Submarine

Commander Coombes slung the sheaf of orders on to his bunk, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The steam leak had blown at 2135 yesterday and, in spite of the efforts of his MEO, Malcolm Gunn, and his team, Safari remained at two hundred feet, under way at snail's pace on her noisy egg-beater and battery. Coombes could not resist sneaking glances at the clock above his desk: it was already 1505, seventeen and a half hours since the breakdown.

'Hell's bloody bells,' he exploded, crashing his fist on to his desk. He resisted sending for the chief again: he'd wait another half-hour before going to find him himself, sow was a ghastly fiasco: Orcus, at appalling risk to herself, was at this moment creeping about the enemy's backyard. If her luck held, she could be transmitting her enemy report at any time after midnight: that last 'immediate' which Safari had received before the satellite went on the blink late on the fourteenth had indicated that the Typhoon (and a suspected Alfa II) could be capable of sailing from 0001 17 May onwards. COMSUBEASTLANT was presuming that she would sail either on the 17 or 18 May, or on the 20 or 21 May, so it was essential for Safari to be at Zulu by midnight of the sixteenth.

The breakdown in satellite communications was a further aggravation: he wondered whether the Russians had started the space war. Presumably their manned vehicle launches in the early eighties had been to learn how to destroy the West's vital communication satellites. Safari had been ordered to listen to hourly W/T routines from midday of the sixteenth onwards.

When Safari had sailed, Coombes knew that Nato's surface forces were unobtrusively streaming for the Greenland and Norwegian seas. Carl Vinson's Striking Force was to bottle up the western exits from the Barents Sea and, apart from her maritime air patrols, she was leaving the Barents clear for Operation sow. Safari need have no worries about friendly boats until north of the seventy-sixth parallel, when she would be informed of the positions of friendly units. Nato's intention was to seal off the enemy submarines' escape routes to the North Polar Basin: for too long the Northern Fleet and the Kremlin had presumed that the Barents was their citadel. For sow to succeed Nato had to achieve a fine balance; by constricting the net too tightly, the Striking Force might dissuade the Soviet off-patrol SSBNS from putting to sea.

There was some consolation in the fact that, while trying to curb his frustration during this breakdown, Coombes had time to memorize the ice conditions. The polar ice was average for April and May: the gales had broken it up a bit faster, that was all; Franz Josef Land should be free by the end of May; the pack limit was average too, and expected to be latitude 77° north for June. Safari needed every hour she could gain in order to overtake her target before it reached the shelter of the ice, where sonar conditions could be much more difficult, especially in bad weather. Orcus also needed time for her breakaway, once she'd made her enemy report. Safari's Position Zulu was the best compromise which the computers could predict.

Coombes swore softly: he had for the umpteenth time checked with his navigating officer the latest time for Safari to be under way again in order to reach Zulu by midnight on the seventeenth — only nine hours' time — but the deadline had already passed. If Safari could get going at once, she would still be five hours adrift, even assuming that she could maintain thirty knots. Coombes regretted having lost his temper with his MEO. Malcolm Gunn was long-suffering, having to cope with the problems not of his making in addition to having to put up with a bad-tempered captain. And he had insisted that the repair must be one hundred per cent — no bodging.

The navigating officer had worked out Safari's furthest-on positions for every hour which passed — and for each hour which slipped by Safari would have to make her intercept further south. Coombes opened his eyes as he heard his curtain swishing open.

Malcolm Gunn stood in the doorway in his streaked, white overalls, his hard hat black with grease, his face grey.

'Ready to try her now, sir. Permission to change the reactor state?'

Coombes nodded and jumped to his feet. 'Well done, Malcolm. Every second counts. Give me thirty knots as soon as you bloody well can.'

'I'll have to work up slowly, sir.'

Coombes nodded as together they hurried into the control-room. 'Diving stations,' he ordered brusquely. 'Let's get this ruddy thing going.'

By 1540 the chief was satisfied. The steam joint held as Safari worked up slowly to full power. By 1602 she was steaming at thirty knots on a course of 081° to cut the corner. Coombes had decided to risk passing closer to North Cape but, even so, Safari would be seven hours adrift and eighty miles further south of Zulu than she should be.