No, there was definitely something wrong. His hair was Navy-haircut short, of course, but he had a full head of it. As a civilian, he'd worn it quite long. But it seemed to be coming out in clumps as he lathered up his scalp.
My hair is falling out. My hair is falling out. And what makes hair do that?
I'm aboard a nuclear submarine at sea, sleeping a few feet from an atomic reactor, and I'm wondering what might make my hair fall out. My God….
It couldn't be radiation poisoning. It couldn't be. There would be alarm bells… people yelling and screaming… They'd be sealing off the aft spaces, evacuating the crew.
They had instruments monitoring that sort of thing, didn't they?
O'Brien was so scared, his knees were starting to tremble and feel weak, and his stomach was twisting.
Nausea!.. Didn't radiation poisoning also give you nausea too? God, what if he started barfing up blood?
Sick call. I gotta go to sick call and have a doc check this out.
He couldn't remember. Did Los Angeles boats rate a full medical doctor? Or did they just have an independent duty corpsman? He wanted a real doctor to look at him, not a damned pecker checker.
"Hey, Navy shower in there!" someone yelled from outside. "Take it easy on the water supply!"
"Uh… sure! Sorry!" Reaching up, he turned off the water. Submarines manufactured their own fresh water — as well as generating their own oxygen — from seawater, but with so many men crowded into such a small space, only so much water could be generated per hour, and the people aboard still had to ration it. Showers aboard submarines consisted of a brief spray to wet down, followed by lathering with the water turned off, followed at last by a rinse. You did not stand in the stream and soak.
After a moment of wondering what to do next, he turned the water on and stepped into the cold, hard stream. Soap lather spilled from his hair and stung his eyes. He tried to wash the lather out… and succeeded in pulling out more of his own hair.
Radiation poisoning! It had to be!
He had to tell someone… but… shouldn't they already know? He didn't want to appear to be panicky.
But his hair was falling out, damn it!
Somehow, he completed his shower and toweled off. He was going to have to see the boat's doctor, and fast. He would know what to do.
Stepping from the shower head, he grabbed his towel and flip-flopped his way back toward the enlisted berthing spaces. Doershner, Scobey, and Douglas were standing together in the narrow passageway talking, and he had to squeeze past them.
"Hey! O'Brien!" Doershner said. "What's the matter with you? You look terrible!"
"Uh, nothing," he mumbled. " 'Scuze me."
He lifted the lid to his personal compartment, which, of course, he now shared with Montgomery. He was stowing his sandals, soap case, and shampoo when the captain's voice came on over the loudspeakers. "Now hear this, now hear this. All hands prepare for angles and dangles. Secure all loose gear, and keep movement about the deck to a minimum. That is all."
Angles and dangles? He'd heard the term before, at Sub School, but he couldn't quite place what—
And then the deck tilted sharply beneath his feet, and O'Brien knew he was going to die.
Roger Benson leaned against a rack support and grinned at the four passengers. "You boys never been on a submarine before, huh?" he asked, not exactly helpfully.
The four passengers, "packages," as they'd heard the skipper refer to them, were seated on the bunks set up in the torpedo room, alternately clutching at the black-nylon bags containing their gear and the rack supports for their bunks, as the submarine deck dipped, rolled, and tilted beneath their feet.
TMC Bart Allison stepped through the watertight doorway into the compartment, cheerfully standing upright against the list of the deck, which at the moment must have been close to thirty degrees. He held a large mug of steaming coffee in his hand. "Our guests getting settled in all right, Benson?" he asked.
"I guess so, Chief. They still don't have their gear stowed, though."
The Pittsburgh's bow began coming up. Both Benson and Allison adjusted their stance naturally and easily, flexing their knees a bit to take the attitude change. Several other sailors in the torpedo compartment grinned knowingly at each other.
One of the bearded guests clutched his bag and goggled at Allison. "Sir," he said in a thick, Slavic accent, "is this happening on submarine… always?… "
"First of all," Allison said, "I'm not 'sir.' " He tapped his crow with two fingers. "I'm a chief. That means I work for a living. Secondly… "He paused, and then his leathery face split in an unpleasant grin as the boat's deck continued to tilt, bow-high, until the deck was again at a thirty-degree angle from the horizontal. "Secondly, what do you mean 'happening'? Is something wrong, fellas?"
"It's the damned boat," one of the Americans said, grimacing. His face had a distinctive green cast to it. "Is it gonna be like this all the way to fucking Siberia?"
"Well, that's hard to say," Allison said. He paused reflectively and took another sip of coffee. "Depends on the weather, partly. Stormy seas topside can make for a rough passage, you know."
"But… but… " the other American said. "I thought it was always calm at the depths where submarines operated!"
The torpedo-room deck dropped back to level again, but now they could feel the gentle throb as her engine brought her up to speed. A moment later, the boat heeled to port as her rudder went hard over in a sharp turn.
"Normally that's true," the chief agreed, taking the maneuver without any outward sign at all. "Still, sometimes it can be pretty rough. I remember one time aboard the old Seawolf, back in '70, must've been, when we—"
"Please, sir, Chief," the Russian said, "not to tell us colorful sea stories at this minute. Your captain is carrying out highspeed maneuvers. I feel this… the sharp turn just now. Is it… is it that we are engaged with Russian submarine, da?"
"Well, sometimes we have to make some pretty hard maneuvers," Allison said, sneaking a wink at Benson.
Benson grinned. "You know, the captain doesn't tell us much down here," he said with matter-of-fact nonchalance. "We could be smack in the middle of the biggest submarine dogfight since the Battle of the Atlantic right now, and unless he orders us to launch a torpedo, we'd never know a thing about it." He jerked a thumb at the torpedo tubes, two set to either side of the compartment, angled out slightly, rather than set dead ahead in the forward bulkhead. The round hatches were closed and dogged, with ominous signs hanging from each:
WARNING
WARSHOT
LOADED
"As you can see," Benson continued, "we're loaded for bear. All tubes loaded and ready to shoot!"
"We should really see about getting your bags stowed,"
Allison said. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. "Hey! Martinez! Doershner! Willis! Give a hand here."
The second Russian clutched his bag a bit closer. "These contain… explosive material."
"Yeah?" Allison said, curious. "Like what?"
"Grenades. Ammunition. Plastic explosives. Tools of the trade, yes?"
"Well, you shouldn't have 'em all stowed together like that. Give them to our people, we'll check 'em, bag 'em, and stow 'em for you."