Lorenz dashed to the ladder and brushed Juhl aside. Graf and the second watch officer exchanged confused glances. The agitated commander did not wait for the pressure to equalize, and when he opened the hatch he was almost lifted onto the bridge by the escaping air. The watch followed him, perplexed by his urgency. Lorenz launched himself at the bulwark, and leaning over the curved ridge, he stared at the empty forward half of the boat. The watch men gathered nervously behind him.
‘Did you see something, Kaleun?’ asked Juhl.
Lorenz took a deep breath. Spray hit his face and he licked the salt from his lips. It was strangely reassuring, the sharpness of the sensation, because it authenticated reality and seemed to impose a stricter limit on what was, and what wasn’t, possible. ‘I thought,’ Lorenz began, ‘I thought I saw a smudge on the horizon — see — over there — but it’s just cloud — just darker cloud.’
‘We haven’t got any torpedoes left,’ said Juhl. It was not a challenge. He was simply interested in what action his commanding officer would have taken had the ‘smudge’ turned out to be a steamer.
‘I intended to use the deck gun,’ Lorenz replied.
Juhl, seemingly content, nodded. The wind was freezing and cut straight through Lorenz’s sweater: he had forgotten to put on his jacket in his rush to get up on the bridge. The fast beating of his heart coincided with a throbbing pain behind his eyes. ‘Carry on,’ he said, before lowering himself down the hatch. ‘Carry on…’
20.10 Minimal swell, mainly overcast, average visibility, freshening. At a bearing of 90° true several plumes of smoke. 15–20 nm distant. Qu BE 2374.
20.35 Flying boat at bearing 90° true, heading straight toward us. Alarm dive.
20.43 Surfaced.
20.45 Flying boat at bearing 90° true, heading straight toward us. Alarm dive. Two bombs. Minor damage.
21.15 U-boat heard through hydrophones at bearing 260° true.
21.32 Surfaced. To the south a fiery glow.
22.00 Test dive and performed essential repairs to the diesel-reverse mechanism, exhaust pipe, and compressors.
2.35 We surface. Moderate swell, clearing from west, intermittent moonlight, visibility 6–7 nm.
3.10 Several shadows appear ahead. Battleships, range 6 nm. We alter course to 120° so as to avoid being seen by this group in the path of the moon.
3.35 Dive. Course altered to 300°.
4.50 We surface. Resound, then, foaming waves, And coil yourselves around me! Let misfortune rage loud around me, And let the cruel sea roar!
The horizon was visible but indistinct. The inky perimeter of the sea and the hem of the night sky had fused together and it seemed to Lorenz that the boat had left the world behind, and they were now soaring through the vast immensity of the universe. Tilting his head back, he gazed upward at the constellations and the softly glowing arch of the Milky Way and he wondered if there were other planets orbiting stars similar to the sun, and if, at that precise moment, there might be another commander, standing on the bridge of another boat, crossing an equally benighted ocean, contemplating the existence of a counterpart elsewhere in the cosmos.
The sense of space, extending infinitely from the bridge in all directions, diminished the significance of human affairs. It imposed scale, a measure of such awesome magnitude, that nothing, not even the constant threat of annihilation, seemed to matter very much. Even a Reich that lasted a thousand years would be forgotten with the passage of time.
Lorenz’s thoughts were interrupted by Müller. The upper half of the navigator’s body had risen through the hatch.
‘Allow me,’ said Lorenz, relieving Müller of his sextant.
‘Thank you,’ said Müller, scrambling onto the bridge. Lorenz immediately returned the instrument to Müller who surveyed the heavens before aiming the telescope at a conspicuously bright star. The navigator muttered to himself, turned a screw, and held the graduated arc over the hatch so that the red glow emanating from the dark adaption light below would illuminate the figures. He repeated the process of observation and adjustment and then delivered his results by calling into the tower. After ‘shooting’ two more stars, his task was complete. He hissed a sailor’s name and presently a hand reached out of the luminous well. ‘Be careful with it,’ said Müller, passing down the sextant.
‘Are we in the right place?’ asked Lorenz.
‘More or less, within ten minutes of arc — a sun shot would be better.’ A quicksilver meteor dropped from the zenith. ‘Permission to have a cigarette, Kaleun?’
‘You still have cigarettes, Müller? Extraordinary.’
‘I have one cigarette. I’ve been saving it.’
‘For the return journey?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very well, I have no objection.’
Müller crouched so that his flame would be concealed by the bulwark. He then lit his cigarette, sighed with pleasure, and stood up again. Wessel, who was the youngest member of the crew, altered his position to inhale the slipstream of tobacco smoke. ‘Here,’ said Müller, offering Wessel the cigarette. ‘One drag — do you understand? And cup it behind your fingers.’
Wessel was so overwhelmed by Müller’s generosity that he could only express his gratitude with utterances that barely qualified as language. As soon as Wessel had passed the cigarette back to Müller the navigator held it out again for Lorenz to take.
‘No,’ said Lorenz, shaking his head. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Only a cigarette, Kaleun.’
‘Tell that to Wessel.’ Lorenz raised his arm and pointed at a dense cluster of brilliant pinpoints. ‘Do you think, Müller, that there’s intelligent life up there?’
‘No. There isn’t any down here,’ Müller replied, ‘why should there be any up there?’ He released a twisting ribbon of smoke from the corner of his mouth.
‘We don’t even know what lies at the bottom of the ocean yet,’ Lorenz continued, undeterred. ‘And what’s the ocean compared to the enormity of all this!’ He rotated his outstretched arm like a drunk. ‘It’s just a puddle. No more than a puddle. Who knows what’s out there, eh? Who knows what’s possible?’
‘How distant are the stars, sir?’ Wessel asked.
Lorenz smiled. ‘Tell him, Müller.’
‘Trillions of miles,’ said the navigator.
‘But how do we know that?’ the inquisitive youth persisted.
‘We know that because of Friederich Wilhelm Bessel,’ Müller replied. ‘He measured the parallax of 61 Cygni and proved that the star is some 64 trillion miles away. He was the first astronomer to make such a calculation and he succeeded in beating his British rival, Thomas Henderson, by two months.’
‘Do you think Reich Minister Goebbels knows this?’ Lorenz said with straight-faced sobriety. ‘I’m sure he’d be very interested.’
‘Our universe,’ Müller continued, ‘proved to be very much larger than anybody had previously imagined.’ He drew on his cigarette and added, ‘Unimaginably larger.’
‘What do we know?’ mused Lorenz. ‘What do we really know?’
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’ Müller stubbed his cigarette out on the bulwark.
‘Ah,’ said Lorenz, ‘our Shakespeare.’
‘I thought Shakespeare was English,’ said Wessel.
‘Well,’ Lorenz said, his voice acquiring the whine of an equivocator. ‘That’s not strictly true. One must never forget that the English are Germans really, and that they are ruled by a German royal family.’
‘Then why are we fighting them, sir?’ asked Wessel.
‘A good question,’ Lorenz replied.
‘Herr Kaleun — don’t confuse the boy,’ said Müller.