“Two minutes fifteen,” said his quartermaster. “Dead ahead. A hair on the port bow.”
“Tell Mr. Abbott to pass directly under, if he can.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“… How long now?”
“Ninety seconds … sixty … thirty … twenty, fifteen …”
Richardson had no idea when it was that he first realized he was looking at something. Though clear, the water was dark, for there was very little light penetrating the ice cover, and out of the deep formlessness of the shadowed water, solidity slowly emerged. It was the color of water, bespoke regularity, and rigidity, a gradual gathering together of vague nothingness in the sea until there was something, square and angular, huge and sinister. And close. Very close! Rich realized he was looking with his line of sight elevated, quickly swiveled it downward, saw what he took to be a square bottom, flipped up the handles, reached for his periscope hoist lever.
“Down periscope!” rapped out Buck, snapping up his control handles. His startled tone caused his quartermaster to jerk the hoist lever, and his periscope shot downward. The man managed to push the lever back toward Raise, to brake the fall, barely in time to bottom the periscope without damage.
Rich’s “Down ’scope!” was almost simultaneous with Buck’s. As he instinctively grabbed for the lever, he felt his own quartermaster already there, pulling it for him, getting the heavy tube down swiftly and safely.
“Left full rudder!” shouted Buck. “Take her down fast!” The whoosh of air and the rush of water into negative tank pervaded the control room. He made a show of wiping the sweat off his forehead. “Did you see what I saw, boss?”
“I think so. What do you think it was?”
“It was mighty big, that’s all I can say!”
“I think we’d have passed under it, but it sure scared me,” said Richardson. “Damn good thing we were going so slow!”
“That’s for sure!”
“What was it, Skipper?” asked Abbott, standing on the main deck outside the periscope circle rail. “An iceberg?”
“No. Too regular for that. Something straight up and down in the water!”
“That’s what I saw, too, Buck! I thought I could see the bottom of it, though — could you?”
“Negative, I had my ’scope turned up. All I saw was something suddenly awfully big and awfully close!”
“The bottom looked squared-off to me. It was man-made, all right!”
“Did it move, or look as if it could move?”
“Passing three hundred. Give me a depth, Captain!” said Clancy, calling from the other side of the periscope station. “I need speed, or permission to blow the tank.”
“Blow negative now, Tom,” said Buck swiftly, “and vent the pressure easy. Try to hold whatever depth you can stop her at.”
The noise of blowing air. Then the flood valve clanked shut, and a great quantity of air, at pressure corresponding to the depth of water, began to vent into the ship. Rich and Buck had to swallow several times before their sinus passages felt normal. “I don’t think that thing was mobile, Buck. That was no seagoing shape. Let’s come on around and ping on it. We’ll have to chance nobody will hear us. Maybe that will give us an idea of what it is.”
At half-a-mile range and depth of three hundred feet, Manta made several complete circuits of the strange object, pinging first strongly, then progressively less so. Finally Schultz had his equipment down to minimum power, the ping barely perceptible as it went out, almost inaudible when the echo returned. And gradually, the outline of what they were looking at so painstakingly came clear.
Rich recognized it first. “It’s a cylinder, Buck! Four cylinders, rather, fastened together in some way and standing upright in the water!”
“That’s what it looks like, all right! I’ve never heard of anything like this! Have you?”
“No. Not ever. It must be floating in the sea, but it doesn’t look as if it were intended to be mobile.”
“Not with that shape,” said Buck. “How big do you make it?”
“No idea — yes, we do too have a guess. If the bottom really was a little above the tops of our periscopes, that would put it at a hundred twenty feet or so. From the sonar picture it’s about two-thirds that in width.”
“And the top’s got to be frozen in the ice pack! If it can’t move, it’s got to be!”
“That makes sense, Buck. But what is it?”
“Let’s close in again till we can see it, boss,” begged Buck. “Maybe that will give us the clue. Besides, if anybody heard us pinging, the quicker we get this over with, the better.”
“Agreed!”
The water was remarkably clear, but the dim light filtering through the bumpy underside of the ice pack was barely sufficient to outline the huge structure. The control room had been darkened, leaving only red lamps glowing at the important stations. Buck and Rich kept their faces firmly pressed against the rubber buffers at the periscope eyepieces, the better to acclimate their eyes to the tenebrous half-light. Forty feet above them, at the tops of the periscopes, they turned their two glass orbs from side to side, elevated and depressed the prisms inside, and gradually the amorphous thing took shape. There was an impression of massive strength, vertical steel solidity held together with an intricate interlocking of rugged girders, combined with a much more delicate tracery of smaller lines running in every direction. At several places steel ladders could be distinguished. The entire structure — or structures, for there seemed to be four principal elements of equal size — was painted sea gray. It was relatively new, for as yet there had been very little growth on the surfaces. Here and there black lettering could be seen featuring the occasional “reversed” characters of the Russian alphabet. Other areas, irregular in shape, were most likely merely abrasions, or rusted places.
As the Manta crept slowly around the complex, rising nearer the surface and then descending to inspect its bottom, its dimensions were determined to be approximately 120 feet in depth, roughly 80 feet in width overall. In composition it was four huge vertical cylinders, each some 35 feet in diameter, attached together by steel girders. Where it encountered the ice overhead, three sides of the square were evidently frozen into it, for there was no visible demarkation above, except that light came through the ice and not through the metal. But on the fourth side there was a large opening in the ice, in length and width many times the size of the two cylinders touching it, through which bright sunlight streamed in stark contrast to the dimness everywhere else.
“What do you think, Buck? Ever see anything like this before?”
“The only thing I can remember that looked like this was the grain elevator in my hometown. It had six silos, sort of roofed — silos! Silos! Could these be missile silos?”
“Missile silos, floating in the Arctic Ocean! By God, that’s what they could be! Then that little polynya would be a resupply dock! Imagine the trouble they’re going to, to keep it ice-free! Buck, I think you hit it! This is the headquarters of that Soviet polar exploration expedition they were talking about in that lousy press release, and it’s really an intercontinental missile base! I’ll bet you five there’s an ice runway alongside it, too!”
“We’ve got to report this as soon as we can, boss!”
“Just as soon as we can. But we’ve got to be sure first. If we’re right, this will really shake up the powers down in Washington!”
“This must be where that submarine was based, and we know he’s not coming back. Maybe we can ease on up and take a careful look! Then we’ll know!”