmed the pipe bowl. “What do you want to do, Rich?” he said. His gravelly voice was smooth, too smooth.

“I still think we should have tried to do something this morning,” said Rich quietly.

“So? Well, why didn't you?” Blunt squeezed the pipe bowl. His hand was trembling slightly. “Do you mean to say that you would have been willing to take this crippled submarine, with a bad hydraulic system, up against three alerted enemy antisubmarine ships?”

There was an unreal undercurrent in the conversation. “But Commodore, the hydraulic system trouble wasn't reported until after. . . . Besides, we didn't have to tear it down right then. It could have lasted——”