Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean
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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 which would provide the nearest and only approach to the nuclear furnace far below.
The end of the passage, another heavily-clipped door, and then we were into what was obviously the control centre of the Dolphin. To the left was a partitioned-off radio room, to the right a battery of machines and dialled panels of incomprehensible purpose, straight ahead a big chart table. Beyond that again, in the centre were massive mast housings and, still farther 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 multi-engined 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 safety-belts to hold the helmsman in place. I wondered vaguely what type of violent manoeuvres 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 buttoned up by then?’
‘Depends how quickly the loading of the torpedoes goes, Captain.’
‘We’re taking only six aboard.’
Hansen lifted an eyebrow, 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-bureau 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 centre 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, reached for a convenient tooth-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 towards 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 added 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?’
‘Surely he told you, Admiral? Just a doctor attached to the navy to carry out –’
‘A naval doctor?’
‘Well, not exactly. I –’
‘A civilian, is it?’
I nodded, and the admiral and Swanson exchanged looks which they were at no pains at all to conceal from me. If they were happy at the prospect of having aboard America’s latest and most secret submarine a man who was not only a foreigner but a civilian to boot, they were hiding it well. Admiral Garvie said: ‘Well, go on.’
‘That’s all. I carry out environmental health studies for the services. How men react to extremes of environmental conditions, such as in the Arctic or the tropics, how they react to conditions of weightlessness in simulated space flights or to extremes of pressure when having to escape from submarines. Mainly –’
‘Submarines.’ Admiral Garvie pounced on the word. ‘You have been to sea in submarines, Dr Carpenter. Really sailed in them, I mean?’
‘I had to. We found that simulated tank escapes were no substitute for the real thing.’
The admiral and Swanson looked unhappier than ever. A foreigner – bad. A foreign civilian – worse. But a foreign civilian with at least a working knowledge of submarines – terrible. I didn’t have to be beaten over the head to see their point of view. I would have felt just as unhappy in their shoes.
‘What’s your interest in Drift Ice Station Zebra, Dr Carpenter?’ Admiral Garvie asked bluntly.
‘The Admiralty asked me to go there, sir.’
‘So I gather, so I gather,’ Garvie said wearily. ‘Admiral Hewson made that quite plain to me already. Why you, Carpenter?’
‘I have some knowledge of the Arctic, sir. I’m supposed to be an expert on the medical treatment of men subjected to prolonged exposure, frostbite and gangrene. I might be able to save lives or limbs that your own doctor aboard might not.’