Phoenix Sub Zero

So the encounter ended. Within a few minutes the 688 was barely detectable, far behind and above the thermal layer, the layer a barrier to surface-noise penetration to the depths. The Second Captain continued along its course, feeling vindicated, though slightly embarrassed at its fear at the start of the 688 close contact, but that was understandable.

The system had performed superbly in the face of partial data, an action-indicated high-threat scenario, and the mission completion probability had been increased. Maybe it didn’t need the crew after all. The weapon-control process controller buzzed up the neural connection, speaking in spite of its direction to keep quiet, the impulse allowed since it was a new thought. The reminder that the mission was a failure unless the crew could be revived to assemble the Scorpion warheads into the Hiroshima missiles. Without the Scorpion warheads, the Hiroshimas were little more than supersonic buzz bombs, barely capable of blowing up a few floors of some Washington federal building. The workers would be back inside the next day as if nothing had happened.

The Scorpions were the mission. It was the radioactivity that made the weapon the mass-killer it was designed to be, and the Second Captain had no way to put the warheads into the missiles, and according to its data on own-ship systems, neither did the crew. But without the crew, the mission success-probability was zero point zero.

Feelings of triumph vaporized. The mission was at the mercy of the human crew. And since the detonation of the torpedo, the crew had been silent. The Second Captain strained its internal microphones to listen for any sign of human activity. The infrared motion monitors showed zero motion of people. The sounds of the air handlers were too loud to hear breathing. The Second Captain shut down the ventilation recirculation systems. The fans whirled to a halt, the sounds of rushing noise now dying. The ship was almost dead quiet, the only sounds the whining of the video screens in the control room and the buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights. The Second Captain extinguished the video screens and shut off the fluorescents. The ship was now as silent as it ever would be, the remaining noises due only to the hum of power to the Second Captain’s process-control modules the 400-cycle motor generators supplying that power and miscellaneous noises leaking from the power plant compartments astern to the command-module compartment. And in the near-silence it was clear that of the eighteen officers permanently assigned aboard and the three riders, there were the sounds of fourteen people breathing, many of them with labored wheezing breaths. The Second Captain felt a rush of hope. It remembered a truism: Where there is life, there is firm expectation of continued high mission-probability estimates. The Second Captain reenergized the fan motors and the video screens as the fluorescents clicked and flickered back to life, an idea forming out of impulses received from the life-support process controller. Why not, the impulse indicated, try to raise the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere?

That would serve to make respiration easier for the humans, and increase the probability of them regaining consciousness, the upper limit on oxygen concentration based on safety of the equipment, since a fire could more easily break out in a high-oxygen environment. And too high a level would prove toxic for the humans. The decision was made quickly, the oxygen levels climbing throughout the command-module compartment. In addition, the video screens in the control room were instructed to begin a series of noise stimulations, something the human psychological profiles stated were conducive to sudden increased levels of human consciousness—the noises described by humans as the bell of an alarm clock.

While the system waited for human response, it responded to the insistent impulses now coming in from the weapon controller, and drove slowly in a full circle listening for any signs of the 688 class. There were none. The 688 had never known they were there. It was so far astern that it now was out of range and gone.