Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  Much of this Richardson had heard before, although without emphasis on the extraordinary performance of the nuclear plant. The familiar story as told by Brighting now sounded a different note. For the first time, Richardson was able to savor fully the vitally important view Brighting and his assistants took of their tests, their refusal to accept a halfhearted trial as adequate witness of performance to be expected or, realistically, to be demanded during the exigencies of war. Had submarine torpedoes been properly tested, the course of the war in the Pacific would have been vastly different, especially in the early stages. This was something no submariner who had lived through it could ever forget, or forgive. More recently, proving that not all designers in the Navy had learned the lesson, the new fleet submarines built during the early 1950s had been a hushed-up scandal; their diesels had been undependable, their torpedo control input erratic, their freshwater distilling apparatus farcically ineffective, their torpedo tubes a maintenance nightmare. The skipper of the first one to go to sea, an experienced wartime submariner, had furiously radioed in during her shakedown cruise that his new boat was a travesty not fit for service—with the shattering result that he was severely dressed down, nearly relieved of command, for excessive forthrightness. Many submariners, Richardson among them, had been incensed at the refusal of the Bureau of Ships to accept the obvious fact that the new class of submarines was a failure, and to move heaven and earth—or at least bestir itself—to fix them immediately.

  But here, in the person of Admiral Brighting, was proof that with nuclear power old mistakes would not be repeated. And the three submarine officers learned also of another aspect of Brighting’s approach to engineering: like the commander of a ship at sea, he accepted full and complete responsibility for everything connected with his charge.

  Admiral Brighting spoke for some time. Richardson was entirely unaware of the expressionless monotone he usually noticed, and certainly one would never have guessed that this articulate, actually eloquent person was renowned for his taciturnity. The strange, naïve expression, the one he had earlier termed “puckish,” was still there. Only now Richardson thought of it as a a look of exaltation, something he might have expected of a passionately idealistic young man. A flash of insight tugged at his senses, and suddenly Brighting was talking about the central question of all. “Have you figured out what you’re here for?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Buck. “We’re here to learn how to handle nuclear power.”

  “That’s only part of it.”

  Rich began, “Nuclear power in the years ahead—”

  Brighting interrupted impatiently. “You’re like all the rest. You see everything as just small improvements on the stuff you’re used to. What do you think the Navy will be like in the years ahead?” He answered his own question. “This is the program for a totally new navy. We’re starting over. Suppose we had the Nautilus in World War Two—what do you think you could have done with her?”

  “With the Nautilus and good torpedoes,” began Rich, “one submarine could have taken on the whole Japanese Navy. We’d not have had to worry about recharging our batteries, or evading at slow speed. We could have outrun almost any antisubmarine ship—” He would have gone on, but Brighting again broke in.

  “You’re a piker, Richardson! Who cares about World War Two torpedoes? Did you ever think of a submarine that could stay submerged weeks or months? Or one that could blockade an entire nation by itself? How long could you stay submerged in the Eel? Twenty-four hours?”

  The shift from weaponry to endurance to a global concept and then back to endurance had come rapidly. “Seventy-two, with everyone except a minimum watch turned in to conserve oxygen,” said Rich, “except I don’t think the battery could make it that long.”

  “How long on the battery? And how far could you go?”

  “We figured forty-eight hours at minimum speed, maybe a little more, if you started with a full charge and had all nonessential services secured. About a hundred miles.”

  “What would you have done if you could stay down six months and go twice around the world without coming up? What if your submarine had been the size of a cruiser, with a load of missiles that could hit any target in the world from any position in the sea? What if your submarine could outrun any surface ship ever built?”

  “We could have ended the war a lot quicker,” said Keith.

  “We’re not talking about the last war!” A note of triumph, his own inconsistency brushed aside, sprang into Brighting’s voice. “Can’t you get that through your head? That’s the trouble with all you people. You can’t see beyond your previous experience. You have no imagination. We’re not even talking about the next war, either, or the one after that. We’re talking about the prevention of all war by total control of the sea! All of it, from above the surface down to the very bottom! We’re through with the Mahan concept of big fleets maneuvering around trying to outguess each other!”

  The three submariners sat silently. Rich could feel the mind-expanding impact of Brighting’s vision. From the rapt, fascinated expressions on their faces, it was clear that Buck and Keith did too.

  “We’re only in the early phases of the history of man,” Brighting went on, “and the key to development has always been the availability of power. But all power has always required consumption of oxygen, combustion somewhere in the process. With the exception of hydroelectric power, that is. The key to control of the sea in a manner similar to the way we control the land is to have adequate power. Mobile power, for the time being. The sea is the last and most limitless resource of man. It’s three-dimensional, and so is the air above it. For all these years, the surface of the sea has been the prize we were after, because it provided cheap transport, and livelihood. That’s what navies have been built for since year one. But not forever. The changes are coming fast. First mobile power, for new and wonderful ships. Then stationary power, with fantastic capability, on the land or in the sea, wherever power is needed.”

  “You’re talking about an entirely new and different kind of a navy, aren’t you, Admiral?” said Richardson.

  “Not just a new navy, Richardson! A whole new type of civilization! How long do you expect the world’s stocks of fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal—to last?”

  “In 1945 I was reading that oil would last only fifty years or so, but we seem to be finding more oil all the time. . . .”

  “That’s true. But have you any idea of how much energy we are using, in just one year, just in the United States?”

  “A lot. . . .”

  “A hell of a lot, Richardson. That’s something people aren’t thinking of these days, but one of these days they’re going to have to. Since 1957 the United States has expended more total energy than the whole world used up to then, ever since the beginning of time! What do you think of that!”

  There was no answer expected. Rich, Keith and Buck merely stared at Brighting.

  “Besides, do you know what’s happening to world population? Man’s been around for thousands of generations, but five percent—that’s a twentieth—of all the people who ever lived are living this minute! Now do you see what I’m trying to do?” The puckish look was gone. In its place were the pinched nostrils, the rigid posture, the glaring eyes of the zealot. Only the flat voice was the same. The whole bearing of the man had changed, almost instantaneously, without visible movement of any sort.

  Later, Rich would wonder if Brighting had been acting a part. At the time, however, he could only notice the metamorphosis with astonishment, as Brighting continued. “The Navy is just the beginning. War, as you and I have known it, is over. Out the window. What will come next is a struggle to survive on earth. In a hundred years all the oil will be gone. That’s only three generations away. In ten generations all the rest of the fossil fuels will be gone.” The manner in which Brighting pronounced the words “fossil fuels” gave no doubt of the contempt in which he held the ordinary energy sources.

  “What about tid
es, solar energy and the internal heat of the earth?” asked Buck.

  The disdain in Brighting’s face was palpable. “Sure!” he said. “We’ve only been talking about all those great things for years. Where are they?” Again it was only a rhetorical question. He gave no time for an answer. “Nuclear power is here now. But it has its own engineering problems, like anything else. So people are afraid of it. They lack confidence in their own ability to control it. And they’re right. Most people are nice. Nice and friendly, like big puppy dogs. And they’ll never do things right if it’s easier to do them wrong. Nobody does things right unless he doesn’t dare do them wrong. He’s got to know he’ll be called to account.”

  The pinched nostrils tightened another notch. No one spoke. “You fellows are supposed to be the best submariners in the Navy. That’s rot! Maybe you can handle diesel submarines, but they’re nothing. You’re worthless if you can’t discipline yourself to handle a nuclear power plant. That’s what you’re here for. This program is a lot bigger than just submarines or the Navy. Now do you see why I have to do things the way I do?”

  There was a moment during which no one spoke. There was nothing to say. Again Brighting seized the initiative. “Good night,” he said, as he rose to his feet.

  Buck Williams put the cap on the evening, as the three officers thoughtfully walked back to the prototype and their interrupted study program. Buck was always the irreverent one, the one given to the apropos comment which tore through obfuscation to expose gobbledygook, the non sequitur or the stupid—or, alternatively, to put things into balanced context. This time, after a minute during which the only sound was their own footsteps on the graveled walk, he did it with a single statement that encompassed what all three were thinking. “No wonder the Navy hates him,” he said, “and still lets him get away with it all. He’s a bully and a genius at the same time. Tonight we saw his genius side. We’re damned lucky to have him in our Navy, and we three are lucky to be working for him.”

  The others said nothing. The crunch of their footsteps was loud in the chill desert night.

  4

  “Captain! Wake up, Captain!” The voice using the unaccustomed salutation came from far away, from far back in the past. He was sleeping on the stool in Eel’s conning tower. The hand shaking him was Keith’s. The voice too. Richardson must have fallen more soundly asleep than he had expected. He rolled upright on the cot in the ladies’ room. “How long have I been out?” he asked, groggily.

  “Not long. Probably only fifteen minutes. Buck and I were going to let you caulk off another half hour at least, but we think there’s an emergency on its way.”

  “That’s right, sir! It’s a big one, I’m afraid, and you’re the only one here . . .” Buck was speaking from the other side of the cot.

  Richardson’s mind subconsciously recorded the fact that both former subordinates were putting him into the role of years ago. Simultaneously his own habit asserted itself, framed the words for him as his quickening pulses for a precious second drove the blood into his brain. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Reactor casualty, I think! There’s steam in the lower level, and all the dosimeter readings are climbing fast. Buck’s and mine have already gone way up the scale.” Keith pointed his pocket dosimeter, a penlike instrument with a frosted glass lens at each end, to the overhead light, squinted through it. “It says I got more than three-quarters of my allowed weekly dose of roentgens during the last half hour!” Hurriedly, he clipped it back into his shirt pocket as he followed Richardson and Williams to the door and down a steel stairway to the main floor.

  “Why couldn’t this have waited a few more days,” Buck was saying. “Two weeks ago Brighting was here and everything was fine. Next week we’re supposed to take our end-of-course exams, and then we’re through, finished, on our way back to New London. After that the whole place can go to hell, for all we care!”

  “Sure,” said Richardson, “except you’re not fooling anybody. You know you’re not going to let anything happen to our reactor if there’s anything you can do to stop it.”

  “That’s why we were in such a hurry to call you, Skipper,” said Keith, catching up. “You’re senior man on board. If something is really out of line, it will be up to you to take charge.”

  “Not so fast.” Richardson paused at the watertight door leading to the engineroom. “Old Brighting was pretty clear that when we came here we left our Navy rank somewhere in the Idaho desert. The regular engineering watch officer is in charge until Dusty Rhodes or somebody else shows up. We’re under his orders. There can’t be two bosses here.” He jackknifed through the steel doorway.

  There was a crowd at the other end of the engineroom, around the watertight door leading to the reactor compartment. To Richardson’s surprise, among them were the three members of the reactor duty section and the engineering watch officer, a young-faced red-haired civilian employee named Baker. Baker was staring through the glass peephole in the steel door as Rich pushed his way through to him.

  “What’s happened, Red? Did you abandon the reactor compartment?”

  “Had to, Rich! All our dosimeters were way up! Couldn’t take a chance on staying!”

  “Any idea what happened?”

  “There’s steam in the lower level. I saw it through the periscope myself. Something has given way down there, is my guess!”

  “Did you scram?” Richardson hissed the question to Baker alone. He already knew the answer, for the turbo-generator sets which provided power for the simulated submarine were still running. Unless the reactor had been shut down only during the past few seconds, less than a minute, they would no longer be getting steam.

  “Not yet. Maybe I’d better. It just happened less than five minutes ago. Somebody noticed his dosimeter had climbed, and then we all checked our own and saw the same thing, and about the same time somebody looked in the lower level through the periscope and saw steam. But everything’s still running okay.”

  “But Red, we can’t leave the reactor untended.”

  “I know,” said Baker uncertainly. “I guess we should scram, but we were hoping to finish this test run tonight. . . .” His voice dropped. He had been recently put in charge of a watch section and was known to be a good technician. Clearly, however, his training had not yet equipped him to make a decision of this magnitude.

  Richardson dropped his voice to a low note meant for Baker only. “Have you called Dusty?”

  “Uh, no. I guess I should. . . .”

  “Better do that right away. How long did it take your dosimeters to rise, and how high did they go?”

  “Maybe five minutes, and they’re all pretty near the top. So it was a pretty healthy dose we all got.”

  “If they didn’t hit the peg you didn’t get much radiation, Red. Have somebody collect the film badges and get them checked. That will give you a better idea of it. Tell someone else to call Rhodes. He’s got the responsibility for the plant and will have to take charge of this. It will take him more than an hour to get here, though, and we’ve got to decide what can be done before then.” Richardson still spoke in a carrying whisper. Unconsciously he had been giving orders, and equally unconsciously, Baker moved with alacrity to carry out the only sensible program that presented itself.

  Richardson was staring through the glass eyeport in the door. It was not possible to look into the lower level of the reactor compartment where the steam leak existed, for that could be seen only through the two “periscopes” which penetrated the thick lead-and-plastic-shielded deck between upper and lower reactor spaces. There was a hatch in the deck, but no one could go into the lower level until the reactor had been shut down, and then only after residual radiation had died away. Everything that could be seen in the upper level was as it should be. Clearly, the only way anything could be discovered was to reenter the upper level and look through the two periscopes.

  He had felt the quickened pulse before. There were chances to be taken, a risk for what might be
gained, the problem of attaining the objective with danger to the fewest number of people. Or, what was the same thing in a different sense, how to use the maximum number of people with the minimum exposure to each individual. And suddenly, there it was. An idea. But first, something more had to be known about the problem.

  “Baker,” he said. He nearly barked the name, realized too late he had reverted to type and used the man’s surname. Baker had been seeing to the film badges which, upon development in the lab, would accurately measure the degree of radiation received by each person.

  “Yessir!”

  “Red, I wasn’t aboard when the trouble started, and my dosimeter is still on zero. I’m going into the reactor compartment to take a good look through the periscopes, and I’ll watch my dosimeter at the same time. I’ll come back out here before it hits the peg at the top. We’ve got to find out where the steam is coming from.”

  “It’s got to be in the primary loop, Rich. The radiation level went up at the same time as the leak was discovered. In fact, that’s how we found it.”

  “Where in the primary loop? That’s the question. If we can find out which line is leaking, perhaps we might be able to do something about it.”

  “Maybe we should scram out anyway. I hate to think of anyone going in there. . . .”

  “You told me you were in the upper level for five minutes yourself, just now, and your dosimeter didn’t even peg. You didn’t get as strong a dose as from an ordinary radium-dial wristwatch!”