In Willowtrack I had seen the clash of three wills, now I was witnessing that of two.
' I don't like to say this, Commander,' replied mKG, but unless you agree, you will surface and return me to Willow- track. The Little Bear missioin will be off. Either you signal, or it's over with.'
Devastation scarcely made a sound crawling along. The cabin creaked.
You'd call off a mission of such magnitude to send a signal which may kill it anyway?' demanded Peace.
You, Commander, are devoted to this mission,' MKG said quietly, and his personality seemed to flood the cabin. If Tyler had been equally so, we wouldn't be in a spot now. But . he saw his duty to the American nation and the office of the Vice-President as the greater. My first duty is to my office as Vice-President. If the mission runs counter to that, the mission will be sacrificed. The signal epitomizes my duty. It must go.'
But Willowtrack will locate us,' argued Peace.
I broke in, You said aboard Willowtrack that the daily signal at sunset to, the White House applied only during
Willowtrack's outward journey to St Brandon. After that, you said you would keep in touch through the DNI. We could come now to periscope depth, get off a brief message to the DNI that you are, in fact, in good hands-' he smiled slightly= and suggest a return signal at a given time a couple of hours later.'
Peace shook his head. It would give Devastation's position away,' he repeated.
Let me send it-even Williams says I'm the quickest operator he knows,' urged Adele. Very brief-half a dozen words. Willowtrack would never get a bearing on us for so short a while.'
We all faced Peace, whose face remained bleak. It's an old Royal Navy adage,' he said. When in battle, never break radio silence.
The DNI's only eight hundred miles away, the White
House is eight thousand,' Adele urged. ' I can raise Mahe in a couple of minutes.'
A couple of minutes is all Willowtrack needs,' retorted Peace.
Will you agree?' I asked MKG.
I'll agree if the Commander will agree. One brief message to the DNI and a return to be fixed for the President's okay. Otherwise-' He shrugged.
Peace stood silent and then, without speaking, he went to an intercom. Bob, any sign of Willowtrack?'
Not a thing, sir.
Very well. I'm coming through. We'll go to periscope depth.' He said to MKG, with half-grudging admiration, I don't like this, MKG, but if you keep it brief maybe we can get away with it.'
Adele and I will draft it,' replied MKG.
Peace and I returned to the Control Centre. Our instruments still showed no sign of Willowtrack. Periscope depth,' ordered Peace. Ease her up.' mKG and Adele joined us within minutes and Peace sent them through to the radio-room. Williams, grinning ruefully, came out and closed the door behind him.
Peace brought Devastation up to 50 feet. With a series of orders, he raised the radio antenna. I watched the clock.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
Then MKG came out, gave the thumbs-up sign. Peace shot off orders in rapid fire.
Take her down-two hundred feet, handsomely! Full ahead!'
The big sub picked up speed. We came opposite the entrance to Seahorse Sound. The surf drummed on the sonar. Peace's continuing unease communicated itself to the group poring over the chart table. A new ripple of sound' What is it?' Peace jerked out. Big school of fish,' replied the sonar-man evenly.
`Could be, opposite the inlet entrance,' muttered Peace, staring at the chart. I hope to God that signal
'
The sonar-man's voice cracked through the silent, weirdlylit control-room. Contact bearing zero-four-zero degrees! Range three thousand yards! Course zero! Speed zero!'
My God' exclaimed Peace, jumping for the control stand.
Willowtrack! Stopped right across our bows! And we send 118 off a bloody signal into the bargain to tell her exactly where we are!'
He swung on MKG, who stood there-pale. For a moment I thought he would reproach him; then he turned back to his instruments.
Tyler-the foxy bastard! He made an offset to ambush us, and then we go and tell him we're on our way into his ambush! Jesus! That bloody signal!' He snatched up his microphone and stabbed the button.
Rig for steep angles Right full rudder, ahead flank, five hundred feet, smartly!'
The planesmen snapped on their safety-belts for the hydrobatics. MKG, Adele and I grabbed the overhead trolley-straps. Tyler had been very shrewd: he had read his opponent's mind in a way which the Navy's training schools at Nuky
Poo and Dam Neck never taught. Peace too, had been right about mKG's signal and his uneasiness had been on the same instinctive, non-rational basis as Tyler's-the supra-conscious decisions of the hunter and the hunted. Tyler had first shown a masterly intuitive reading of the signs and then we had handed him the rest on a plate by virtue of MKG'S signal. Had this been war, I told myself grimly, the first we would have heard of Willowtrack would have been the swift rush of her torpedoes. It remained now to see how Tyler would push home his advantage.
I clung to my trolley-strap as the deck went down thirty degrees and the reduction gears of the giant nuclear turbines took on their full-throated whine.
Call out the depths!' ordered Peace.
Three hundred-three-fifty-four hundred-'
Peace raised his right hand with two fingers curved in a tight circle to the diving officer. The man nodded and gave a volley of orders, but the depth-indicator had hit 550 feet before he caught her.
Left full rudder, three hundred feet, smartly!' commanded Peace. My stomach gave a sickening lurch as Devastation turned on a sixpence and spiralled upwards. Peace held her to the first half of a tight S, rolled her off the top and went deep, twisting likes a harpooned whale.
Sonar said, Contact bears two-six-zero degrees, five thousand yards, speed approximately thirty-five knots.'
Tyler was clinging like a leech-he had lost less than a mile as we shot off into a series of tail-chasing gyrations. Peace reached the glass table-top, hanging on as Devastation peeled off in the equivalent of a steep aeroplane, bank. She headed 119 towards the entrance to Seahorse Sound, tearing towards its jagged jaws at 30 knots. He grabbed my strap to steady himself. There were rings of sweat below his eyes. John,' he asked, you didn't get any soundings in that entrance, did you?'
The fear and the thrill of what he was about to do hit me. '
No.'
Adele said, At St Brandon there are stories of a deep, mysterious passage somewhere into the reef..
MKG broke in, Commander, rather..
Peace shook his head. ' No! Periscope depth!'
Devastation was under full power.
' Up attack periscope!'
The long tube, much thinner than the main periscope so as to leave no feather of spray on the surface, slid up at the periscope jockey's touch of a lever. Peace clipped down the handles and threw his left arm over one in the almost affectionate way I had seen so many times. He took a quick sweep round. He beckoned me over. I glanced into the eyepiece. I gasped. We were rushing straight at two big coral cliffs. Through a gauzy curtain of spray the red sun sank balefully, masking the streaming cliffs and dagger-like coral-heads. In the strange light, the coral's soft pinks, reds and yellows were blurred to leprous monochromes on which stood out in startling juxtaposition jagged, striated black barnacles, sea creatures, and weed. They seemed right on top of us, but in fact the entrance was nearly half a mile wide. I flicked the single-lens 'scope astern-no Willowtrack, only a wild following sea exploding against the cliffs. We were in the entrance.