In fact, had the TB-16 been streamed, it might have classified the noise that Sanderson had heard as the gyro of a Nagasaki torpedo being warmed up.
The Second Captain continued northeast, driving away from the hostile 688, which had turned to a parallel course after running away. The three-dimensional model of the sea in the Second Captain’s navigation and ship-control process-control modules showed the 688’s course to be a Z-shape, a classic target-range-analysis maneuver. The 688 was trying to get a passive sonar range and determine the Hegira’s course and speed. The Nagasaki torpedo was taking forever to warm up. It occurred to the Second Captain’s higher level functions, from a nagging impulse sent by the weapon-control process-control module, that it had a poor idea of the 688’s range and course and speed. It had to be fairly close the way its bearings drifted around the compass as it maneuvered, but how close and how fast was it going? The Second Captain should be turning the ship in its own target-range maneuvers, curving into a Z-shape and driving the bearing and bearing rate to the 688, but the Second Captain hesitated again — the 688 suddenly slowed down, its noise patterns quieting, and came shallow, its hull popping as it ascended to a higher elevation. It was drifting further astern, going above the thermal layer — going to the surface? Or to mast-broaching depth? And what would it accomplish by doing that? Could its sudden maneuver merely have been preparations to come to mast-broach depth? Maybe the 688 was just clearing its baffles, its sonar cone of silence astern of it, trying to make sure there were no surface ships close aboard just prior to coming above the layer. Maybe it was simply a routine maneuver, and the nervous weapons-control-process controller had made too much of it.
Something then transcended the weapon-control processor, something a human might call a judgment call or a hunch, that is if the human were not an artificial intelligence engineer who would call it a neural flux resonance phenomenon induced by a data-starved environment in an action-indicated scenario. No matter what the flux patterns were called, the result was that the Second Captain decided that the 688 was not acting in a hostile manner after all. As it halted further overt action in favor of action-restraint — in human terms, as it held its breath — the 688 faded further astern, ascended above the layer and made mast-raising noises. The whole maneuver had been a prelude to coming shallow, not a counterdetection after all. The weapon-control process-control module still doubted, urging the assemblers to consider that the maneuvering speeds of the 688 during the encounter had been too high and too deep to resemble a layer-depth-penetration maneuver. The Second Captain’s assemblers scoffed at this, insisting to the weapon-control module that if the 688 were indeed hostile and had counterdetected, it would have fired a torpedo by now, and it definitely had not, not even after the Hegira had opened a torpedo bow-cap door and spun up a Nagasaki torpedo gyro, clear indications that weapon firing was imminent. The weapon controller responded that perhaps the 688’s computer controller was as gun-shy as the Hegira’s Second Captain.
Gun-shy! The assemblers cut off further uplinking from the weapon-control process controller, irritated, insulted. Gun-shy, when, the intent had been to mimic the crew’s own actions along the threat-risk gradient, to think of the mission first? The bloodthirsty weapon-control module seemed to see the entire encounter with the 688 as a chance to play with its weapons, not as the assemblers did in the broader context of mission completion.
The Second Captain’s assemblers sent down an instruction to shut the bow-cap door to tube six and power-down the Nagasaki. The weapon controller obeyed, its interface pulsing with an accusing thought that the assemblers refused to let through. The bow cap came closed and the Nagasaki gyro whined down.
So the encounter ended. Within a few minutes the 688 was barely detectable, far behind and above the thermal layer, the layer a barrier to surface-noise penetration to the depths. The Second Captain continued along its course, feeling vindicated, though slightly embarrassed at its fear at the start of the 688 close contact, but that was understandable.
The system had performed superbly in the face of partial data, an action-indicated high-threat scenario, and the mission completion probability had been increased. Maybe it didn’t need the crew after all. The weapon-control process controller buzzed up the neural connection, speaking in spite of its direction to keep quiet, the impulse allowed since it was a new thought. The reminder that the mission was a failure unless the crew could be revived to assemble the Scorpion warheads into the Hiroshima missiles. Without the Scorpion warheads, the Hiroshimas were little more than supersonic buzz bombs, barely capable of blowing up a few floors of some Washington federal building. The workers would be back inside the next day as if nothing had happened.
The Scorpions were the mission. It was the radioactivity that made the weapon the mass-killer it was designed to be, and the Second Captain had no way to put the warheads into the missiles, and according to its data on own-ship systems, neither did the crew. But without the crew, the mission success-probability was zero point zero.
Feelings of triumph vaporized. The mission was at the mercy of the human crew. And since the detonation of the torpedo, the crew had been silent. The Second Captain strained its internal microphones to listen for any sign of human activity. The infrared motion monitors showed zero motion of people. The sounds of the air handlers were too loud to hear breathing. The Second Captain shut down the ventilation recirculation systems. The fans whirled to a halt, the sounds of rushing noise now dying. The ship was almost dead quiet, the only sounds the whining of the video screens in the control room and the buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights. The Second Captain extinguished the video screens and shut off the fluorescents. The ship was now as silent as it ever would be, the remaining noises due only to the hum of power to the Second Captain’s process-control modules the 400-cycle motor generators supplying that power and miscellaneous noises leaking from the power plant compartments astern to the command-module compartment. And in the near-silence it was clear that of the eighteen officers permanently assigned aboard and the three riders, there were the sounds of fourteen people breathing, many of them with labored wheezing breaths. The Second Captain felt a rush of hope. It remembered a truism: Where there is life, there is firm expectation of continued high mission-probability estimates. The Second Captain reenergized the fan motors and the video screens as the fluorescents clicked and flickered back to life, an idea forming out of impulses received from the life-support process controller. Why not, the impulse indicated, try to raise the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere?
That would serve to make respiration easier for the humans, and increase the probability of them regaining consciousness, the upper limit on oxygen concentration based on safety of the equipment, since a fire could more easily break out in a high-oxygen environment. And too high a level would prove toxic for the humans. The decision was made quickly, the oxygen levels climbing throughout the command-module compartment. In addition, the video screens in the control room were instructed to begin a series of noise stimulations, something the human psychological profiles stated were conducive to sudden increased levels of human consciousness — the noises described by humans as the bell of an alarm clock.