Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  Keith hesitated a moment to weigh the priorities. There was something he must do before clambering out on the submarine’s bridge and thence to the ice. There would be some delay, anyway, while a hastily organized working party hacked away with axes and crowbars at the huge, dripping ice cakes filling the bridge cavity. As soon as this was done they would move immediately to the area of the ship’s retractable antennas and clear them for hoisting. Ten or fifteen minutes, at minimum, would elapse before Cushing’s radio room could begin to transmit the message he and Jim Hanson had laboriously prepared.

  Encryption had been completed only an hour or so ago, immediately after the decision that this fourth area of thin ice, frozen over as it was, was likely to be as satisfactory as any Cushing would find at this time of year. A message of some kind was overdue anyway. But the few minutes of delay before it could be sent were long enough to make a quick change to report the collision. It should be possible to do this without reencrypting the entire message. Howie Trumbull would be able to take care of it.

  In only one thing were Richardson and Williams wrong in their evaluation of what had gone on aboard the Cushing. Keith was not in the radio room while his first message was being sent. He had handed the quickly revised text to Trumbull and then hurried to the bridge, donning on the run a heavy hooded parka, equally heavy wool trousers and thick boots.

  The hatch trunk leading to the bridge was mercifully protected by the rounded forward portion of the sail, so that there was at least some transition from the temperature inside the submarine to that of the winter Arctic. His lungs nevertheless felt as though he had suddenly drawn in a shaft of solid ice. Two breaths later (he had become more cautious, breathed more gently) he was on the bridge, fumbling with the cords so as to draw tighter the hood of his parka. There was a mild but freezing wind. He had forgotten mittens, was torn between exposing his hands to pull on the drawstrings and thus protect his face—already beginning to feel numb—and plunging them into his parka pockets to keep his rapidly stiffening fingers from freezing. He kept his head below the oval cockpit, turned his back to the wind, drew up and knotted the drawstrings, finally shoved his hands into the grateful warmth of the pockets. There he found the pair of mittens some forward-thinking parka custodian had placed in them, drew them on, and immediately shoved his mittened hands under his armpits.

  It was much easier to look to leeward, but he resolutely forced himself to survey the entire horizon. The binoculars he held to his face were some protection. The month of March was at midpassage. The vernal equinox was still a week away, and the sun had not yet broken above the horizon. Instead, it traveled unceasingly around through 360 degrees, out of sight, its location revealed by a spot of extreme brightness from which rays of sunlight, broken by unseen clouds, streamed upward. The entire Arctic was a rapidly lightening semitwilight zone. This close to the North Pole, the year was divided into only the dark period, the twilight, and the daylight. In Cushing’s location, within 200 miles of the Pole, the nearest equivalent of “night” was when the sun was directly across the Pole, thus farthest below the horizon. In navigation parlance, the sun “dipped” when it was due north, and came nearest to the horizon when it was due south. On the twenty-first day of June, when the sun was at its most northern point, to an observer exactly at the Pole it would be only about twenty-three degrees twenty-seven minutes above the horizon—and would appear to travel completely around him at that elevation during the day’s official twenty-four hours.

  There had as yet been no perceptible warming of the Arctic wastes. Winter still had the area in its grip. The temperature topside, according to a thermometer which some quartermaster had thoughtfully placed in an angle-iron recess on the bridge before laying about with a crowbar, was a minus forty degrees Fahrenheit. From somewhere Keith recalled that this point, on the Centigrade scale, also read minus forty, the only place where the two coincided. Keith had lost sensation in his cheeks. Frostbite must be near. A few feet away, four men, garbed as he was, were demolishing the last of the ice on the rounded, ice-reinforced top of Cushing’s sail. They had been topside far longer than he. They must be nearly frozen. The unnatural stiffness of their features and the clumsiness of their movements showed it.

  One thing he could do for them, for morale in general. It might even bring volunteers for any similar jobs. He fumbled for the button controlling the bridge speaker, pressed it with his knuckle through the thick wool-and-leather mittens, spoke into it. “Control, this is the captain. The ice-chopping crew is finished and coming below. Tell the doctor to issue them a ration of medicinal spirits first thing. Also to everyone else coming down from a topside detail. It’s cold up here. Be sure all hands coming topside wear face masks and full cold-weather gear.” He released the button, pressed it again. “I’m going out on the ice,” he said. “Send me a face mask, and keep a watch on me through the periscope.”

  He released the button, waited for the face mask, then began to climb over the side of the cockpit, placing his feet carefully on the rungs welded to the outside. He would inspect quickly for whatever damage could be seen from the surface. Doubtless there would be little or nothing he could see, but it would give him solitude to consider what next to do.

  Keith was grateful to the supply officer whose forethought had included white paint among the special Arctic equipment with which the Cushing had been loaded. While he was thawing out in the after part of the warm engineroom, watching Curt Taylor and his machinist’s mates as they crawled among the heavy foundations of the propeller shaft and reduction gears, another half-dozen men were eagerly earning their rations of medicinal brandy by hastily daubing a coat of white paint over all visible portions of the ship.

  Damage assessment was dismaying. The other submarine had bumped and scraped some distance along Cushing’s bottom and marked its passage with a series of dents visible from inside. To withstand sea pressure at depth, the pressure hull and framing of submarines, particularly the large-diameter hulls of modern missile submarines, are far stronger than comparable structures of any other type of ship. Keith was amazed at the reports of dents between frames in the Cushing’s single hull section, had to inspect them himself before accepting what had been reported to him. He could conjecture what must have happened to the thin outside plating of the double hull section. The other submarine, having been struck in her upper works, must have suffered major damage as well.

  Although the Cushing’s hull was sound, despite the dents, the shock to her propulsion machinery had been enormous. Most significantly, her huge propeller was undoubtedly badly damaged, and the propeller shaft showed measurable travel from side to side as the electric “creep motor” slowly rotated it. When a few faster revolutions ahead and astern were attempted under turbine power, the instantaneous vibration transmitted to the whole huge structure of the shaft bearings and reduction gears was frightening. It had been intended to go up to fifty or sixty rpm, the ship still being held fast in the ice, but the shaking was so strong that Keith ordered the shaft stopped when it reached twenty rpm.

  “Whew!” muttered Curt Taylor, mopping sweat off his ample face. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that! I wonder what’s on the end of the shaft. It must be really bent out of shape!”

  “It looks bad,” agreed Keith, in an equally low voice. He had been listening on a telephone handset, now hung it up. “It took more steam than usual to turn the shaft. The motor was drawing more amperage, too, I saw. Curt . . .” His voice became even more grave. He drew the chief engineer farther away from the others. “Curt, we’ve got to hope at least one blade of that screw can still give us some thrust, somehow. The emergency propulsion motor is completely gone!”

  Curt Taylor’s eyes widened as he took it in. “It was rigged out, that’s right! I’d forgotten—we were using it to help maneuver. What do you mean, it’s gone. Is it beyond repair?”

  Keith nodded. “It’s gone. Wiped clean off. There’s nothing left of it.”
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  Cushing, like all the big missile submarines, had been designed with a retractable electric-powered “outboard motor,” in the auxiliary machinery compartment just forward of the engineroom, which could be hydraulically extended below the keel for maneuvering in close quarters, or, if necessary, for emergency propulsion. Normally it was carried completely housed; even the opening in the ship’s bottom was closed over, so there would be no break in the smooth continuity of the underwater body. Keith had been using it to help position the ship under the frozen lead, and by consequence it had been sheared off in the collision.

  Her secondary propulsion having been stripped away, Cushing would be totally dependent on her main drive for any movement. Taylor’s face showed the seriousness with which he viewed the situation. “Skipper,” he said, “we had the shaft up to twenty rpm, but I don’t think we could even keep that up for long. It looked to me she’s definitely bent out of line. That’s why it took more power to turn it. Also, there’s that vibration. Whatever it was that hit us, it ruined the propeller. Who knows what we have out there now on the end of our propeller shaft!”

  “If it can drive the ship at all, Curt, we’ve got to use it. Control reports the ship didn’t even try to move in the ice while we had the shaft turning, but we didn’t keep it turning very long. We’ll have to give it another try. I don’t want to drop out of this polynya until we’re sure we can travel, or at least come back to it if we need to. Keep your boys on it. Figure out anything you can do, maybe loosen some of the foundation bolts so the shaft can turn more easily. We’re going to have to get some people in the water with diving outfits to inspect—”

  The telephone buzzed. “For you again, Captain,” said the man who answered it, as he held out the instrument. Keith listened, put it back on its cradle with a terse “thanks.” He turned back to Taylor. “They need me up in control, Curt. Do everything you can. We’re in real deep trouble.”

  From the after end of the engineroom to the control room was a distance of over 300 feet, the major portion devoted to the sixteen silos in the missile compartment—sixteen tremendous cylinders, set vertically, extending from the bottom of the submarine through all the decks between and through the cylindrical hull on top. Strangely, despite the formidable complexity of everything about the Cushing, here, in the place that it was all about, where her firepower was located, there was none of the profusion of equipment so characteristic of the rest of the ship. Except for a few chests of spares ranked outboard against the curved side, and the umbilical cords plugged into each silo—reaching through to the missile at their upper end, disappearing beneath the deck at the other—the compartment seemed bare, in marked contrast to the rest of the ship. And yet, were these sixteen silos fully loaded with war-ready missiles, which at the moment they were not, they would carry within them more explosive power than the total used by both sides in both world wars!

  The missile compartment, from which all this destruction could be unleashed upon command, actually presented a scene of peace and serenity. The sixteen huge vertical tubes, cork-insulated around their exterior, painted a light coral tone, had never failed to impress Keith with their total lack of malevolence. Perhaps it was that the mind of man simply could not encompass the dreadful intent, the terror, for which they had been built. Nor the fear which had inspired them.

  Even now, as Keith sprinted the length of the passageway alongside the ranked missile tubes, the old philosophical reverie roused itself from some dormant part of his mind. But there was no time for contemplation today. He reached the watertight door at the end, hurriedly spun the handwheel to undog it, pushed it open. The man standing in the passageway readily understood Keith’s wordless signal to dog down the door once more, and Keith continued his hurried trip past the navigation center into the cluttered open space which was the nerve center of the ship.

  Jim Hanson, Keith’s tall second-in-command, sprouting the red beard which would come off before return to port, was standing on the raised periscope station, facing the lowered starboard periscope. There was a look of helpless concern on his face. “I lowered the periscope, Skipper,” he said as soon as Keith appeared. “There’s an airplane out there, and I figured we’d be a little harder to see with it down.”

  “How far?” said Keith. He reached his side with a huge leap up the metal steps, aided by the handrail on either side.

  “On the horizon.”

  “Is it coming this way?”

  “Couldn’t tell. It wasn’t coming right at us. Yet, anyway.”

  “Could you see any markings?”

  “Too far.”

  With a decisive movement, Keith shoved the hydraulic control handle, started the periscope up. “I’ll have to take a look,” he muttered to Hanson as the shiny tube began to rise. “It can’t be one of ours, though. Do we have anyone topside?”

  “Negative,” said Hanson. “We’re standing lookout watch on the periscope. All hatches are shut.”

  “Good,” said Keith as the periscope handles appeared smoothly out of the periscope well. He snapped them down, hooked his right elbow over one handle, his left hand on the other, applied his face to the rubber guard around the eyepiece. “We can’t dive out of this hole we’re in until we know if we have propulsion,” he said as he began swinging the tall, thin instrument. “We’ll never get back to it, and we sure won’t be able to look around for another one. Their boat must have some problems, too. It must have taken a lot of damage, considering how hard he hit us.”

  “You think they’re looking for him?” Hanson asked the question in a low voice, standing alongside Keith as he began swiftly rotating the periscope.

  “Probably.” Keith answered without taking his eye from the eyepiece, leaning to his left as he let the weight of his body help spin the periscope. He stopped suddenly, straightened up slightly, began swiftly manipulating the periscope controls. Then, very rapidly, he spun the instrument around twice, stopped on the same bearing, looked for a long instant and flipped up the handles.

  Jim Hanson, his hand on the control handle, pulled it toward him. “What do you see?” he asked as the periscope dropped away.

  “There’s three planes out there circling around something.”

  “How far?”

  “On the horizon. Maybe a little beyond. Probably about where you saw the first one.”

  “You think they’re looking for the boat that hit us?”

  “That would be pretty fast work. Could be, I s’pose, but I’d be a little surprised if they’re out looking for him this soon. We’ve not even got an answer to our message yet.”

  “Could you make out the markings?”

  “No. But I’m glad we had enough white paint to cover everything that came up through the ice. I’m not too anxious for them to find us. Not yet, anyway, especially if they’re out here for some other reason.” Keith paused. “Listen,” he resumed, “I don’t want to use the periscope any more than we can help. It increases the chances they’ll spot us on their radar. But we’ve got to keep a watch on them. So there’ll have to be a topside lookout. Get a watch set up right away. He’ll need heavy-weather gear, and a heater in the bridge cockpit. Also, have him keep a white sheet or tablecloth wrapped around his head and upper body.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Hanson.

  Keith was grateful for the reversion to official language. Jim Hanson’s questions had begun to be uncomfortable. Although Jim was his most trusted subordinate, he had known him only during the year or so of the ship’s precommissioning and training period. Such questions Keith might have asked of Rich, as his executive officer, because the relationship had been going on so much longer and was so much deeper. Or, they might have been required during combat, when one of an exec’s duties was to inform himself of everything his commanding officer knew and thought. Keith’s eyes followed Jim as he left the periscope platform to see about organizing the lookout watch. It was the first time he could recall having been even mildly displeased with him.
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  And then the idea introduced itself that, for Jim, it was the nearest thing yet to a combat situation. Jim was doing exactly what Keith had done, many times before. The difference was in the nature of the antagonist. Jim’s questions, in fact, were nearly the same ones Keith had asked of Rich. And suddenly Keith wondered why he had had such feelings in the first place. Could it, perchance, be the result of his own inadequacies? For he could already feel, growing within him, still held rigidly beneath the level of conscious recognition, the dread of what he was going to discover when at last the propeller could be inspected.

  With the secondary propulsion system gone and the main propulsion out of commission, either with propeller blades crumpled or the shaft so far out of line that it could not be used, there would be no way of moving the Cushing. He and his ship and crew were trapped in the Arctic, as surely as those old wooden whaling ships! He dared not even drop out of the frozen lead in which he had surfaced, for fear of not being able to return to it!

  Drafting the second message had been done with speed and urgency, yet it had taken well over an hour. And there were many discarded pieces of paper, carefully collected by Trumbull for destruction by burning. This process, too, reminded Keith of the many wartime moments when he had participated in the same thing: the drafting and redrafting; the poring over words and phrases; the painstaking distillation of every drop of meaning, accidental, possible or intended; the equally painstaking concern over how every word would—or could—be interpreted by the recipients. The effort to compress as much meaning as possible into the fewest words, knowing they would be subjected to the same process by those to whom addressed, and by many others besides.

  After careful observation of the aircraft in the distance, Keith decided they were engaged in some activity centered in the vicinity where he had first seen them, not searching the area in general. There was, however, at least one plane continuously in the air, or so it seemed, for there had been only a few periods of any length during which none was visible. During the first one, a work party managed to chop a small hole in the ice behind the rudder and confirmed, from what they could see through the clear, still water, that the propeller had been badly damaged. But reappearance of a plane, albeit still on the horizon, caused Keith to countermand dispatch of the diver—the man had already gone to the bridge in his rubber suit and breathing gear—and hurriedly call back his men from the ice. Thereafter he had been more cautious. An hour later he had progressed no farther than thinking about sending out a new group when another aircraft sighting nullified the idea once more.