Killer ship, p.11
Killer Ship, page 11
He appreciated these things, he assessed the probable results of his actions, and he acted, while the officers about him were still staring in horrible fascination at that bulb of death a few yards ahead of them.
That was why he was the captain.
A destroyer steaming at twenty knots travels thirty-three feet in one second. If the sun had risen five seconds later; if the starb’d lookout had taken that time to clean his binoculars; if ...
The slim bow swung. Even on the bridge they could feel the alien, unrhythmic shudder as the damaged propeller shook and bit unevenly at the water. Because they were turning so fast they seemed to be sliding sideways down onto the mine. It was so close they could see the water ripples snaking back and forth as the evil thing rolled in the swell; they could even see the rivets holding the plate at the base of the topmost horn, and could determine that there were at least three of those horns above the surface waiting for the least touch of this oncoming steel.
Then the mine disappeared from their sight beneath the outward-turning flare of Wind Rode’s starb’d bow.
“Midships!” Bentley roared. “Hard-a-starb’d!”
For the first time in his life the coxswain at the wheel failed to repeat the order, he did not have time. He knew what the captain was doing—trying to snake his long hull past the menace in the bend of a huge S-turn. His hands whirled; the spokes of the big wooden wheel spun till their movement made another circle of wood above the main support of the spokes. The big rudder under the stern swung over.
The port lookout shouted so loudly that the coxswain and his telegraph men heard his report down the bridge voice-pipe.
“Mine on the port bow!”
Bentley snatched a swift stare at it; he could do nothing more. The presence of the second mine merely told him that his enemy had laid a pattern across his course at right-angles. His head jerked back. His brain seemed to be filled only with a timeless sense of waiting. He knew that Wind Rode would be spuming up a great bow wave on either side of her stem at this speed, and it was on those twin outward falling waves of water he was relying, even more than on his turning. If he missed the first mine, it was now too late to reverse his rudder to try and miss the second—they were abreast it now, and the ship would continue to swing for some seconds in the original direction before she straightened. He could only hope, hope with a mouth-drying, thought-stopping intensity, that the big bow-waves would wash and push the black globes sufficiently clear to allow him to slip ...
“Mines in sight astern!” Randall roared. Then he turned and put on Bentley’s arm a hand that caught like a hook.
“Hell,” he said hoarsely, “we’re through!”
For a long, narrow-lidded moment Bentley stared at the bobbing death floating farther and farther astern, and the edges of their white wake, licking right up to the sides of the mines, showed plainly how close they had been. Every nerve in his body was strung ragged and taut; the edge of his left eye twitched in a slight tic. He didn’t take out a handkerchief and mop his brow, but he wished he could indulge in that sedative gesture. His shirt felt damp in the small of his back.
He felt something else. “Half ahead together,” he ordered, and almost at once the strained shuddering eased. He did not ring the engine-room and ask if that last burst had collapsed anything down there—he knew he would be told if it had. He spoke to the coxswain instead, and Wind Rode began to straighten up from her wild swinging, until her sharp nose pointed due north.
The bridge seemed strangely quiet without the asdic’s resonant pinging. Bentley remembered the dome was up, and decided against lowering it yet. They would now be directly over the shoal. He was confirmed in this when the operator on the echo-sounding machine in the chart-house reported;
“Depth seven fathoms, sir.”
She pressed on, her underwater searching stilled, nothing to show in the surface of the sea that they had only forty feet or so beneath the keel, when for the past night close to a mile of water had reached down below them.
The shoal was not wide. They were almost across it, and Bentley was bending to the voice-pipe to alter course to the eastward. And then the whole ship leaped as if a giant steel hand had reached upwards from the depths and slammed against her stern.
Sound and shock waves travel much faster through water than through air; so that the blast of the mine’s explosion reached them almost two seconds before Bentley saw the mound of water well up from the surface of the sea astern and then fling itself apart in high-reaching geysers of white spray.
He realised at once what had happened. The Fox, trailing astern on its long towing wire, swung to right and left by the hound’s gyrations, had fouled the righthand mine.
The three voices spoke almost on top of one another. Pilot said, from under his binoculars;
“There are five more mines, sir. They were laid in a line across our line of advance.”
Bentley ordered;
“Stream the spare Fox. Quick with it!”
Glandford asked;
“Permission to lower dome, sir?”
They were clear of the shoal, Bentley gave permission, and Randall slammed his big hand down on the compass ring.
“Let’s shake this bastard up!” he growled. “He’s due for another pattern.”
Glandford’s voice, coldly practical, reported;
“Echo bearing Green one-oh, sir. Classified submarine.” Randall heard the sharp peep of the contact. He looked sideways into Bentley’s face, his eyes narrowed and his mouth a hard straight line. He said:
“You’ll attack?”
Without looking at him, his gaze directed out over the bow, Bentley shook his head.
“No,” he said “That burst will have done the engines no good. We’ll practise a spot of psychological warfare instead.”
Chapter Seven
KAPITANLEUTNANT KAMENZ HAD no time to worry about Kranzbuhler and whether he were releasing the mines correctly—his whole attention was on the conning of the vessel. Naturally, the shoal was not charted inch by inch—the cartographer who had drawn its presence on the map had hardly expected that any mariner would be foolish enough to test the accuracy of his work, and he had merely charted the maximum and minimum depths. So that Kamenz could not be sure, as his boat crept over the shallow patch, that he would not ram her into a projecting spike of hard coral—rocks that might scrape and puncture even her tough hull. But, he thought as he gave his careful orders to the helmsman, the object of his present course was important enough to justify the risk.
With the sea still dark, it would be a miracle if his enemy escaped the trap he was laying in front of him.
The submarine had cleared the northern edge of the shoal, and was again hovering over deep water, when Kranzbuhler came into the control-room. He was running with sweat and his mouth hung open, gasping in the poisonous atmosphere. Kamenz’s eyes grabbed at his face.
“It is done. Kapitan,” Kranzbuhler panted. “Six mines laid across the enemy’s line of advance. The depth should…”
Kamenz waited for no more. Just in case the trap failed, he had to get clear of the shoal, even though it meant seriously depleting his power-supply.
“Group up,” he ordered. “Three hundred revolutions.”
Because of the danger they had been in while crossing the coral patch the whole control-room crew were on their feet, at their posts. They felt the captain’s orders for more speed translated into a quiet shaking of the hull, and a rising of the whine from the electric motors. Every man in the crew knew what it was their captain had planned, and they forgot even the condition of the air they were trying to breathe while they waited.
They waited, and in the control-room there was no sound but the whine of the motors, the raspy breathing of a seaman near the hydrophone cabinet and the gentle tok-tok of the destroyer’s sound-spear. Their faces were globuled with sweat, for it was unbearably hot in the unfreshened compressed air, and on each strained face the globules would run together and then slide down in a little trickle of sweat, prickling and salty.
Over beside the periscope-hoisting lever a man vomited, suddenly, the sound of his retching lacerating against their strained ear-drums. The man threw-up on the wet deck, and Kamenz ordered harshly;
“Clean it up!”
The man stumbled through the compartment and passed through the bulkhead door, looking for a bucket. He walked as if he were drugged, hitting the sides of the narrow passage with his shoulders as he walked.
They were too far away to hear the sound of the destroyer’s propellers with their unaided ears, but the hydrophone operator was in contact. His head poked out from his little cabinet and his eyes sought and found Kamenz’s.
“She is increasing speed, Kapitan.” he croaked, “she is working up very fast.”
Kamenz did not answer him. No one else spoke. Then Murimoto said quietly in English;
“She has seen one of the mines. She is taking avoiding action.”
Kamenz said nothing. He did not even look at him. He stared at his watch, and he saw that it was a few seconds after sunrise. He knew the exact time of sunrise because at sea there is only the straight edge of the horizon for the sun to lift above—no hiding mountains or trees or buildings. And he knew, with a snarling hate in his mind, that the Jap was right. The destroyer had seen one of the mines, and was hauling herself round to miss it. He swung on Kranzbuhler, and now his feeling for the Party member was plain in his tight face.
“What distance apart did you lay the mines?” he snarled.
Kranzbuhler saw the hate in the curled-back lips and the hard, yellowish eyes. All his faculties tightened into instant awareness. He had seen what Kamenz had done to Klaus. If the destroyer succeeded in avoiding the block of mines it was quite possible that Kamenz would lay the blame for failure on the man who had laid the mines. He wanted to slide his hand round to the holster which he had buckled on so soon as he knew they were being hunted, but he did not dare such a provocative movement in sight of the cold mad stare probing into his eyes. He said, trying to speak calmly;
“As you ordered, Kapitan—twenty metres apart. If he alters course to avoid one mine, he must swing into …”
His voice was cut off in mid-sentence. His body was flung sideways and jolted up against the greasy periscope tube. Kamenz slithered past him and cannoned into the long bench on which the two hydroplane operators sat. And into the heeling boat there beat the transmitted sound-waves of a violent explosion.
At the order-panel Lemp bellowed orders, striving to right her upset trim. His voice was well-nigh drowned by the cheering—hoarse, guttural, half-mad explosions of savage joy and relief. The tension drained out of them, making their faces slack and enervating their bow-taut bodies. Some slid down to the deck, their legs straight out in front of them, their gasping faces lolling forward on their sweaty chests. In the far corner, near the helmsman’s feet, someone began to cry, a choked, whimpering sort of sound, quiet and telling.
But the postures and the hoarse shouts and the crying were all offspring of the one feeling—relief that they were alive and safe, free to go their way, while their enemy was blown apart by half a ton of high-explosive, killed or maimed or struggling in fuel-scummed water above them.
Murimoto was the first to speak coherently.
“Congratulations, Captain,” he said, and held out his brown hand. His lips were smiling in an extended line straight across, and the smile creased the skin of his cheeks upwards and slitted his eyes. “You have beaten him—at last.”
Kamenz took the hand, briefly. Even into the relief and pleasure filling his own mind had penetrated the significance of the Jap’s last words—‘at last’. He dropped the other’s hand, and he felt irritation that this sour note should have been dropped into the sweetness of his final and complete triumph. His lips twisted as he thought that if this had been a Japanese submarine the chase would have been over long ago.
Now the chase was over ... The thought sparked action. Today was the day, the final day of weeks of cautious cruising on the surface and submerged, the day which would see the culmination of this long and hazardous mission. He turned to the helmsman.
“Steer one-oh-oh.”
“Steer one-oh-oh,” the seaman answered, and he smiled quickly back over his shoulder. That would put them back on their original course, a line which would take them straight to Jomard.
Kamenz stepped back and straddled his legs on either side of the periscope tube. Kranzbuhler watched him, but now there was only interest, and hope, in his panting face. He was too full of the relief of deliverance to feel any animosity towards Kamenz; he wanted only to hear the order which would bring them to the surface and let the clean cool air of heaven stream down into the fetid boat. Kamenz said to Lemp;
“Bring her up. Thirty feet.”
Kranzbuhler lowered his face to hide the look on it and slowly rubbed the back of his hand across its prickly moistness. He wriggled his shoulders a little, feeling the clammy exudations of his armpit pores sticking flesh and cloth together.
Lemp’s voice was harsh and strained, ordering the forward ballast tanks pumped clear of water and full of compressed air. They could feel the upwards tilt of the deck almost at once, and see the big needle of the depth gauge begin to swing round towards the top of the bland figured face, towards zero; towards the surface, away from this killing weight of water all around them, up towards the sparkling sunlight, the washing waves and, sweetest of all, the inward rush of cool fresh air as the upper bridge hatch was opened. The captain would merely take a precautionary look around through the periscope at thirty feet, check that his enemy was finished, and then—surface!
They would have to be quick—there might be aircraft patrolling. But it would take only minutes for the vile air in the boat to be replaced with fresh. Then they could run with their snorkel tube raised and the whole boat submerged, running on their diesels at the same time as they charged their batteries. It was finished, it was all over but the routine of laying the rest of the mines across the throat of the passage.
“Thirty feet,” Lemp rasped, the words coming with difficulty from his coated throat and tongue.
Every man of the control-room party was on his feet, for surfacing at any time, let alone in hostile waters, was an operation which demanded their alert attention. But their faces stared at Kamenz beside the periscope well, haggard, dull, mouths panting, squinted eyes longing ...
The periscope tube slid upwards with a greased whir. The gloved hands clutched round the bar, the big wrestler’s shoulders crouched. The periscope reached the full extent of its projection. It came to rest gently, almost imperceptibly. Kamenz lowered his head and eyes towards the twin eye-pieces. They saw two spots of light, intensely blue, reflect from his eyeballs—light from the world of sunshine and clouds and fresh wind above them.
They ran tongues over cracked and salty lips. They panted and stared and longed. And they saw the captain’s lower jaw sag down in abrupt astonishment, and they heard against the hull a quiet, malignant tok-tok-tok.
Kamenz snapped the handle-bars to the trunk and the instrument slid down into its well. His harsh voice rasped through the shocked room;
“Dive deep! Take her down! Flood ‘Q’—”
They reacted automatically, with the trained part of their brains, that part not stunned by incredulity and bitter disappointment. Q-tank vented inboard with its scream of air and the nine tons of water it now held dropped them down fast.
“Seventy feet,” Lemp croaked.
“Stop her. One hundred feet.”
They heard these words, they carried out the operations necessary to implement them, but they were thinking ... thirty feet! Another ten feet upwards and the bridge would have been out of the water. Twenty feet ... six long paces of air. They did not consciously classify the air of their longing now, any air would do, hot, humid air, rain-heavy air, cold air, smoky air ... just so long as it was not the poison-choked gas they were striving to draw into their starving lungs now. And they were sinking down to their private hell again.
Throughout the boat the men of U-221 worked their pumps and hydroplanes, their levers and wheels, and the attention of their sluggish minds was focused on one hard, implacable figure in the control-room.
The men of U-221 had had enough—they were ready to surrender.
The submarine levelled off at one hundred feet, creeping at three knots, groping blindly through the pressured blackness. They had nothing to do now; now they could think. The destroyer had slipped their first two torpedoes; she had survived the unfailing acoustic torpedo; they had blown her apart with a mine; they had been within a few feet of salvation; and now they were back in the depths, cringing, crawling, hunted by the gentle reaching fingers of a ship which should have been lying shattered on the bed of the deep ocean.
Tok-tok-tok.
It was everywhere, in their minds and in actuality; the asdic beam, shaped like a slice of cheese, knife-edged at the point of transmission and broad at the point of echo, encompassed them. And every second or so, every time an alternating current ran through a piece of oscillating quartz in the destroyer’s asdic dome, the resultant sound-pulse tapped at their minds ... tok-tok-tok.
Kranzbuhler said;
“Herr Kapitan—we ... we must surface. We must have air.” His voice was low, and desperate. Kamenz turned to look at him. He turned slowly, as if he were not sure he had heard correctly, and was debating these astonishing words from his deputy as his head turned. For five seconds his cold, hard stare bored into Kranzbuhler’s worried eyes, then he turned his head back and looked at the compass. He did not speak.
Emboldened by what he construed as indecision—not realising it was contempt—Kranzbuhler went on;
