Submarine

'Sherry, Number One? Reckon we've earned it.'

The exception to his drinking rule added a warmth to the gathering, a comradeship which even Woolf-Gault, sitting apart at the end, could not lessen. Riley entered with the supper. With the aplomb of a head waiter, he placed the dish in the centre of the table cloth.

'What's that revolting looking mess, Riley?' Tim Prout asked, pointing at the grey sausages, sweating in their wrinkled skins under the red lighting.

'Bangers, sir,'

'Bangers?'

Yes, sir.' Riley shifted his feet. He adjusted the stained cloth which, affectedly, hung from his hairy fore-arm. 'Yesterday's left-overs, sir.'

'Disgusting,' David Powys screwed up his nose. 'Definitely not up to your cordon bleu standard.'

Riley glanced at his captain. 'I've warmed 'em up, sir.'

'Warmed them?' Prout asked in astonishment. He probed one of the obscene things with a finger. 'There's a ban on all cooking.'

'On top of an over-'eated motor casing, sir,' Riley explained, regaining confidence.

'Not the defective motor?' Powys interrupted, 'in the — ?'

'Yes, sir,' Riley said, edging towards the door. 'In the JRS'

'eads.'

'What you laughing at?' Murray said, pushing his way into the wardroom as Riley went out. He halted, staring at the table 'God, what's that?' He swung round, but Able Seaman Riley was hurriedly disappearing down the passageway.

'Have you laid off your course yet, Alastair?' Farge asked his navigating officer.

'051°, sir,' Murray said, sitting down alongside Woolf-Gault 'The easterly tidal stream starts running at 2025.'

Farge looked up at the clock. 'Luck's on our side. By the time we've come up and fixed our position…'

'And caught a trim, sir,' Foggon chipped in.

'Tricky,' Farge acknowledged, 'after this lot. By the time you've got your trim, Eddie, it'll be time to cross the western lane.'

'A bit of activity'll do you good,' Chris Sims grinned, glancing at the MEO. 'Some of us have been working.'

'Hanging around like this gets under my tits,' David Powys murmured.

'That's not the medical term,' Tomkins said. A newcomer to the wardroom, the surgeon lieutenant was emerging from his shell.

Powys glanced at Farge. 'You know what I mean, sir.'

They laughed, forcing themselves to eat, but Farge's eyes were constantly drawn towards the clock. He finished hurriedly, pushed away his plate, then sliced himself a slab of cheddar.

'Action stations in ten minutes' time, Number One. The party's over.'

They rose to their feet as the captain threaded past them to the doorway.

'Or just beginning,' Farge heard someone murmuring as he crossed to his cabin.

'Don't over-pump, chief,' the captain told his trimming officer 'I'd rather speed up to keep her down, than risk a break-surface.'

Farge realized only too well that catching a fresh trim would be tricky after fifteen hours of scraping about the bottom: but all the transducers and sonars seemed to have been unaffected, thanks to the keel block. He felt the slight tremble as, going slow astern on both screws, Orcus unstuck herself.

'135 feet, sir… 130,' the OOW sung out.

'Course, sir, 080°,' the helmsman reported.

Foggon turned to Grady on the paneclass="underline" 'Pump three hundred gallons from for'd to aft.'

The bubble crept slowly back on the inclinometer, slid past the central graticule and, as Farge went ahead slowly on his port propeller, settled on four degrees up.

'Hundred feet, Number One.'

'Hundred feet, sir.'

'Don't overpump on Ms,' Farge insisted, as Foggon tried to help the cox'n lift her upwards.

They stopped at a hundred feet to catch a trim. It was 1945 when the sound-room finally cleared the sectors.

'Periscope depth,' Farge snapped. 'Sixty feet. I'll use the attack periscope.' At eighty feet, Orcus began to feel the motion of the restless sea.

'Seventy feet.'

'Up attack.'

Farge crouched by the well from which the slender steel tube was sliding upwards. He snatched at the handles as the head came level with his chest. He knew that the next few seconds were cruciaclass="underline" whether the fin broke surface at forty-eight feet remained in the hands of Foggon and the cox'n. If a bad sea was running, they might not be able to keep her down — suicidal here, five cables from the shore and a mile and a half from the radar dish — and then the pale light was glimmering from the surface.

'Sixty feet. Breaking…'

The smeared lens cleared and Farge was seeing the world above again. He spun round on his heels. 'Nothing close.'

'Fifty-five feet, sir.'

Farge inverted the thumb of his right hand. The stick responded, descended until he was forced to crouch. He could still feel the bow-up angle beneath his feet.

'Fifty-one feet, sir,' Powys called out. 'Still coming up, sir, Forty-nine…'

'For God's sake, chief. Keep her down. Speed up.' But in those few seconds, Farge had checked once again that there was nothing close — only a mast. 'Bearing that,' he snapped. 'Masthead.'

'Red 14.'

'Flood Q', he heard Foggon shouting. 'Vent Q inboard.'

'Down periscope,' Farge rapped. 'Group up, half ahead together.'

He watched in desperation as they struggled for controclass="underline" a couple more feet and the fin would slice through the surface to throw up plumes of spray.

'Get the trim under control,' Farge shouted, above the roar of Q venting inboard. 'There's a bad sea running.' But he knew the worst was over: the nearest ship was a couple of miles to the southward. Gathering way, the planes began to bite; the bubble slid aft; the depth began to increase. The cox'n was silent, wrestling with his planes as he tried to prevent her porpoising.

'Forty-nine, fifty-one feet…'

'Blow Q,' Foggon ordered.

'Stop both,' Farge commanded. 'Group down.' He waited for the log to fall back. 'Up attack.'

'Fifty-eight feet, sir.' An audible sigh whispered through the sombre control room.

'Have you control?' Farge asked brusquely. 'Up periscope.'

'I've got her, sir,' the cox'n said quietly. 'Fifty-nine feet.'

They dipped him, the lens going dark again, but then she settled. The trimming crisis seemed to have ended, judging by the calm reigning behind him. Working fast, lowering and raising his attack periscope, taking swift, short looks, Farge registered the surface scene. Rapping out the bearings of his sightings, he gave the LOP and CEP enough data with which to build up their pictures.

To the south-east he could see the flashing light of the roundabout whistle buoy, a warship (a frigate?) on the far side of it. Coming abeam, on his port side, was the sloping outline of Set' Navolok. The yellow light-tower, atop its single-storied building, was perched upon the sepia-tinged granite cliff, the giant cupola of the radar dish rearing behind it. The coast running down to the Pushka caves was devoid of vegetation, the bleak cliffs plunging sheer into the sea. He could see the gulls wheeling in the wind above Lodeynaya Bay, the breakers leaping in curtains of spray where they battered Pushka Point; and the dark tower, astern now, which perched on the point guarding the southern entrance to Orcus' recent refuge. Though the submarine must be a mile off now, he could distinguish the white band of the horizontal markings on the tower. He could just make out the eastern tip of the entrance to the inlet, the coast a dull green above the shoreline where the granite showed. In spite of the scrub in the breaks of the cliffs, the eastern side was as desolate and dreary as the western shore, now slowly drawing astern. The mast was enlarging to a bridge and funneclass="underline" 'Bearing that, and two more masts.' Farge slammed the handles shut and turned to Murray: