“Keith’s?”
“Sure. Don’t you remember the communication procedure Keith and I worked out back during the war when you had to run that wolfpack for Commodore Blunt? It cut out a lot of the excess transmissions so that we could put out the important dope in a hurry. Well, before he left on this secret trip of his, Keith had some free time, and he and I dragged it out again. It’s perfect for what we need, and he helped me work up a vocabulary for the BarEx. There’s been a lot of changes in submarines and in communications too, since the war, but for fast passing of tactical dope between subs in a barrier …” Williams hesitated, stopped uneasily. The grave look on his superior’s face was disquieting. “What’s the matter, Rich?” he said, after a searching look.
The two sat in silence for a moment. Richardson leaned forward with a decisive motion. “Buck, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the last few days, especially since Keith shoved off. I’m worried about him, because nobody knows what he might be getting into. If he runs into any kind of trouble up there under the ice”—Buck’s eyes flickered—“we’ve got to have a way to help.”
“Under the ice, eh?” said Williams. “Keith never said, but I guessed that was it. Cushing will be the first missile ship up there, won’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty rugged for a shakedown cruise.”
“Yes.”
“This is the worst time of year for ice, too. The greatest coverage. There won’t be many potential missile launch spots, if that’s what he’s supposed to look for.”
“That’s part of it, Buck, but this is all classified stuff, so I can’t talk to you about it.”
But Buck Williams was not to be put off. “I know he has a special bottom mapping rig attached to his fathometer, and that new bump on his forecastle has to be a closed-circuit TV. He might even have some of these new navigational beacons to drop here and there. The main thing, though, is whether he really could launch a missile on demand. He’ll have to have some way to clear the ice overhead, maybe a vertical running torpedo, or a mine that would float up and go off on hitting the ice… What do the Russians think of all this? Or do they know about it?”
Richardson’s face had, for the first time, the faintest suggestion of a smile. “Damn you, Buck, you always ask too many questions. I don’t know if the Russians know or not, and we can guess what they’ll think. But that’s not what’s worrying me. Suppose Keith breaks down up there? What can we do to help him?”
“We’d have to send another submarine — Keith’s not in trouble up there, is he?”
“No trouble so far as we know, Buck. But right now there’s nothing another boat could do if he did break down for some reason, except maybe surface through the ice — assuming he could, too — and pick up his people. That’s why I asked you to come on up here today, and that’s why I think we should send the Swordfish on that barrier exercise in your place.”
Williams stared, wordless for once. “Now wait a minute,” he finally said. “Of course I want to be ready to help Keith, if he needs it. But he isn’t in trouble, and the chances are that nothing at all will happen. If something does, there’s a lot of submarines you could send. You could send planes with skis to land on the ice — that would be a lot faster than going up by water anyway. What can we do that some other nuke can’t do? Why scrub us from the BarEx just on the off-chance something might happen?”
“We’re not scrubbing you, Buck. I was sort of hoping you’d volunteer…”
“Goddammit, Commodore — Rich, dammit — stop playing games with me. There’s something going on. What’s it got to do with us?”
“Buck, I’m sorry. I’m asking you to take a lot on faith, and to give up something you’ve obviously put a lot of time and effort into already. It may all be for nothing, but if we’re needed, we’ll be needed badly, in a hurry. It’s true that another boat could probably do the job, but, frankly, I’d rather have you, because it’s Keith we’re talking about.”
“Can’t you tell me anything at all? I’ve got so many clearances now they’d have a time squeezing another one in…”
“You’d be surprised, Buck. They can think up new classification categories anytime. Ever hear of the TPBR category?”
Buck shook his head.
“It means ‘Take Poison Before Reading,’ and it’s supposed to be funny. Anyway, maybe I can make you feel a little better about the rest of the mystery. How many nuclear submarines are fitted with stern torpedo tubes?”
“Not many — now that you mention it there’re only the five in the Manta class, and the Triton. You can’t put stern tubes in a single-screw submarine. They’d have to shoot between the propeller blades, and that won’t work.”
“That’s right. World War One airplanes had an interruptor mechanism to fire machine guns through their propellers, but a torpedo is too big. So none of the new single-screw boats have stern tubes. Have you ever towed another submarine?”
“Once, in the old Sennet,” said Buck, “for a couple of hours. It was easy, after we got coordinated.”
“You had to make up the tow rig to Razorback while lying to on the surface, start towing her and then dive together, right?”
“That’s right. You read our report, then. I was exec, and that was the tricky part. We passed the ‘execute’ for diving and surfacing on the radio, and had to relay the rest of our messages on sonar through our escort, riding abeam. We couldn’t hear a thing astern on our sonar set.” Williams deliberately did not ask what his superior was leading up to. He could afford to be patient, now that Richardson was talking at last.
“How would you take the Cushing under tow from under the ice pack?”
This was it! This must be the problem! Buck could feel his excitement mounting, but he knew Richardson too well to let it show. At least, not just yet. “You mean without surfacing? I don’t think we could. We’d have to use divers, locking them in and out through the escape chambers, but I don’t think there’d be a Chinaman’s chance to rig the towline. It would be a bitch of a job, even in warm water, and even if everything was ready on deck before we went under the ice.”
“Without surfacing, and without sending anyone out of the ship,” said Richardson. “I suppose we’d have to have some cold-weather divers along, just in case of absolute need, but the way to do it, if at all possible, is to make the contact submerged, hook on, and then drag her out all in one motion.”
“Why not break through the ice and do it the regular way?”
“Sure, if the ice is thin enough, but it’s not apt to be. Besides, that would be a mighty chilled working party. You’ve read Jim Calvert’s reports of his trips with the Skate, haven’t you? He said his crew just wasn’t acclimated to the cold. Their effectiveness was cut in half as soon as they got outside the ship, and got worse minute by minute. Your working party would be frozen solid in an hour.”