The Cushing was not visible on the tube, nor could the JT hear her. She was somewhere overhead, resting against the ice with all machinery stopped. Lighting was minimal and on the storage battery; there would be no cooking; all unneeded personnel had been ordered to their bunks. In this condition, her cavernous interior had ample air for forty-eight hours and there was stored oxygen sufficient for many more days. Her battery was her limiting factor. Keith could remain in this condition for seventy-two hours, he had said, before his battery would be too low to restart his reactor.
Buck had also stopped every piece of nonessential machinery, including his primary loop main coolant pumps, but had kept his heaters on and the reactor functional in the newly developed natural circulation mode — a low-power condition from which restoration of full power could be accomplished in minutes. Under Clancy’s skillful hand Manta, too, was stopped, hovering on a fortuitous thermal layer at the 300-foot level.
For the time being, it was a standoff. “I’ll bet he can’t see Cushing either,” said Buck. “Maybe he’s even lost us, if we’re quieter than he is. We ought to be. So he must be making up his mind whether to go active with his sonar.”
“When he does, he’ll find us both, and he’ll know the one against the ice cover must be the Cushing. Also, she’ll give the bigger echo.”
“We could try keeping our broadside to him. Unless he happens to get both of us broadside, our echo will be about as big as Keith’s.”
“If we ease up against the ice ourselves it will confuse him even more,” said Rich, thoughtfully, “but then, sound is so funny we might lose contact on him ourselves. Or, we might hear him better.”
“We can always come back down again, boss. Let’s try it!”
And so Tom Clancy blew some air into his tanks, and the Manta slowly drifted upward until she bumped gently against the solid ice, her side turned toward the intruder. True to the well-known vagaries of sound, contact remained, and ten minutes later the tiny luminescence that was the enemy lashed out with six strong rapid pings.
“He can’t hear us!” Buck chortled. “He can only see us by going active!”
“Right,” said Rich, “and unless Keith was also broadside to him, by accident, the echoes he got must have been nearly identical. So, right now, he can’t tell which is which. We ought to be able to use that, somehow.”
“Shoot our last decoy?”
Rich snapped his fingers. “Get it programmed so it simulates us trying to get away. Then get two Forties ready. Back out a Fourteen. They can reload it later. Can the wolfpack code tell Keith to get some fish ready?”
“That’s one of the things it was made for.”
Preparations were going forward when Schultz made the signal Rich and Buck had learned to anticipate, and the sound of inimical pings filled the compartment. “I think he’s getting ready to shoot,” said the sonarman.
“How do you know that?”
“Don’t know. Just feel it,” said Schultz. “There!” He pointed to a wispy, wavering discontinuity in the smooth blankness of the scope. “There again! There’s another! He’s still pinging, and he’s fired twice!”
There were two discontinuities on the sonar scope emanating from the enemy submarine, one diverging slightly across its face, the other coming in steadily and remorselessly toward its center. “He’s fired at both of us!” said Buck.
“Buck!” There was a decisive snap to Richardson’s voice. “If he can’t hear us, he must have fired on active sonar bearings and ranges. Set the decoy to run in circles under us! Maybe that will attract the fish! I’ll tell Keith to do the same. Hope he can!” Rich dashed away, returned a moment later. “He’s going to try,” he said. “These are pretty slow-running torpedoes, so there may be time. Also I told him to shoot his Forties with us. Is our decoy away?”
“Affirmative!”
“There’ll be a minute or so more before his fish gets here. Time to shoot ours!”
A quarter of a minute later, a thin streak arrowed on the scope toward the Russian, traveling much faster than the weapon he had fired, passing it close aboard on the sonar scope. As before, a brilliant white phosphorescence bloomed over the spot where he was, and there was no explosion.
“He’s still there, I think!” said Schultz. “He didn’t run this time! The Cushing’s fired too!”
A streak similar to that made by the Manta’s weapon, which could only have come from the Cushing, drew itself swiftly across the scope. Rich, Buck and Schultz were watching it with consuming interest, to the exclusion of all else. The Soviet sub’s reaction to this second shot would show whether she could remount her antitorpedo protection quickly. Then a violent explosion shook the Manta’s sturdy structure. The resounding roar, reverberating through the sea and inside the submarine hull, blocking out all sound save for itself, threw clouds of dust and paint particles into the air. On the sonar scope there was nothing to be seen; only the startled, white, almost alive reaction of the scope as it attempted to reproduce electronically what it had heard through its audio senses.
“All compartments report to control!” Buck shouted into the telephone, looking, at the same time, at the sonar scope. The whiteout was receding, the Soviet submarine reappearing, surrounded by a fading halo of phosphorescence.
“He can’t keep this up!” said Rich. “That must be a whale of a lot of energy! Shoot again! As soon as you can!”
A third swift streak raced toward the enemy submarine. Jerry Abbott appeared at the sonar room entrance. “No damage, Captain,” he said. “It was close, though. Must have gone off right under us!” A distant explosion filled their consciousness. “Get a report from Leone!” snapped Richardson. Abbott darted away.
Again the halo effect enveloped the enemy. Again the speeding Mark Forty torpedo, the U.S. Navy’s best, entered the immune area and disappeared.
“Cushing reports she’s been hit!” gasped Abbott.
“Cushing’s fired again!” said Schultz.
“Are you reloading forward, Buck?” asked Rich.
“Affirm. Two more Forties.”
“Shoot again, as soon as ready!”
In all, six Mark Forty torpedoes, from two different locations, converged in succession on the intruder. In succession they ripped into the area where the sonar scope showed her, into the halo effect which seemed almost to have developed pulsations, so fast was it going on and off — and disappeared.
There was a cry from Schultz. “He’s fired again! He’s fired at us! It’s coming this way!”
“You’ll have to try to outrun it, Buck!”
“Coolant pumps in high speed, maneuvering!” ordered Buck on the telephone. “How much speed can you give me?” He listened anxiously. “Not enough!” he said. “Use all the steam that you’ve got in the generators! Override the low-pressure alarm and the high temperature-differential scram! Keep those rods up! Get us rolling!”
He shouldered Rich aside, stuck his head outside the sonar room. “All ahead emergency,” he called to the helmsman. To Clancy, across the control room, he yelled, “Two hundred feet!” Back inside, on the telephone, he said, “Don’t wreck the reactor, Harry! We’ll still be needing it. But if you can’t give me speed, right now, it won’t make any difference! That first explosion was meant for us, the Cushing’s been torpedoed, and there’s another fish headed our way!” Turning to Rich he said, “They’ll do it! Harry Langforth’s with them, and he’ll build up faster than this old reactor’s ever gone before!” Suddenly he grinned tightly. “Wish old Brighting could see us! Where are all those reactor safeguards now, hey?” He darted out into the passageway again, called, “Left full rudder!” To Rich he said swiftly, “What’s the course dead away from that fish?”