Thinking fast, he said into his microphone, “This is Keith. I read you loud and clear. This is Keith. I read you loud and clear. How me? Over.” He said the brief message twice. It would not do to use the name of his ship over voice radio, but his own first name would be all right. Rich had done the same.
The ship’s telephone rang in the radio room. Melson picked it up, answered, held it out to Keith. “For you, sir.”
“This is the OOD on the bridge, Captain. We’ve got a plane in sight again.”
“Keep me informed,” said Keith. “Be ready to submerge if it heads this way!” Keith dropped the handset. Richardson’s voice on the speaker was saying, “Can you stay up on voice? Over.”
“Negative, Rich. There’s too much activity over the equator…” Rich and Buck would understand. Maybe he was being a little coy, but there was no point in calling the attention of a chance listener to his position.
Suddenly there were two loudspeakers going at once. Richardson’s next transmission was paralleled by the ship’s general communication system. Jim Hanson’s voice. “Captain, this is Jim. I’m on the bridge. That plane is closer than ever before. It’s on a steady bearing. I think it’s headed this way!”
Rich was saying something about maintaining a watch on the voice circuit. Keith had already begun a reply. Perhaps the plane had a direction finder, was homing in on his transmissions! Hurriedly he closed out the conversation, speaking quickly. His voice, he knew, would transmit its own sense of exigency. Rich and Buck, for the time being, would have to be satisfied with that.
The control room was but a step away, through a bulkhead. For the barest instant he debated going to the bridge himself. No. Jim’s presence was already increasing the load up there by one. If it became necessary to dive, another extra person would slow down the process of clearing the bridge and getting everyone below. Worse, encumbered as everyone was with heavy clothing, he might be caught in the hatch trunk and jam up the process inextricably. He picked up the periscope-station mike, pressed the button for the bridge. “Jim, I’m in conn. What’s it like now?” Jim would recognize his voice. No need to go through the obligatory call-up procedure.
Jim must have had his hand already on the speaker switch, automatically overrode Keith when he pushed it. His amplified voice filled the control room as Keith was uttering the last few words. “It’s out of sight now. Still steady bearing, though. Maybe it’s not heading this way.” There was relief in Hanson’s voice, and yet uncertainty, too. The plane was still some distance away, perhaps still beyond the horizon, flying low…
An old memory clicked in Keith’s mind. The pupils of his eyes dilated as the impact sank in. The plane was flying low. There was malevolent intent in that. It might be on an attack run! “Clear the bridge!” he yelled into the microphone, the fingers gripping it suddenly clenched, the blood driven out of his fingernails. “Take her down!”
With his other hand he pushed the handle controlling the hydraulic periscope hoist. As the bright metal tube slithered silently up from the periscope well he could sense the quick bustle of the control room crew standing up to their stations, their practiced hands waiting for the orders that would open vents, let air out of tanks and send the powerless Cushing deep into the icy sea.
Two blasts of the diving alarm. Jim Hanson had sounded it from the bridge after making sure the heavily bundled lookout and the OOD had gotten into the hatch trunk. He would be the next-to-last man down, would render assistance as necessary as the Officer of the Deck dogged the hatch. Already the lookout, red of face (what could be seen of it), skin puffed from the cold, bulky in the heavy clothing under his white sheet, had appeared in the control room. A quick look to the left, to the ballast control panel. Its operator was in the process of flipping the last of the switches controlling the main vent valves.
The base of the periscope appeared at the top of its well, dragging with it the big tubular radar section. Keith had chosen the radar periscope because of the superior optics its larger head-size accommodated. He grabbed the handles as they appeared, snapped them down, with a single smooth motion put his right eye to the eyepiece and swung the ’scope around to the previously noted bearing of the aircraft. The periscope height would permit him to see what the uneven ice denied to Jim Hanson on the bridge.
Just as he had thought! The plane was flying as low as it could, almost brushing the ice, lifting just enough to give clearance to occasional hummocks and piled-up drifts. It was headed directly for the Cushing. Its two whirling propellers were plainly visible. So was the fixed landing gear, with large broad skis instead of wheels. Fortunately, the bridge watch had been alert. Possibly the plane had been sighted before beginning its run in. Whatever the sequence of events, and their cause, now it was down on the deck, headed directly toward him. There was only one way to interpret this hazardous style of flying. The plane was trying to remain concealed. Only a professional military pilot would fly this way, and only if his intentions were not friendly!
Keith noticed that his periscope was lower, the ice surface nearer. He hazarded a swift look aft. Yes, the rudder had vanished, leaving a neat hole in the ice shaped to its cross section and the smaller hole his men had cut directly abaft it, which had not been visible as long as the rudder protrusion was in the way. He could not depress the periscope optics enough to see whether Cushing’s sail was still visible, and he did not try. The diving officer, or Jim Hanson, whom he could sense now standing beside him on the periscope station, would in any event report depths as the ship submerged, and he could calculate the disappearance of his sail by himself. The plane was closer, although he had been looking in another direction less than ten seconds. How long would it take to get here? How fast was it coming? How far away?
Answers to all these questions were by guess and estimation only. Cushing, with no way on, was dropping very slowly. During the war Walrus and Eel had customarily dived in seconds, often in less than half a minute, using the combined full diving capabilities of speed, sharp down-angle, and a boat deliberately ballasted heavy. Cushing was four times the displacement of Eel, and she had no power. Even if she had, she could not have used speed to leave her niche in the ice. She was going down excruciatingly slowly.
“What’s the depth?” he snapped, without taking his eye from the periscope. He would lower it as soon as the sail was under, but now that Cushing’s presence had been detected he might as well use it as long as he could.
“Forty-six feet.” Jim, answering instantly. He must have been watching the depth gauge. “Zero bubble. Forty-six-and-a-half — now it’s forty-seven feet. Four feet to go!” Good man. He knew what Keith needed to know. The Cushing went completely under at keel depth fifty-four feet. Allowing for snow buildup on top of the ice, her sail would be out of sight when her keel had reached about fifty-one. “Forty-eight feet,” said Hanson’s voice, speaking directly into Keith’s right ear.
The plane was close, now. A two-engine, propeller-driven, high-wing monoplane with fixed landing gear, rigged with skis for Arctic operations. Its presence in the Arctic could not have been spur-of-the-moment! Quickly he announced the description to Jim. “No insignia visible at this angle,” he concluded. It must be only a couple of miles away.