A Twist Of Sand

"We have good reason to believe that they are using hydrogen peroxide as a main fuel, and then feeding it through a complicated system of burners, mixed with oil fuel, and driving U-boat turbines."

"Air and speed?" I asked wryly.

"Not quite," he smiled back. "But damn nearly. Without boring you with what few technicalities we know, I can say that this type — we just call it HP on our files — is faster than the Type XXI. The air problem is almost solved, for she can remain submerged — "

"But the air to burn the fuel…"

"In the hydrogen peroxide," he said. "She doesn't need a snort for her engines, but there are a maze of technical problems to be beaten (I should say) before she becomes really operational. Although she might be fundamentally sound, she might still be too complicated to build more than a few. I doubt whether they could mass-produce them with any degree of success for some years. And then there's the R.A.F. bombing to take into account also."

"I feel that I would have the same chance against one of these hellish things as I would taking H.M.S. Victory to sea against the Scharnhorst" I said grimly.

The Flag Officer (S) tightened his compressed lips.

"They aren't invincible," he said with a grate in his voice. "You don't know what they have coming to them in the Western Approaches."

I suppose his cold rage was more terrifying than any bombast or bluster. Here was a man who weighed up the facts. He was interested in facts only. The weight of one fact against the other. Death and counter-death. An icy level of cold command, I thought, wondering why I as a mere submarine commander ever had cause to feel the isolation of command.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked the Intelligence Chief.

"I haven't finished telling you," he rebuked me gently. In his prim voice he went on, "As you see, the Type XXI is lethal, but suffers from the conventional maladies which have beset submarines since their inception. In truth, I would call it more of a submersible in the strict sense than a submarine. To my mind submarine means a permanent ability to operate under water. The surface is only incidental to it."

My mind reeled. When I thought of the ordinary things which surrounded Trout, the need for intensive training and engineering skills in her operation compared with these dreadful weapons, I could have wept.

"The U-boat which I really fear is the one I want to tell you about," he said.

Fear and terror take many forms. All my life I have been used to associating them with violence, actions, events, turbulent emotions. But that calm, didactic voice speaking of fear as if he had been discussing the merits of a long-dead Greek play struck a chord of horror in my heart which I have seldom known before or since. And I am not a man easily frightened; death had been near to me too many times for me to shudder at the thought of a sudden rending of flesh, or suffocation by salt water.

A hush fell over the room. Both men, unconsciously, gave full drama to the pause. I remember the incidental noises still — the faint hoot of 9 car, and the muted drone of a squadron of high-flying bombers overhead. Neither moved. The one was lost in the technical problem, the other pondering his next words to put it plainly to a seafaring man. And why, in God's name, send for me in the Mediterranean to tell me all this? This was stuff for the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, and certainly not for very many others less elevated.

"Air and speed," he said, and there was a note of tiredness in his voice which heightened my feeling of fear. Fear of something gigantic, unknown, prescient of the thing that was to warp my whole future.

"Even the German High Command won't believe that they have, in fact, solved it — absolutely."

"Absolutely?" I said stupidly.

He almost drew his schoolmaster's gown about him. "Blohm and Voss have their assembly yard at Wesermunde," he said without expression in his voice. "One of their top engineers there is a man called Werner. He designed a U-boat which can do twenty-two knots under water, is silent, and doesn't need to come to the surface. She can fire acoustic torpedoes from about fifty metres almost parallel to a convoy, and she will outrun the ordinary escort group ships in the North Atlantic — submerged. Only a destroyer is faster."

"Impossible," I said.

"Thank God, that is what the German High Command also say — still. But Werner is a man of parts. He is not only a practical engineer with the greatest appreciation of what is needed; he is also somewhat — more than somewhat, if I might interpose Runyon in this conversation — of a scientist. Do you know anything about nuclear physics?"

For the only time the cold mask behind the desk relaxed. "Give him a chance, George."