The last compartment aft was the after torpedo room, with its four large bronze torpedo tube doors matching the six in the forward torpedo room. Counting the four torpedoes in the tubes and the six reloads — two more than the designed load — the after torpedo room had ten torpedoes compared to the forward torpedo room’s sixteen.
With approval the skipper saw, already laid out as in the forward torpedo room, the special equipment which Keith and Buck had designed to make possible a torpedo reload even with the ship pitching and rolling on the surface.
Still wearing the red goggles, Rich returned to the control room, passing forward through the broiling hot maneuvering room with its two huge motors beneath the deck, and the contrastingly cold engine rooms with their roaring diesel monsters and whirling electric generators on either side.
In the crew’s dinette, one of the mess tables now held a large oval tray with a mound of sandwiches covered with a dampened cloth. Several were already being eaten, Rich noticed, and he filched one from under the cloth as he went by. In the galley two more loaded trays had been put aside for use later. They would be needed.
The watertight door to the control room was closed to protect its darkened condition. Rich lifted the latch, stepped over the coaming, relatched it. Through the goggles he was instantly aware of the red lights glowing about, but at first could see very little else. In a moment, however, thanks to the protection given by his goggles, he was able to distinguish the familiar objects.
Since the ship was on the surface, the diving station was secured. The bow planes were rigged in, the stern planes locked on zero. Al Dugan was loitering about on the diving station in desultory conversation with the battle stations bow and stern planesmen, who were sitting on the toolboxes which doubled as seats when they were operating the planes. Al gave a thumbs-up signal as Rich started up the ladder into the conning tower.
It too was dimly lighted, had been “rigged for red” since surfacing. The roar of the engines came more clearly here through the open hatch in its forward starboard corner. Also could be heard the rush of the sea through which Eel was cleaving, the muttered monosyllabic words of the watch on the bridge deck above, the occasional response from the helmsmen or the quartermaster in the forward part of the conning tower.
The speed indicator, mounted on the forward bulkhead just above the helmsmen’s head, stood at just a shade below twenty knots. Its needle indicator, in reflective paint, stood out sharply in the soft glow of the instrument lighting.
Eel pitched softly, rolled gently, but there was a purposefulness to her motion. The very steel fabric of the submarine exuded a determination to go about her deadly business.
In the after port corner of the conning tower, the Torpedo Data Computer — the TDC — purred softly, its instrument panel lights glowing. It had been turned on for hours, and the automatic inputs from ship’s own course and speed had been checked and rechecked. Buck Williams had long ago reported the TDC in readiness to receive the observed inputs of target course and range, plus the all-important item of exact target bearing from radar, sonar, the TBTs on the bridge, or the periscope. With this information it could help determine target speed and automatically make the necessary computations to set the correct gyro angles on the torpedoes. Then, when the firing key was pressed, the selected torpedoes would be sent on their deadly mission aimed with the most accurate information the human mind and the mechanical computer together could devise.
On the starboard side of the conning tower, opposite the TDC and a little forward of it, was the radar control console, glowing with suppressed green, orange and red lights. Faint flashes shone through crevices in the light shrouding covering it. A figure stood bent over the console, his face pressed into a conical rubber hood shaped to fit a man’s forehead and the bridge of his nose. The man, his two hands on the face of the instrument, fingering its dials, was relaxed but simultaneously all attention. In the darkness above the bridge, at the top of the periscope shears, the rotating electronic antenna was searching the area, probing the night, bringing in the information down to this vitally important instrument.
Rich recognized the slight figure peering into the radar receiver as he stood beside him. “Quin,” he said, putting his hand on the yeoman’s shoulder, “how is the watch going? See anything yet?”
“No, sir,” said Quin, keeping his face against the hood. “I’ve been up here since midnight, and all I’ve got is Quelpart Island, off on our starboard beam about forty miles away. Also, there’s radar sweeps coming in on our starboard and port quarter.”
“Our friends, right?” said Rich.
“Yessir. They’ve got rotating radars just like ours, and they’re on the same frequency. I can see them sweep across, so I figure it must be them.”
“Let me see, Quin.”
Quin stood up, stretched gratefully. Rich pulled the red goggles from his eyes, let them hang on their elastic thong around his neck, leaned into the hood. He was looking at a large circular dial, perhaps twelve inches in diameter, from the center of which a white shaft of light the thickness of a pencil line rotated ceaselessly in a clockwise direction. Faint concentric circles — the range markers — were visible as the moving pencil line illuminated them in passing.
At the 2 o’clock position, out near the periphery of the dial, the jagged outline of land appeared clearly every time the rotating wand passed it, slowly faded as the wand continued around the circle, was regenerated when it passed over it again. Rich watched as the radiant wand made several passes, noticed when from slightly below the 5 o’clock position there appeared the faint evidence of another wand, also sweeping. When it intersected Eel’s wand, a series of dashes was produced. The 8 o’clock position had a similar, fainter wand rotating from it which could occasionally be seen.
“That’s Chicolar over on our starboard quarter and Whitefish on our port quarter, Quin,” said Rich. “That’s where they should be. It looks as though we’re out ahead of both of them.”
“The one to port seems to be dropping behind,” volunteered Quin. “But the one to starboard — it’s been there all the time I’ve been up here.”
Theoretically, Whitefish should be a shade faster than either Eel or Chicolar, or so Whitey Everett had argued. Perhaps her battery had been more depleted and he had not yet been able to put all four main engines on propulsion.
Richardson mentally projected himself out into the space covered by his moving radar beam. To starboard, silent and massive, the bulk of Quelpart Island, a mountain rising out of the water, divided the Yellow Sea into two parts. The ships he sought were coming toward him north of the island. Ahead, not yet near enough to be picked up on the radar, the rocky coast of Korea formed a corner projecting into the sea, its long side extending nearly due north, the short side stretching eastward to create a funnel through which the convoy passing to the north of Quelpart must come. Strewn about the Korean coast, extending northward and eastward, many small islands, rocky and inhospitable, stood like protective sentinels guarding the mainland. Soon one or more of them would become a jagged blob on the radar. Eel, scenting game, was racing toward them. In a little while a group of tiny symmetrical pips would appear among the jagged blobs. They would be arranged in some man-designed, coherent way, and they would move, whereas the islets would only grow nearer. Then would the prey be flushed, and the wolf of the sea gather her pack together. They had already been called to follow. They would pursue it, fall upon it like the ravening wolves they were, rend it to pieces. Man would eat man. It was as though Richardson stood omnipotent in the heavens, searching the sea below and seeing both the past and the future.