Joe Poyer - North Cape

Folsom stared pensively out the starboard port, watching the storm-thrashed waves towering on either side of the ship. Only rarely now did they break over the bow to come dashing down the length of the ice-smooth deck. He became aware that Larkin had come onto the bridge and had moved over to stand behind hint

“The seas seem to be easing somewhat”

“Yes, sir. We aren’t taking such a pounding now. The repair crew has managed to reweld the cover plates in the bow section and rig a couple of beams to help hold it in place. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble, from that quarter at least”

“Then there are small things to be grateful for.” Larkin smiled. “You have managed quite well, Mr: Folsom. I must say that I am proud of both you and the crew.” Larkin delivered this rare compliment in a matter-of-fact voice, but Folsom was deeply touched by it.

“Thank you, sir. Although you might want to modify that when you hear about the condensers.”

Larkin chuckled. “Expecting a rocket were you? I read the report when I came up. Don’t worry about it. As you know, man does not always triumph over machinery,” he quoted solemnly. “There was nothing else you could have done. And I think the auxiliary condensers can handle the cooling system for now.”

He paused and stared out at the waves. “What have you decided about using the boost engines?”

“Uh, nothing really, at least at the moment. I didn’t…”

“Well, think…”

“Come now, you are the executive officer. You probably know this ship and her engines better than I do. Do you think she could handle seas like this under emergency power?” Folsom hesitated a moment before answering. “Yes, I think maybe she could,” he said thoughtfully. “Ordinarily I would suggest that we go farther under the lee of the Cape. We might find easier waters there. The only thing that worries me is whether or not the hydrofoils could stand the pounding. In and out of the water so much… shorter seas would be a lot easier on the struts.”

Larkin rubbed his mouth and chin. “Go in closer to the coast… I don’t really know. Most of the charts for this area are not accurate. This coast hasn’t really been thoroughly re-charted since the Germans did it in 1941. The coastal shelf is full of reefs…. How close in would you want to go?”

“At least five miles.”

“Five miles!” Larkin exclaimed. “That puts us inside Norwegian waters.” Folsom nodded. “I know, sir, but anything less would do us no good. That’s why I don’t think we should try. The Norwegians probably Wouldn’t raise a fuss if they spotted us. But, if for some reason they did, the investigating board would have to examine our logs and there would be no way of concealing the fact that we did violate Norwegian waters without permission.

“We can gain a few extra knots by coupling the boost engines to the main drive shafts anyway.”

Larkin nodded assent and turned away to cross to his high seat. He sat down and scanned the readout dials that presented the status of every vital portion of the ship. Both Larkin’s and Folsom’s panels — identical in every way — were to the Robert F. Kennedy what Teleman’s PCMS console had been to the A-17.

“All right, Mr. Folsom,” he said finally, “let’s play it that way.” The Robert F. Kennedy came to the rendezvous position hike an icy ghost. Every external fitting that faced the sea and wind was covered to a depth of three feet with gray, rock-hard ice. Long rills ran along the length of the weather deck, covering every shroud and stay and the lower reaches of the single antenna mast protruding from the superstructure. Only the upper, working portion of each antenna was clear due to its own independent electric heater. The RFK was streamlined like no other ship had ever needed to be. Instead of the block-like superstructure characteristic of modem destroyers and cruisers, the RFK’s bridge was built in a V and sloped aft. Her fore and after decks were free of the usual cannon turrets and other protuberances and the weather deck ran smooth from bow to stem in a gentle line except for the superstructure. At the same time, the sides of the deck curved, from a center line formed by a ten-foot walkway, downward to meet the hull. But now the ship resembled nothing as much as a child’s plastic toy boat covered with ice.

Larkin ordered the ship into a station-keeping pattern and re-.. duced speed to eight knots, only enough to maintain steerageway in the heavy seas. The RFK came about to fight the seas around a four-mile rectangle, with the legs into and running from the waves.

On the bridge, Folsom glanced warily at Larkin, standing before his console, his eyes glued to the radio operator’s hunched back as he sat ears straining under the earphones to catch the slightest whisper of sound over the VHF-FM frequency. Folsom knew Larkin was extremely worried. Knowing the full story and the knife-edge schedules the reconnaissance aircraft had to keep to, he was worried as well. Minutes before they had received a transmission from the refueling tanker, maintaining his assigned rendezvous position two hundred miles to the west. Everything was waiting, the stage set for the final scene. But where was the leading actor? Larkin shifted his weight from one foot to another. Imperceptibly at first, the motion of the ship was becoming rougher as she turned into a crosswind run. Larkin noted it with a sharp glance at the gyroscopic-driven indicator and immediately turned back to face the radio operator. Teleman was less than four hundred miles from the North Cape when he decided that perhaps he had pushed his luck as far as it would go. His fuel readouts were showing barely enough left to reach rendezvous, but the single, remaining engine was certainly not acting like there was. Twice, within the space of two minutes, the engine had coughed like, an old man on a cold winter morning and then resumed its steady drone. Teleman had never experienced a fuel shortage in the A-17 and he was at a loss as to how to diagnose the malady.

He was still maintaining a steady twenty-two thousand feet deep in the top layers of the Arctic storm. So far he had not been spotted by the searching Russian aircraft, but the radar screen was showing them strung out like pickets in a fence. They were putting out quite a bit of effort to greet him, he thought, but it was one honor that he would be happy to do without.

Teleman ran a correction bug-hunter program through the computer directed at the fuel readouts. Nothing showed up and he tried to relax; telling himself that if anything had been wrong the computers would have spotted it. He had almost convinced himself when the engine shuddered again. This time the unevenness persisted, the engine’s RPM’s dropping quickly until he thought he was going into a flame-out condition. At twenty-one thousand RPM, they caught again and the compressor came back up to the proper rev level. If he was running low on fuel, he figured, it was probably due to the increased drag from the damaged tail section. He had been checking on it steadily for the past hour, watching larger and larger chunks peel lose. Added to the fuel problem, he was now worrying about how much longer the entire aft fuselage was going to hold together. Of all places he did not want to eject, he could think of few that ran second to the top of Norway in the middle of an Arctic storm. If he was lucky, a wandering Lap might find his body, perfectly preserved in its thick coat of ice, several years hence. Leaning back as comfortably in the acceleration couch as he could after six straight days he stared at the instrument panel and the various displays trying to decide how soon to raise RFK to transmit his information. He was so tired that the various displays and panels full of readout dials and verniers refused to focus into concrete entities. Instead they were all running together into a fuzzy, jumbled mass of softly glowing colors. He was so tired that he knew if he closed his eyes not even the last trumpet would be loud enough to wake him.