Peters took me for'ard through the crew's quarters to the torpedo-compartments in the bows. Through a low steel door I saw a heavy bronze tube running out of sight into the bulkhead above. Set into it was a hatch, like an outsize oven door. Peters explained that this was an escape route for the crew if the sub should be flooded. It worked on the principle that when the air pressure inside the tube equalled that of the ocean outside, all the five or six men in the bronze tube need do was to rise to the surface…
A telephone buzzed. A rating answered and automatically jumped to attention. He handed the instrument to Peters. '
For you, sir!'
Peters listened for a moment and slammed it down. '
Quick!' he said. Control Centre!'
He raced through the ship with me at his heels and reached the Control Centre breathless.
The 00D said quickly, ' Sonar reports contact bearing zeronine-zero true, twelve miles.'
Peters took a quick glance at the fathometer, whose stylus was clicking and chuckling, as he asked: ' All round?' ' Aye aye, sir. Something massive is blocking our way.'
6 SAYADEMALHA
Peters snatched up an intercom. Captain in the controlroom, sir!'
In a moment Peace, pulling on a shirt, joined us at the diving-stand. The sleep seemed to have evaporated from his eyes in the few short moments it took him to get from his cabin to the Control Centre.
Peters explained the situation briefly. Peace nodded.
Ahead one-third,' he ordered.
Six hundred feet,' chanted the diving officer.
Bring her up-four hundred feet, handsomely,' went on
Peace.
The strong sound of the pumps-the diving officer was careful not to blow the vents for a too rapid rise through water of unknown salinity and temperature-filled the Control Centre.
Sonar?'
Contact now bears zero-nine-zero true, confused background echoes.'
Is it moving?'
No, sir. Steady range and bearing.;
Come right to one-two-zero,' ordered Peace. He swung
Devastation's bows away to point at an oblique angle. The sonar-man said in his flat voice, Contact steady on zero-six-zero. Confused background noises.'
What the hell is it?' I asked Peace.
These are seas with coral formations,' he replied. Theoretically, there should be a gradual shelving approach towards land, or shoals like the Saya de Malha.' He swung round. Depth?'
' Four hundred.'
The fathometer sounding read 1800 fathoms under our keel, and on Peace's orders Devastation lost way, hanging in mid-ocean. The diving officer stood with his eyes glued to the ballast-control panel, trimming, adjusting, holding her delicate balance.
The sonar-man reported, 'Contact now bears zero-fiveseven, ten miles.'
Without warning, Devastation rocketed upwards, caught by some formidable power combination of current and salinity. '
Flood her down-emergency!' roared Peace. My ears clicked and clacked as scores of tons of high-pressure water poured into the tanks.
Then-Devastation plunged downwards in the opposite direction. The men in the Control Centre hung on to the trolleystraps.
` Blow negative to the mark!' rapped the diving officer.
With a roar like an express train, high-pressure air creaked against the cork insulation lining the control-room dome.
` Blow secured, negative at the mark!' came the answer.
' Shut the flood, vent negative, pump auxiliaries to sea!'
Jenkins, Geoffrey
Hunter Killer
My stomach righted itself as we pulled out of the unexpected dive. Beads of sweat stood out under Peters's eyes. Peace, at the raised periscope stand, glanced round with narrowed eyes. There was an indefinable atmosphere of fear. John, it can't be coral,' said Peace.
Limuria! I saw it so clearly that I could have laughed. Limuria had died a million years ago, not by volcanic upsurge-which would have meant customary coral formations – but by subsidence, by falling into the sea! The huge obstacle barring our way-was it the high rim, the ancient boundary of Limuria, a giant rock soup-plate resting on the ocean bed, the inside of it being the Saya de Malha? My idea would account for the lack of shelving and the shallow, unknown, broken waters extending over 12,000 square miles of treacherous ocean.
I told Peace quickly what was in my mind. Before I had finished he ordered, ' Make your depth two hundred feet.'
I was becoming more accustomed to the swift, deft responses of the planesinen and the ballast control.
' By God, John!' Peace exclaimed, after giving the order. '
The only person with the guts to run these shoals was old Surcouf, the French corsair.'
Surcouf logged an island two hundred years ago somewhere off the northern extremity of Saya de Malha. He named it Roquepiz. Today it's supposed not to exist.' I indicated the fathometer. ' But Surcouf didn't run like a bull at a gate at his shoals.'
In my mind's eye I saw the picture, straight ahead the drowned land of Limuria, a giant rim, probably volcanic, the wall of a vast plateau on which the ancient continent had stood. Our sonar showed that the rim lay in a broad arc across our bows. Inside that rim-what? Few except some eighteenth-century pirates had ever ventured to Saya de Malha on the surface; beneath the ocean, we were the first. What was under that narrow slot, shown on the charts 70 as lying between the main mass of Saya de Malha and my
Disney elephant's head?
' Captain, sir!' It was the sonar-man.
Peace and I joined him for'ard.
' Listen to this doppler effect, sir.
T h e o p e r a t o r t u r n e d u p t h e s o n a r s c o p e v o l u m e o n t h e sound reproducer. Even with the primitive instruments I had been schooled in, I had been able to recognize the change in pitch of the echo which comes back to a listening sub from a target or underwater obstacle. Devastation's sona' was sophistication itself. The doppler effect was clear through the transducer. We were converging on a solid object in our path.
The searching sound went out as a long purr-purr impulse. but it returned with a faint break in it.
' Land?' Peace, too, was puzzled.
' Aye aye, sir-but more-seems something solid is standing out, sort of, from the land.'
' Hill?'
' No, sir. You can hear yourself. Regular, all round the, clock. Waves, too, sir.
I caught the faint crunch of water on the transducer. Peace shook his head. ' Water, not waves.'
' Could be, sir,' replied the sonar-man. ' Tide-race against these unidentified objects.'
My mind was out in front, in Devastation's sonardrome where hyper-sensitive instruments probed ahead through water where sunlight never penetrated, parallelling the dark dreadful night of the spirit when all is lost. I shuddered. We were deeper than man had ever been before over the detritus of a once-great continent which had fallen victim to the sea. I' was afraid.
Peace's voice broke the oppressive silence. ' Navigator!
What is our position?'
W i t h o u t w a i t i n g f o r a r e p l y, h e s t r o d e o v e r t o a g l a s s t o p p e d t a b l e u n d e r w h i c h m o v e d a n e e d l e p o i n t o f l i g h t. striking up through a chart folded over it. The navigator marked its path towards the opening between the two great banks of Saya de Malha. He gestured, unspeaking.
The sonar-man chanted formally. ' Contact evaluated as land, with confused echoes, may be surf.'
Peace watched ' the bug ', as the needlepoint of light is called, move across the dead-reckoning tracer. Then he went to another instrument console to watch the nervous whip of the precision depth-recorder stylus on its sensitized paper, sketching, with frantic haste, it seemed, every sea-bed undulation. He walked slowly back to his raised stool at the periscope stand, glancing half-left beyond the attack periscope to the depth-gauge and course-indicator. The crew were tense, over-attentive to every sound. This sort of waiting game is the test of the submariner.