Submarine

'Get the trim under control,' Farge shouted, above the roar of Q venting inboard. 'There's a bad sea running.' But he knew the worst was over: the nearest ship was a couple of miles to the southward. Gathering way, the planes began to bite; the bubble slid aft; the depth began to increase. The cox'n was silent, wrestling with his planes as he tried to prevent her porpoising.

'Forty-nine, fifty-one feet…'

'Blow Q,' Foggon ordered.

'Stop both,' Farge commanded. 'Group down.' He waited for the log to fall back. 'Up attack.'

'Fifty-eight feet, sir.' An audible sigh whispered through the sombre control room.

'Have you control?' Farge asked brusquely. 'Up periscope.'

'I've got her, sir,' the cox'n said quietly. 'Fifty-nine feet.'

They dipped him, the lens going dark again, but then she settled. The trimming crisis seemed to have ended, judging by the calm reigning behind him. Working fast, lowering and raising his attack periscope, taking swift, short looks, Farge registered the surface scene. Rapping out the bearings of his sightings, he gave the LOP and CEP enough data with which to build up their pictures.

To the south-east he could see the flashing light of the roundabout whistle buoy, a warship (a frigate?) on the far side of it. Coming abeam, on his port side, was the sloping outline of Set' Navolok. The yellow light-tower, atop its single-storied building, was perched upon the sepia-tinged granite cliff, the giant cupola of the radar dish rearing behind it. The coast running down to the Pushka caves was devoid of vegetation, the bleak cliffs plunging sheer into the sea. He could see the gulls wheeling in the wind above Lodeynaya Bay, the breakers leaping in curtains of spray where they battered Pushka Point; and the dark tower, astern now, which perched on the point guarding the southern entrance to Orcus' recent refuge. Though the submarine must be a mile off now, he could distinguish the white band of the horizontal markings on the tower. He could just make out the eastern tip of the entrance to the inlet, the coast a dull green above the shoreline where the granite showed. In spite of the scrub in the breaks of the cliffs, the eastern side was as desolate and dreary as the western shore, now slowly drawing astern. The mast was enlarging to a bridge and funnel: 'Bearing that, and two more masts.' Farge slammed the handles shut and turned to Murray:

'Got your fix?'

'Okay, sir. We're entering the western limit of the inward Jane now.'

'Happy?'

The navigating officer nodded. 'Everything checks, sir. Plenty of water now.'

'150 feet. Assume the Ultra Quiet State. I'll keep her slow together.'

Orcus slipped down to her depth, her company remaining at action stations. Except for the reports of sonar contacts from the sound-room, no one spoke; each man listening, nerves taut. Orcus was crossing what must be the most heavily defended, monitored and mined entrance to a naval port in the world. The old submarine had penetrated the first stockade. If she could reach WP2, between the diverging lanes, Operation sow was going to plan — provided Safari was in Position Zulu on rime.

Chapter 15

HM Submarine Safari, 15 May.

It was unusual for Safari's senior rates' mess to be empty at this hour, and CPO Derek.Scanes was savouring his few minutes of peace before going on watch Privacy was at a premium in Safari, though at 4,500 tons she was vast compared to the conventionals he had left long ago, or so it seemed. The most striking difference, and one which was still foreign to him even after his time in Valiant, was the fashion in which the nuke was a 'split' submarine, the seamen and weaponry up for'd, the propulsion department to which he belonged, back aft.

The split was natural, inflicted upon them by the reactor which divided the boat geographically and practically into two The outside wrecker and his for'd staff took care of the engineering for'd of the reactor, but to pass from up for'd to back aft required passing through the huge doors of the tunnel over the reactor. People could not wander throughout the boat as in conventionals, and the ship's company, however hard the officers tried to break down the division, lived two existences Scanes did not like the system, but they had to live with it.

Scanes was one of the minority who had decided to look after his health, to arrest the inevitable deterioration caused by no physical exercise and plentiful food. He conscientiously did his daily pedalling on the cycle, but the struggle to keep down his weight was hard, now that he'd packed in the cigarettes. Beryl didn't like fat men.