"Number One," ter Horst told him, "lay forward and steady the damage control parties. See to that fan room fire."
As Van Gelder stood up awkwardly, the control room began to fill with wispy smoke. He ordered the crewmen into respirators. Some cursed in pain as they put masks to bruised and bloodied faces, then aided unconscious or stunned neighbors who flopped sideways strapped into their chairs. Van Gelder reached for a walk-around breather set stowed under his console.
"We're still going down," ter Horst said. "Diving Officer, give the forward ballast tanks more air."
"Sir," the senior chief said, coughing, "it'll expand too much as we go up and we'll lose bubbles through the bottom vents. They'll make a datum topside."
"Christ, man, that doesn't matter now!"
Van Gelder staggered as an aftershock hit. The deck tilted even further in spite of the bow tank blow. He reached out desperately to avoid a long fall down the forward passageway. He grabbed a stanchion on the overhead and lunged to safety, dropping his air pack on the way. He wound up pinned by gravity beside the diving officer and helmsman. He heard his respirator crash against a transverse bulkhead somewhere forward. That could have been my skull, he told himself, then wondered how the fire fighters were making out.
"Emergency-blow stern ballast tanks," ter Horst said. "Use all the air you've got." Van Gelder's ears hurt more, but nothing happened.
"Dammit," ter Horst said, "it's not enough. Fire the hydrazine gas generators." Van Gelder knew the onetime-use chemical cartridges were a last resort. He heard them igniting in the ballast tanks, like missile engines on a hot run in the vertical launching system.
The boat shuddered, then seemed to stop and think about it, still with a frightening downbubble. The helmsman shouted that the sternplanes had been freed. He put them on full rise but then they jammed again. Voortrekker started coming up. The helmsman called out their depth every hundred meters, then every two hundred as the boat kept on accelerating, driven now by massive and increasing positive buoyancy.
"Sonar," Van Gelder said automatically, holding on for dear life, "any surface contacts?" The sonar chief gestured helplessly. "Sir, it's impossible out there." His voice sounded distant, muffled through his breather mask.
"Collision alarm!" ter Horst said into the sound-powered phone. "Talkers relay to all hands: Emergency surface, stand by to broach. Rig for fallout, do not open air induction valves, do not man the bridge."
Van Gelder eyed the speed log. The boat moved in reverse, rising by the stern.
"Raise the photonics mast," ter Horst said. Still strapped in at his console, he activated the viewing screens that hadn't been blown out. He used the 'scope joy stick to look aft and upward.
Van Gelder stared at a screen. At first there was nothing, then he saw an image ― intensified dull glow. Quickly the picture brightened, showing the greenish underside of waves, getting closer and closer. Van Gelder realized the waves were very large, churning and breaking horribly, not like normal windblown swell. Suddenly Voortrekker burst through, and ter Horst worked the joy stick.
Van Gelder watched their stern uncover, white water swirling off the hull, Voortrekker a massive projectile thrusting up into the sky. He could see the control surfaces and the cowling of the pump-jet, exposed naked in the air. Van Gelder's stomach rose to his throat as the sub topped out in her trajectory, halted, then smashed back down. She thrust the chaotic seas aside, water spraying from beneath her, then plowed under, reburying the hull. She seemed to stagger, then came up again, fighting against the violent ocean, settling on an even keel. At once she started to badly roll and pitch, steerageway gone, visibly stern-heavy now.
"Do not counterflood," ter Horst ordered.
Van Gelder struggled to his feet, his attention glued now to the monitor, taking in the scene with a practiced sailor's eye. Foam sprayed off the frenzied wavetops, streaming away beyond the stern.
"My God," he said, "the wind's blowing to the south." Van Gelder knew that thanks to planetwide air circulation driven by the sun, the winds of the Southern Ocean were the steadiest on earth. They roared down off the high mountains of central Antarctica, spreading northward toward the coast in all directions. To conserve angular momentum while moving farther from earth's axis of rotation, the air had to lose ground to the planet's spin, veering left: the Coriolis force. The wind at this latitude always blew to the northwest, Van Gelder told himself. Always.
Ter Horst shifted the periscope head, searching. He switched to wider angle, then found what he was looking for. "Five thousand meters tall already, maybe." The overcast had dissipated from the heat, and the base surge had mostly cleared: the mushroom cloud thrust higher as they watched. The golden-yellow fireball cast shadows north along the wavetops, canceling the sun.
"Air's being sucked in toward its base," Van Gelder said. A satanic low-pressure front, he told himself, driven by staggering thermal forces. The superheated air formed nitric oxides, like in smog, adding a reddish-orange tinge.
"Look at that," ter Horst said. "The entrained steam's condensing now … It's giving the pillar a nice fluffy white appearance."
In a mockery of normal weather the man-made cirrostratus cooled.
"It's started to rain," Van Gelder said. He knew droplets falling against the pillar's updraft would add their static charges to the massive ones created by the blast.
"Lightning," ter Horst said. "Wow." He actually smiled as the monitor flashed again. Each discharge's crack resounded through Voortrekker's hull.
"Navigator," Van Gelder said, "get a radiation count."
"Working on it, sir. It takes a minute for the detector modes to integrate."
"Captain," Van Gelder said, "we're probably best off like this for now, with that thing facing toward our stern." His eyes were stinging from the smoke.
"What?"
"The slant angle, sir, from the fireball back aft. It makes the hull seem thicker."
"Yes, I think you're right … "
"That way our sail and the reactor shielding give us more protection too, at least in forward compartments."
Ter Horst nodded. Finally tearing himself from the screen, he spoke into his mouthpiece.
"All nonessential personnel evacuate the engineering spaces. Do not use the aft escape hatch, come forward through the reactor tunnel." He reached beneath his seat and gave Van Gelder his own air mask, then grabbed a spare stowed in the overhead.
"Sir," the navigator shouted through his respirator, "not much gamma radiation's getting through the hull, but it's murder topside. Strontium 90 all over the place, iodine 131, cesium 137, krypton 85 … "
The boat rolled into the trough of an especially lofty wave, the confluence of several others that had melded in a rogue. Van Gelder braced himself as the backup mechanical inclinometer plumbed toward sixty-five degrees, then recovered as the vessel yawed almost broadside to ground zero. The working of the ship seemed heavier now — she must have spilled some air and hydrazine fumes. Van Gelder glanced nervously at the overhead to starboard, toward the south, knowing what was out there. Another strong wave hit. Again the boat rolled mercilessly.
"We've got to get propulsion back," ter Horst said. "We need directional control. But a fast scram recovery will take them ten or fifteen minutes."
"Sir," Van Gelder said, "if we start the emergency diesel now, we'll draw in outside air."
"I know. And the batteries won't take us far in so rough a sea either, plus then we won't have the amp-hours to regain reactor power."
A breathless messenger arrived from aft. "Captain, the engineer reports wrecked main motor breakers bypassed now, but forward DC buses impaired by overheating from the fan room fire. Only trickle current available from the forward batteries."