At least, in a submarine, depth control is usually possible to predict and maintain. Because it was essential for the Fish to remain a specific distance above the bottom of the ocean, in order to prevent its destruction by contact with terrain irregularities, precise submarine depth control was mandatory. Alternatively, if the Viperfish pulled the Fish too high above the bottom, its ability to "see" anything below it would be compromised. As long as no emergencies developed that would require sudden changes in depth, a silent submarine was clearly the vessel best suited for a secret search of the ocean's bottom.
The speed of the vessel also dramatically affected the altitude of the Fish above the ocean floor; if the Viperfish inadvertently slowed for a few seconds, the Fish could easily sink and be destroyed against rocks or ridges. Cable length had a nearly immediate effect on the Fish's altitude, and careful control of the spool rotation was of top priority. Reactor power and turbogenerator power were essential to operation of the Special Project's computer system that analyzed information from the Fish. Finally, the Viperfish's buoyancy, depth, and direction, which were controlled by the ballast control operator, the planesmen, and the helmsmen, required close communication and teamwork.
Success, however, continued to be elusive. As time passed, we all became increasingly frustrated. We experimented with different methods of moving the boat, and we varied circular patterns and Fish elevations. Each new trial consumed days at a time and resulted in nothing.
After all of these failures, Robbie Teague brought a stack of stunningly clear 8x10 black-and-white photographs to the crew's dining area to show us life at twenty thousand feet below the surface, complements of the Fish. Bizarre bat-like structures stuck out from the bodies of some fish, and others had ornaments clinging to their faces. Other structures resembling slugs lay on the bottom; Robbie called them sea cucumbers. As we passed around the pictures, we expressed appropriate interest in the fauna, complimented Robbie's photography and the clarity of the images, and asked if the civilians had found the object of our search.
Robbie's smile faded. "Not yet, but we're still looking."
"Are we still circling, or have we started a new pattern? If we can't find it here, why can't we look somewhere else?" Richard Daniels asked, his voice sounding tense.
"Because this is where it's supposed to be," Robbie said, almost inaudibly.
"Tell us what it is, and we'll become more enthusiastic. Is it a UFO?" Daniels asked.
"They don't have me in the loop. Can you understand that?"
"A nuclear warhead?"
"It's secret, guys, secret."
"Nobody on the Viperfish knows what we're looking for?"
"Nope, nobody I know around here. I just develop the pictures, and-"
"Why is this thing so important?"
"It's classified, it-"
"Right, right, but if we can't find it, then where it's supposed to be doesn't mean much."
"Okay," Robbie said softly, "you're right. However, if we keep looking, we do have a chance. And they tell me it's important."
Robbie gathered his pictures in the silence that followed and, without another word, returned to the hangar compartment — his diplomatic mission of fostering Special Project enthusiasm a notable failure.
As we cruised around and around and back and forth and as morale continued to slide, a shocking event occurred one morning in the crew's dining area. We were all eating freshly cooked oatmeal, when one of the forward crew machinists violently spit the cereal all over the dining area table and jolted the men around him.
"Goddamn it all, where's the cook?" the man hollered as everybody began to examine their own cereal.
"Right here," Marty Belmont said, looking concerned as he walked up to the table. "What's the problem?"
Marty was a chubby, pleasant little fellow who worked as hard as anybody on the boat and did a good job. His work was especially important because the meals were almost the only variability in our day-to-day lives, and good food meant a happy, or at least a happier, crew. The budget for food on submarines exceeds that of any other branch of the Navy. Regularly taking advantage of that fact, Marty tried to make the food as tasty as possible.
"Marty, there's goddamn worms in the goddamn cereal!" the machinist hollered, spitting out more food. Immediately, every-body in the dining room, including myself, simultaneously blasted food from our mouths. The tables were covered with a layer of partially chewed cereal.
"Jesus Christ, Marty, don't you check for bugs in the food?" another man yelled.
"Did Robbie give you these animals from the bottom of the ocean?"
I spit out some more food and carefully examined the bowl cereal in front of me. Thousands of tiny white worms, crawling among the grains of warm cereal, exactly matched the color of oatmeal-a perfect camouflage, unnoticed by the rest of us. It occurred to several of us, as we groused and grumbled and generally felt miserable, that the cereal had actually tasted pretty good, a little meatier than usual perhaps, but the flavor was definitely unique.
Marty gathered up the bowls, his face distressed, as he reflected on the ruins of the morning meal. "I'm sorry, fellas. They must have broken into the grain. I cooked the cereal but I guess I didn't get it hot enough. Damn little buggers shoulda died."
We all stared at the man, speechless.
Finally, one of the men stood up and handed Marty his bowl.
"Even dead worms don't belong in the cereal."
"I'm doing the best I can," Marty said, wiping down the tables, as a couple of the other galley crewmen joined him to clean up the mess covering most of the tables.
From that day on, the phrase, "I'm doing the best I can," became synonymous with the ever-increasing numbers of important things going wrong in spite of the best intentions.
The search continued for another two weeks, until even the normally enthusiastic civilians in the hangar became discouraged. Robbie didn't bring any more pictures to us, and the men throughout the Viperfish stopped speculating about the object of our search. A feeling of profound frustration and gloom descended on everybody. The explosions outside our hull were similar to Chinese water-drop torture; each one wasn't that loud but added together, day after day, the noise created a mental state of continuous uneasiness.
As our second month under water began, I found myself slowly feeling more and more claustrophobic. None of us had seen any sunlight or sky since the day we left Pearl Harbor. After each four-hour watch, the dilemma of nowhere to go and nothing to do became a problem. I had passed the time by completing French lessons and reading a couple of books during the first month at sea, but now I found myself becoming restless after reading just one or two pages-it was getting increasingly difficult to concentrate. My French lessons were becoming much more of a challenge, and it took all the effort I had just to sit down and concentrate on trying to understand bits and parts of the language.
The final blow came shortly after I started working on the last paragraph of a full page of carefully typed French. The typing of my correspondence course work had taken most of my free time during the preceding several days. Moving from one word to the next, I struggled to avoid mistakes, looked up each incomprehensible French idiom, penned in the proper accent marks, and corrected the inevitable errors that slipped through in spite of it all As I endeavored to clarify the spelling of a particularly strange French word in the last part of the final paragraph, a large hydraulic valve above me abruptly cycled with a loud whoosh. A thick glob of grease dropped from the valve directly onto the part of my typewritten page sticking out of the typewriter.