“Captain, the ship is rigged for dive,” said Dwyer.
“Very well,” said the captain. “Submerge the ship.”
He noticed that Dwyer still wore a .45 pistol on his belt, a vestige of their time in port. They’d gotten to sea so fast that he hadn’t time to check it back in to the small arms locker. This pleased the captain, in part because the bookishDwyer looked so odd with the big gun at his side.
With the shutting of that hatch, the ship became completely sealed. Air re-circulated from compartment to compartment, and from man to man. The ship’s atmosphere control equipment only removed three things from the air. One, carbon monoxide, was produced by combustion. In normal times the only combustion on the boat was that of cigarettes. Secondly, the ship monitored and removed carbon dioxide, a product of respiration produced every second of every day by living men. Thirdly there was hydrogen, given off by the ship’s gigantic acid-filled battery as it stored and released electric power.
The ship only added one thing to the air: oxygen, which they created themselves by using high voltage electricity to tear molecules of sea water into their constituent parts. On a submarine men shared everything, including the air they breathed.
The ship soon descended to periscope depth, then deeper still. Dwyer lowered the periscope.
“Ahead one-third,” he ordered.
“Ahead one-third, aye sir.” The helmsman rang it up, and the engine order telegraph dinged as the engine room acknowledged the order. The ship slowed.
Chief Crosby, the diving officer, leaned forward to concentrate as the two planesmen in front of him allowed themselves to relax. It was his show now.
Those two young men were Petty Officers Diaz and Lacroix. Between them they operated the three control surfaces that actually made the ship move: the rudder that turned the ship right or left, the stern planes at the back of the ship and the bow planes at the front, both of which drove the ship up and down. Diaz found that sometimes his friends and family back in Colorado didn’t believe him when he explained that he, a mere nineteen year old, actually controlled the movements of a billion dollar submarine. He didn’t even attempt to explain that as a member of the maneuvering watch ship control party, he was judged to be one of the best at that job on the boat. Diaz and Lacroix had developed instincts and a god-given ability to react instantly and accurately to officer of the deck’s orders, to the point that when they were on watch, they became an extension of his will.
One of the reasons they were good at it was because they enjoyed it. The rudder and engine orders came quickly and rapidly while the ship maneuvered itself out to sea, backing bells and reverses of the rudder in rapid succession. The orders were a language of their own: steady as she goes… rudder amidships… meet her… check your swing. All had very specific actions associated with them that could mean the difference between reaching the dive point safely and running aground on a sand bar, or colliding with another ship. And of course in the control room, they couldn’t see any of the objects they might be trying to avoid: it was like driving a sports car down the interstate with a blindfold on, while somebody else stuck their head out the sunroof and told you how to steer, and whether to press the brake or the gas. Steering the ship precisely, actually controlling it, was a rush to them, and responding to the rapid orders of the maneuvering watch was more exciting and challenging than just about anything else on the boat. Diaz had noticed when he had last looked back on the control room that the quartermaster had his head down on the chart, exhausted from the night of preparations, and already bored with their patrol. It made him grateful for his job, and the adrenalin rush it provided.
Once the boat submerged and slowed, he too could relax slightly as the diving officer took control. The dive’s mission, immediately after submerging, was to get a “good one-third trim,” meaning that at a given depth, at five knots, and with zero degrees on all the control surfaces, the ship would maintain a constant depth. It was crucial to ship control, establishing a baseline of buoyancy, and ensuring that the ship was in good trim as it began its deployment. While he worked on it, the ship would stay on a steady, slow course, giving Lacroix and Diaz a breather.
“Pump from aft trim,” Crosby ordered the Chief of the Watch.
“Pump aft trim, aye,” he said. The Chief of the Watch, or COW, controlled all the ship’s tanks and pumps, moving water from tank to tank, and on and off the ship as necessary. As he pumped, the planesmen could reduce their angles little by little until the ship was neutral. There were complex calculations one could run to determine how much water needed to be pumped from where and how long to reduce an angle, but like all the good diving officers, Crosby did it by feel.
Diaz could feel it too… he lowered the angle of his planes to maintain the zero angle on the ship as the dive’s changes took effect. It felt almost like weight coming off, like he was holding the ship down with his planes, and as the dive corrected the trim he could release it, bit by bit, until ship rode flat on its own, with no effort by the giant control surfaces that were an extension of his hands on the wheel. He looked over at Lacroix, and saw that he was getting there too. It felt good.
Suddenly, just outside controclass="underline" loud coughing.
“Jesus,” he said.
“Sounds almost like he’s puking,” said Lacroix.
“Mind your helm,” said Crosby, unhappy with the distraction.
Then: a clatter, and a crash. A thud to the deck, then the sound of running footsteps and shouting.
“What the hell?” said Diaz.
“Mind your helm,” said Chief Crosby again, but he was leaning over too, trying to get a look.
The OOD stepped up behind them… unlike them he was free to roam the control room. They could only see the shocked expression on his face, then he rushed back to the conn and grabbed the 1MC mike:
“Injured man in the forward compartment!”
“What happened?” said Crosby.
“Somebody passed out,” said Lieutenant Dwyer. “Looks like he smashed his head on the way down… blood everywhere. I don’t know… there might be two of them.”
“Two of them? Who is it?” asked Diaz.
“I can’t see,” replied Lacroix. He was leaning way over in his seat to get a look. The dive was looking too, everyone wanted to know what was going on. Diaz was irritated that from where he sat, the outboard station, he couldn’t see a thing. Everyone in control was trying to look, and everyone had a better view than him.
“What do you see?” he was frustrated that his friend wasn’t sharing any information, just leaning over. Way over.
“What do you see?” he asked Lacroix again. “Tell me.” He nudged him.
Lacroix’s glasses fell off his head, and onto the deck. He didn’t react.
He had passed out too.
Diaz stood up out of his chair then, and turned around to face the control room. All eyes were fixed on the passageway, where at least two men had passed out. He saw the quartermaster still face down on his chart. And now the helm was unconscious. He didn’t think anyone else had realized it yet: people were passing out all over the boat. There was something wrong with their air.
For the first time in his life, real panic began to well up inside him.
“Chief…” he said.
Crosby looked at him, startled to see him standing. Diaz pointed at Lacroix.
“He’s out too.”
“What the fuck?”
The OOD began coughing hard behind them. The COW coughed into his hand.