Submarine

'Difficult to say, sir.' Powys was fiddling with his pocket calculator. 'Perhaps five hours, sir. We're hardly using anything at these revs, slow one, grouped down.'

'What speed are we making good, Alastair?'

'Four knots — and we've still got a bit of westerly set under us,' Murray said.

'Happy with your DR?'

'Reasonably so, sir. We switched SINS off after the flash report.'

Farge reached up for the dividers. 'Five hours at four knots,' he murmured. 'Twenty miles at the most, gentlemen.1 He measured off the distance from the latitude scale. Sticking one point of the dividers in the 0136 DR position, he traced out an arc to the west and south.

'Twenty miles short of Vardo,' he indicated, 'and…' The point of the dividers swung southwards, then began crossing the shallower bank where they had sighted the Norwegian fishing-boats aeons ago. A spur of the bank stretched north-west with soundings of 165 metres and less.

'Five hundred feet and less,' he said softly, leaving unspoken the thought in their minds. 'Everywhere else, it's deep water.' He looked up and met his senior officers' glances. Then he traced out a course to the centre of the spur. 'I propose we make for that bank,' he said. 'If we can reach it with what's left of the battery's capacity, we can try to snort there — as safely as anywhere else. We might suck in enough air to sit it out a bit longer on the bottom, while the heat passes over. If we're left in peace we might be able to stick it out until tomorrow's twilight.'

'Will you tell the troops of your intentions?' Tim Prout asked.

'Not yet,' Farge said. 'Nor the other officers. No point in worrying them.' He grinned ruefully. 'Miracles can still happen — and thanks, all of you.' He moved back into the centre of the control-room.

'Port ten,' he ordered Sims. 'Steer 206°. Remind the hands that Ultra Quiet State remains in force.' He walked slowly around his control-room, checking the gauges, having a word with the planesman and the watch-keeper on the panel. He turned to Sims:

'You have the ship, officer of the watch. Shake me if you're worried, and at 0400.' He stuffed his hands in his pockets and, shuffling in his slippers from the control-room, retired to his cabin.

Exhaustion brought Farge a fitful sleep but at 0315, with the two-minute reports from the sound-room filtering into his consciousness, he finally quit his bunk. Rubbing his eyes and smoothing back his hair, he sat himself at his desk. Pulling up his chair, he extracted his leather writing holder from his personal drawer, took out a few sheets of writing-paper and arranged them neatly in front of him. He held his pen poised for a moment as he closed his eyes. He could see her so vividly in his imagination, her fair curls, her laughing eyes, her soft smile. Then he bent over his desk and began to write.

'We should be crossing the bank now, sir,' Murray reported. 'Time, 0502.'

'Nothing from the sound-room?'

'Only the distant contact, sir. Still very faint,' Sims said.

Farge stood between his periscopes, hands behind his back, waiting for his men to reach their action stations. He could hear them struggling through the boat, many swaying as if they were drunk while they fought for breath.

'Take a quick sounding, pilot.'

The trace appeared, enough to show that Orcus was in 490 feet of water.

'Depth recorder switched off,' Murray reported.

Farge reached for the intercom:

'Captain speaking.' He kept his voice low, matter-of-fact. 'We've nothing much left in the box,' he said, 'and as you all realize, there's not much air. I haven't risked coming up before this, because a detection would definitely have been bad news. So we've got the choice: either sit on the bottom here at 490 feet and slowly snuff it, or risk sticking out our necks by getting in a quick snort. We've heard nothing for over nine hours — only a faint contact to the north. With luck, we may get in a bit of a charge and, what matters most, recirculate the air.' He paused. 'We're only twenty-five miles from the coast, but I reckon the risk is worth it. A quick charge is all we want, enough to take us north-west into the deep field again, where we can snort to our heart's content.' He said carefully: