Another hour passed; an hour and a half. Rich’s shoulders were aching with his unaccustomed straining. Following Buck’s instructions, Jerry had been slowly traversing the area where Cushing should be, keeping Manta’s bow whenever possible on the bearing of the enemy to reduce the possibility of detection. The Soviet submarine, also, must be searching. Probably in much the same way, and with no more to go on.
And then Jerry Abbott suddenly jumped on to the periscope platform. “He’s pounding again!” he whispered. “Very close!”
“Bearing?” said Buck.
“No bearing! Schultz says it’s right overhead! He and JT hear it all around the dial!”
“Even if we don’t see Keith, Buck,” said Rich, “that will bring our playmate over here.”
“We’re ready!” said Buck. “But we have to be sure which is which before we shoot!”
“What do you think I’ve been thinking about!”
Both men had kept their eyes to the eyepieces, faces pressed tightly to the face guards of their respective periscopes. And then Buck saw the Cushing. “I’ve got Keith in sight!” he said. “Bearing, mark! Almost straight up! As high as you can elevate!”
“Two-four-eight,” said the quartermaster, who had been hovering nearby, almost totally idle, for hours.
“Put me on him!” Forgetting he was not the skipper of the submarine, Rich had barked the order as if he were. No one seemed to notice, or think anything of it. He felt someone’s hands, the quartermaster’s, helping swing the heavy periscope. It was already at full elevation.
There, in silhouette, surprisingly near and quite distinct in outline, was the unmistakable shape of a U.S. missile submarine! He was looking from beneath, saw a fisheye view, but there could be no mistake. He searched the bow section, saw the thin line of the anchor chain hanging vertically down. Keith was snug against the underside of the ice pack. He might even be under a relatively thin place, for there seemed to be considerable light around him. Now where’s the other one? As he thought the question, he heard Buck ask it, and Abbott’s answer.
“Very close! On zero-two-three, coming in slow!”
“We may see him in a minute, Buck! I hope he’s shallower than we are!”
“He will be, boss! He won’t be able to raise his periscopes any deeper than we can. Probably not as deep. He’ll be coming in to look Keith over!”
“That’s the way I figure it, too. He’ll be checking for the damage his fish did.”
“You know what he’ll do if he thinks it’ll be too big a job to bring her in, don’t you?”
“There’s no doubt what his instructions are.” Rich spoke very quietly. The thought had been growing in his mind for the past several hours. Dead men tell no tales. Enough of life, treasure and national prestige had been risked in this operation already. A negative decision on the part of the foreign submarine skipper would dictate another torpedo, and one for the Manta, too, once her continued existence was inevitably revealed. The silence of the sea would claim yet two more victims, and no one would ever know what had happened under the silent white overlay which had, since before history, sealed the mysteries of the Arctic.
Some portions of the U.S. Navy, aware of Manta’s rescue attempt, would assume that it had gone too far, had been too unorthodox. Ergo, it must have resulted in disaster to both submarines — a comforting thought for the mediocre mind, illogical though it might be. Poorly informed speculation, nonetheless articulate, would suggest dozens of ingenious solutions of the mystery, some of them ranging into the occult. Some would even have both submarines transported through time warps, or black holes in space. Nowhere in the West, probably, except in some secret drawer of the U.S. National Security Council, would there be an accurate appraisal of what had most likely actually occurred.
Rich and Buck had kept their periscopes trained on the bearings given by Schultz, relayed by Jerry Abbott, and they saw the enemy submarine simultaneously.
She was moving very slowly, with three periscopes up, passing between the Manta and the Cushing at a depth roughly halfway between them. She had a very large bulbous bow, a small bridge structure well forward, a conical stern section and a large single propeller, barely turning over. She was larger than the Manta but considerably smaller than the Cushing. As she came into view what instantly struck both Americans was the strange structure wrapped around her bridge and forward portion. It looked almost like an afterthought to her design and added greatly to the outsize bulge of her bows. Massive, heavy, askew, deformed even — and then Rich realized what it was. Great steel beams and thick protective plates, built around the sleek basic form. The askew condition was due to some strong force that had bent and twisted them out of their original shape!
“That’s the damage he took when he hit Keith,” said Rich.
“Right, boss! I was wondering. That’s got to be it!”
“What depth do you figure him at?”
“He’s looking her over through his ’scopes. So he must be at about the same depth we were when we did. Keel depth a hundred forty or so. Thank goodness we’re well below him. It’s dark below. There’s no way he could see us.” Buck spoke rapidly, in a low tone suited to the dim light in the control room and the secrecy of their effort.
“Hear us, either, the way you’ve got this boat of yours silenced.”
“Ship. We’ve got her pretty quiet, all right. Damn good thing!”
“Ship. I was estimating his depth as a hundred thirty feet. We can hear him plain. Keith should, too.”
“Yes, but he’s been tied up with those emergency repairs.”
Rich and Buck had become growingly conscious of the noise level of the enemy submarine. Schultz and Abbott had been hearing it for a long time through the sonar equipment. So had the JT. The enemy skipper had evidently shifted to the silent mode, but he had his reactor running — heavy machinery of some kind, anyway — and there was a strong hum, a whine of high-speed gears, which was what Schultz had heard at first. Now, at close range, the sound of the gears was coming directly through the water into Manta’s hull, where it could be heard by all hands. The eerie feeling associated with the foreign noise, the noise which had done its best to destroy them, affected everyone.
“Keith’s bound to hear him now, but the bastard’s too close to shoot. When he moves off a bit Keith may try a shot. That’s a chance the Russian knows he’s taking, but he’s still got that thing that stops electric torpedo motors, and by now he knows it works. We don’t have it, and we’d better be on the other side of the Cushing when Keith shoots!”
“Listen!” A series of short, staccato whistles came over the Gertrude speaker. “Keith’s sending RI KE! There it is again! RI KE! He wants to know if it’s us!”
“Well, we can’t answer him! Not yet, anyway.”
Rich had been gradually training his periscope to the left, following the enemy submarine. So had Buck. He could feel Buck’s nearness, the smell of his sweat, the occasional foot in the way of his own. The intruder was slowly passing beyond the Cushing. Soon he would turn, probably, for another pass on her other side. “All right, Buck. I think this is our chance. You know what to do!”
The Manta swam slowly, silently, in the opposite direction, turned. Buck was using as much speed as he dared. At the depth, her screws were silent.
“We’re ready forward,” said Deedee Brown. “Depth set, one-two-oh feet. I need a range and bearing!”