That was all gone now, lost, for here they were in a time before any of that had ever happened—June of 1940. The seconds and minutes there would tick off, their sound growing ever louder, through one engagement after another, until that dreadful hour when they approached the time of their first arrival in the past, July of 1941.
But they never reached that time.
Something happened.
It was as twisted as the misshapen warp in the deck, or the sad fate of Lenkov, who found half his body embedded in the galley deck, and the other half inside a Marine locker. It was as mysterious as that thing Fedorov had taken from Orlov, casting it away into Peake’s Deep to be forever lost and forgotten by the world.
Then came the grey mist, the endless sea fog that not even the KA-40 could rise high enough to penetrate. Then came the aimless swell of the sea. In time, he knew, they were lost on that sea, for it lapped the shores of infinity itself, and for them, there would be no safe haven where they would ever drop anchor again.
One by one the men went missing… One by one. Orlov was gone, and Tasarov, and Dobrynin. Then Fedorov vanished one day, a loss that some among the crew did not even notice. It was as if he had never even been there, never even existed, but Volsky remembered. He would not forget.
Then it had happened to him. The feeling had been creeping up on him for many days. He remembered when he had called Rodenko to his cabin, to prepare him for what he knew was coming.
“Mister Rodenko,” he whispered. “I must tell you that I have felt very odd of late.”
“We all have, sir.”
“No,” said Volsky with a wag of his thick finger. “It is more than this confusing madness that has been plaguing us. It is very strange… I feel… empty.”
“Losing a man like Fedorov will do that to you sir. And we’ve lost so many other good men.”
“Yes, but that is not what I mean. It is as though I was just not all here. I’m forgetful, listless, and very fatigued. The other day I was on my way to the bridge and found myself on the wrong deck.”
“It’s just the whole situation, sir, this fog, the missing men, Lenkov’s legs.”
“It’s more than that. Mister Rodenko, I must tell you that you should not be surprised if I am the man who fails to make his next assigned shift. I feel all thin and stretched… I feel like something is pulling at me, reaching for me, but I cannot see it or understand it. If I should suffer the same fate as our good Mister Fedorov, then realize that all this business will then be on your shoulders. Understand?”
Who could comprehend what happened next? There he was, back on the ship, sitting in his chair on the bridge, that dull ache in his sea tooth, the one that would always plague him in the cold waters of the north. There he was, wondering what in hell had happened to the sea, and why the Orel failed to return their hails? There he was, his mind emptied of all that he now remembered, innocent, like a child; unknowing.
Everything seemed as it once was—except Fedorov. Something was different about this young navigator, and the way he drew sparks with Karpov was most surprising. Yet what could be more astounding than the things Fedorov began to assert—that the ship was not where they thought it was, that time itself had slipped into their boiling wake, and that they now sailed in the cold uncertain waters of WWII. The impossibility of that was something the mind had to chip away at, with one test after another, until every scrap of evidence they had about the world they were then sailing in served only to vindicate what Fedorov was saying.
I had lost the memory of everything that happened after that first arrival, he thought, but it is all back now, crowding into my weary head like a throng of theater goers jostling for too few seats. We went south that first time, through the Denmark Strait, but not that second time. No. The second time we turned for home, Murmansk, Severomorsk, and who could have believed I would discover that the Captain skulking on my bridge, worrisome, suspicious, conniving with Orlov, ever at odds with Fedorov, would be replaced by the sinister and devious figure of the man I met in Severomorsk—the Siberian.
Two Karpovs! Two ships; two worlds….
Then I went south on the submarine, not Kazan, but that antiquated old British boat. Yes… I went south, with that thing in my pocket to deliver to Admiral Tovey, Fedorov’s gift—the key. What was that all about? How did Fedorov come by that key, and what did it have to do with any of this madness and mayhem that had swept through their lives, and shaken the fate of the world to its knees?
Then there came that awful moment, in the heat of red battle, the loud boom of the guns, the ear shattering crash on the bridge when that heavy 16-insh shell burst in through the wind screen, and yet did not explode. Men were lying senseless all around him, Tovey one of them, the blood streaming from his ear and neck.
I was stunned and dazed, he thought, but at least had the presence of mind to get Tovey safely back to that aft compartment off the bridge. Then to the wheel, to the ship stricken, headless, careening through the wild sea. Then to the fire of battle, my hand tense on the wheel, legs straining as I threw my weight into it, turning, turning…. Then darkness came upon me, endless silence, the black of unknowing, my very self was torn asunder, lost, lost… until now…. Until this very moment when everything I once was, everything I lived out in both those worlds, now comes pouring back into my head again with its animated fury.
“Sir?” said Gromyko. “Shall I call the ship’s physician?”
He held up a hand, reassuring the Captain that he was alright. “All is well, Captain,” said Volsky, still struggling to place himself here in the mad rush of recollection. Other memories were there, beneath the torrent that now cascaded into his mind, memories of yet another life.
He had been sitting at his desk in the Red Banner Northern Fleet headquarters in Severomorsk, when in walked a most remarkable man—Director Kamenski. He sat himself down, a worn book under his arm, and a familiar light in his eyes that Volsky knew he had seen many times before.
“I have a request to make of you,” he said. “It has to do with the submarine that only just returned to us—the one we lost in the Norwegian Sea.”
“You mean Kazan?”
“That is the one. Admiral…. I need to speak with you about that submarine, and a good deal more….”
They talked, and for a very long time, the subject becoming darker and darker, more convoluted, more impossible to believe, like a story that was pulling him deeper and deeper into its web, until he felt himself to be one with it, just another character in the flow, through time, and tide, and long hours at sea.
Those were the things I now remember, he knew. Kamenski asked me to come aboard and put out to sea with Gromyko, and here I am. Yet when I first stepped aboard this boat, nothing of the maelstrom of recollection that is now raging through my mind was even present. I was another self, from yet another life, and one much quieter and sleepier than these other two I now recall. I think I was to stay put in that life—none of this mucking about in time as Kamenski put it to me, but no, it seems I was fated to become a traveler. That is how he explained it. I was meant to be a part of the longest story ever to be written… right here, right now. It continues at this very moment, in the thrum of the engines that I instinctively perceive whenever I go to sea, in the eyes of this man before me now, wondering, concerned, Gromyko.