Phillips stepped through the hatch and into the bright reactor compartment tunnel, a narrow corridor through the shielded reactor compartment. This was the only access through the space, since the nuclear reactor was so radioactive and gave off such powerful neutron radiation. The tunnel had a central hatch that went into the reactor compartment. The hatch dogs were locked and chained with a second lock, since anyone making their way into the compartment would not survive more than ten minutes when the reactor was critical. At the end of the tunnel Phillips stepped through a hatch into the middle level of the engine room then up a ladder to what was properly known as the aft compartment upper level or ACUL for short. The upper level held the steam piping on its way to the electrical turbines and the main engines, as well as the upper few feet of the electrical generators and the main engine turbine casing. Further aft, the top of the reduction gear’s casing poked through the deckplates, requiring Phillips to walk around it until he came to the door to maneuvering, a large and soundproofed, heavily air-conditioned space, the maneuvering room, where the reactor and steam plants were controlled. He pressed the intercom button and announced himself, then opened the heavy door and walked in.
The room was freezing. Walt Hornick stood in the center of the space, staring at the reactor plant control panel over the shoulder of the reactor operator. Next to Hornick was his main propulsion assistant, the MPA, a senior lieutenant named Katoris, a bone-thin blond officer who looked like he should be walking the hallways of a high school rather than the passageways of a nuclear submarine.
Phillips walked next to Hornick and scanned the reactor-control panel. Phillips looked at the position of the control rods; they weren’t moving. On the surface of the console a Plexiglas cover was lifted off a black rotary switch marked manual scram. The reactor operator’s hand was on the switch while his eyes were on the panel. Nothing seemed to be happening.
“Well, Eng, pretty slow day here?” Phillips said.
Hornick didn’t budge, not even to look at Phillips. When he spoke it was in a quiet mutter. “It’s an emergency approach to core critically, and the startup rate meter might jump at any second. We’re standing by to try to scram the plant manually if that happens, but more than likely a failure of the protection circuitry would find us blown to pieces back here before Bronson there could hit the scram switch.”
“How did you do this?”
“We calculated the estimated critical position of the control rods for the core based on the core life — it’s new and highly reactive — and the fission product poisons from the last operation — minimal since we’ve been at low power on our two previous startups — and the length of time we’ve been shut down. All those factors have tolerances and errors, so we backed off about 5 percent on the reactivity of the core. Once that was done it was checked and triple-checked. I did my own calculation and confirmed the reactor chiefs calcs. The book is not all that specific about this, but I took the liberty of taking the reactor-protection circuits to maximum sensitivity — the voting circuits are out, so any one channel of the protection can scram us out — but that’s all I can do.”
“Eng, can we talk privately?”
Hornick looked half-panicked at the idea of leaving the reactor plant control panel, but Phillips waved him to the door. Hornick glanced nervously at Katoris, then followed Phillips to the door and out of the space into the wider expanse of the engine room.
“Sir, I think I should be back in—”
Phillips interrupted with a finger over his lips.
He put his arm around Hornick’s shoulders and started walking him slowly forward.
“Walt, I could give you a long lecture about cost versus risk, about the risk thresholds of wartime operation, about the prerogatives of command, but I’m not gonna do any of that bullshit. We don’t have time for that crap.” Phillips took two Cuban cigars from inside his wet parka, unwrapped both and clipped the ends off them, handing one to Hornick.
“No, no, sir, I—”
“Come on, it’ll put hair on your chest,” Phillips said, squinting. He plugged one of the cigars into Hornick’s mouth, lit his own, then put his lighter to Hornick’s cigar. Hornick mechanically puffed the cigar to life, cringing at the smoke in his eyes. “Now, where was I? Oh yeah, risk. Now Eng, you’re more senior than Court, right?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“So that makes you third in command, right, after me and Whatney?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good, good.” Phillips took a puff of the Cuban and looked at Hornick, dipping his head in encouragement. Hornick took a puff, frowning, blowing the smoke out.
“Now, you being third in command, I can tell you things that I couldn’t really tell kids like Katoris, right? I mean, you’re not gonna go blab them to your stateroom mates after watch, right? Okay, then here’s the deal. How’s that stogie?”
“Not too bad, sir,” He took a puff.
“Okay, picture this, Walt. This ship is doing a Coast Guard kind of mission. You know what the motto of the Coast Guard is?”
“No, sir.”
Phillips still had his arm around Hornick’s shoulders, walking him to the forward end of the space. “The Coast Guard motto, if I remember it right, is this — ‘You have to go out. You don’t have to come back.’ That sound familiar?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, here’s why I thought of that, Walty-boy. Pretty good cigar, I think.”
Phillips puffed a smoke ring at the overhead. Hornick had the cigar clutched between the knuckles of his fist, looking like an old pro. He took a puff and blew it into the overhead, squinting slightly at the smoke, but the expression of pleasure winning out over a frown. Suddenly Phillips dropped his arm from Hornick’s shoulder, clenched the cigar between his teeth, and with both hands grabbed Hornick’s shirt and brought him in close, his eyes wide open.
“Walt, this ship ain’t likely coming back. Those Vortex missiles might open up the hull. Or the Japs may be able to run from them. Our own torpedoes may not work so hot against those Destiny-class boats. But I don’t have any plans for next month, Walt. If we come back with a ship under us, that’ll be like winning a sweepstakes. If we come back, or half of us do, and the boat’s on the bottom of the Pacific, I’d call that a good day. If this ship becomes our coffin, you and me and the crew in Davy Jones’s locker, that’s going to be shooting par. If it’s a bad day, we don’t even make it into the Pacific and we get stuck under the icecap and stay there. And if it’s a totally bad week, we blow up the core on initial startup. So do you see what the game is looking like, Walt?”
“I see your point. Captain.”
Phillips dropped the maniac act and straightened out Hornick’s shirt, then stood off to the side and puffed the cigar, looking down at the deckplates for a moment as he collected himself. “So, Walt, what do you say? You only have 95 percent estimated reactivity inserted into the core. I think you should crank it up to 100 percent. I need power and I need it an hour ago. Once that god damned needle comes out of the startup range, you can heat this bitch up and we can be in a full-power lineup in five minutes. Yeah, it may blow up, but you know what? I won’t even put that in your fitness report, I promise. You’ve got total amnesty today, Walt. So I’m not going to order you to do this, it’s your call, it’s your plant. But I would sincerely like to get reactor power this century. Can you do it for me?”