Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

“Well, I can’t be sure, Captain,” said Don. “But here’s what the book says about it.” He showed me one of the manuals, his finger marking the place.

I read the paragraph carefully. It applied specifically to our situation, described what we were then experiencing, and stated in clear language the several possible causes. Two of the possibilities we could immediately dismiss. Two others, after some discussion, we were satisfied did not apply. But one, very clearly, applied only too well.

My stateroom was barely big enough for the three of us, and our impromptu conference became a rather packed affair when Pat McDonald unceremoniously opened the door and entered. I slid over on the padded bench beneath my folded-up bunk and motioned Stark to sit beside me.

Pat had a slip of paper in his hand. “Here’s a new set of readings, Don,” he said.

I reached for the paper and held it for both Fears and Stark to see. The new figures were not encouraging.

“Well, Pat,” I said. “It’s your reactor. What do you think?”

“We’re still in limits, Captain,” Pat replied, “but I don’t like the way this is moving. Of course, it could be …” Here Pat described an innocuous possible explanation which had occurred to all of us—“but all we can do is keep on checking.”

“Who’s checking?” I inquired. “You’re all in here with me.”

“We’re all into it, Captain,” Don said. “All our reactor technicians, all the officers. Everybody.”

“What do you think?”

“Well,” Don answered reluctantly, “we either have a problem or we don’t. If we do, it’s a lulu. We’ll know for sure in another couple of hours. We’re checking everything, naturally, and I should be able to tell you more pretty soon.”

“All right,” I said, trying to show an assurance I did not feel, “get with it. I don’t want to alarm the troops about this and take their morale down any further, unless we can’t help it. Anyway, it’s not as though there were any danger to personnel. I’ll not come back with you right now, but I’ll join you about the time you have another set of data readings.”

“Right, Captain,” Fears said, as he and Pat rose to leave. “If we go over limits, shall I shut down?”

“Of course. And when you do, say a blessing for Admiral Rickover and the few farsighted officers in the Pentagon who insisted on the development of a multiple reactor plant.”

Jim Stark made a move to follow the two engineers.

“Don’t, Jim,” I said. “One of your duties is radiological safety, you know, and having you be the one who spotted this in the first place is bad enough. If you continue to show interest, the men will think there’s a radiation hazard of some kind. We’ve got enough problems.”

Stark nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve got Poole to worry about. Should check him right now, as a matter of fact.”

It took real will power not to go back into the engineering spaces myself right then, and I knew I shouldn’t be able to wait it out very much longer. Kidney stones, a fathometer that wouldn’t work, and now this—all in a single day! If anything could force us to give up our voyage, this latest difficulty would come closest.

The trouble was, so far, localized in the mechanism of a single reactor, and there was no reason to expect it to appear in the other. Catalogued as an improbable possibility by our manual, this had never happened before in any naval reactor. Could there have been a design error, a weakness undetected in all the testing, something which had at last slipped by Admiral Rickover’s vigilant group? Ergo, might we expect the same problem in the other reactor?

Triton was fortunate in having two. Indeed, it was precisely for this kind of contingency that Rickover had insisted on building her. The Admiral also wanted to amass the practical experience of operating such power plants, which might be installed in future surface ships and later-model submarines. The casualty facing us would have immobilized any other submarine, forced her to surface and radio for help. In our case, it only threatened to slow us down. We could still keep on with our mission, unless, by sad mischance, the investigation now going on would show both reactors to be involved.

But time spent in fruitless worry could do no good. Restlessly, I began to wander about the ship.

Almost the first person I ran into was Poole, up and fully dressed, his head buried in the innards of one of the radar receiving sets in Triton’s air-control center.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Fine, Captain,” he replied, “I feel swell. I think it’s all over now.”

I didn’t recall Poole as being a particularly placid individual, and something about his bearing, perhaps his half-shut, sleepy eyes, seemed not exactly normal. I found Jim Stark in the ship’s pharmacy and put the question to him.

“What you’re seeing, Captain, is the after-effects of the dope he’s been given during the last twenty-four hours,” said Jim.

“You mean he’s still hopped up? He looked just the opposite,” I said.