“Captain speaking.” His voice echoed emptily through the control center. “The fire is located in the engine room. We do not know yet whether it is electrical, chemical, or fuel oil: the source of the fire has not been pinpointed.’ Acting on the principle of being prepared for the worst, we are now testing for a radiation leak.” So that was what the masked man had been carrying, a Geiger counter. “If that proves negative, we shall try for a steam leak, and if’ that is negative, we shall carry out an intensive search to locate the fire. It will not be easy, as I’m told visibility is almost zero. We have already shut down all electrical circuits in the engine room, lighting included, to prevent an explosion in the event of atomized fuel being present in the atmosphere. We have closed the oxygen-intake valves and isolated the engine room from the air-cleaning system in the hope that the fire will consume all available oxygen and burn itself out.
“All smoking is prohibited until further notice. Heaters, fans, and all electrical circuits other than communication lines to be switched off–and that includes the juke box and the ice-cream machine. All lights to be switched off except those absolutely essential. All movement is to be restricted to a minimum. I shall keep you informed of any progress we may make.”
I became aware of someone standing by my side. It was Dr. Jolly, his normally jovial face puckered and woe-begone, the tears flowing down his face. Plaintively he said to me, “This _is_ a bit thick, old boy, what? I’m not sure that I’m so happy now about being rescued. And all those prohibitions–no smoking, no power to be used, no moving around–do those mean what I take them to mean?”
“I’m afraid they do indeed.” It was Swanson who answered Jolly’s question for him. “This, I’m afraid, is every nuclearsubmarine captain’s nightmare come true–fire under the ice. At one blow we’re not only reduced to the level of a conventional submarine–we’re two stages worse. In the first place, a conventional submarine wouldn’t be under the ice anyway. In the second place, it has huge banks of storage batteries, and even if it were beneath the ice, it would have sufficient reserve power to steam far enough south to get clear of the ice. Our reserve storage battery is so small that it wouldn’t take us a fraction of the way.”
“Yes, yes,” Jolly nodded. “But this no smoking, no moving–”
“That same very small battery, I’m afraid, is the only source left to us for power for the air-purifying machines, for lighting, ventilation, heating–I’m afraid the Dolphin is going to get very cold in a short time-so we have to curtail its expenditures of energy on those things. So no smoking, minimum movement–the less carbon dioxide breathed into ‘the atmosphere, the better. But the real reason for conserving electric energy is that we need it to power the heaters, pumps and motors that have to be used to start up the reactor again. If that battery exhausts itself before we get the reactor going–well, I don’t have to draw a diagram.”
“You’re not very encouraging, are you, Commander?” Jolly complained.
“No, not very. I don’t see any reason to be,” Swanson said dryly.
“I’ll bet you’d trade in your pension for a nice open lead above us just now,” I said.
“I’d trade in the pension of every flag officer in the U. S. Navy,” he said matter-of-factly. “If we could find a polynya I’d surface, open the engine-room hatch to let most of the contaminated air escape, start up our diesel–it takes its air direct from the engine room–and have the rest of the smoke sucked out in nothing flat. As it is, that diesel is about as much use to me as a grand piano.”
“And the compasses?” I asked.
“That’s another interesting thought,” Swanson agreed. “If the power out-put from our reserve battery falls below a certain level, our three Sperry gyrocompass systems and the N6A–that’s the inertial-guidance machine–just go out of business. After that we’re lost, completely. Our magnetic compass is quite useless in those latitudes–it just walks in circles.”
“So we would go round and round in circles, too,” Jolly said thoughtfully. “Forever and ever under the jolly old ice cap, what? By Jove, Commander, I’m really beginning to wish we’d stayed up at Zebra.”
“We’re not dead yet, Doctor. . . . Yes, John?” This to Hansen, who had just come up.
“Sanders, sir. On the ice machine. Can he have a smoke mask? His eyes are watering pretty badly.”
“Give him anything you like in the ship,” Swanson said, “just so long as he can keep his eyes clear to read that graph. And double the watch on the ice machine. If there’s a lead up there only the size of a hair, I’m going for it. Immediate report if the ice thickness fails below, say, eight or nine feet.”
“Torpedoes?” Hansen asked. “There hasn’t been ice thin enough for that in three hours. And at the speed we’re drifting, there won’t be for three months. I’ll go keep the watch myself. I’m not much good for anything else, this hand of mine being the way it is.”
“Thank you. First you might tell engineman Harrison to turn off the CO2 scrubber and monoxide burners. Must save every amp of power we have. Besides, it will do this pampered bunch of ours a world of good to sample a little of what the old-time submariners had to experience when they were forced to stay below maybe twenty hours at a time.”
“That’s going to he pretty rough on our really sick men,” I said. “Benson and Folsom in the sick bay, the Harrington twins, Brownell and Bolton in the nucleonics lab right aft. They’ve got enough to contend with without foul air as well.”
“I know,” Swanson admitted. “I’m damned sorry about it. Later on, when–and if–the air gets really bad, we’ll start up the air-purifying systems again but blank off every place except the lab and the sick bay.” He broke off and turned around as a fresh wave of dark smoke rolled in from the suddenly opened after door. The man with the smoke mask was back from the engine room, and even with my eyes streaming in that smoke-filled, acrid atmosphere, I could see he was in a pretty bad way. Swanson and two others rushed to meet him, two of them catching him as he staggered into the control room, the third quickly swinging the heavy door shut against the darkly evil clouds of smoke.
Swanson pulled off the man’s smoke mask. It was Murphy, the man who had accompanied me when we’d closed the torpedo tube door. People like Murphy and Rawlings, I thought, always got picked for jobs like this.
His face was white and he was gasping for air, his eyes upturned in his head. He was hardly more than half conscious, but even that foul atmosphere in the control center must have seemed to him like the purest mountain air compared to what he’ had just been breathing, for within thirty seconds his head had begun to clear and he was able to grin up painfully from where he’d been lowered into a chair.
“Sorry, Captain,” he gasped. “This smoke mask was never meant to cope with the stuff that’s in the engine room. Pretty hellish in there, I tell you.” He grinned again. “Good news, Captain. No radiation leak.”
“Where’s the Geiger counter?” Swanson asked quietly.
“It’s had it, I’m afraid, sir. I couldn’t see what I was doing in there. Honest, sir, you can’t see three inches in front of your face. I tripped and damn near fell down into the machinery space. The counter did fall down. But I’d a clear check before then. Nothing at all.” He reached up to his shoulder and unclipped his ifim badge. “This’ll show, sir.”
“Have that developed immediately. That was very well done, Murphy,” he said warmly. “Now get for’ard to the mess room. You’ll find some really clear air there.”
The film badge was developed and brought back in minutes. Swanson took it, glanced at it briefly, smiled, and let out his breath in a long, slow whistle of relief. “Murphy was right. No radiation leak. Thank God for that, anyway. If there had been–well, that was that, I’m afraid.”
The for’ard door of the control room opened, a man came in, and the door was as quickly closed. I guessed who it was before I could see him properly.
“Permission from chief torpedoman Patterson to approach you, sir,” Rawlings said with brisk formality. “We’ve just seen Murphy. He’s pretty groggy, and both the chief and I think that youngsters like that shouldn’t be–”
“Am I to understand that you are volunteering to go next, Rawlings?” Swanson asked. The screws of responsibility and tension were turned down hard on him, but I could see that it cost him some effort to keep his face straight.