Ice Station Zebra (29 page)

      "I'm afraid they do indeed." It was Swanson who answered Jolly's question for him. "This, I'm afraid, is every nuclearsubmarine captain's nightmare come true--fire under the ice. At one blow we're not only reduced to the level of a conventional submarine--we're two stages worse. In the first place, a conventional submarine wouldn't be under the ice anyway. In the second place, it has huge banks of storage batteries, and even if it were beneath the ice, it would have sufficient reserve power to steam far enough south to get clear of the ice. Our reserve storage battery is so small that it wouldn't take us a fraction of the way."
      "Yes, yes," Jolly nodded. "But this no smoking, no moving--"
      "That same very small battery, I'm afraid, is the only source left to us for power for the air-purifying machines, for lighting, ventilation, heating--I'm afraid the Dolphin is going to get very cold in a short time-so we have to curtail its expenditures of energy on those things. So no smoking, minimum movement--the less carbon dioxide breathed into 'the atmosphere, the better. But the real reason for conserving electric energy is that we need it to power the heaters, pumps and motors that have to be used to start up the reactor again. If that battery exhausts itself before we get the reactor going--well, I don't have to draw a diagram."
      "You're not very encouraging, are you, Commander?" Jolly complained.
      "No, not very. I don't see any reason to be," Swanson said dryly.
      "I'll bet you'd trade in your pension for a nice open lead above us just now," I said.
      "I'd trade in the pension of every flag officer in the U. S. Navy," he said matter-of-factly. "If we could find a polynya I'd surface, open the engine-room hatch to let most of the contaminated air escape, start up our diesel--it takes its air direct from the engine room--and have the rest of the smoke sucked out in nothing flat. As it is, that diesel is about as much use to me as a grand piano."
      "And the compasses?" I asked.
      "That's another interesting thought," Swanson agreed. "If the power out-put from our reserve battery falls below a certain level, our three Sperry gyrocompass systems and the N6A--that's the inertial-guidance machine--just go out of business. After that we're lost, completely. Our magnetic compass is quite useless in those latitudes--it just walks in circles."
      "So we would go round and round in circles, too," Jolly said thoughtfully. "Forever and ever under the jolly old ice cap, what? By Jove, Commander, I'm really beginning to wish we'd stayed up at Zebra."
      "We're not dead yet, Doctor. . . . Yes, John?" This to Hansen, who had just come up.
      "Sanders, sir. On the ice machine. Can he have a smoke mask? His eyes are watering pretty badly."
      "Give him anything you like in the ship," Swanson said, "just so long as he can keep his eyes clear to read that graph. And double the watch on the ice machine. If there's a lead up there only the size of a hair, I'm going for it. Immediate report if the ice thickness fails below, say, eight or nine feet."
      "Torpedoes?" Hansen asked. "There hasn't been ice thin enough for that in three hours. And at the speed we're drifting, there won't be for three months. I'll go keep the watch myself. I'm not much good for anything else, this hand of mine being the way it is."
      "Thank you. First you might tell engineman Harrison to turn off the CO2 scrubber and monoxide burners. Must save every amp of power we have. Besides, it will do this pampered bunch of ours a world of good to sample a little of what the old-time submariners had to experience when they were forced to stay below maybe twenty hours at a time."
      "That's going to he pretty rough on our really sick men," I said. "Benson and Folsom in the sick bay, the Harrington twins, Brownell and Bolton in the nucleonics lab right aft. They've got enough to contend with without foul air as well."
      "I know," Swanson admitted. "I'm damned sorry about it. Later on, when--and if--the air gets really bad, we'll start up the air-purifying systems again but blank off every place except the lab and the sick bay." He broke off and turned around as a fresh wave of dark smoke rolled in from the suddenly opened after door. The man with the smoke mask was back from the engine room, and even with my eyes streaming in that smoke-filled, acrid atmosphere, I could see he was in a pretty bad way. Swanson and two others rushed to meet him, two of them catching him as he staggered into the control room, the third quickly swinging the heavy door shut against the darkly evil clouds of smoke.
      Swanson pulled off the man's smoke mask. It was Murphy, the man who had accompanied me when we'd closed the torpedo tube door. People like Murphy and Rawlings, I thought, always got picked for jobs like this.
      His face was white and he was gasping for air, his eyes upturned in his head. He was hardly more than half conscious, but even that foul atmosphere in the control center must have seemed to him like the purest mountain air compared to what he' had just been breathing, for within thirty seconds his head had begun to clear and he was able to grin up painfully from where he'd been lowered into a chair.
      "Sorry, Captain," he gasped. "This smoke mask was never meant to cope with the stuff that's in the engine room. Pretty hellish in there, I tell you." He grinned again. "Good news, Captain. No radiation leak."
      "Where's the Geiger counter?" Swanson asked quietly.
      "It's had it, I'm afraid, sir. I couldn't see what I was doing in there. Honest, sir, you can't see three inches in front of your face. I tripped and damn near fell down into the machinery space. The counter did fall down. But I'd a clear check before then. Nothing at all." He reached up to his shoulder and unclipped his ifim badge. "This'll show, sir."
      "Have that developed immediately. That was very well done, Murphy," he said warmly. "Now get for'ard to the mess room. You'll find some really clear air there."
      The film badge was developed and brought back in minutes. Swanson took it, glanced at it briefly, smiled, and let out his breath in a long, slow whistle of relief. "Murphy was right. No radiation leak. Thank God for that, anyway. If there had been--well, that was that, I'm afraid."
      The for'ard door of the control room opened, a man came in, and the door was as quickly closed. I guessed who it was before I could see him properly.
      "Permission from chief torpedoman Patterson to approach you, sir," Rawlings said with brisk formality. "We've just seen Murphy. He's pretty groggy, and both the chief and I think that youngsters like that shouldn't be--"
      "Am I to understand that you are volunteering to go next, Rawlings?" Swanson asked. The screws of responsibility and tension were turned down hard on him, but I could see that it cost him some effort to keep his face straight.
      "Well, not exactly volunteering, sir. But, well--who else is there?"
      "The torpedo department aboard this ship," Swanson observed acidly, "always did have a phenomenally high opinion of itself."
      "Let him try an underwater oxygen set," I said. "Those smoke masks seem to have their limitations."
      "A steam leak, Captain?" Rawlings asked. "That what you want me to check on?"
      "Well, you seem to have been nominated, voted for, and elected by yourself," Swanson said. "Yes, a steam leak."
      "That the suit Murphy was wearing?" Rawlings pointed to the clothes on the deck.
      "Yes. Why?"
      "You'd have thought there would be some signs of moisture or condensation if there had been a steam leak, sir."
      "Maybe. Maybe soot and smoke particles are holding the condensing steam in suspension. Maybe- it was hot enough in there to dry off any moisture that did reach his suit. Maybe a lot of things. Don't stay too long in there."
      "Just as long as it takes me to get things fixed up," Rawlings said confidently. He turned to Hansen and grinned. "You stopped me once back out there on the ice cap, Lieutenant, but sure as little apples I'm going to get that little old medal this time. Bring undying credit to the whole ship, I will."
      "If torpedoman Rawlings will ease up with his ravings for a moment," Hansen said, "I have a suggestion to make, Captain. I know he won't be able to take off his mask inside there but if he gave a call-up signal on the engine telephone or rang through on the engine answering telegraph every four or five minutes we'd know he was okay. If he doesn't, someone can go in after him."
      Swanson nodded. Rawlings pulled on suit and oxygen apparatus and left. That made it the third time the door leading to the engine compartment had been opened in a few minutes and each time fresh clouds of that black and biting smoke had come rolling in. Conditions were now very bad inside the control room, but someone had issued a supply of goggles all around and a few were wearing smoke masks.
      A phone rang. Hansen answered, spoke briefly, and hung up.
      "That was Jack Cartwright, skipper." Lieutenant Cartwright was the main-propulsion officer, who had been on watch in the maneuvering room and had been forced to retreat to the stern room. "Seems he was overcome by the fumes and was carried back into the stern room. Says he's okay now and could we send smoke masks or breathing apparatus for him and one of his men. They can't get at the ones in the engine room. I told him yes."
      "I'd certainly feel a lot happier if Jack Cartwright was in there- investigating in person," Swanson admitted. "Send a man, will you?"
      "I thought I'd take them myself. Someone else can double on the ice machine."
      Swanson glanced at Hansen's injured hand, hesitated, then nodded. "Right. But straight through the engine room and straight back."
      Hanson was on his way in a minute. Five minutes later he was back again. He stripped off his breathing equipment. His face was pale and covered with sweat.
      "There's fire in the engine room, all right," he said grimly. "Hotter than the hinges of hell. No trace of sparks or flames, but that doesn't mean a thing, the smoke in there is so thick that you couldn't see a blast furnace a couple of feet away."
      "See Rawlings?" Swanson asked.
      "No. Hasn't he rung through?"
      "Twice, but--" He broke off as the engine-room telegraph rang. "So. He's still okay. How about the stern room, John?"
      "Damn sight worse than it is here. The sick men aft there are in a pretty bad way, especially Bolton. Seems the smoke got in before they could get the door shut."
      "Tell Harrison to start up his air scrubbers. But for the lab only. Shut off the rest of the ship."
      Fifteen minutes passed, fifteen minutes during which the engine-room telegraph rang three times, fifteen minutes during which the air became thicker and fouler and steadily less breathable, fifteen minutes during which a completely equipped fire-fighting team was assembled in the control center, then another billowing cloud of black smoke announced the opening of the after door.
      It was Rawlings. He was very weak and had to be helped out of his breathing equipment and his suit. His face was white and streaming sweat, his hair and clothes so saturated with sweat that he might easily have come straight from an immersion in the sea. But he was grinning triumphantly.
      "No steam leak, Captain, that's for certain." It took him three breaths to get that out. "But fire down below in the machinery space. Sparks flying all over the shop. Some flame, not much. I located it, sir. Starboard high-pressure turbine. The sheathing's on fire."
      "You'll get that medal, Rawlings," Swanson said, "even if I have to make the damn thing myself." He turned to the waiting firemen. "You heard. Starboard turbine. Four at a time, fifteen minutes maximum. Lieutenant Raeburn, the first party. Knives, claw hammers, pliers, crow bars, CO2. Saturate the sheathing first, then rip it off. Watch out for flash flames when you're pulling it off. I don't have to warn you about the steam pipes. Now, on your way."
      They left. I said to Swanson: "Doesn't sound so much. How long will it take? Ten minutes, quarter of an hour?"
      He looked at me somberly. "A minimum of three or four hours--if we're lucky. It's hell's own maze down in the machinery space there. Valves, tubes, condensers, and miles of that damned steam piping that would burn your hands off if you touched it. Working conditions even normally are so cramped as to be almost impossible. Then there's that huge turbine housing with all that thick insulation sheathing wrapped all around it, and the engineers who fitted it meant it to stay there for keeps. Before they start, they have to douse the fire with the CO2 extinguishers, and even that won't help much. Every time they rip off a piece of charred insulation, the oil-soaked stuff below will burst into flames again as soon as it comes into contact with the oxygen in the atmosphere."
      "'Oil-soaked'?"
      "That's where the whole trouble must lie," Swanson explained. "Wherever you have moving machinery, you must have oil for lubrication. There's no shortage of machinery, down in the machine space--and no shortage of oil, either. And just as certain materials are strongly hygroscopic, so that damned insulation has a remarkable affinity for oil. Where there's any around, whether in its normal fluid condition or in fine suspension in the atmosphere, that sheathing attracts it as a magnet does iron ffiings. And it's as absorbent as blotting paper."
      "But what could have caused the fire?"
      "Spontaneous combustion. There have been cases before. We've gone over fifty thousand miles in this ship now, and in that time I suppose the sheathing has become thoroughly saturated. We've been going at top speed ever since we left Zebra, and the excess heat generated has set the damn thing off. . . . John, no word from Cartwright yet?"
      "Nothing."
      "He must have been in there for the better part of twenty minutes now."
      "Maybe. But he was just beginning to put his suit on--he and Ringman--when I left, and maybe, they didn't go into the engine room right away. I'll call the stern room." He did, then hung up, his face grave. "Stern room says they've been gone twenty-five minutes. Shall I investigate, sir?"
      "You stay right here. I'm not--"
      He broke off as the after door opened with a crash and two men came staggering out--rather, one staggering, the other supporting him. The door was heaved shut and the men's masks, removed. One man I recognized as an enlisted man who had accompanied Raeburn; the other was Cartwright.