The Dragon in the Sea

The new man put his cap over his red hair, stepped out of the jitney. The machine rebounded from his weight. The driver whirled the jitney back the way they had come.

The ensign stepped up to Sparrow, saluted, said, "I'm Ramsey."

Sparrow returned the salute, said, "Glad to have you aboard."

Ramsey handed his service record to Sparrow, said, "No time to send these through channels."

Sparrow passed the papers to Bonnett, said, "This is Mr. Bonnett, first officer." He turned to Garcia. "Mr. Garcia, engineer."

"Good to meet you," said Ramsey.

"We'll soon dissuade you of that illusion," said Garcia.

Sparrow smiled, offered his hand to Ramsey, was surprised to feel strong muscle in the new man's grip. The fellow just looked soft. Bonnett and Garcia also shook hands.

Ramsey was busy cataloguing his first visual impressions of the three men in the flesh. It seemed strange to be meeting these people for the first time when he felt that he already knew them. And that, he knew, would have to be concealed. Odd bits of knowledge about the personal lives of these men -- even the names of their wives -- could not be in the memory of a new man.

"Security said you might be delayed," said Sparrow.

"What's got Security on its ear?" asked Ramsey. "I thought they were going to dissect me."

"We'll discuss that later," said Sparrow. He rubbed at the thin scar on his neck where the Security surgeons had imbedded the detection-system speaker. "Castoff is 0800. Mr. Garcia will take you aboard. Get into fatigues. You'll be assisting him in a final spy-beam inspection as we get underway."

"Yes, sir," said Ramsey.

"Your gear came along hours ago," said Garcia. He took Ramsey's arm, propelled him toward the ramp. "Let's get with it." They hurried up the ramp.

Ramsey wondered when he could break away to examine his telemeter box. He felt an anxiety -- a need to study the first reports on Sparrow.

That mannerism of rubbing his neck, thought Ramsey. Extreme nervous tension well concealed. But it shows in the tight movements.

On the pier, Sparrow turned to look across the mooring basin at a string of moving lights. "Here comes our tow, Les."

"Do you think we'll make it, Skipper?"

"We always have."

"Yes, but --"

"'For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,'" said Sparrow. "'The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.'" He looked at Bonnett. "Paul wrote that to the Romans two thousand years ago."

"A pretty wise fellow," said Bonnett.

A bos'n's whistle sounded at the head of the dock. A swifty crane came darting up to take away the boarding ramp. Ratings hurried to attach the hooks, looked inquiringly at the two officers.

Men hurried along the pier, a new purposefulness in their movements. Sparrow swept his gaze over the scene. "We're being asked to perform," he said. He gestured for Bonnett to precede him up the ramp. "Like the man said: Let's get with it"

They climbed to the conning tower. Bonnett ducked for the cable rack which mounted the float for their TV periscope. As a matter of routine, he glanced at the housing, saw that it was secured for dive. He grasped the ladder arms, slid down into the subtug.

Sparrow remained topside. Around him, the mooring basin appeared a vast lake. He looked at the rock ceiling's blackness.

There should be stars, he thought. Men should get one last look at stars before they go under the sea.

On the pier below, scurrying figures moved to cast off the magnetic grapples. For a moment, Sparrow felt like a useless pawn being thrown into a sacrifice position. There had been a time, he knew, when captains conned their vessels away from the dock, shouting orders through a megaphone. Now, it was all automatic -- done by machines and by men who were like machines.

A surface tug swung up to their bow, slapped its tow grapples onto them. White water boiled from beneath the tug's stern. The Fenian Ram resisted momentarily, as though reluctant to leave, then began a slow, ponderous movement out into the basin.

They cleared the slot, and another tug slid alongside their stern. The magna-shoe men leaped onto the Ram's silencer planes, hitched the tow and guide cables of the long plastic tube which stretched out across the dark water of the basin. Their shouts came up to Sparrow in the tower like the clear noise of children. He tasted a sudden oil-tainted breeze and knew they had crossed the path of a ventilator duct.

No special fanfare, no brass bands, no ceremony for the departure of a raider, he thought. We are as a reed shaken with the wind. And what go we out into the wilderness to see? No John the Baptist awaits us. But it's a kind of baptism all the same.

Somewhere in the darkness a klaxon hooted. Turn and identify the man next to you. Another Security scheme: Show your identification when the horn sounds. Damn Security! Out here I identify myself to my God and none other.

Sparrow looked astern at the set of the tow. Oil. War demanded the pure substance born in the sediment of rising continents. Vegetable oil wouldn't do. War was no vegetarian. War was a carnivore.

The tow tug shifted to the side of the Ram and now the sub was being nosed into the traveler rack which would carry it down to the underwater canyon and the gulf.

Sparrow looked at the control console in the conning tower, and the green clear-away light. He flashed the standby signal to the tug below him and, with a practiced motion, touched the controls to retract the tower. It slid smoothly into the sub, its plasteel lid twisting into the groove seats.

A chest microphone hung beside the tower console. Sparrow slipped it on, spoke into it: "Rig for dive."

He focused his attention on the dive board in front of him.

Back came Bonnett's voice, robbed of life by the metallic mutes of the intercom: "Pressure in the hull."

One by one, the lights on Sparrow's dive board shifted from red to green. "Green board," he said. "Stand by." Now he could feel the hull pressure and another pressure in his stomach. He closed the signal circuit which told the outside crews that the subtug was ready to go down tunnel.

The Ram shifted, lurched. A dull clang resonated through the boat. Across the top of the dive board amber lights flashed: they were in the grip of the tunnel elevator. Twenty hours of free ride.

Sparrow grasped a handhold beside the dive board, swung down and out onto the engine-room catwalk. His feet made a slithering sound on the catwalk padding as he made his way aft, crawled through the control-room door, dogged it behind him. His gaze paused for a moment on the hand-etched brass plate Heppner had attached beside the door -- a quotation from some nineteenth-century pundit:

"No one but a crazy man would waste his time inventing a submarine and no one but a lunatic would go down in it if it were invented."

Through the gulf shelf in the Florida elbow, De Soto Canyon slashes the soft peninsula limestone like a railroad cut: fourteen fathoms where it starts in Apalachee Bay, more than two hundred and sixty fathoms where it dives off into the ocean deeps south of Cape San Blas and east of Tampa.

The gulf exit of the marine tunnel opens into the canyon wall at fifty fathoms: a twilight world of waving fan kelp, red fingers of gorgonian coral, flashing sparkles of reef-dwelling fish.

The Fenian Ram coasted out of the dark hole of the tunnel like a sea monster emerging from its lair, turned, scattering the fish, and slanted down to a resting place in the burnt-umber mud of the canyon bottom. A sonar pulse swept through the boat. Detectors in the triple hulls responded, registered on control gauges of the navigation deck.

Garcia's clipped accent -- oddly squeaking in the oxygen-high atmosphere -- repeated the check list as he watched the Christmas tree lights of the main board. ". . . no leaks, trim weights balanced, external salvage air clear and pressure holding, atmosphere free of nitrogen, TV eyes clear and seeing, TV periscope surfaced and seeing; periscope gyro checks with --" His laughter echoed through the intercom:

"Seagull! It tried to land on the peri-box as I started to reel in. Lit on its fanny in the water."

Bonnett's crisp tones interrupted: "What's it like topside, Joe?"

"Clear. Just daybreak. Going to be a good day for fishing."

Sparrow's voice rasped over the speakers: "Enough of that! Was there anyone up there to spot the gull's flop? They could've seen our box."

"Negative, Skipper."

Sparrow said, "Les, give me the complete atmosphere check. Vampire gauges everyone. Follow the check. Report any deviations."

The patient inspection continued.

Ramsey interrupted. "I'm in the induction-drive chamber. A lot of static here as I entered."

Garcia said, "Did you go back by the lower shaft tunnel?"

"Lower."

"I noticed that myself earlier. We'll rig a ground for the scuff mat. I think that'll fix it."

"I grounded myself before entering."

Sparrow said, "Run that down, Joe. Les, where are you?"

"Second-level catwalk in the engine room."

"Relieve Joe on the main board. Ramsey, get into your shack. Contact with base in eleven minutes."

"Aye, Skipper."

Sparrow moved from his position on the control deck below Garcia to a point at the first-level door which was open to permit visual inspection of the big gauges forward on the radiation wall. That room in the bow, he thought. That's what worries me. We can see into it with our TV eyes; gauges tell us what's happening. But we can't touch it with our bare hands. We don't have a real feeling for that place.

He mopped his forehead with a large red handkerchief. Something, somewhere is wrong. He was a sub-tug skipper who had learned to depend on his feeling for the boat.

A string of Spanish curses in Garcia's voice, rendered metallic by the intercom, interrupted his reverie.

Sparrow barked: "Joe! What's wrong?" He turned toward the stern, as though to peer through the bulkheads.

"Wiper rag in the rotor system. It was rubbing the induction ring every revolution. That's Ramsey's static."

"Does it look deliberate?"

"Did you ever come across a silk wiping rag?" The sound of a grunt came over the intercom. "There, by heaven!"

Sparrow said, "Save that rag." Then: "Ramsey, where are you?"

"In the shack warming up the transmitter."

"Did you hear Joe?"

"Yes."

"Tell base about that rag. Tell them --"

"Skipper!" It was Garcia's voice. "There's oil in the atmosphere back here!"

Sparrow said, "A mist of oil plus static spark equals an explosion! Where's that oil coming from?"

"Just a minute." A clanking of metal against metal. "Open pet-cock in the lube system. Just a crack. Enough to squirt a fine spray under full drive."

Sparrow said, "Ramsey, include that in the report to base."

"Aye, Skipper."

"Joe, I'm coming back there," said Sparrow. "We're going over that drive room with a microscope."

"I've already started."

Bonnett aid, "Skipper, would you send Ramsey up here after he gets off the contact? I'll need help checking the main board."

"Hear that, Ramsey?" asked Sparrow.

"Aye."

"Comply."

"Will do."

Sparrow went aft, dropped down to the lower level, crawled through the shaft tunnel and into the drive room -- a cone-shaped space dominated by the gleaming brass induction ring, the spaced coils. He could

smell the oil, a heavy odor. Garcia was leaning into the coil space, examining the induction ring by magnifying glass.

"They're just little things," said Sparrow. "But taken together -- boom!"

Garcia turned, his eyes glittering in the harsh work lights. "I don't like the feel of things, Skipper. This is a bad beginning. This is starting like a dead-man mission."

Sparrow took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. With an abrupt motion, he thumbed the button of his chest mike. "Ramsey, when you contact base, request permission to return."

"Aye, Skipper."

Ramsey's thoughts leaped. What will that do to morale? The first raider in months turns back without getting out of the gulf. Bad. He stared at the wavering fingers of the dial needles. His contact timer hit the red line, buzzed. He rapped out the first pulse with its modulated message: "Able John to Red Hat. Over."

The speaker above his head hissed with background noise like a distant surf. Presently, a voice came out of it, overriding the noise: "This is Red Hat. Over."

"Able John to Red Hat: We've discovered sabotage aboard. A silk rag was put in the motor system of our drive room. A static spark from the rag could've blown us out of the bay. Over."

"Red Hat to Able John. Stand by, please. We are routing your message to Bird George."

"Security!"

Again the speaker came to life. "Bird George to Able John. This is Teacher. What is the situation? Over."

Clint Reed! Ramsey could almost see the humorless face of his Security teacher. Teacher Reed. Impromptu code. Ramsey bent over his own mike: "Teacher, this is Student." He repeated the story of sabotage.

"Teacher to Student. What's your suggestion? Over."

"Student to Teacher. Permit us to go on with inspection out here. There's less chance for an unknown factor. Just the four of us aboard. If we check safe, allow us to continue the mission. Bad for morale if we came back. Over."

"Teacher to Student. That's the way we see it. But stand by." Pause. "Permission granted. How much time do you need? Over."

Ramsey turned on his intercom microphone. "Skipper, base suggests we continue the inspection here and not return if we check secure."

"Did you tell him what we'd found?"

"Yes, sir."

"What'd they say?"

"That's there less chance for a Security slip out here. Fewer personnel. They suggest we double-check each other, give every --"