"Bad, sir. Water's gaining on the bilge pumps fast, rising over a foot a minute. The spray's still taking paint right off the bulkheads."
"XO," Wilson said, listening on the damage control handset, "that's our biggest problem now. You head down there and take charge, get Weps in here as Fire Control." Wilson picked up the 7MC with his left hand. "Maneuvering, maintain back flank. We need speed for depth control and the pump-jet's got lousy pickup in reverse." Wilson turned to Meltzer. "Helm, how are the waterfoils?"
"Sir, foreplanes will not deploy. All after control surfaces are nominal, but functioning is awkward going backwards."
"Make your depth one hundred feet and try to hold her steady there. That'll reduce the outside pressure and give us some protection from the fallout." As the boat came up, she began to roll and pitch. "Captain," Meltzer said, "we're too unstable!"
Wilson held the mike open as he continued, "Right standard rudder."
"Right standard rudder, aye, sir. No course specified."
"As our bow swings left to two seven zero," Wilson said, "steady her there and stop the shaft. Then go ahead to one third smartly. I want us clearing datum upwind, just in case. The lower speed'll relieve some of the force of the water on the bow. Use down-angle on the sternplane function if we get too heavy forward."
"Understood, sir," Meltzer said.
"XO, tell me if you can't stop the flooding. Besides the radiation problem, I'd hate to surface and make a datum for some overflying satellite."
"I concur, sir," Jeffrey said. He started for the ladder aft of the CACC, the one leading down to the weapons spaces.
On the way he grabbed a portable radiac — radiation, detection, indication, and computation. This one measured alpha particles, the heaviest and slowest-moving — thus least penetrating — fallout emission by-product. But alpha sources were the most carcinogenic if inhaled, lodged in the alveoli of the lungs. At another locker Jeffrey donned a self-contained Scott air pack. He sealed the mask very tightly, drawing in the metallic-tasting oxygen from the heavy tank. He put on thick work gloves. When he reached the torpedo room lower level, the damage control parties were inside. Jeffrey quickly sized up the situation.
Challenger's eight torpedo tubes, her war-fighting business end, were grouped vertically in sets of four, starboard and port of her centerline. The tubes were located abaft the bow, canted outward nine degrees to clear her sonar sphere — gantries between the four tall weapons racks created an upper mezzanine. Tube eight was on the lower left of the port-side, even-numbered group. Water gushed from around its inner door, blasting harder than a fire hose.
By the time Jeffrey climbed through the hatch and dogged it shut behind, the boat was trimming noticeably by the bow from all the weight of added water. The lowest pair of three-foot-wide gleaming titanium inner doors was half submerged. The next pair up, tubes five and six, wore small signs, WARNING WARSHOT LOADED.
The water was tinged with red and flecked with bits of plastic and raw flesh. Shoved out of the way behind one weapons rack were the remains of the torpedomen who manned the room at general quarters. The force of the incoming spray at depth had battered them beyond recognition. Electronics cabinets near the tube-eight door were smashed as if hit by cannon fire. The fore-ends of the weapons in direct line to the door had all been shredded, their blue protective covers and fiberglass nose caps gone and their guidance packages in tatters. The conventional Mark 48 highest on the inner port-side rack teetered menacingly, its support clamps knocked asunder by seawater jetting in at a thousand psi. Jeffrey wondered what state its arming circuitry was in. He sloshed forward through the thigh-deep freezing water, his head just clearing the gantry overhead, his shoulders brushing the weapons racks on either side. He wriggled past the damage control party, then bent over and took a good look at tube eight, which projected from the forward bulkhead through a mass of pipes and fittings. Thick wooden beams pressed against the damaged door, placed there before the concussion by the nowdead crewmen. The sea spewed out all around the edges of the interrupted-screw breach, ricocheting off the bulkheads and hydraulic loading gear.
"The balks won't hold it," the local man in charge yelled in Jeffrey's ear, above the constant roaring of the water. "The outer door's jammed open!"
"We tried driving in more shims!" a leading petty officer said. "It didn't do much good!" The LPO held a sledgehammer with both hands.
Jeffrey nodded. The balks, hastily fitted when Wilson ordered the door shored up, had kept the door from being blasted inward by their own Mark 88. But the shock wave of the detonation had driven into the tube — kept open so they wouldn't lose the fiber-optic wire — and like a water hammer, it warped the inner mounting frame.
Jeffrey eyed the door once more. "We'll have to knock those off first," he shouted through his mask, pointing to the balks, "then fit a lock-down collar on!" He glanced at his radiac and didn't like what he saw. "Everybody without a respirator get out of here!" The LPO read Jeffrey's unit, a proportional counter that caught radioactivity from the unfissioned uranium or plutonium scattered in a low-yield burst. "Sir, four millirems a minute's nothing!"
"The guidelines say—"
"Screw the guidelines, Commander! We helped build this boat!"
"Okay," Jeffrey shouted back, "belay the order." He'd transferred on as Challenger's exec after the war started, and wasn't about to argue with a motivated plank owner, especially one who'd just lost friends.
Besides, everybody was already soaking wet and breathing hard. Ordering them to put their masks on wouldn't make much difference now Instead Jeffrey told the local phone talker to have COB pump in high-pressure air — at least that would slow the flooding. The man kept flicking water from his mouthpiece as he bellowed each word carefully, then listened. He caught Jeffrey's eye and nodded hard.
Jeffrey glanced at a depth gauge as the bow suddenly whipsawed vertically, sloshing water everywhere, knocking crewmen off their feet. The boat was going down, getting too hard to control.
"Sir," the man in charge yelled hoarsely, "that topmost ADCAP's shifted more! We can't get to it with this spray, and if it falls, the thing could blow!" And if they surfaced now, the A-bomb-ravaged seas would toss them more.
But the torpedo room's rear bulkhead wasn't very pressure-proof. Jeffrey knew that if this compartment filled at depth, the seawater could get into the battery bank in the bilge spaces just aft. Broken batteries would short, giving off hydrogen and chlorine gas, and then explode. Jeffrey's ears began to ache as the atmospheric pressure rose. He swallowed hard to ease the pain.
"All right!" Jeffrey shouted. "We have to do this all at once and fast!" He positioned several crewmen next to the leaking door, ready with the heavy ceramic repair collar. Another half dozen men stood by to get the massive beams out of the way. On Jeffrey's command the LPO whacked the shims loose with his sledgehammer, freeing the beams. The water inflow got much worse, and now they used hand signals because of the noise.
Jeffrey helped wrestle the two halves of the repair collar, hinged at a joint, to fit the collar around the door, fighting hard against the bruising spray. He grunted when one of the beams rammed him in the calf as it was hastily moved aside. An electrician's mate slipped, cracking his jaw against a protruding autoloader cam. The man got up, lip and chin bloodied, hair and denim jump suit soaked, and resumed his place. A severed arm floated by and Jeffrey batted it aside.
The crewmen crouched into the rising water to get more leverage. Jeffrey and two men wearing respirators put their heads under to better see what they were doing. Pink water pressed the improvised scuba masks against their faces, but at least down low the builtup water helped soften the incoming spray. They rammed the collar flush. Muscles bulged as the men gradually forced the halves of the collar together against the flow, then cranked it closed. Someone brought a metal tool, a long valve extension rod, and the work gang used brute strength to tighten each of the collar's ten giant wing nuts, squashing the door the rest of the way shut. The LPO gave the mating crank one more solid heave, seating the collar decisively.