Brown appeared directly behind Buck in the sonar room doorway. “We’re ready,” he said. “Tube’s flooded. Outer door’s open.”
“All right, Chief; get a single-ping range. Get the best bearing, too. Feed ’em both automatically to the TDC.” A single white spoke lashed out from the center of the sonar dial, impinged directly upon the faint dot representing the enemy sub. He heard the squelched transmission signal, and the clear, solid echo which returned.
“Thirty-eight-fifty,” said Schultz. “Bearing zero-three-seven and a half, relative. TDC’s got them both, sir!”
Despite his statement to Brown, Buck could not remain in the sonar room. He leaped out the door, heard Deedee call out loudly, “Set!” Rich, he felt rather than saw, was right behind.
“Fire!” cried Buck sharply. Brown, his finger poised on the firing key, punched it hard to the left. He stepped back, waited, eyes on the indicator lights.
“Torpedo started, ran out normally,” said the telephone talker. Brown was watching his fire control panel carefully, nodding his head. “She’s away,” he said.
Back in the sonar shack, Schultz was watching the path of the torpedo. It had curved to the right, was speeding toward the spot occupied by the enemy submarine. It would run at high speed into the general area, then slow, make a circling search, finally go back to speed and home in on magnetic attraction. It was the best torpedo the U.S. Navy had, the product of years of research. Its record of successful firings was outstanding. It was fast, nearly silent, and almost 100-percent deadly.
“Good shot, Buck,” said Richardson. “I think he’s a dead man!” But as they watched the sonar scope, suddenly the spot the Russian submarine occupied became suffused with its own white light, a light which persisted. The speeding trace of the torpedo entered the enlarged spot and vanished. Disbelievingly, the three men in the sonar room watched for an appreciable time, but nothing happened. The large white spot died down, disappeared, leaving not even the original indication of the presence of another submarine.
“I think I saw him take off,” said Schultz, by way of possible explanation. “He was making knots, behind all that white, and he went right off the scope!”
“At least, you scared him silly, Buck. Maybe now he’ll leave us alone!” But the grim look on Rich’s face showed he did not believe his words, nor did he expect Buck to. “How fast do you think we can tow Keith?” he went on.
“Maybe six knots, or a fraction more,” said Buck.
“Make another radical course change, away from the direction he went, and go as fast as you can. Run up close to the ice, too, as close as you dare. That will confuse his sonar. We’ve got to take this opportunity to lose him. I’ll explain it to Keith. On our third day with the Besugo, we ran overloaded for several hours. Can you find those strain-gauge readings?”
“They were all logged. I’m sure we can.”
Despite Buck’s misgivings, resuming towing resulted in only a few bumps as the towline was again stretched. Once a steady towing condition was achieved, he gradually increased speed until both ships seemed fairly flying along, close under the ice pack. They might have been able to go even faster than the seven knots shown on the log had it not been necessary for Keith to maintain a small amount of plane angle because of the Cushing’s tendency to tow a few feet above the Manta. After three hours, Buck was contemplating ordering his crew off action stations, and slowing to conserve the strength of the towline as well as to reduce his noise level. But this was the moment sonar chose to pick up contact once more.
It was Schultz, still religiously maintaining his solitary watch, who was forced to bring the bad news. “Sonar contact,” he announced in a heavy voice over the speaker system. Rich and Buck crowded into the sonar shack. “It’s him again!” said Schultz. “No doubt about it anymore. I’d know that signature anywhere!”
“We have to break the towline, Buck! We’ll have to fight this guy on even terms! If he sinks us, Keith’s done for anyway. We’ve no hope at all if we stay tied to him!”
“I’ve been thinking the same! Shall I do it now?”
“Yes! I’ll go tell Keith!”
As Richardson picked up the UQC handset, he heard Buck order, “All ahead full!”
“Keith,” Rich said in the low tone which had become habitual, “that fellow is back again, and we’re going to have to break the towline. After we dispose of him we’ll be back to pick you up with the other tow rig.”
“I understand,” said Keith’s distorted voice, and Rich knew he did, fully. He quickly described his own already laid plans for this contingency, and then said, “If we get a chance to, we’ll try a Mark Forty on him ourselves. We still have a few strings left. And, Skipper,” Keith’s voice deepened, took on an expression of determined will, even under the poor reproductive quality of the equipment, “whatever happens, we’ll never give up this ship. Never.”
It was Richardson’s turn to say, “I understand.” He followed it with, “If we don’t make it back, wait him out at test depth or below. I doubt he can follow you down there, nor can his fish!” As he said the words he found himself wondering what good that could possibly do, for without Manta, Cushing was dead too!
And then the nylon line snapped with a shuddering flip, and Buck sent Manta sliding down into the depths. The last thing Rich heard was Keith’s quiet “Wilco!”
“It’s us he’s after; so it’s us he’ll chase, Buck. We’ve got one decoy left, and we’ve no idea how many fish he’s got, nor how many of those defenses against the Mark Forty.”
“It didn’t make any noise, at least nothing we heard. Maybe it’s not a weapon he shoots at all,” said the disconsolate Buck.
“You mean, some kind of a magic energy device? Inexhaustible, maybe?”
“All I mean is he might not have to shoot a piece of hardware. So it wouldn’t be something you could count, like our decoys. But maybe he wasn’t all that sure it was going to work either. He sure ran off in a hurry. If he’d only run a little longer, we might have shaken him!” Buck spoke morosely. His disappointment was keen.
“True, old man, but right now our problem is to kill him before he kills us. We have six Mark Fourteens and five Mark Forties left forward, is that right?”
“Plus two Mark Forties in the skids in the after torpedo room. I’ve told Deedee to unrig the after room for towing and load both of the Forties he has back there.”
“The Forty is a single-shot fish. You shoot it very carefully, one at a time. You can reload one quicker than you can fire a second shot. So if you have one of them and our remaining decoy loaded, you can also have a salvo of four Fourteens in the other tubes forward.”
“You don’t expect him to let us get within range of an old Mark Fourteen!”
Buck’s exhaustion was showing in his slowness at picking up the idea, Rich decided. “Maybe this magic energy thing you thought up can stop the electric motor in the Mark Forty, but if that’s what it does it won’t faze an old straight-running steam fish,” he finally said, and was secretly delighted when Buck’s eyes lighted and he gave the necessary orders.
The Manta had separated from the Cushing only a short distance, contrary to Rich and Buck’s first intention to go many miles away. As had become virtually a necessity during the past few encounters, they were in the darkened sonar room, awaiting developments which could only be seen, and that poorly, in the sonar equipment. And yet, there must be instantaneous response. Awareness of the enemy submarine’s whereabouts must be constant, and careful evaluation of any change or movement, immediate. She had approached to a distance of about a mile and had apparently stopped. Doubtless she had silenced herself as much as possible. Even so, she made a faint but definitely discernible note. It was this tiny noise level, which Schultz and the JT operator were so strenuously keeping in their earphones, that created the spot on the sensitive scope.