Buck smiled at him, nodded. “Good thinking, Jeff. We’ll be able to check it when we hear his sixth beep.” Deep feelings of relief were stirring within him. There had been only five pings. The other station — other submarine, it must be, could only be, another submarine — had stopped with five. It must be the Cushing. Keith. And he must have received the message, therefore knew they were on their way, was expecting them, was therefore okay. Rich, standing there so impassively, must internally be feeling the same. How could he keep such a poker face?
The sixth ping from the other ship would certainly identify her as the Cushing. It came. “Thirty-six seconds,” said Jeff. He consulted the watch held by his sonarman. “He’s got the same. Thirty-six seconds — they lost one second somewhere. That’s twenty-eight thousand eight hundred yards, just under fourteen and a half miles.”
“Close enough for government work,” said Buck genially, wanting to make up somewhat for his earlier rebuke. “Maybe he sent his first ping half a second early. That would do it, wouldn’t it?”
“Yessir.”
Richardson was already leaving the sonar room. Buck began to follow, turned back. “Jeff, that was real good work. And Schultz”—he clapped the sonarman on the shoulder to attract his attention away from his dials and earphones. Palmer Schultz, a freckled “middle-aged” youth, anywhere from twenty to thirty-five years old, twisted the near earphone, with its covering of soft rubber and sound-absorbing fiber away from his left ear, half turned toward Buck. “Beautiful job, Schultz. We’re going to close him now. That’s the Cushing, we’ve no doubt. I want you to log everything you hear from that bearing as we go on in. But keep your regular search all around going, too. I need to know everything that happens in the water. Do you know what you’re supposed to hear from the Cushing, and when?”
The Chief Sonarman nodded assent, his eyes straying back to the darkened, hooded instrument which was Manta’s ears and, sometimes, her only link with the whole universe outside the machinery-crammed cavern of her hull. Norton also nodded, several times, well realizing Buck’s words were meant for him as well.
“All stop!” said the OOD. “All back one-third — all stop!” The bow planesman twisted the annunciator knobs in the console in front of him.
“Answered all stop, sir,” the bow planesman reported, adding after a moment, “I have no control on the depth, sir. She’s not answering the bow planes.”
“That’s as it should be,” responded Lieutenant Tom Clancy, Manta’s engineering officer, at the moment on watch as officer of the deck and diving officer. “Speed indicates zero. Stern planes, do you have control?”
The stern planesman, seated beside the bow planesman in front of the diving console, pushed his control lever all the way forward, then brought it back into his lap. “No, sir,” he said as he returned it to the center upright position. “She’s not answering stern planes.”
“Put your planes on zero,” ordered Clancy. “Report depth changes every foot. Chief Mac”—addressing the grave chief petty officer seated to his left before a five-foot-long array of gauges, switches, dials and machinery controls—“I want to stay at this depth, one hundred-fifty feet, zero bubble. Operate your ballast control panel to hover, reporting each one hundred pounds of ballast change.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said the chief, whose name was McClosky. He flipped one of the tiny levers on the panel, waited a few seconds while he scrutinized one of his dials, flipped it back. “Flooded two hundred pounds into auxiliary,” he said. “Trim looks good. Fore and aft trim looks right on.”
“It ought to be,” Clancy answered. “We worked on it enough.” He turned around to face Richardson and Williams, who were watching from the periscope station behind him. “All stop, Captain,” he reported. “Speed zero. I think we have a stop trim. Depth, one-five-zero feet.” There was a suggestion of professional pride in his voice. The newer attack subs, and all the missile submarines, were fitted with automatic hovering gear. With Manta, it had to be done by hand. Doing it well bespoke someone who knew his ship, and his business.
“Good, Tom,” answered Buck. To Rich he said, “I guess that’s it, Commodore. By plot we’re within a quarter of a mile of the Cushing. The Gertrude’s turned all the way down. You should be able to talk with Keith now, but she shouldn’t carry over a mile or so. I’ll keep the ’scope up while you do, and if we drift any nearer maybe we can see her. If she’s up against the ice there’ll be plenty of clearance to pass right under her, even with the ’scope up.”
Richardson held the UQC microphone in his hand, at the end of a short extension cord. He fingered the button on its side. So much depended on what he would find out in the next few minutes! He raised it to his mouth, pressed the button, spoke into it. “Keith, old man,” he said, unconsciously speaking softly. “This is Rich. Do you read? Over.” He let go the button, could hear the reverberations as his voice was carried by the sound waves. There was a rushing noise, as though there were something being physically dragged through the water. In a sense this was true, for the slow-moving sonar transmission left echoing reverberations throughout its passage. The UQC was omnidirectional; that is, like an ordinary radio broadcast station, whatever transmissions it made were in all directions all the time. There was no security in it, and no directivity, but under the circumstances it was the best medium for communication.
Perhaps he should have used the Cushing’s official voice call (Northern Lieutenant) and the Manta’s (Flat Raider). He had decided against them as unnecessary. Were there some fleet operation involved, with other ships also needing the UQC, they might have been. Without deliberate intent, he had leaned his head against the UQC speaker, mounted on the after bulkhead of the periscope station, was concentrating his attention on the answer he was willing it to give. Thus, when it came, sooner than he expected, the clipped semimechanical voice which sounded so much like Keith’s spoke loudly right into his ear.
“Rich! Skipper! It’s so good to hear you! I read you loud and clear, how do you read me? Hello to Buck, too. Thank God you guys have showed up. We’re about to go stir crazy over here! Over.” There were worlds of relief in Keith’s voice, distorted and mechanized though it was by the less-than-optimum reproduction of the speaker. No doubt it was matched by every man aboard, as many as possible of whom had probably congregated within hearing distance of Cushing’s UQC.
Buck’s broad grin of happiness must be mirrored by his own, Richardson felt. He could not see much of it — just the lower part — for Buck’s forehead and eyes, the entire upper portion of his face, were covered by the rubber eye guard of the periscope, as, his shoulder muscles bulging, he slowly turned it around. The rest of the control room crew, Tom Clancy, Chief McClosky, the planesmen, who had dared a quick glance over their shoulders, several others, not on watch, who had found an excuse to be present, all had glad expressions on their faces.
Soon the work of making the submerged hookup would begin, but first it would be necessary to carry out the preliminaries so specifically ordered. “Keith, obviously you received the message from ComSubLant. Do you have the one from CNO? Do you have your message ready?” Again the sensation of his words traveling slowly through water, dissipating rapidly in the vastness of the ocean.