Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean
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you know immediately anything came through that could possibly be of any interest to you.’
So I shaved and then had Benson take me on a conducted tour of this city under the sea: the Dolphin, I had to admit, made any British submarine I’d ever seen look like a relic from the Ice Age.
To begin with, the sheer size of the vessel was staggering. So big had the hull to be to accommodate the huge nuclear reactor that it had internal accommodation equivalent to that of a 3,000-ton surface ship, with three decks instead of the usual one and lower hold found in the conventional submarine. The size, combined with the clever use of pastel paints for all accommodation spaces, working spaces and passageways, gave an overwhelming impression of lightness, airiness and above all, spaciousness.
He took me first, inevitably, to his sick-bay. It was at once the smallest and most comprehensively equipped surgery I’d ever seen, whether a man wanted a major operation or just a tooth filled, he could have himself accommodated there. Neither clinical nor utilitarian, however, was the motif Benson had adopted for the decoration of the one bulkhead in his surgery completely free from surgical or medical equipment of any kind – a series of film stills in colour featuring every cartoon character I’d ever seen, from Popeye to Pinocchio, with, as a two-foot square centrepiece, an immaculately cravatted Yogi Bear industriously sawing off from the top of a wooden signpost the first word of a legend which read ‘Don’t feed the bears.’ From deck to deckhead, the bulkhead was covered with them.
‘Makes a change from the usual pin-ups,’ I observed.
‘I get inundated with those, too,’ Benson said regretfully. ‘Film librarian, you know. Can’t use them, supposed to be bad for discipline. However. Lightens the morgue-like atmosphere, what? Cheers up the sick and suffering, I like to think – and distracts their attention while I turn up page 217 in the old textbook to find out what’s the matter with them.’
From the surgery we passed through the wardroom and officers’ quarters and dropped down a deck to the crew’s living quarters. Benson took me through the gleaming tiled washrooms, the immaculate bunk-room, then into the crew’s mess hall.
‘The heart of the ship,’ he announced. ‘Not the nuclear reactor, as the uninformed maintain, but here. Just look at it. Hifi, juke-box, record player, coffee machine, ice-cream machine, movie theatre, library and the home of all the card-sharps on the ship. What chance has a nuclear reactor against this lot? The old-time submariners would turn in their graves if they could see this: compared to the prehistoric conditions they lived in we must seem completely spoiled and ruined. Maybe we are, then again maybe we’re not: the old boys never had to stay submerged for months at a time. This is also where I send them to sleep with my lectures on the evils of overeating.’ He raised his voice for the benefit of seven or eight men who were sitting about the tables, drinking coffee, smoking and reading. ‘You can observe for yourself, Dr Carpenter, the effects of my lectures in dieting and keeping fit. Did you ever see a bunch of more out-of-condition fat-bellied slobs in your life?’
The men grinned cheerfully. They were obviously well used to this sort of thing: Benson was exaggerating and they knew it. Each of them looked as if he knew what to do with a knife and fork when he got them in his hands, but that was about as far as it went. All had a curious similarity, big men and small men, the same characteristic as I’d seen in Zabrinski and Rawlings – an air of calmly relaxed competence, a cheerful imperturbability, that marked them out as being the men apart that they undoubtedly were.
Benson conscientiously introduced me to everyone, telling me exactly what their function aboard ship was and in turn informing them that I was a Royal Navy doctor along for an acclimatisation trip. Swanson would have told him to say this, it was near enough the truth and would stop speculation on the reason for my presence there.
Benson turned into a small compartment leading off the mess hall. ‘The air purification room. This is Engineman Harrison. How’s our box of tricks, Harrison?’
‘Just fine, Doc, just fine. CO reading steady on thirty parts a million.’ He entered some figures up in a log book, Benson signed it with a flourish, exchanged a few more remarks and left.
‘Half my day’s toil done with one stroke of the pen,’ he observed. ‘I take it you’re not interested in inspecting sacks of wheat, sides of beef, bags of potatoes and about a hundred different varieties of canned goods.’
‘Not particularly. Why?’
‘The entire for’ard half of the deck beneath our feet – a storage hold, really – is given up mainly to that. Seems an awful lot, I know, but then a hundred men can get through an awful lot of food in three months, which is the minimum time we must be prepared to stay at sea if the need arises. We’ll pass up the inspection of the stores, the sight of all that food just makes me feel I’m fighting a losing battle all the time, and have a look where the food’s cooked.’
He led the way for’ard into the galley, a small square room all tiles and glittering stainless steel. A tall, burly, white-coated cook turned at our entrance and grinned at Benson. ‘Come to sample to-day’s lunch, Doc?’
‘I have not,’ Benson said coldly. ‘Dr Carpenter, the chief cook and my arch-enemy, Sam MacGuire. What form does the excess of calories take that you are proposing to thrust down the throats of the crew to-day?’
‘No thrusting required,’ said MacGuire happily. ‘Cream soup, sirloin of beef, no less, roast potatoes and as much apple pie as a man can cope with. All good nourishing food.’
Benson shuddered. He made to leave the galley, stopped and pointed at a heavy bronze ten-inch tube that stood about four feet above the deck of the galley. It had a heavy hinged lid and screwed clamps to keep the lid in position. ‘This might interest you, Dr Carpenter. Guess what?’
‘A pressure cooker?’
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? This is our garbage disposal unit. In the old days when a submarine had to surface every few hours garbage disposal was no problem, you just tipped the stuff over the side. But when you spend weeks on end cruising at three hundred feet you can’t just walk up to the upper deck and tip the waste over the side: garbage disposal becomes quite a problem. This tube goes right down to the bottom of the Dolphin. There’s a heavy watertight door at the lower end corresponding to this one, with interlocking controls which make it impossible for both doors to be open at the same time – it would be curtains for the Dolphin if they were. Sam here, or one of his henchmen, sticks the garbage into nylon mesh or polythene bags, weighs them with bricks –’
‘Bricks, you said?’
‘Bricks. Sam, how many bricks aboard this ship?’
‘Just over a thousand at the latest count, Doc.’
‘Regular builder’s yard, aren’t we?’ Benson grinned. ‘Those bricks are to ensure that the garbage bags sink to the bottom of the sea and not float to the surface – even in peacetime we don’t want to give our position away to anyone. In go three or four bags, the top door is clamped shut and the bags pumped out under pressure. Then the outer door is closed again. Simple.’
‘Yes.’ For some reason or other this odd contraption had a curious fascination for me. Days later I was to remember my inexplicable interest in it and wonder whether, after all, I wasn’t becoming psychic with advancing years.
‘It’s not worth all that attention,’ Benson said good-humouredly. ‘Just an up-to-date version of the old rubbish chute. Come on, a long way to go yet.’
He led the way from the galley to a heavy steel door set in a transverse bulkhead. Eight massive clips to release, then replace after we had passed through the doorway.
‘The for’ard torpedo storage room.’ Benson’s voice was lowered, for at least half of the sixteen or so bunks that lined the bulkheads or were jammed up close to the torpedoes and racks were occupied and every man occupying them was sound asleep. ‘Only six torpedoes as you can see. Normally there’s stowage for twelve plus another six constantly kept loaded in the torpedo tubes. But those six