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He stumbled out of control into the watchstander’s head at the bottom of the ladder; one of very few places you could be truly alone on the boat. Everyone noticed him stagger out, of course, but the same people had seen him virtually live in control for two exhausting days. And this was his first patrol, before there’d been even a whisper about his odd behavior amongst the crew or the wardroom. Most of the men assumed he’d just done an admirable job of controlling his bladder until an opportune time, or perhaps had finally succumbed to sea sickness. Mark splashed water on his face from the head’s tiny steel sink, and tried to pull himself together. Gradually he began to control his breathing enough to return to the control room, where an endless series of charts awaited his review.

Ever since then, he’d recognized that the first day at sea was the hardest, that moment when the ship became a submarine. It was a moment he dreaded, but one he was prepared for. He knew that after that first day submerged, all patrol, every patrol, he’d have trouble separating what really happened to him with what was going on in his mind, the voices of the crew from the voices in his head. The problem, he knew, was getting worse. Stabbing himself in the leg was bad; Maple hadn’t been able to make eye-contact with him since. But he knew it was Jabo he had to be careful around, the smartest junior officer on the boat. The rest of the officers might think the Nav was just a little odd, a little stressed out. But he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to fool Jabo for long.

Now it was the start of his fifth patrol. He had thought that he would just tough it out, his last patrol before rotating to shore duty, and then he’d vowed to himself to get help. He’d find a civilian doctor who would treat him in secret, away from the Navy’s watchful eyes. Maybe it was as simple as a pill he could take, he’d read about things like that. A good prescription and a shore tour were just what he needed. Maybe he and Muriel would even patch things up. Of course, that had all been wishful thinking before the patrol began and their orders changed.

Now he knew he would never see land again.

• • •

The nav realized his eyes were shut, and snapped awake. The bright, fluorescent box of the Officer’s Study was empty except for him and his charts. He had a splitting headache, and the color scheme of the OS did nothing to relieve it, everything in the room was painted a different shade of orange, with the exception of the brass clock, the only nautical touch in that sterile space. The Nav noticed with a sigh that the clock had stopped; keeping those old-fashioned clocks wound, six of them placed throughout the ship, was yet another responsibility of the navigator’s. He turned back to the clean chart in front of him.

In the case of nautical charts, unblemished was not a desirable thing. It meant the charts had never been used, and hence never been updated with the frequent changes and revisions that they received from a variety of sources, including the NOAA. Their home charts, the ones near Puget Sound, were smeared and smudged with notes and numbers that had been added as more detailed depth surveys were taken, sand banks shifted, and, occasionally, ancient shipwrecks were identified beneath the waves. When planning the ship’s track with those charts he could be confident that while there were many hazards, every hazard had been identified. But now, they were not only steaming through an area that the Alabama had never been through, it was an area far from the traditional shipping lanes to and from Asia. The new charts he’d received from Group Nine were pristine, with vast swaths of light blue that, the navigator knew, did not indicate a lack of hazards, but a lack of information. With a stack of bulletins and messages, he was adding what few updates he had, but the charts were still dominated by unmarked stretches marred only by the dark pencil line of the ship’s track that the navigator had laid out. The ship was travelling so fast, it was all he could do to keep up with their track, getting a chart updated and approved by the captain and XO just in time to hand it to the OOD as they raced westward. He involuntarily glanced at the stopped clock again; he didn’t know what time it was, and he didn’t how long it had been since he’d slept. He glanced at the edge of the chart, the small island of Taiwan, the looming mass of China.

His hands started shaking at the magnitude of what they were doing, at the magnitude of his role in it.

The end of the world, he heard, in a voice that was not quite his.

You have to stop this submarine.

• • •