Submarine

Scanes glanced at the clock. 0005, Sunday… and his thoughts flashed to the Dartmoor village of Meavy, where Beryl was staying with mum until he got back.

'How far to the ice for us, pilot?'

'Fourteen miles, sir.'

'And for the target?'

'Six miles.'

Scanes felt his gut tauten. He longed to shout at that brawny skipper of theirs, yell at him to ease down. The ice edge was only 28,000 yards — the Typhoon only sixteen thousand yards ahead. No one knew precisely where the edge of the polar field began and yet that red-bearded captain was continuing to hurtle onwards towards the hazard, and risk being picked up by the Russian. Coombes stood there rock-like, fingering his flaming whiskers:

'Stand-by Tigerfish attack. Two torpedoes, two hits,' he commanded briskly. 'Tell me when the ice is at ten miles.'

The next ten minutes dragged, the tension relieved only by Bull Clint who, grinning in the cox'n's seat, his hands on his lap, had blurted out, 'Ringo-dingo,' his favourite expression, while Safari hurtled onwards at full speed. His fly-whisk was swinging with the angle of the boat as she swooped to either side of four hundred feet, the ordered depth. Lieutenant Wesley, standing silently in the bandstand and supervising the delicate trimming, was not amused. Scanes jumped when the navigator shouted:

'Ice, range ten miles, sir.'

'Assume half power state,' Coombes snapped. 'Revolutions for twenty knots.' His arms hung downwards, his shirt-sleeves too long and becoming grubby at the cuffs.

'Target course 335°, sir,' Farquharson announced from his CEP. 'Estimated speed, ten knots.'

Scanes tried to calculate: the Typhoon was six miles ahead and only four from the ice. Overtaking her at a rate often knots Safari would very shortly be within range, providing her quarry did not escape, screened by the noise from the ice. To be so close and to lose the target now would be a disaster.

'Target range twelve thousand yards, bearing dead ahead,' the 2001 sonar reported a few minutes later over the intercom.

The speed was coming off and at twenty-two knots the captain ordered the after-planes in hand. Bull Clint took over the column.

'At twenty, go twenty,' Coombes snapped. 'Six down, five hundred feet.'

Scanes felt the angle increasing, watched the pointer on the gauge falling away. Thank God the Old Man was taking no risks with the ice. The tension could be felt, Botham's voice and the subdued reports of the plotters being the only interruptions when at 0035 Safari neared the edge of the polar ice. Only the motors hummed in the control-room for at action stations the doors were shut, each compartment a sealed world on its own.

'Track 334 is target,' Hamilton reported.

'Bring number one and two tubes to readiness State One,' Grenville ordered.

Scanes could hear his own breathing as he waited, watching the drill. In the tube-space the bow caps would be opening, the attack team tubes' crew opening the valves, flooding numbers one and two tubes. The silence in the control-room was broken by reports from the sonar controller and then, in the speakers, Scanes heard the first sounds of the ice grinding above them, moving mazily in the Arctic swell.

The sinister sound always gave Scanes the creeps: he had never yet discovered anyone who enjoyed this mysterious world beneath the polar cap: it was deep here in the Arctic Basin, too deep for comfort. But what made the adrenalin spurt were the invisible, uncharted dangers, hazards which had to be risked if Safari was to remain undetected…

The captain and the navigator had spent the afternoon studying the ice patrol reports. The buzz suggested that this was a bad year, the icebergs more numerous than usual after the hard winter. Silent, gigantic, their bases piercing the depths for hundreds of feet, these isolated monsters were a constant menace to submarines. Scanes clearly heard the creaking, then the distant booming — if only Safari could use her active sonar, at least she'd pick up the fang-like protrusions of the icebergs, detect the ice pillars which could stretch down from the surface to the sea bed. Another distant boom echoed sepulchrally up ahead and Scanes caught the glance which flickered between the captain and the first lieutenant.

The sonar was picking up the peeking sounds offish — Scanes had sometimes heard the 'chukking' of dolphins, a joyful sound after the weird creakings of the ice. Scanes was thankful that Safari's sonar controller was one of the most senior chief ops in the Navy: not much got past him. During the last patrol, he had allowed Scanes to listen in on the sonar — the joyful twitterings, the chief said, were the sounds of shrimps making love.

'AIO checks correct, sir,' Whalley, the ops officer, called.

Grenville hesitated, then followed with his report.

'Fire control correct.'

'Try the following solutions,' Hamilton rapped, 'Course 335°, speed ten, range 8,200 yards…'

The captain was bending over the command display, twitching at his beard: