“We’ll be fully provisioned and ready to leave by day after tomorrow if you need us, Commodore,” said Buck.
“Are there any problems? What about the two rigs?”
“No strain there. Your Proteus gang will have them both made up again and ready by tomorrow night. They’ll make that change in the hook by then, too.”
“Good,” said Richardson. The two had disengaged themselves from the obligatory attentions of Proteus’ officer of the deck, were walking toward Richardson’s cabin. The gangway messenger had already disappeared with the suitcase in that direction. “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Buck,” he went on, “but there’s not much choice after that message from Keith.”
“Thank God we got this little invention of yours built, Commodore, and a chance to try it out. At least there’s something we can do. But maybe there won’t be any need. Maybe it will all turn out okay after all.”
“Maybe,” said Richardson. “I don’t suppose there’s been any new message.”
“Not from Cushing. There’s one from ComSubLant, but all it does is confirm what he told you on the telephone, that you’re operational commander.”
The two officers reached Richardson’s door, with “ComSubRon 10” emblazoned over it on an engraved brass plate. It was ajar. His suitcase stood in the center of the floor. Wordlessly he pushed Williams inside, shut the door, began turning the combination on his desk safe. He opened it, pulled out an unfolded message flimsy, laid it on the top of his desk. Williams closed in beside him, also reading it. For a moment neither spoke. It was as if, by the intensity of their concentration on the paper, they could elicit some additional word, some further meaning, that Keith might have put there.
URGENT FOR COMSUBLANT AND COMSUBRON TEN [the preliminary procedural letters indicated] FROM CHARLIE JULIET X POSITION GOLF NOVEMBER TWO NINE X NO POSSIBILITY LAUNCH EXCEPT SURFACED THROUGH MINIMUM THREE FEET ICE COVER X ONLY FOUR POLYNYAS FOUND DURING WEEK IN OP AREA CMA ALL ICED OVER TWO DASH THREE FEET AND SMALL X TOP SECRET X COLLISION WITH FOREIGN SUBMARINE WHILE SURFACING X PROPELLER DAMAGED X TOP SECRET X
Williams broke the silence. “When it first came in, both of us said that message isn’t like Keith. It tells us practically nothing about his propeller, except that it’s damaged. He’s left out everything we need to know.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” said Richardson, “but that’s not quite true. The information about the collision came at the end of the message instead of the beginning.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Buck. “You’d think the dope on that would be the first thing on his mind instead of the last thing.”
“How about an add-on.”
“Add-on?” Buck was incredulous. “What do you mean, Commodore?”
“ ‘Rich.’ We’re by ourselves.”
“Okay. Rich. But what’s this about the collision being an add-on?”
“It’s a guess. Encoding a message is the hard part. That and writing it as carefully as you can. The cipher system Keith used is designated for operational situations and generally calls for simple operational precedence. Operational Immediate at the most. If there’s anything secret in a message, the whole message is supposed to be ciphered in a secret code. Keith goes even a step beyond that. He labels the last part ‘top secret.’ But this message isn’t in a top-secret code. It’s in an ordinary code. But he sticks the words ‘top secret’ on both sides of the secret part, right at the end of the message, and sends it Urgent, the very highest priority.”
“That’s true,” said Buck very seriously. “A collision with a foreign sub is a pretty obvious top-secret thing, and pretty urgent, I’d say. It’s enough to spoil your entire day…”
Richardson did not even notice Buck’s characteristic frivolity. “Keith would have had plenty of time to get the message ready before trying to break through. He and his coding board probably spent half the day getting ready to broadcast the minute the Cushing got her antenna above the ice. It would have been all encoded and sitting in the radio room. The first part is a routine report on conditions. Then suddenly he breaks into something really secret and really urgent. I think he added on that last bit hurriedly. The collision could have happened a very short time ago, maybe only minutes before that message got on the air!”
“You think that’s why he made it so short?” Buck’s seriousness was genuine now.
“That’s what I’m guessing. It’s the first thing we’ve got from him since his report that he was about to go under the pack. You’d think he’d have had a lot more to say. It’s my guess he scrubbed at least half of what he had there at first.”
“Why shorten an already written and coded message, though? Why not just add on what he wanted, or make up a whole new one?”
“Time. That’s got to be the reason. It’s much quicker to crank up a coding machine that’s already set up with the original code than to break out a different code book and set it up with a whole new one. And he made it short because he didn’t want to transmit for very long.”
“But why not, boss? The other sub must be damaged too. It’s probably trying to surface to get off a message to its headquarters too. Just like Keith. What difference does that make? Keith doesn’t have to bother them, and they don’t have to bother him, either. In fact, they should help each other.”
“Not so fast, Buck. Two boats have collided under the ice. That’s a lot of bother, right there. It’s bound to annoy that Russian skipper a little.”
“So, he’s unhappy. So’s Keith. So’s everybody.”
“Maybe he’s not all that unhappy?”
“Who’s not? Keith? … Oh, you mean the other skipper. How do you know he’s a Russian?”
“All I’m doing is guessing. The Arctic Ocean is as big as the whole United States. If the only two subs tooling around up there have a collision, that’s one hell of a big coincidence. One sure thing is that Keith’s doing a lot of guessing too. One of the instructions in his operation order was to remain undetected at all costs. Another was a warning to be alert for possible unfriendly reaction to his presence there.”
“What right do the Russians or anybody else have to object to his being there? It’s international waters, just as much as any other ocean!”
“Sure. But one whole half of it borders on their country, and they’ve been running ships through it along their northern coast for a long time. They’ve got the biggest icebreakers in the world keeping the channel free in the winter.” Richardson turned suddenly, picked up his suitcase, walked with it into his sleeping room, opened it decisively on the bed, began to transfer its contents into a drawer.
“So you figure they think they own it?” said Williams, following.
“They might. Nobody has ever competed with them. The Nautilus, Skate and Sargo have been up there, we’ve sent some exploring teams out on the ice and nowadays we fly over it all the time. But that’s about it. It figures they won’t like our putting a ballistic missile submarine up there.”
“If that’s the way Keith’s thinking, that would account for his trying to be on the air as little as possible, I guess,” said Buck. “At least, that would make it harder for the Russians to locate him by DF-ing his transmission, if they have a direction-finding station up there. Do you think he’ll send another message?”