Manta rolled to starboard, leaning into the turn like a rollercoaster car. Her gyrocompass repeaters began to spin. She had almost reached full speed but had slowed markedly with the loss of one engine, and now even more as the rudder drag took effect. The whirling port propeller, driven with the maximum output of the reactor and steam generators, was cavitating heavily because of the increased hull resistance. Its noise came clearly through the hull. Richardson’s face was immobile. Buck suddenly had the impression that he was not there at all.
“This is it, Skipper,” said Buck softly. “Just like the last time, only we’ve lost half our power. It’s all we can do!” He spoke almost with resignation.
“What’s our depth now, Buck?” asked Rich, not stirring from his position, braced against the double angle on the ship.
“Passing six hundred feet. We’ll have to take the angle off her pretty soon, even if we can contain the leak!”
“Buck,” said Rich, speaking somberly and slowly, “Keith did one thing for us that we didn’t appreciate at the time. It’s almost as if I could hear him all over again. Do you remember the depth the Cushing reached?”
“Yes. He told us fourteen hundred pounds sea pressure. That’s over three thousand feet!”
“If the Cushing could go that far below her design depth, so can we, Buck! Even with a bad leak. But that torpedo won’t! It’s our only chance! Tell Tom to keep the angle on and level her off at fifteen hundred feet!”
Buck nodded shortly, his eyes wide as he took it in. The memory of Keith’s last moments was strong in him as he deliberately gave the orders. There was silence in the control room, and in all the other compartments. The silence of men who realized the risk but who also understood the necessity for it. If ever they were to put their faith in the men who had designed and built their ship, who had given it a marvelous power plant and a magnificent hull to go with it, now was the time. Damaged or no, there was no other choice.
One thousand five hundred feet was far below Manta’s designed depth, yet far short of the depth sustained by the Cushing’s stout hull before its inevitable and catastrophic collapse. The Manta was there in slightly more than a minute, and as Clancy began to level off, the immense pressure of the sea was already obvious. During the descent there had been creaks in the solid structure, as the implacable squeeze drove everything inward upon itself. Light partition bulkheads were bowed, drawers and sheet-metal doors were jammed shut. Even some of Manta’s steel interior decks were curved upward or downward, where their girders were compressed lengthwise. All depth gauges had reached their limits and had been secured, the valves communicating to the sea closed tightly. So had most of the sea pressure gauges, only a few of which could register the 670 pounds per square inch the depth produced. A special watch had quickly been set up on all sea connections, throughout the ship, with special emphasis on the periscopes and propeller shafts. Most particularly on the port shaft and its thrust bearing, now also taking increased pressure from the depth as well as the drag imposed by the dead starboard shaft. As expected, its oil temperature had immediately begun heating up.
Everyone aboard was subconsciously aware of an unwonted rigidity in Manta’s heavy framing. Flecks of paint popped off as the squeeze minutely compressed the steel, and it seemed to settle itself, almost as though with flexed muscles and a look of defiance, at holding back the malevolently waiting sea. Steel shapes cannot be alive, and yet there was the indisputable aura of elemental struggle about them as they held fast.
Manta’s speed on one shaft had been reduced to fifteen knots with the rudder hard over, and the overloaded propeller was thrashing loudly. Buck left the rudder on for one more full circle to render the disturbance it made in the water as nearly impenetrable as possible, then put the rudder amidships and let her steady on a course away from the polynya. Resistance eased, the furiously cavitating screw became more quiet, but not completely so, and Manta’s speed increased to nineteen knots.
The real battle, as everyone was well aware, was taking place in the stern room, where the inrush of water must be somehow contained, where Tom Clancy’s two assistants and the entire engineering department, backed up by Jerry Abbott, were at full stretch. There were no illusions about what was going on. The water must be spurting in with maniacal force, sufficient to break an arm or rip off clothes and skin. The proper treatment for any leak is to reduce the pressure behind it — exactly opposite to what they had done. With the damaged shaft stopped, the seal where it exited from the Manta’s hull could be clamped down tightly by its huge peripheral bolts, but to do this under the best of conditions men would have to reach into nearly unreachable places, jammed, confined, with hardly the room to swing a wrench. Only now they would also be confronted with a roaring spray with the force of fifty fire hydrants issuing from behind these same bolts. But no news, in this case, must be good news. They must be coping with the leak, somehow.
Jerry Abbott was undogging the door leading aft to the reactor compartment, was returning to the control room. He left a trail of water dripping on the deck behind him, and a large puddle began swiftly forming under him as he stopped, facing Buck. He was soaked through and breathing hard. “We can’t hold her at this depth, sir,” he said rapidly. “We’ve got the packing nuts as tight as they’ll go, but the water is coming in so hard that two of us had to hold a piece of sheet metal to deflect it so that one man could reach the gland nuts. We’ll have to pressurize the compartment!”
“Is everybody out of there?” asked Buck.
“Not yet. Harry Langforth and Whitey Steele and our three best men are still working on the gland, but there’s not much more they can do. The leak’s still a bad one. The drain pump’s taking a suction, but it can’t pump very fast at this depth. The water’s gaining fast, and I’m afraid the rest of the seal might blow out with the pressure!”
“We’ve got to stay down here for a while, Jerry, until that second torpedo either runs down or collapses. Have them abandon the stern room and start putting air in it. That will help the drain pump, and also cut down the rate of the leak!”
Abbott said, “Aye, aye, sir!” and ran aft. As he passed through the watertight door he heard Buck order, “Port ahead two-thirds!”
“The best thing we can do is slow down, Skipper,” said Buck to Rich. “If they’ve got another fish ready we’re still making so much noise it might be able to follow us! Everything else is silenced except the propeller!”
“Right!” It was not necessary to mention the fact that, in her present condition, Manta dared not slow to such a degree that she could not carry the increased weight. Buck would otherwise have ordered one-third speed. A glance at the diving station verified that Clancy had already begun to use angle on the stern planes to hold the stern up. More would be needed as speed dropped, as well as a large bubble of air in the after group of ballast tanks. They could hear the hiss of air as Abbott began to follow his orders at the stern room bulkhead.
Chief Sonarman Schultz finally made the report that had been so anxiously awaited. “When we quieted down I could still hear the torpedo pinging somewhere astern and above us,” he said. “Then it sort of petered out and stopped. I think it finally ran down!”
Clancy had been adding air for several minutes to the ballast tanks aft to compensate for the weight of the water in the stern room, and the anxious looks on his face and on those of his diving crew testified to their realization that the total cubic capacity of all of Manta’s air banks could only expand six times against sea pressure at the 1,500-foot depth — far from enough to empty the after ballast tanks. A silent cheer went through the control room when Buck gave the order to bring the ship up.