Alistair MacLean: Ice Station Zebra

"He didn't by any chance fly down with you in that chopper from Renfrew this afternoon?" Hansen interrupted shrewdly.

"No."

"Know him, by any chance?"

"Never even heard of him until now."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Hansen murmured.

A few minutes passed in desultory talk — the minds of Hansen and his two men were obviously very much on the reason for the arrival of Admiral Garvie — and then a snowfilled gust of chilled air swept into the canteen as the door opened and a blue-coated sailor came in and crossed to our table.

"The captain's compliments, Lieutenant. Would you bring Dr. Carpenter to his cabin, please?"

Hansen nodded, rose to his feet and led the way outside. The snow was beginning to lie now, the darkness was coming down fast and the wind from the north was bitingly cold. Hansen made for the nearest gangway, halted at its head as he saw seamen and dockyard workers, insubstantial and spectral figures in the swirling, flood-lit snow, carefully easing a slung torpedo down the for'ard hatch, turned and headed toward the after gangway. We clambered down and at the foot Hansen said: "Watch your step, Doc. It's a little slippery hereabouts."

It was all that, but with the -thought of the ire-cold waters of the Holy Loch waiting for me if I put a foot wrong I made no mistake. We passed through the hooped canvas shelter covering the after hatch and dropped down a steep metal ladder into a warm, scrupulously clean and gleaming engine room packed with a baffling complexity of gray-painted ma. chinery and instrument panels, its every corner brightly illuminated with shadowless fluorescent lighting.

"Not going to blindfold me, Lieutenant?" I asked.

"No need." He grinned. "If you're on the up and up, it's not necessary. if you're not on the up and up, it's still not necessary, for you can't talk about what you've seen — not to anyone that matters — if you're going to -spend the next few years staring out from behind a set of prison bars."

I saw his point. I followed him for'ard, our feet soundless on the black rubber decking, past the tops of a couple of huge machines readily identifiable as turbo-generator sets for producing electricity. More heavy banks of instruments, a door, then a thirty-foot-long very narrow passageway. As we passed along its length I was conscious of a heavy vibrating hum from beneath my feet. The «Dolphin's» nuclear reactor had to be somewhere. This would be it, here. Directly beneath us. There were circular hatches on the passageway deck and those could only be covers for the heavily leaded glass windows, inspection ports that would provide the nearest and only approach to the nuclear furnace far below.

The end of the passage, another heavily clamped door, and then we were into what was obviously the control center of the «Dolphin». To the left was a partitioned-off radio room, to the right a battery of machines and dialed panels of incomprehensible purpose, and straight ahead, a big chart table. Beyond that again, in the center, were massive mast housings and, still further on, the periscope stand with its twin periscopes. The whole control room was twice the size of any I'd ever seen in a conventional submarine but, even so, every square inch of bulkhead space seemed to be taken up by one type or another of highly complicated looking machines or instrument banks: even the deckhead was almost invisible, lost to sight above thickly twisted festoons of wires, cables and pipes of a score of different kinds.

The for'ard port side of the control room was for all the world like a replica of the flight deck of a modern multiengined jet airliner. There were two separate yoke aircraft type control columns, facing on to banks of hooded calibrated dials. Behind the yokes were two padded leather chairs, each chair, I could see, fitted with a safety belt to hold the helmsman in place. I wondered vaguely what type of violent maneuvers the «Dolphin» might be capable of when such safety belts were obviously considered essential to strap the helmsman down.

Opposite the control platform, on the other side of the passageway leading forward from the control room, was a second partitioned-off room. There was no indication what this might be and I wasn't given time to wonder. Hansen hurried down the passage, stopped at the first door on his left, and knocked. The door opened and Commander Swanson appeared.

"Ah, there you are. Sorry you've been kept waiting, Dr. Carpenter. We're sailing at six thirty, John" — this to Hansen. "You can have everything set up by then?"

"Depends how quickly the loading of the torpedoes goes, Captain."

"We're taking only six aboard."

Hansen lifted an eyebrow but made no comment. He said, "Loading them into the tubes?"

"In the racks. They have to be worked on."

"No spares?"

"No spares."

Hansen nodded and left. Swanson led me into his cabin and closed the door behind him.

Commander Swanson's cabin was bigger than a telephone booth, I'll say that for it, but not all that much bigger to shout about. A built-in bunk, a folding washbasin, a small writing desk and chair, a folding camp stool, a locker, some calibrated repeater-instrument dials above the bunk, and that was it. If you'd tried to perform the twist in there, you'd have fractured yourself in a dozen places without ever moving your feet from the center of the floor.

"Dr. Carpenter," Swanson said, "I'd like you to meet Admiral Garvie, Commander U. S. Nato naval forces."

Admiral Garvie put down the glass he was holding in his hand, rose from the only chair, and stretched out his hand. As he stood with his feet together, the far from negligible clearance between his knees made it easy to understand the latter part of his "Andy Bandy" nickname: like Hansen, he'd have been at home on the range. He was a tall, florid-faced man with white hair, white eyebrows and a twinkle in the blue eyes below; he had that certain indefinable something about him common to all senior naval officers the world over, irrespective of race or nationality.

"Glad to meet you, Dr. Carpenter. Sorry for the — um — lukewarm reception you received, but Commander Swanson was perfectly within his rights in acting as he did. His men have looked after you?"

"They permitted me to buy them a cup of coffee in the canteen."

He smiled. "Opportunists all, those nuclear men. I feel that the good name of American hospitality is in danger. Whisky, Dr. Carpenter?"

"I thought American naval ships were dry, sir."

"So they are, my boy, so they are. Except for a little medicinal alcohol, of course. My personal supply." He produced a hip flask about the size of a canteen and reached for a convenient shot glass. "Before venturing into the remoter fastnesses of the Highlands of Scotland, the prudent man takes the necessary precautions. I have to make an apology to you, Dr. Carpenter. I saw your Admiral Hewson in London last night and had intended to be here this morning to persuade Commander Swanson here to take you aboard. But I was delayed."

"Persuade, sir?"

"Persuade." He sighed. "Our nuclear-submarine captains, Dr. Carpenter, are a touchy and difficult bunch. From the proprietary attitude they adopt toward their submarines you'd think that each one of them was a majority shareholder in the Electric Boat Company of Groton, where most of those boats are built." He raised his glass. "Success to the commander and yourself. I hope you manage to find those poor devils. But I don't give you one chance in a thousand."

"I think we'll find them, sir. Or Commander Swanson will."

"What makes you so sure?" he asked slowly. "Hunch?"

"You could call it that."

He laid down his glass and his eyes were no longer twinkling. "Admiral Hewson was most evasive about you, I must say. Who are you, Carpenter? «What» are you?"