William Brinkley - The Last Ship

To update the reader’s calendar: Approximately two years had passed since the launchings. Meaning that they had occurred during the Antarctic summer when the continent would have supported its greatest concentration of people. These scattered over it, bent to their various scientific projects, it was reasonable to assume that something like the following may have happened: Hearing the news, they had all proceeded at once to the McMurdo Sound base; further news, more explicitly the possible absence of any news due to the communications blackout created by the Electromagnetic Pulse, convincing them of the prudence of passing the Antarctic winter there, awaiting developments; another summer come, the intelligence quite clear at this point that there was nothing in any of their dozen nations to which to return; rationally, they had settled in to wait, to winter over again; to ponder some course of action, their stockpile of stores affording them plenty of time to reach a decision as to one. This was our general speculation, awaiting on-site verification, which we now commenced.

As we slowly penetrated McMurdo Sound that morning, the submarine proceeding at dead slow, topside in the sail were the Russian captain, myself, two watch officers, and two lookouts training binoculars on the base up ahead. Pushkin pushing gently through waters the blue of some flawless gem, broken only by decorative particles of ice. Temperature 15° F., the bridge thermometer read, quite comfortably cold for former Barents sailors (ourselves) and former Arctic sailors ( Pushkin ’s company), all now bundled cozily in this gear from the ship’s stores. Across the water, below great snow mountains, we could begin to make out the installation, the slate-colored buildings of sundry sizes huddled on the shore, their mass sitting there intrusively, as any mark of man would of necessity in this chaste world, which he had altered so infinitely less than he had any other space on earth; beyond the settlement, the great continent seeming to go on forever in an epic white emptiness. In the spectral silence that lay over the scene, all of us glassing meticulously the considerable expanse of the base for a period of at least five minutes, the Russian captain at the longer-range telescope, no one saying a word during it. He straightened up.

“Will you please try, Captain?”

I bent, swept carefully the entire diameter of the base, larger and more detailed in the telescopic lens, swept each building, slowly, once, twice, three times. Stood up, looked at him.

“Nothing that moves,” I said.

“Strange,” he said, the tones equally of bafflement and of initial disappointment in his voice.

“Aye. Strange.”

We stood thoughtfully, both regarding it now with the naked eye across the water.

“I would have expected something… somebody.”

“Maybe they’re inside.” I gave that dim hope.

“They would have seen us.” Steadily we were closing the base. “Nevertheless…”

He spoke to a messenger who ducked below, soon produced a loud hailer.

“All of them would know English. Only ours Russian. You do it, Captain.”

The English words, booming out through the hailer in a startling volume, shattered the silent scene. Briefly I identified ourselves as friendly, as a Russian submarine with crew Russian and American (we were flying both ensigns): Was anybody there? The buildings stood mute, unresponsive, before this assault, no figures emerging from any one of them. I brought the hailer down.

“Well, we’ll just have a look,” the Russian said, the undertones of enigma clinging to his voice. “It doesn’t make sense. We’ll just look,” he said again. “All right, Captain?”

“By all means. Let’s look.”

Ahead was an ice pier. The Russian captain gave an order through the bridge intercom and presently Russian sailors with mooring lines were on the hull. He nosed her in with a perfection of seamanship and soon she stood tied up alongside the pier.

Searching through that cluster of buildings—the party of about a dozen, both Russian and American sailors, led by the two captains—was like proceeding through some ghost town, the spooky effect heightened by the enclosing whiteness of the setting, by the fervent stillness that presided everywhere. Our slow progress, one kept on edge as by the imminent prospect of a figure—a naval officer, a lone scientist—emerging and explaining all. Nothing. Nobody.

“When it happened, they cleared out.”

“They would have done better to stay where they were,” I said.

“Aye.”

We stepped outside, stood looking around in the white silence, still pondering.

“Those must be the storehouses,” he said, indicating the two large, warehouse-looking structures set in the snow at the far edge of the cluster. We had gone then into one, then the other of them; come upon as overwhelming a sight as, save for live people, could have been presented us.

Stretching down row after long row stood hundreds of shelves filled with stores. Brought to a halt for a moment in our dumbstruckness, we then began to wander in speechless awe up and down the aisles. Everything was here. First of all, food in great quantities; principally in the large freeze-dried ration containers used on U.S. Navy ships, along with hundred-pound bags of assorted foods, flour, beans, sugar, rice; also in huge freezers, one or two of which we opened, filled with great sides of beef, other meats, hanging in splendid long ranks. Shelves also filled with medicines; vitamins; cold-weather clothing; much else. Everything it seemed needful for a considerable community to live in a decidedly civilized and undeprived fashion. Where necessary, the stores especially packed for these regions and temperatures, thus in perfect condition. (Preservation of food being no problem in Antarctica, some of us familiar with the polar-exploration accounts of food of previous expeditions half a century old found on it, perfectly preserved, entirely edible.) We came to a halt in an open space and stood, still not a word said, stood in marvel contemplating this fantastic prospect, trying to assimilate the two emotions following on the two discoveries and pulling us in different directions. The immense sadness at the absence of ones like ourselves, human beings, these being what we wished more than anything else to see. The immeasurable, welling-up thrill of all that stood before us and all it represented. Rather than being able to count on but six months of assured supply of stores, of food… well, if one had had to pull some wild figure out of a hat, one would have probably guessed what indeed our later precise inventories and calculations showed to be just about the case. Something like a two-year supply for a thousand souls. For a company of 159 of the Pushkin, approximately a twelve-year supply. It was almost too much for us to comprehend. Taken together with our ten-year fuel supply for the submarine, these seemed to lift terrible chains from around us, the life prospects of quite potentially doomed men extended in a stroke to uncounted years. Men fear nothing so much as the spectre of hunger. Now that most horrible of all foes seemed vanquished virtually forever. The most enormous lifting of spirits took possession of us, something little short of an ecstasy on witnessing an epiphany—surely the long rows harboring all our needs deserved that appellation.

Thus at McMurdo Station we first stayed, virtually all of us moving ashore. Life has settled into a pleasant if quite vigorous rhythm. Mornings, starting early, we are aboard Pushkin for the meticulous indoctrination of the American sailors, including myself, including the women, by the Russian sailors, in the peculiarities of submarines, converting our destroyer skills into submarine skills; learning to be submariners, respective ratings working under their counterparts—enginemen with enginemen, helmsmen under helmsmen, and so on. Hard, exacting work, requiring the closest concentration. Fascinating work to most of us, if nothing else for destroyer men to learn so precisely how their great traditional foe functions. Most of all, the stern awareness that Pushkin is now all, that in her lies our salvation, that therefore we must know her intimate ways in order to keep her healthy, sound, safe; profoundly aware, deeply grateful, of the fact that in her, unlike the destroyer, by proceeding in the ocean depths, we can go anywhere in perfect safety; all this giving us a growing affection toward her. Afternoons are given over to something equally intensive, equally vital—language courses in which every single member of ship’s company, American and Russian, is enrolled, each learning the other’s language (the rather considerable library we also discovered at the base containing language-instruction books, materials, in not just these two but as well in the several other languages of the Antarctica Pact member nations): full four hours in the Mess Hall, occupying the entire afternoon; this mastery indispensable not just to our two peoples becoming one community, but to the two ship’s companies becoming one, to the very safety of the submarine, watch-standers needing to understand and execute instantly commands given in either language.