“Damn, it’s stuck!” Irvin said, trying to undog the hatch. “Give me a hand!”
Danny moved to join him, and together they strained with all their might. No go. “Must’ve rusted shut,” Danny said ominously. Irvin glanced up at a sound and saw Lelaa standing there.
“Let me help.” Awkwardly arranged around the small wheel, the three of them gave another tug. To Irvin’s consternation and Lelaa’s delight, the dog finally spun.
“See? You just needed ‘girl help.’ I didn’t really do anything but touch the handle. You Amer-i-caans say that ships are ‘shes’ even when you give them ‘he’ names. Maybe you’re right. Girls always listen better to girls.”
Danny made a rude noise and spun the wheel to its stop. Looking at Laumer, he raised the hatch.
After the better part of a year exposed to fresh open air, they weren’t prepared for the stench that wafted out. It was ungodly, even to Danny. His submariner’s brain instantly categorized most of the smells, however, and even as he almost retched and stepped quickly away, his mood brightened a little.
“Aggh! People live in that?” Lelaa gasped.
“No!” Irvin insisted. “At least… not this bad. We used to vent her out every day. She spent most of her time on the surface, not all buttoned up. There’s months of stink down there that’s been baking in the hot sun!”
“A little more than that, Mr. Laumer,” Danny said. “There’s mold and mildew and other things, but she doesn’t smell any gassier than she did when we sealed her up.”
Irvin looked thoughtful. Scampering up the rungs to the top of the conn tower, he tried the other hatch, and it spun freely. It had been the one they used most often when they were here before. It clanked open against its stops and he peered into the dark hole. Remembering the battle lantern, he shone it down.
“Doesn’t look that bad,” he murmured noncommitally. “Smells nasty, but what do you expect? No more gas, so water hasn’t gotten to the batteries again.”
“Are you going inside?” Lelaa asked. Irvin seemed to consider.
“Well, at first I figured we’d let her air out overnight. Even if it rains, it won’t hurt anything, not really. Why?”
“I want to go inside,” Lelaa announced. “All I can see is this little thing poking out of the sand. I want to see inside!”
“Okay…” Irvin hedged. “It is nasty. And it’s hot in there too. Maybe not as hot as it used to be when it was in full sunlight. ..”
“Hell, let’s go,” said Danny. “You told the fellas we’d start to break her or get her out tomorrow, one or the other. They deserve an answer!”
Irvin nodded. “You’re right. Let’s do it.”
One at a time, they descended to the control room below. The smell was ghastly and it felt like breathing a putrid soup, but eventually they grew accustomed to it, even Lelaa. Irvin shone the light around until he settled on the switch he was looking for. It activated the red emergency lighting Spanky had turned on months ago. To Irvin’s surprise, the lights still came on, but just barely. There wasn’t much juice left at all.
“If we get her dug out, run a cable from the generator, maybe we can charge her up enough to start an engine,” Danny said.
“Maybe. Or if the compressed air tanks are still charged, we can turn one over that way. Just give her some fuel, and vroom!” He shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“What are these big poles for, and what are those big, shiny wheels?” Lelaa asked, pointing to port.
“The poles are the periscopes. You know, those two things sticking up on top of the conn tower?”
“One is bent.”
“Yeah, it was damaged when the Japs were depth-charging us. Giving us a treatment kind of like what we did to the mountain fish with the “Y” gun. We use them to see above the water when we’re under it. Those wheels control the bow and stern planes. They make her go up and down underwater. That, and the amount of water we let in.” She looked around.
“Water in here?”
“No. In the ballast tanks. We let water in to go down, and blow it out with compressed air to go back up. That big wheel at the front of the compartment controls the rudder, just like on Simms. It makes the boat turn from side to side.”
“Sounds simple.”
“Believe me, sister. There ain’t nothing simple about it!” Danny quipped.
“Hey!” cautioned Irvin. “I don’t think ‘sister’ is an appropriate way to address the captain of a United States ship!”
Danny blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Bein’ back here on my old ‘sugar boat,’ it started to feel like old times.”
Lelaa blinked in acceptance. “Then let us be about the business of determining whether we can make it more like old times by getting your ‘sugar boat’ off this beach!”
They decided to go forward first, since the bow was buried deeper than the stern. The crew compartment looked much like they’d left it: decks clear, racks chained to the bulkhead. They’d removed some of the mattresses for bedding on the island and the others had turned somewhat gray.
“Here’s where some of the mildew’s from,” Danny said. “High humidity got the fart bags!” Irvin pointed the light, nodded, then looked around. It was the most spacious area in the boat and even some of the wooden folding chairs were still secured. A few had come loose, probably when the boat was rolling with the storm. Danny knelt and raised one of the linoleum-covered deck plates and Irvin shone the light.
“Forward battery looks just like we left it.” Irvin glanced at Lelaa. “We lost a few batteries in here and had some water coming in. Had to seal off the compartment. Some good fellas died. Gas.”
It was a simple statement, but Lelaa could tell the words still hurt. Irvin had already told her the story and explained what happened when seawater and sulfuric acid met. She also knew he’d been a junior officer and the decision wouldn’t have been his. She wondered how she would have felt. Probably the same, she concluded. Not guilty, certainly, but pained that she’d survived as a result of such a decision.
“All the passengers were in the torpedo room.” Irvin gestured forward. “No torpedoes, so it was the logical place to put them. There’s racks in there too.”
They moved to the hatch, which had been left standing open. Sure enough, there were quite a few more racks stowed in the compartment. There was also the most confusing conglomeration of pipes, valves, and instruments Lelaa had ever seen. She watched Irvin and Danny inspect a few gauges here and there and make approving or disapproving sounds. They inspected the bilge in the forwardmost area, in front of the fuel tanks.
“Well, she ain’t dry,” Danny announced, “but she ain’t sunk either. Looks about like normal seepage to me.”
“So?”
“So we look aft,” Danny answered, shrugging.
The aft crew’s quarters and officer’s country looked much the same. The batteries under the plates looked okay too. There was water in the bilge under the engines, but it hadn’t reached the huge machines.
“Those are the engines?” Lelaa asked. She’d seen the steam engines they were building, but the difference in sophistication was stunning.
“Yep,” Irvin said. “Two NELSECO diesels. Twelve hundred horsepower combined. They’ll move this tub at fifteen knots on the surface, if the sea’s calm.”
“And they were both running when you ran out of fuel?”
“That’s right,” said Danny. “They worked the last time we used them.” Lelaa looked at him and twitched her tail. She had much to learn about Amer-i-caans, but the statement sounded… odd.