The ghastly cacophony of braying alarms stopped. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I felt the strong backward thrust of our propeller cease. The silence was as ominous as the previous racket.
Devastation hung suspended between life and death at 1,100 feet below the surface, nose down.
The second planesman, stunned in the first violent dive, rose and staggered to his seat. He automatically felt the control. He turned to his companion. There was a note of hysteria in his voice.
This bitch has got lead in her tits.'
The other laughed. Lead! Christ! It's broken right through her flippin' bra!'
A sharp hissing, like water on a fire, came from outside the hull. The angle of the deck changed.
The planesman jiggled the control column.
' Answers now, sir!'
The sonar shrieked momentarily as it was turned up.
Contact not evaluated,' said the operator laconically.
In the tomb-like silence of ultra-quiet, every face was turned towards Peace. What would-could-he do? Tons of weight lay across our forward topside casing and bows. Could Peace take the risk of startling the creature to clamp itself again across the controls? Could he risk another massive electrical discharge like an outsize electric eel?
Again, the sharp sizzling hiss. The monster moved slightly
– placated by the silence, perhaps.
Peace must make the captain's decision-a decision which would take a hundred men to a bottomless ocean grave, or back to life in Limuria's soft air. He reached for the microphone.
' Rig ship for hydrobatics!' he rasped. ' Right full rudder!
Ahead flank! Six hundred feet smartly!'
Hands clutched the trolley-straps in anticipation of the violent movements to foliow. In terms of aircraft, Peace meant to go stunt flying, to shake the creature free.
The planesman turned the dial. The diving officer's knuckles were white on the back of his seat
' Answers, ahead flank!'
Secure from ultra-quiet!'
Peace knew there was no reason now to keep silent. He had cast the die.
The propeller bit full thrust. The control-column went hard over. I gasped and hung on. Devastation swung into a snap roll and her bow came up. Another sharp slithering hiss. Devastation gave a wild lurch and her bow came up. but the weight held it from the swift movement which would shake the creature free.
Depth?'
Eight hundred!'
The bow dipped. Would she dive, never to come up again? Peace said, Man battle stations torpedo!'
The heavy alarm for general quarters pulsed through the ship, striking at my chest like a drum. Peace would lighten Devastation by firing her bow torpedoes!
Men hung on, trying to get some sort of attack discipline.
He ordered, We will fire six. Speed high. Depth maximum.' '
Speed high-depth maximum.'
Make ready tubes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Open outer doors.' '
Torpedo-room-tubes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 ready in all. respects! Outer doors open!'
Set!'
' Shoot!' Peace stood balanced.
' Shoot,' came the repeat.
– Fire!' There was a faint jerk. A torpedo was on its way. ' One fired electrically!'
`Set!'
Shoot!'
Fire!'
Two fired electrically!'
'Set!'
Shoot!'
' Fire!'
' Three fired electrically!'
Peace said, Left full rudder, ahead flank, six hundred feet smartly!' He turned Devastation into a full-speed 30-degreeangle turn in the other direction as he emptied her torpedotubes.
`Set!'
' Shoot!'
Fire!'
Four fired electrically!'
The bow jerked upwards. Outside there was a savage hiss like steam blowing and at the same time a heavy movement.
' Blow all the main ballast-handsomely now!' commanded Peace. The burst of high-pressure air drowned the firing orders. 80
As it roared into the tanks, Peace whipped out, Right fifteen degrees rudder! Back emergency!'
Devastation shook her head, like a crocodile's jaws savaging a great fish to death-a lash and whip from side to side. The propeller gripped, gathered sternway. There was a heavy rending and crackle outside.
Devastation leapt free.
Peace shouted: ' Hold her, Bob! Don't let her go!'
The submarine spiralled upwards, a wild angle on the floor. Flood her down-emergency!' roared Peace.
Again the choking burst of air pressure as tons of water boiled into the ballast tanks.
A fusillade of helm, diving and trimming orders brought the great sub on to an even keel. As if to crown our escape, the main lighting came on. Control-room routine was reestablished. The turbine reduction gears and hydraulics hummed. We sauntered along, safe. Peace climbed on to the diving-control stool.
Sonar, any contacts?'
He's running like a bat out of hell-beg pardon, sir!'
Bob,' said Peace. I'll take the conn. You get aft and have a spot of sleep.' He added briskly to the operators: Keep that fathometer and precision depth-recorder going. And send me some coffee, will you?'
We went, dead with fatigue and strain. At the bulkhead door I looked back. Peace in his turtle-necked sweater sat tireless, commanding, devoted-to what, I asked myself. I found the answer as my head touched my pillow. The sea. Peace belonged to the deep sea.
7 THE MAN FROM ANACOSTIA
Up periscope!'
With a cheerful hiss, the long barrel slid up from the well of the ship. Peace snicked down the hinged handles and looked into the eyepiece.
It was three days later. We had made our rendezvous-St Brandon. Four hundred miles to the north-east lay the Saya de Malha.
Fifty feet,' reported the diving officer.
All stop,' ordered Peace. There were great shadows under his eves. He seemed never to have left the Control Centre during the long plot of an ocean-bottom contour chart of 81
Saya de Malha. The abstruse technicalities of it had kept at bay the foreboding which grew in my mind as we approached the rendezvous. Peace still refused to aliow Adele to do a radio stint. She had been listless, almost a prisoner in the tiny cabin, but during the long hours of her company one thing was clear and I would have traded away Little Bear for it: her deep and growing affection for me.
There had been no signals from the DNI, nothing to indicate that Willowtrack was converging on the remote reef to meet us. The isolation of being 500 feet beneath the widest ocean in the world, completely alone, preyed on my mind, shadowing my anticipation of the coming meeting with the Vice-President and making it seem unreal.
On Peace's curt order the needlepoint of light under the glass-topped chart table slowed, halted.
It was scarcely necessary for Peace or myself to consult it, since we had drawn the chart ourselves during our trip from Mauritius to the Seychelles in his yacht. It seemed years away now. The great boomerang-shaped reef of St. Brandon, twenty-six miles long and five wide, narrows at both extremities and is broadest northwards, diminishing to less than a mile in the south. Inside its enclosing horns are 22 islands and islets, all on the western side of the main reef. The islands are ludicrously small-even Raphael, which has a permanent population of little over a hundred, is less than half a mile long and a few hundred yards wide.
' Like a look?' Peace asked.
I adjusted the focus lever, blinking at the bright sunlight. The day was brilliant. It seemed impossible to distinguish where the china-blue sky began and the china-blue sea ended. Dead ahead were two islets, no more than sandbanks, a strip of yellow sand, a few coconut palms, a millrace of water between them, back-dropped against a high misty curtain of spray which stretched out of sight westwards as 'far as the eye could see-the great St Brandon reef. Over this immense and awesome natural barrier the open ocean pounded and thundered, throwing spray high into the air, to be caught by the trade wind and flung far across the coral barrier.