“Forty-nine feet,” said Jim quietly. The plane was clearly not a modern attack or combat plane. The apparently nonretractable landing gear — with skis, to boot — marked it as an aircraft configured for supply missions over icy terrain. But what had brought it and its two mates to the middle of the Arctic Ocean just at this moment? The idea that the Russians had been able to mount a rescue effort for their own submarine in the very short time since the accident simply could not wash. Perhaps it was a coincidence, some operation, already planned, now doubtless diverted. Perhaps — the idea struck suddenly home — the three aircraft and the submarine which had done the damage were part of a combined operation. Perhaps their presence, and the collision, were not accidental!
The plane was closer, perhaps a mile. “Forty-nine-a-half,” said Jim. Its underside was more clearly visible. Keith’s hand fell to the motorcycle-type elevation control, but there was no immediate necessity to elevate the periscope optics. The plane was not yet coming overhead. More of the underside was visible because it had suddenly assumed a climbing attitude. Now his angle of sight was distinctly below it. There were no insignia on the underside of the wing. A small object detached itself from the belly of the plane, between the skis, separated rapidly from it, grew swiftly in size as the plane zoomed upward.
“Sound the collision alarm!” Keith spoke rapidly. “He’s dropped something! Looks like a bomb!” He turned the handle rapidly, keeping the plane in sight as the scream of the collision alarm and the deep thuds of watertight doors slamming throughout the ship reverberated in his ears. When he reached the limiting elevation he watched the plane go out of sight overhead, then spun the periscope completely around. “Put me on the reciprocal!” Jim Hanson’s hands were over his on the periscope controls, shoved the ’scope to the right bearing. “Passing fifty feet,” Jim said. The plane had abruptly increased altitude as it dropped its bomb, but there had been no discernible course change. It would pass over the submarine in one or two seconds and he would pick it up as it again came within his field of view.
“Fifty-one feet,” said Jim as he waited. The sail must be nearly out of sight now; at least, buried in the snow and little pile of broken ice created when it pushed through. The bomb — if that was what it was — would be landing at any moment, no doubt before the plane reappeared in the periscope view. Perhaps he should have kept his eye on the bomb in its trajectory, instead of on the plane. Perhaps he should have lowered the periscope. He had consciously decided to risk leaving it up: if the bomb struck the sail, there was as much possibility of damage to the periscope whether up or down. If it missed, the ’scope was safe anyway, except for the extremely unlikely chance that the elevated portion might take a direct hit from an otherwise near miss.
BLAM! The explosion came with shocking suddenness. A cloud of white — flying snow and ice, and the smoke of the explosive charge — filled the periscope view. The rubber eyepiece vibrated against Keith’s forehead, the ridge of his nose and his cheekbone. The plane had not yet come into view. Now it would be impossible to see anything for a few moments. On releasing its bomb the plane obviously had been climbing for altitude. A bomb dropped from a low-flying aircraft was often as hazardous to the bomber as to the target, because the bomb “flew” the same course and speed as the plane while dropping away from it. Its shock wave on detonation inevitably encompassed the space directly above, where, unless there were room and time to maneuver, the plane that had dropped it would be. This was why the plane had swooped upward. It had been flying too near the ice to risk the radical course change which was the normal postrelease tactic.
“Fifty-three feet.” The reverberations of the explosion had died away, although to Keith’s hypersensitivity their vibrations, and the sympathetic tonal response of the submarine’s huge cylindrical hull, resounded in a lengthy continuum overshadowing his exec’s forced calm. Cushing was dropping faster, now. He had missed the fifty-two-foot mark. Most likely, despite his preternatural self-possession, Jim had missed announcing it as well.
Thirteen feet of periscope still out of water. Perhaps ten feet of it still projected high enough to be useful, above the blocks of ice thrown aside a few hours ago when the sail crunched up from below. But he could not allow the Arctic Ocean slowly to close over its extended tip, as if his ship were in an ice-free sea. There might be some tiny amount of current down below, a slow-moving, imponderable shifting of the water beneath the ice cover, enough to cause the helpless Cushing’s great bulk to move as she descended into it. It need not be much; just enough to bring the fragile periscope tube into contact with the solid ice rimming the hole. Even though far thinner than the regular ice floes covering the area, the three-foot thickness of ice in the frozen-over lead could bend or snap off the periscope with ease. He must lower it soon, within seconds at most.
Another thought impacted into Keith’s brain: barring the most extraordinary good luck in drifting under another lead, or polynya, once submerged there was no way he could get Cushing back to the surface again. From now on they were trapped, unable even to communicate.
“Fifty-four feet.” Still impossible to see anything, although perhaps vision was very slightly improving. He dared not wait longer. Keith snapped up the periscope handles to signal for it to be lowered but he kept his face to the eye guard, his hands to the folded handles. His knees bent slightly, preparatory to riding the ’scope down until it dropped below the floor plates. Understanding, Hanson pulled the hydraulic control handle gently, sent the periscope down at half speed. Just before he had to pull his head clear, Keith thought he saw the plane, barely visible through the thinning smoke and debris still in the air.
Afterward he could not be sure, but there was something different about it, something suddenly askew, not balanced as it should have been, something horribly wrong. On his haunches, he was forced to crane his head to the side and rear to allow the periscope yoke to pass between his legs and descend into the well, thus did not see the wounded wing spar give way, the wing collapse and fold back upon the plane’s fuselage.
Aboard the William B. Cushing, only the audio frequency sonar watch-stander heard the muffled crash as the disabled plane shattered itself on the ice a quarter of a mile away. The ice was twenty feet thick, solid with the iron rigidity of a century of existence and covered with a two-foot patina of blizzard-derived snow. The sound, transmitted first through the unyielding ice and then through water, resembled nothing the sonarman had ever heard. He listened carefully for a repetition, heard none, and gradually relaxed. It was a much less frightening noise than the explosion which had blasted into his eardrums only moments before. Nevertheless, the ship’s standing orders for sonar watch-standers required him to write a description in his log of what he had heard, immediately following his notation regarding the bomb explosion. But the bomb explosion itself, preceded by the frighteningly unexpected collision alarm and the resulting activity, had happened too recently. He had not yet even reached for the ball-point pen with which he made his entries.
There was no further underwater noise to note, and after a few minutes the sonarman took up his log book. It had all happened at the same time, 0612 according to the ship’s clock on the bulkhead. He began to compose a single laborious entry encompassing all the events of that confusing and scary instant.