Cold is the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  Eleven transfers had been made. On the UQC Rich told Keith to hurry, that he would authorize eight men per trip, with only two monitoring topside. Keith’s voice told him what he was afraid to hear: the ship would not last more than half an hour longer.

  Then more disaster. Two of the scuba tanks ran out of compressed air. They were recharged immediately, but it took time. Then one of the mouthpieces, too anxiously taken from one of the transferees, dropped and was damaged. Unusable. More time lost.

  “Boss,” said Keith over the underwater telephone, “we have a full outfit of regular escape breathing gear, with hoods. If we leave off the tanks, we might be able to reduce the suiting-up time.”

  “Try it with half of the men!” The stratagem was successful, the men with the hoods being helped by the others, and the next time all but two used hoods instead of tanks. But now Cushing was floating with a noticeable up-angle, and its gradual increase could be seen by the scubamen topside.

  “We can’t hold her, boss! Depth’s increasing! I’m going to let out a group without waiting for the wet suits!” Richardson and Williams, without the underwater TV, could only imagine the scantily clad men, wearing nothing but their regular clothing, a breathing bag with oxygen, and a yellow, Plexiglas-faced hood over their heads, being herded out of the Cushing’s airlock. The scubamen would help them to the now tightly stretched nylon line which was beginning to take some of the negative buoyancy of the missile submarine, and along it into Manta’s airlock. The change in procedure caught the operating crew in Manta’s torpedo room as they were opening the lower escape chamber hatch, getting the previous group out of the chamber. The instructions received only minutes before had been to bundle the suits quickly into sacks, forgetting the tanks, and give them immediately to the waiting scubaman, who would take them back into the airlock. Not till then would the lower hatch be closed. Of course, the upper one could not be opened for the same period. A small confusion, quickly straightened out—but at the expense of another vital minute or two.

  The men came in, nine of them, faint with the cold, gasping, but alive.

  “Twenty-three men left, Rich! We’re putting ten of them out this time! It’s all our hatch can hold! Stand by to grab them!”

  There was no way to communicate with the men topside, except through a hastily generated system of pounding on the hull. The situation had been explained, however, the last time a scubaman appeared in the escape trunk. The number of bangs on the hull indicated the number of men to be found in Cushing’s trunk when the hatch was opened. As the tenth bang resounded, the rope connecting the two submarines was extending downward at an appreciable angle. The action of the line was causing the sinking Cushing to drift slowly under the Manta, or pulling the Manta over her, which was the same thing. The line was stretched to its uttermost, a fact the divers recognized. Hurriedly, they urged the men onward and up the line. The escapees pulled themselves up rapidly along it. Then, near the Cushing, but with a snap audible also inside the Manta, the line broke.

  The released nylon snapped backward like the rubber band it had virtually become, but the vicious whiplash was subdued by the water. Even so, the short end of it struck the scubaman on the missile submarine’s rounded foredeck, knocking him off. At that instant the two submarines touched, Manta’s keel scraping across the bullet-shaped bow of the Cushing. Pulling himself back by his safety line, the scubaman found to his horror that the line was jammed in its slot on Cushing’s deck, where the Manta’s scraping passage had crimped the recessed track. He could feel the pressure rapidly increasing in his ears. Frantically, he struggled with the belt around his middle. It seemed jammed too. He let out all his breath, tried to force the heavy web belt over his hips. It would not move. The buckle was suddenly too complicated to operate. Desperately, he tried to shove it over his shoulders, but this, too, was impossible. He had forgotten about the tanks on his back, and now he had lost his mouthpiece. A huge dark shadow, the Manta, and safety, was just above him. He could almost reach it with his hand! He grabbed for his mouthpiece, found it hanging down on its hose, jammed it into his mouth. His lungs were tight. There was pressure on his chest. No air in his lungs. No help for it; he would have to inhale water, swallow it. Then he could get air! But, instead, a violent coughing fit seized him. He lost the mouthpiece again. He could not release himself from the Cushing. With a last convulsive effort, he managed to yank the toggles which inflated his life jacket. The rubber-impregnated fabric closed around his chest, lifted him to the limit of the tether still connecting him to the sinking submarine. But now he could not move. He was like a kite on the end of a string, floating above the slowly descending Cushing. Despairingly, he saw the shadow of the Manta receding. He reached for it with both arms, and knew that he was doomed.

  Three of the ten hooded men had got into the Manta’s rescue chamber before the line broke. Two more were nearly there, managed to get in on their own. The remaining scubaman got two more in, but three floated away, lifted up against the ice cover by the air in their hoods. Heedless of his instructions, he released himself from his safety line, swam after them. Grabbing the nearest one, he motioned downward. Seventeen feet below, the submarine’s dark upper works were visible. The man nodded, tried to paddle downward in a vertical, upright position so that the air would remain in the hood. He could not. The scubaman squeezed the hood, forced a bubble of air out, but it immediately expanded again with air from the breathing bag. He tried wrenching the hood off, tried improvising instant buddy-breathing technique with his single mouthpiece, but the man could not, or would not, understand.

  Anxiously, the scubaman swam down, tried to enter Manta’s rescue chamber. It was closed. The men inside were transferring into the interior of the sub. He banged on the deck with the hammer tied there for the purpose, heard the answering sledgehammer thump. The door opened after an interminable time, and he entered. Minutes later, he emerged again, this time with an assistant, not dressed, who would remain in the airlock. He carried a length of line with a buoy on the end. Swiftly he knotted the line outside the open outer hatch, released the buoy, followed it up, riding with the line under his arm. He was not far from the men in the hoods, who were floating quietly with their heads against the underside of the ice. He reached the nearest, gripped his arm—and recoiled in horrified dismay. The arm floated downward limply, remained hanging at a small angle with the rest of his body. The man was dead.

  So were the other two. But as the scubaman was investigating them, two others appeared, and then four more, floating up swiftly from below the Manta. Rapidly he swam to each, dragged him to the buoyed line, indicated he should haul himself down it. Gratefully, worriedly, they obeyed. The next to last got only partway down, then stopped, his hands and feet desperately gripping the line. The man above was forced to stop also. When the scubaman finally was able to turn his attention away from the others to go back and clear the tangle, he had to pry both bodies free. Two more yellow hoods appeared below him, coming from deep beneath the Manta. Helplessly, fatalistically, he let go of the stiffened body in his arms, let it float away, lunged for the newcomers. He intercepted one before he had reached the ice, was able to get him to the buoyed line, start him down. The other hit the ice, but he was able to get the buoy to him, and he accompanied him partway as he haltingly pulled himself down.

  There were five dead bodies floating in yellow, Plexiglas-faced hoods, up against the ice. The scubaman swam to each, felt him carefully, then on to the next, repeating the procedure. Finally he left them and swam down to the submarine. The two men he had just sent down were holding the knotted end of the line near the closed hatch. They were still alive, moving feebly. They could not last long in this temperature. He banged on the hatch, banged again. Finally an answering thump, and a minute later it opened. By this time both men were unconscious. He shoved them inside, yelled to the suited diver waiting for him with head above the waterline in the chamber, “Watch for more guys coming up! I’ll be right back,
but these guys may have had it!” Then he pushed him out and shut the door.

  He was in time, Manta’s doctor assured him, though barely. But when he got back outside there was no one in sight except the scubaman who had taken his place, and the five hooded bodies above, against the ice. In vain they searched for the missing diver who had been on the Cushing’s deck. He was an experienced, qualified scubaman. He would not have panicked, would have found means to free himself from the sinking missile submarine’s deck. But he was nowhere to be seen. Ten minutes, fifteen, they waited. No more yellow hoods came up from the depths below. No welcome dark-suited comrade appeared. The five bodies overhead stood watch, dangling upright against the ice, their hoods slightly flattened against it, their bodies hanging loosely, limply, arms slightly away from their torsos. They had so nearly made it! Their heads were on the same level as the top of the Manta’s sail. One could so easily swim the few yards up to them, grab their feet, and pull them down. . . .

  Disconsolately, the two scubamen reentered the escape trunk, closed the door, and made ready to report that there was no further action topside.

  “Rich,” said Keith, speaking over the UQC in a quiet, yet tense voice, “we got everybody out but four. Jim Hanson and Curt Taylor are with me still, and chiefs Hollister and Mirklebaum. I’m afraid we’re going to have to ride her on down, boss. I hope all the others made it!”

  “Five, Keith. You didn’t count yourself!”

  “That’s right, five. Did you get all the rest?”

  “I’m sure we did, Keith. We’re still taking a muster with your list. Howie Trumbull is in charge. And I have your ship’s log and your unfinished report. You can rest easy. All your men are okay!” Richardson was far from sure of the truth of this, for although he could not see, he had been receiving frequent reports and had an excellent idea of the struggle taking place outside the hull, only a few feet from where he stood in Manta’s control room. “Is there anything at all you can do, Keith?” he could not refrain from asking. “Is all your variable water out? Safety and negative and everything? How about your anchor and chain? Could you try a big bubble in main ballast? Couldn’t that boost you up for one final escape? One more time would do it.”

  “Come on, old man, we’ve done all that. We all tried to pile in the hatch the last time, but the ship upended, and everybody fell down against the bulkhead. They were trying to make it back up, but there wasn’t time, so I had to slam the hatch on the two that were in already. Now we’re at two hundred feet, and I’m back in the control room sitting on the bulkhead to reach the UQC. It’s down between my feet. We can hear the air bubbling out of number-one main ballast through the flooding holes. We’re making our last dive, and it will be a deep one.”

  Richardson felt something salty in his face. More than one submariner in a sinking submarine had closed the hatch that might have led to escape over his own head, thus closing the trap upon himself as well as the shipmates trapped with him. This was precisely what Keith had done, with life prolonged at his option, with two men, destined for survival, already in the escape chamber and waiting. Rich knew without its being said that Keith had been handling the lower hatch himself, had had it yawning open above; or perhaps, since Cushing had upended, was now vertical in the water, it had been by that time alongside of him—and had consciously chosen not to enter it. In fact, since he had personally shut the hatch himself, he must actually have entered the escape chamber, taken hold of the hatch, and pulled it shut behind him as he backed out! Captain of the ship, he could not leave so long as there were men for whom he was responsible still aboard. Faced with his life’s climactic decision, and only seconds to make it, he had chosen instantly. Or, possibly, he had firmly made up his mind before.

  What to do? What to say? What to say to one’s own deep, personal friend, now about to be stilled forever? Rich felt his eyes stinging. There were tears there. His nose hurt. There was a knot at its base, at the top of his mouth. He gripped the mike to control himself, strained with both hands to squeeze it away, finally said in a voice he could not recognize, “We understand what you’re saying, Keith, old friend. Buck’s here too. All that we’ve heard will be reported fully, and believe me, there’s going to be some truth told when we get back. We’re sorry, Keith. Believe me, we’re so terribly sorry. What can we do for you and the fellows with you? Tell me. Anything. It’s a promise!” Something like a vise was closing down Richardson’s throat.

  “Tell our wives that we love them. No, Stew Mirklebaum says he’s divorced. The rest of us. Mirklebaum says to find Sarah Schnee—Schneehaulder”—Keith spelled the name—“one of the fellows you’ve picked up will know who she is. Tell her he’s thinking of her. Jim Hanson wants you to tell Mary he loves her and little Jimmy. Larry Hollister sends love to Eleanor and says not to forget they’ll meet by the first bloom of the lilac tree. Curt says Suzanne knows he’s always hers. And tell Peggy and Ruthie for me”—here, Keith’s steady voice broke for a moment—“tell them I love them, and would like to have been able to get Peggy that little garden in the picket-fenced yard that I always promised her. Someday we’d have had it, too. Tell her the Navy didn’t let me down. It did all it could, and so did you and Buck. There’s nothing more anyone could do than you did for us. Tell her we’re not suffering, and aren’t going to.”

  The stricture in Richardson’s throat threathened to suffocate him. “I’ve got it all, Keith. I promise, and so does Buck,” he choked out. “And there’ll be a full report on how you carried out the best and finest traditions of the United States Navy, and how you told that foreign submarine, Soviet or whoever he was, by that last torpedo of yours, that you weren’t about to give in to him or anyone. And we’ll also tell how you stayed with your ship to the very last, giving your own life to save your crew and making sure they escaped, even though you couldn’t.”

  “I’m not the last, Rich. There’s Jim and Curt and Larry and Stew, and we’re all together now. Passing three hundred feet.”

  Silently, Buck handed Rich a piece of paper. Richardson looked at it, frowned thoughtfully, did not speak for a full fifteen seconds.

  “Rich, are you still on the line?”

  “Rich, here. Yes, Keith. We’ve just got a report on your muster. For a minute I thought of lying to you, but I can’t. All of your crew is accounted for except five. They didn’t make it. They were in the last two groups, and didn’t have the wet suits. Jim Baker, Howard McCool, Willson Everett, Abe Lincoln Smith and John Varillo. I’m sorry, Keith. They got up all right, but they died in the water before we could get them in the chamber. Also we lost one of our divers when the line carried away.”

  “I’m dreadfully sorry, Rich, and Buck too. I meant to tell you, I saw him carried over the side through the TV when the line parted, but I thought he’d have no strain getting back on deck with his safety line—what was his name?”

  “Cliff Martini.”

  “I’m sorry, Buck. Tell his family for me. We’re going down faster, now. Just passed four hundred feet. About the five of our men who died, they were all good men. John was a fine young officer and would have been a credit— I understand he was engaged to be married to a girl named Ellen Covina. She lives in New York. Look her up for him, will you? And also the next of kin for the other four— I don’t know all the details—oh, we know. McCool’s family is in Groton. So’s Abe Smith’s. Everett lived in Waterford. Baker was born and brought up in Norwich, Larry says. Passed five hundred while I was talking.”

  “Okay, Keith. We’ve got it all. Wilco on all of it, old friend.”

  “We’re nearing six hundred. Mark, six hundred. I’ll try to keep giving you the depths. That will be something the designers might like to know.” Keith’s voice was growing fainter, and with the last speech he must have raised the output gain control. The time of transmission of his voice from the sinking submarine was lengthening.

  Rich raised his own gain to full. What could he say to help Keith over these horrible last few min
utes? What could anyone do? “Keith, remember our second cruise on the Eel? Remember how you rescued me from that fake sampan, and that sadistic character, Moonface? I’ll never forget how you burst out of the water with our old ship and impaled that wooden tub on her bow buoyancy tank. That was beautiful!”

  “Thanks, Skipper!” Keith’s voice took longer to reach him. Perhaps he had not answered immediately. “I’ve often thought of it, too, and wondered how you managed to keep from finishing Moonface all by yourself when we got the upper hand.”

  “I’ve wondered myself. It was partly because of Bungo Pete, I guess.” (There, the name was out again. Rich sensed Buck looking strangely at him.)

  “Seven hundred! Forget Bungo, Rich! You’ve paid for that too many times! I’d have done it, too, and I’d not have worried about it after, either. What about this guy you and Buck sank today? He probably had a wife and kids at home, and so did Bungo, most likely—and so did I. Eight hundred!”

  “I understand what you’re trying to say, Keith, and I’ll try.”

  It took appreciable time for Keith’s voice to make the return trip. “You’ve got to promise me, Rich. Don’t let me down now. Don’t let any of that stuff throw you. Put it behind you. No matter who comes to you with it! No matter who! I mean it, Rich. Haven’t been able to think of the words to say, got to try to get it in.” Keith’s voice had risen in pitch, and was louder. “Buck knows what I’m talking about. Tell Peggy I love her, and for her to take the insurance and get that house and garden, far away from New London. But don’t you talk to her, Rich. Not unless there’s someone with you. Ask Buck! This is going to throw her, and sometimes she’s—Passing a thousand feet. Missed the nine-hundred-foot mark. Sometimes she says things she doesn’t really mean, or doesn’t really know about but makes you think she does. Don’t let her upset you, Rich. She’s my wife, and you’re my best friend, and I love you both, and it tears me to think of it. Be sure Buck or Laura is with you! That’s all I can think of to say. The others are over in the corner talking by themselves. They said they don’t need to talk to anyone. Eleven hundred. Going fast, now. I can hear the internal bulkheads squeezing. She’ll last a bit longer, but not much. Twelve hundred. I can smell chlorine. The battery’s spilled for sure. Took a long time, though. It’s a good design. Thirteen. We’re off the deep gauge. Give it to you in sea pressure. Where’s a sea pressure gauge? I’m disoriented. Here’s one. I can barely read it from where I’m sitting to get to this mike. It should be built with a long cord, instead of fixed to the bulkhead, which is now the floor—the gauge is showing seven hundred pounds. That’s more than fourteen hundred feet. Now it’s nearly eight hundred. I’ll hold the mike button down with my foot and maybe I can stand up partway to read it—it’s eight fifty. I’m shouting. Can you hear me? Don’t answer. It doesn’t matter, but I’ll keep trying. . . .”