“Green and check,” one of them confirmed.
Lifting the headset from one ear, Zhukov said, “How’s it look out there, sir?”
Keeping his eye to the periscope, Gorov said, “Not much better than it did.”
“No landing shelf?”
“Not really. But the ice is still falling.”
Zhukov paused, listening to the petty officer at the other end of the line. “Muzzle door shut.”
“Green and check.”
“Blowing number one tube.”
Gorov wasn’t listening closely to the series of safety checks, because his full attention was riveted on the iceberg. Something was wrong. The floating mountain had begun to act strangely. Or was it his imagination? He squinted, trying to get a better view of the ice behemoth between the high waves, which still continued to wash rhythmically over the upper window of the periscope. The target seemed not to be advancing eastward any longer. Indeed, he thought the “bow” of it was even beginning to swing around to the south. Ever so slightly toward the south. No. absurd. Couldn’t happen. He closed his eyes and told himself that he was seeing things. But when he looked again, he was even more certain that—“
The radar technician said, “Target’s changing course!”
“It can’t be,” Zhukov said, startled. “Not all that quickly. It doesn’t have any power of its own.
“Nevertheless, it’s changing,” Gorov said.
“Not because of the torpedo. Just one torpedo—even all our torpedoes—couldn’t have such a profound effect on an object that large.”
“No. Something else is at work here,” Gorov said worriedly. The captain turned away from the periscope. From the ceiling, he pulled down a microphone on a steel-spring neck and spoke both to the control room around him and to the sonar room, which was the next compartment forward in the boat. “I want an all-systems analysis of the lower fathoms to a depth of seven hundred feet.”
The voice that issued from the overhead squawk box was crisp and efficient. “Commencing full scan, sir.”
Gorov put his eye to the periscope again.
The purpose of the scan was to look for a major ocean current that was strong enough to affect an object as large as the iceberg. Through the use of limited-range sonar, thermal-analysis sensors, sophisticated listening devices, and other marine-survey equipment, the Ilya Pogodin’s technicians were able to plot the movements of both warm- and cold-blooded forms of sea life beneath and to all sides of the boat. Schools of small fish and millions upon millions of krill, shrimplike creatures upon which many of the larger fish fed, were swept along by the more powerful currents or lived in them by choice, especially if those oceanic highways were warmer than the surrounding water. If masses of fish and krill—as well as thick strata of plankton—were found to be moving in the same direction, and if several other factors could be correlated with the movement, they could identify a major current, lower a current meter, and get a reasonable indication of the water’s velocity.
Two minutes after Gorov had ordered the scan, the squawk box crackled again. “Strong current detected. Traveling due south, beginning at a depth of three hundred forty feet.”
Gorov looked away from the scope and pulled down the overhead microphone again. “How deep does it run below three forty?”
“Can’t tell, sir. It’s choked with sea life. Probing it is like trying to see through a wall. We have gotten readings as deep as six hundred sixty feet but that’s not the bottom of it.”
“How fast is it moving?”
“Approximately nine knots, sir.”
Gorov blanched. “Repeat.”
“Nine knots.”
“Impossible!”
“Have mercy,” Zhukov said.
Gorov released the microphone, which sprang up out of the way, and with a new sense of urgency, he returned to the periscope. They were in the path of a juggernaut. The massive island of ice had been swinging slowly, ponderously into the new current, but now the full force of the fast-moving water was squarely behind it. The berg was still turning, bringing its “bow” around, but it was mostly sideways to the submarine and would remain like that for several minutes yet.
“Target closing,” the radar operator said. “Five hundred yards!” He read off the bearing that he had taken.