Crash Dive

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Schultze, the spear in his right hand, hauled himself onto the deck, using the spare end of one of the jump wires that ran from conning tower to stem. “Bremen, stop!”

  The radio officer heard him at last, half turned, his eyes not quite human. As Schultze drove the spear home, it seemed to him that Bremen had gone, in a literal sense, berserk. He was more bear, or wolf, than man. Bremen, rolling away from the pain, still gripped the lanyard. As they struggled, blood leaping like a fountain from the wound in Bremen’s throat, the gun fired.

  Schultze held his man down on the slippery deck until there was no further sign of life. Bremen’s death rattle and the parody of “Lilli Marlene” faded simultaneously. When Schultze looked up, the white ship was on fire. In that moment, he knew that regardless of what happened now, whether the fire was contained or not, whether there were casualties or not, he and his men had just been made parties to a war crime that could only be expiated in more blood. The retribution that would surely follow would destroy their paradise. He would marry Python Woman, as he had promised, that night. Then he would surrender himself to the Americans.

  Hat for a Sail

  JEAN RABE

  Jean Rabe is the author of eleven fantasy novels and more than two dozen short stories. Among the former are two DragonLance trilogies, and among the latter are tales published in the DAW anthologies Warrior Fantastic, Creature Fantastic, Knight Fantastic, and Guardians of Tomorrow. She is the editor of two DAW collections, Sol’s Children and Historical Hauntings, and a Lone Wolf Publications CD anthology: Carnival. When she’s not writing or editing (which isn’t very often), she plays war games and role-playing games, visits museums, pretends to garden, tugs on old socks with her two dogs, and attempts to put a dent in her towering “to be read” stack of books.

  MILLER SUSPECTED DYING would feel just like this. He could scarcely breathe, his chest so tight he swore a mule was sitting squarely on it. What little air he managed to take in was uncomfortably warm and heavy with the stink of men gone too long without a bath. Sweat rolled down his face and into his mouth, soaked his clothes, and added to his misery. His eyes burned terribly, and he blinked to bring tears—quite an effort, it seemed, considering his state.

  It was dark. The flame of a stubby candle flickered several feet away, but it was too feeble to chase away the shadows. Couldn’t really see anything by it, not anymore. Miller had been watching the candle for . . . how long? One hour? Two? An eternity, most likely. The flame was much taller at the beginning, somehow comforting in its dance, and letting him see the weathered face of Arnold Becker, the man sitting next to him, and—if he leaned forward a bit—James Wicks, who sat just past that. But now the flame was little more than a glow, and he couldn’t see Becker at all—though he could plainly hear the man gasping.

  Miller heard a lot of things.

  There was a somewhat steady “plinking,” which would be Wicks, who broke his precious pocket watch on the last outing and was now futilely trying to keep track of time. A harsh wheezing, this undoubtedly coming from an older man named Simkins, who would likely spread his cold to all of them—if they survived. There was the soft rustle of clothes, someone moving his arms. The thunk of a boot heel. Above all of that, almost painfully loud, was a quick, rhythmic pounding, which Miller realized was the beating of his own heart.

  Miller stared at the candle more intently, as if by focusing on that little piece of fire he could will it to burn brighter or at the very least force it to take his mind off all the irritating noise and the ache in his lungs. When that didn’t work he glanced away, blinking furiously now and seeing tiny motes of white behind his lids, the “stars” that he’d come to learn signaled the last of the air going away. Then out of the comer of his eye he saw the candle wink out, plunging him into a blackest black. In response, his chest tightened even more, Wicks’s plinking stopped, and Becker’s gasps became thin and strangled.

  “Up,” Miller heard Wicks croak. “Up.”

  “Up,” Becker echoed.

  Miller tried to say the word, too, but found his throat too dry and his tongue too unwieldy to cooperate. He tried to work up some saliva.

  “Up,” someone else managed, Simkins from the sound of it.

  “Up.”

  “Up.”

  Amid puffing sounds and the rustling of shirtsleeves, Miller summoned what was left of his strength and fumbled forward with his hands, finding a section of the metal bar in front of him. The bar ran the entire length of the submarine they were sitting in. Miller wrapped his sweat-slick fingers around his portion of it.

  “Up,” Becker said.

  He felt the bar move a little, and he threw his back into it, helping to push it forward and down, pulling it toward him and up and around and over again, as if he was operating the cantankerous hand pump on his uncle’s old well. Becker was at it, too, as was Wicks and Simkins and the rest, all in the cadence of desperation. The bar was one big crank, and it manually operated the submarine’s propeller.

  “Up.” Miller finally found his voice. Please, he added to himself, as he inhaled once more. Please hurry. Then he worked faster, in time with his panicked fellows, seeing the “stars” winking in and out of the blackness with more frequency, his head growing light and bobbing forward, his lungs holding fast to that last breath he’d impossibly been able to suck in.

  After several revolutions of the bar there was a lurching sensation, and Miller’s hands accidentally slipped off. His arms felt like lead weights, but he reached deep inside and somehow found the energy to raise them. The bar was turning round without him, propelled by the other men at their stations. In the absolute darkness it painfully struck his searching fingers and caused him to expel the precious air. But a moment more and he’d locked a grip again and was helping to push the bar forward and down, up and over, forward and . . .

  “Up,” he heard Wicks say with more conviction.

  God! Miller’s mind screamed. There’s no air. I’m dying! He sucked in nothingness.

  They hadn’t gone deep this time, no more than four fathoms, and so there was little pressure on Miller’s ears. Still, he could tell that the damnable submarine they were squeezed inside was rising. Compared to his on-fire lungs and everything else going on around him, it was a rather subtle sensation, but Miller had taken a half-dozen rides in the thing, and so could recognize the perception of going up.

  But would they reach the surface in time?

  He doubted it—not soon enough this time. In their pride and foolishness they’d tarried too long on the bottom of the river. Miller felt like he was sinking into oblivion.

  “Up!” Becker and Wicks whispered in unison.

  Dying does indeed feel like this, Miller thought. Dying and . . .

  Then suddenly and blessedly shades of gray intruded as the submarine came toward the surface. Light streamed in through small windows near the fore and aft hatches. Miller closed his eyes as he heard Simkins working a valve and felt the wondrous stir of fresh air. He and the others started gulping it in—long-starving men at a sumptuous feast—leaning away from the bar and shaking out their fingers. Becker leaned back a little too quickly and knocked his head soundly against the curved metal wall at his back.

  Miller scarcely heard the man’s cursing over his own ragged breath.

  “Two hours and thirty-one minutes,” Lieutenant George Dixon announced after a few minutes had passed—and he’d had time to catch his own wind. “A record, gentlemen. Congratulations.”

  There were no whoops of victory. There hadn’t been any yesterday either, when they’d stayed down for two hours and twenty minutes and the day before that when they’d stayed down for two. There was only the sucking in of blessed air.

  Please not tomorrow, too, Miller thought, as he continued to gulp it in. Please let this be the last test of this damnable contraption. Then he was rubbing his face into his shoulder, futilely trying to wipe the sweat off, opening his eyes and breathing deeper still in an effort to
shut down the furnace his chest had become.

  “Well, boy,” Becker said as he slapped Miller on the knee. “We made it! Stonewall Jackson’d be rightfully proud of all of us.”

  Wicks chimed in: “Stonewall’d be rightfully prouder if we won the war with this infernal thing, eh Miller? Quite a damn fine machine this Hunley is!”

  Miller didn’t reply. He just rolled his shoulders, as much as the cramped confines allowed, and started working the crank again. Lieutenant Dixon was consulting the compass, looking through the small windows and directing the men to head for shore.

  Becker nudged Wicks, and the two men started a tune in time with their cranking. Simkins joined in on the second verse:

  Come, stack arms, men pile on the rails,

  Stir up the campfire bright;

  No matter if the canteen fails,

  We’ll make a roaring night.

  Here Shenandoah brawls along,

  Here burly Blue Ridge echoes strong,

  To swell the Brigade’s rousing song of Stonewall Jackson’s way.

  We see him now—the old slouched hat Cocked o’er his eye askew.

  The shrewd, dry smile, the speech so pat,

  So calm, so blunt, so true;

  The “Blue Light Elder” knows ’em well:

  Says he, “That’s Banks, he’s fond of shell;

  Lord, save his soul! we’ll give him well

  That’s Stonewall Jackson’s way.

  An hour later Becker was singing the same song again, the song he sang at least a few times every day—the only one Miller swore the man seemed to know. But this time he was singing it in the shade of a thick red oak several yards back from the shore of the Cooper River and the dock, where the submarine H. L. Hunley was moored.

  “That’s Stonewall Jackson’s way,” Miller muttered as Becker began to repeat the tune for the God-only-knew-how-many-hundredth time.

  Silence! Ground arms! Kneel all! Caps off!

  Old “Blue Light’s” going to pray;

  Strangle the fool that dares to scoff!

  Attention! It’s his way!

  Appealing from his native sod,

  “Hear us, Almighty God!

  Lay bare Thine arm, stretch forth Thy rod, Amen!”

  That’s Stonewall Jackson’s way.

  “Becker, stop that ruckus! You sound like a cat getting squeezed to death. Miller, on your feet! Come grab a root with us!” Wicks was waving and gesturing toward the cook fire on the bank, where Simkins and a few others were roasting potatoes and passing around some of the pickled beef they called salt horse.

  Becker was quick to stop singing and jump up. “Comin’, boy?”

  Miller shook his head. “Maybe later, Beck.”

  “Won’t be any of the good stuff left, Too Tall,” Becker clucked as he hurried to join the men. “Nothing but sheet-iron crackers for you if you don’t skedaddle, boy.”

  Another shake. “Thanks, though.” Miller was stretched out, legs pointed toward the river, leaning back on his elbows and face pitched toward the clear early November sky. He was a lanky, beanpole of a man—nicknamed Too Tall by some of the others—and though he was young and nimble, sitting hunkered inside that submarine for hours made him stiff and set his knees to throbbing. He intended to sprawl here an hour or so with no walls and nothing but fresh air around him. Then he’d walk into town and get him a bath and a change of clothes so he could stomach himself. He’d probably head over to Willum’s and order something tasty for supper, then get him some nokum stiff to chase away the memories of this morning and the one before.

  Would Lieutenant Dixon see how long they could stay down tomorrow? What would satisfy the man? Would he make them stay down until they died? Despite the day’s heat, a shiver raced down Miller’s spine.

  “Damnable submarine,” he cursed to himself. Miller propped himself up a little higher so he could see it, tied to the dock, the top of it showing above the water, all black and ugly and glistening, looking like a giant, bloated bullhead a fisherman had tugged in and left there, forgotten. “Damnedest thing, that is.”

  Miller continued to stare at the Hunley as he caught a whiff of a potato burning, the smell settling sour in his mouth and making his nose wrinkle.

  “That’s foul,” he said, purposely loud enough for the others to hear. But he knew it wasn’t near so foul as the odor of himself and the smells that always hung inside the submarine. He hated that—the stink of the men so cramped up in that thing, the stink of the piss jug that was passed down the line whenever someone called for it. Yesterday Wicks vomited early-on and Lieutenant Dixon didn’t bring the submarine up for more than an hour after that. It all had to bother the other men as much as it did himself. But no one said anything, least not so Lieutenant Dixon could hear. It was like torture being in the Hunley’s crew, Miller decided, like wallowing in a slop trough.

  Maybe I shouldn’t come back after Willum’s, he thought. Maybe I should just head on home and stay out of the war. It’d make my father happy.

  At sixteen—though he told the Lieutenant he was three years older than that—Miller was the youngest member of the Hunley’s eight-man crew, and the only one not in the military. He would have joined up to fight the North, signed on with the army or the navy, despite his father’s protests to stay on the ranch and stay safe. But if he had joined up, he might have been sent out of South Carolina, and he didn’t want that. The Hunley was moored on the Cooper River, across from the eastern end of Drum Island and within shouting distance of Charleston. He was already farther from home than he’d ever been, his family’s small ranch sitting to the southwest near the Georgia border.

  And if he had joined up, he was certain he never would have been a part of this damnable submarine’s crew. No chance to serve Alabama engineering officer Lieutenant George Dixon. And no chance to die in a slop trough at the bottom of the river.

  And if Lieutenant Dixon sent them down tomorrow—to see if they could go beyond two hours and thirty-one minutes, Miller felt in his gut that he’d surely not be coming back up. It was Dixon’s rule that the men were to holler “up” when they believed they would pass out from lack of air. But Miller had his pride and would not let himself be the first to give in. In fact, he was usually the last to say the word.

  “Lord, but I don’t want to die in that thing,” he whispered. “Maybe I won’t come back after Willum’s. Maybe I’ll just go home. Yes, sir, I’ll just go home.”

  Miller was back shortly after dawn, feeling clean and refreshed. He strode toward the bank, past a pair of tents where army men slept when they weren’t guarding the Hunley or waiting anxiously for it to surface after another one of its tests. The Hunley’s crew had the luxury of staying in town. Miller nodded to a pair of sentries and stepped onto the dock, absently whistling Becker’s favorite tune and heading to the submarine. He’d brought with him cleaning rags and lye soap, and a pitted wooden bucket.

  In the early morning light, his face reflected back ghostly from the river’s smooth surface. Miller had to admit that he didn’t at all look nineteen. He looked like a boy, though at six foot four a tall one, freckle faced and with wheat-blonde hair that never lay flat. His nose was a little too long and hawkish to please him, and his chin had a deep dimple in the middle of it. Lieutenant Dixon had to know he wasn’t nineteen. Miller grinned wide at the notion that he’d been accepted despite the obvious lie. He dipped the bucket in the river, chasing away his reflection, then was quick to the task of scrubbing the hatch covers of the submarine. He didn’t have to do it, had never been assigned the job. But he was by nature fastidious, and when he was cleaning the Hunley, he had the submarine all to himself.

  Miller was at the same time fascinated and frightened by the Hunley, and he was certain it would put him in newspaper articles and in history books—and somewhere in there make his father proud.

  It had taken quite a bit of persuading to get Lieutenant Dixon to take Miller aboard. At the onset, Dixon already had a fu
ll crew—seven volunteers, six army men and one from the navy. Six of them were needed to turn the hand-cranked propeller, and one steered the contraption. Dixon kept watch on the compass and depth gauge and attended to other business. Not one more man could fit inside the submarine, and so Miller had spent days on the dock, glumly watching the Hunley sail down the Cooper River and disappear beneath the surface. Always without him.

  But when one of the men was transferred—it happened three-and-a-half weeks past—Miller dogged the lieutenant even worse. Eventually his persistence landed him the open spot, and his chest had been swelling with pride ever since. He’d never considered himself happier. Still . . . sometimes . . . like yesterday afternoon when there was no air—and the day before, Miller cursed himself for wanting to be a part of all of this.

  He opened the fore hatch and climbed inside, almost tipping the bucket as he held it above his head. The opening was only fourteen inches across, and so even though he drew his shoulders together he always scraped his arms and wore at his shirts. Miller had to crouch and crawl inside, for while the Hunley looked impressive and weighed a hair better than four thousand pounds, it was actually quite small.

  It was less than five feet wide and roughly forty feet long, a deepened, cylindrical iron steam boiler that had been hammered to give it tapered ends, and that was held together by rivets and iron strips. Lateral fins were part of a shaft attached to the submarine, and these were moved by a lever inside the Hunley, and helped the submarine to maneuver underwater. Lieutenant Dixon usually operated the rudder, which was moved by turning an iron wheel. When the entire crew was inside, there was very little room to move, and the air was very close and often stale.

  The submarine had been fitted with a seacock and opposing ballast tanks, and Miller was trying his best to understand just how it all worked. He’d never been “book smart,” as his father used the phrase. But Miller didn’t consider himself stupid. He was certain Lieutenant Dixon didn’t either, as the man had been patient with him, explaining that the tanks could be flooded when the valves were turned. Miller’d been set at one end two days past and given a chance to operate a tank, helping to send them to the bottom, then pumping the tanks dry so they could thankfully rise again. There was additional ballast—a fancy name for weights as far as Miller was concerned. And this was simply iron pieces that had been bolted to the bottom of the hull. Miller’d been taught that if the submarine had to surface quickly, Lieutenant Dixon would order the man assigned the wrench to unscrew a few bolts, which would drop the iron pieces.