“Right — uh — Rich. Nobody calls me ‘John’ anymore. I guess I sort of like ‘Dusty.’”
“Okay, and don’t forget that ‘Rich’ business.” Rhodes’ handshake contained considerably more warmth than at the airport. “That goes for everybody else here, too, Dusty, and now that’s settled, is there time for me to shave before coming over?”
“I really don’t think so, Rich.” This time Rhodes’ eyes were unflinching, and again Richardson had the sense of a hidden message, some concealed urgency, behind the words.
Once in the prototype building, however, Richardson was surprised to discover only a duty section, a very small percentage of the total force, present. Rhodes had a small office suite opening directly into the cavernous interior housing Mark One, as the prototype reactor for the Nautilus was known, and there were desks for an assistant and two secretaries, all three vacant. The main room of the building, occupying almost all of its interior from concrete floor to metal roof, had the air of being full of activity even though few persons were present. Toolboxes, workbenches, storage lockers, equipment bins and boxes were everywhere. Mark One was festooned with steel ladders, catwalks, wire cables, steam piping and waterlines, the ordered confusion of the paraphernalia of many functions and many workers.
And, of course, Mark One itself, a horizontal cylindrical section of a huge submarine’s pressure hull projecting through the side of a tremendous circular steel tank the size of a big swimming pool and filled with light green seawater, instantly captured Rich’s attention. He had already read of the pool and seen a photograph of it, but the reality of the beige-colored pool walls, green seawater and dark gray hull cylinder was breathtaking. The purpose of the salt water, he knew, was to duplicate the radioactive shielding effect of the sea around the simulated submarine’s reactor compartment. The submarine hull section was identical to the Nautilus’ reactor and engine compartments, except that, for economy, only a single turbine and propeller shaft had been installed. The water level in the pool surrounding the reactor compartment was the same as it would be with Nautilus fully surfaced, since that was the condition of least shielding.
“There she is, sir — Rich. You’re to be here fourteen weeks and learn all about it. Then we’ll give you an examination, and if you pass it you’ll be a qualified reactor operator.” Dusty Rhodes was looking with proprietary satisfaction at the surrealistic monster. It was humming softly. Richardson thought he could detect the noise of ventilation blowers buried amid the other sounds, but the rest meant nothing to him. Rhodes answered his unspoken question. “We’ve been keeping her self-sustaining for the past couple of weeks. What you’re hearing are the electric turbo-generator sets, one of them, that is, and the main coolant pumps in slow speed. The main turbine isn’t running.”
Rich nodded his acknowledgment, though he was far from clear as to the information imparted. But it was then that Rhodes, his guard let down perhaps because of his companion’s ready acceptance of his role as a student, forgot himself. “You’ll have two days’ head start on the others,” he said. “The class won’t really begin until the other students get here Monday morning.” The moment he spoke the words Rhodes realized they were beyond recall, and the consternation he felt reproduced itself on his face. Richardson struggled to keep his sudden anger from showing.
Dusty Rhodes’ slip regarding the other students made little difference, Rich assured him. He would have known soon anyway, and he was too grateful for Admiral Brighting’s change of heart, whatever the cause, to quibble over his pettiness. Rich kept a second reason for silence to himself: whatever or whoever had changed Brighting’s mind — Joan maybe — was owed something too. But the internal anger remained until it was replaced on Monday by the pleasure of welcoming Keith Leone and Buck Williams. It had been years since they had been in the same duty area as Rich. Despite occasional correspondence, the closeness brought on by wartime service together had begun to dim. Now, magically, it was all restored. All three felt it, and Rich was forced a few times to emphasize that, as students under Brighting’s control, the old official relationship had no place on the site. Not until Richardson had spent several hours guiding his newly arrived friends in a thorough inspection of Mark One did he realize that there were no other new students. Keith, Buck and he were the entire class. It must have been organized and scheduled just for them.
“You’re here to participate in the actual operation of a submarine nuclear reactor,” Dusty Rhodes told them that first day. “The whole function of all this machinery is to turn that propeller shaft.” The four were standing on the floor of the mammoth enclosure—“room” was hardly the proper word — in which Mark One rested. “As I guess you know, we call this Mark One because Mark Two is the Nautilus herself. They were building her in Groton at the very same time they were building Mark One here out in the desert. Only, Mark One was kept a few months ahead. Everything was tested and proved out before its duplicate was allowed to be installed in the ship. All changes that were found to be needed here were automatically done there, too.”
It was obviously a speech that Dusty Rhodes made to every new group of trainees, but there was also a note of pride in his voice. It had been one of the extraordinary engineering feats of the time. Mark One was a monument to the genius of its designers and constructors, particularly that most demanding and irascible construction engineer of them all, Admiral Brighting. And now he, Lieutenant Commander Dusty Rhodes, had been entrusted with its total and exclusive charge.
“I don’t see any propeller, Dusty. How do you simulate the resistance of the water? Just turning a big thing sticking out of the end of a fake submarine hull isn’t the same. To get horsepower you have to do work.” Keith’s question was one he knew Rhodes would have the answer for.
“We thought of that, all right,” said Rhodes, picking up the cue. “When you get into your schedule, one of the things you’ll be learning about is the water brake. It duplicates propeller resistance. Makes the turbine think there really is a propeller out there — even puts thrust on the thrust bearing. There is some trouble with it, though. Since we’re not really driving a ship, what we really do — the work we do — is make heat. You’ll be calculating the BTUs before you’re through here. We make a lot of heat, and this damn things heats up too easy. We have to have a garden hose spraying water on the outside casing of the water brake whenever we stay at full speed for long.”
The others nodded their comprehension. One of the fine points, obviously, was that since the water brake was not an integral part of any submarine, a permanent and “engineered” solution for its overheating was not a matter of urgency or even concern, so long as the jury rig, the garden hose, solved the problem. After a moment, Rhodes went on. “What we do here is operate Mark One just like a submarine underway for a long cruise, and the trainees stand all the watches, along with the instructors. There’s usually several classes going on at the same time, in various stages of the program, so there’s trainees on nearly all the billets. The instructors fill in the rest of them. The only exception we make to shipboard routine is that the watches are eight hours long instead of four. Everything else is exactly like on board ship. We go through all the evolutions of starting, running, maneuvering and stopping, cope with simulated or real casualties to the machinery, do everything the Nautilus could do.