Submarine

The conference in the control-room took longer than Woolf-Gault expected, Hicks taking charge of the diving side, while Number One went through the escape chamber drill. The captain re-emphasized the signals: two knocks, Orcus to go ahead; three, astern; four, stop. Then, surprisingly for Farge, he shook Hicks and Woolf-Gault by the hand.

The first lieutenant moved for'd down the passage-way. Hicks behind him, Woolf-Gault last. As Woolf-Gault passed the messes, faces peered outwards, wishing him luck. Hicks and he dressed in the cold of the tube-space, each checking the other's bottles. Hicks Had the line, the charges and the saw: Woolf-Gault, double-checking the lanyard which secured the long-handled cutter to his hip, took the mini-grapnel. They switched on each other's headlamps and closed their masks. They opened the valves of their breathing-mixture, blew through and checked the depth rate on their dials. Hicks gave the thumbs-up, grasped Woolf-Gault's forearm and began climbing the ladder into the escape-chamber, his flippers clumsily feeling for the spaces between the rungs.

Woolf-Gault glanced about him, met Prout's anxious gaze, then followed Hicks into the chamber. The lower hatch shut beneath them. Woolf-Gault saw Hicks mouthing the orders they knew by heart:

'Open the flood… open the vent.'

In that instant, as the icy water began swirling beneath his feet, Woolf-Gault again felt that terrible uncontrollable panic tugging at him. Trapped in here, the water rushing up to his knees now, the pressure mounting on his ears — it was all he could do not to wrench off his head-set and get out. But his terror evaporated as he remembered his drill: he wouldn't survive if he did not balance the pressures, keep his head, adjust the air-flow. He cleared his ears again, was jabbed in the stomach by Hicks' elbow. The level was up to his mouth, swirling over his visor. He was underwater, the noise of the deluge decreasing as the pressure eased. A tap on his shoulder and the body next to him was reaching up for the releasing wheel.

Drill, drill, drill. The hatch was springing open. Hicks was moving upwards, as agile as an otter. Woolf-Gault, the moment of agony past, floated up after him, his mind calm, concentrating upon the job lying ahead of him.

Even at seventy-five feet it was as black as pitch: Woolf-Gault felt the steel of the casing beneath his hands as, pushing against the upturned hatch, he swam steadily forwards, inches above the casing, keeping pace with the creeping submarine. In the beam of his headlamp, he could see Hicks to his right, his arms encircled about the wire glinting in the beam of his diver's lamp. Hicks' beam swung upwards, following the thrumming wire which curved like a bow into the blackness.

They saw it together, a ghostly cylinder swaying slowly across the casing. Whorls of bubbles glinted in its stream as it was hauled through the sea by the submarine twelve feet below it.

Peering downwards, below where the wire was scraping the side of the casing, Woolf-Gault saw the shadowy outline of the starboard fore-plane. On the for'd side of its inboard edge, by the axis-trunnions, the wire was nipped hard against the curve of the pressure hull — or so it seemed. He glanced at his luminous watch: four minutes under pressure already. Hicks decided to use the charge. Even if their special saw and cutter could scythe through this case-hardened, cable-laid steel wire, how were they to maintain a foothold in this stream?

Woolf-Gault laid the edge of his hand across the wire at a height level with his face. Hicks, with his free hand, unsnapped a charge from his waist and slapped it on the wire. The charge clamped on hard by its own magnetism. Hicks hung on, his finger poised over the time-switch, while he waited for his partner to return to the escape chamber.

Woolf-Gault let go the wire, faced the bows and, still swimming steadily, judged his re-entry better than he had hoped. A minute later he saw Hicks' flippers probing around the lid — and then he was dropping downwards into the chamber. Woolf-Gault reached up and pulled the hatch shut above their heads.

They waited, tense, trying to regain a rhythmic breathing after their exertions. A few feet below the soles of their feet their shipmates must be standing, Number One peering through the spy-hole. In those few seconds Woolf-Gault knew that he had compensated for his failure: he felt a sudden lifting of his spirit knew that soon this cold fear would be over, his terror conquered….