‘God help us.’ Milovych blanched, kneading his hands together. The reference to ‘God’ caused Krasnov, who had just returned to the control-room, some surprise, worried and frightened as he was. It was not the Party line to invoke the aid of the Almighty. Krasnov liked neither the commissar nor the Party.
‘What can we do?’ In his distress Milovych again omitted the ‘comrade’.
‘I’m already doing it,’ said Yenev tersely. ‘But I’m too busy to explain.’ He swung away from the commissar. ‘How’s the trim now, Lomov?’
The executive officer’s eyes never left the instruments on the panel in front of the planesmen. The depth-gauge needles seemed to exert a hypnotic influence. ‘Depth 103 metres, Captain. We have some positive buoyancy. She’s coming up slowly but…’ he hesitated, ‘… the rate of rise is also decreasing slowly.’ They both knew what that meant. Zhukov was losing positive buoyancy.
Yenev picked up the telephone to the machinery control platform. ‘Machinery control, Captain here.’
‘Ilyitch here,’ came the senior engineer officer’s voice.
‘We are losing positive buoyancy. Are you pumping to full capacity yet?’
‘About eighty per cent, Captain.’
‘What’s the delay?’
‘We’re rigging and testing emergency power cables and pumping lines. It takes time, Captain.’
‘How much time?’
‘Another five, ten minutes, maybe.’
‘We might get away with five. We won’t with ten.’
‘We’ll do our best, Captain.’ There was a note of desperation in Vladimir Ilyitch’s voice. He and his team were working like men possessed. It was impossible to do more.
Yenev knew that too, but the urgency had to be driven home. The additional pumping power, once it was harnessed, could mean the difference between losing Zhukov and saving her. It was typical of Yenev that he thought of the disaster in terms of the ship rather than those in her.
He went across to Lomov. ‘We should have full pumping capacity soon. When we do we’ll flood aft and see if we can’t get the bows up a little.’
He called Feodotik, ‘How are things looking now, chief?’
‘Almost holding the water level in the torpedo-compartment, Captain. But we’ll have to switch some pumping capacity soon. The air-conditioning and emergency generating centres are taking water. The battery spaces too.’
‘Much?’
‘Nothing like the torpedo-compartment, Captain. But enough to be serious.’
‘Soon we’ll have full capacity, chief. Then you can do something about them. Top priority now is the torpedo-compartment. We’ve got to get more water out than’s coming in if we’re to get the bows up. If we don’t, we won’t make the surface.’
Feodotik nodded. ‘Yes, Captain.’ In the red light he looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
The bleep on the captain’s phone sounded. He lifted the handset from its rack. ‘Captain speaking.’
‘Gallinin here, Captain. Radiation level in emergency communications room rising.’ Gallinin was the officer in charge of the atmospheric and radiation control centre. It was on Zhukov’s middle deck, immediately abaft the control-room. The console there contained a complex of systems relating to radiation and air-conditioning. Instruments fed by geiger counters and other devices recorded radiation in the seas through which the submarine travelled and measured radiation levels, temperatures, humidities and air pollution in all compartments.
Yenev shivered involuntarily. There was much about the new generation of ballistic missile submarines he liked and admired but not their radiation potential. It was a new hazard in an already hazardous environment. He tried to recall details of the confused report which had reached him earlier about damage to the emergency communications room. Something about an electrical fire?
‘Any idea what’s causing the trouble, Gallinin?’
‘The emergency communications room is one deck above the reactor, Captain. The reactor screening is on the same deck.’
‘But there are watertight bulkheads between these compartments.’
‘Possibly the shock of the explosion has invalidated their integrity.’ It was like Gallinin to report in such formal jargon. He, too, was a graduate entry.
Yenev said, ‘Do what you can, Gallinin. Once we’ve surfaced things’ll be easier.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
Yenev swore as he hung up the phone. As if he hadn’t enough problems without rising radiation levels.
CHAPTER THREE
In the minutes that followed much happened on board Zhukov. Some of it could be chronicled for it was seen, but much was anonymous: the struggle of small groups of men, hidden away in watertight compartments, to repair damaged circuits, fractured pressure lines and electronic systems which had gone off stream.
The efforts of Ilyitch and his team had resulted in the application of full pumping capacity to the torpedo-compartment less than four minutes after Yenev’s order. As the level of the water fell the after trim tanks were flooded and the bow-heavy trim of the submarine corrected. For a time positive buoyancy had been lost and Zhukov had begun a slow descent. But full pumping power gradually checked that and at 0031 by the chart-table clock came Lomov’s long awaited report. ‘Periscope depth, Captain.’
‘Hold her there,’ said Yenev.
A sigh of relief like the sound of a small wave breaking came from the men in the control-room. Faces which had been drawn with fear relaxed into smiles and knowing nods as if the men were saying, ‘I told you he’d get us back to the surface.’
Yenev’s sharp, ‘Up periscope,’ broke the euphoric spell.
As the big instrument rose from its well he snapped down the training handles and looked into the eyepiece.
Despite every attempt by technicians to repair the damage done by the shock wave, the sonar, radar and SINS systems were still unserviceable. To bring a submarine almost the size of a cruiser to the surface without them, made the operation a particularly hazardous one in busy waters. Yenev, well aware of this, carried in his mind a picture of what had appeared on the sonar screen before it failed: to the eastward the long line of the Vesteralen Islands; Vrakoy, the island outpost; the five ships to starboard and two to port; the scatter of fishing vessels. But there had been relative movement since then, including Zhukov’s turn of seventy degrees to starboard, and he wondered what the periscope might reveal.
It stood high above the water and he was able in a quick sweep to cover the sea around the submarine to a range of at least thirty kilometres. It was a dark moonless night but the powerful lenses showed many lights. Mostly these were land lights from the islands, but some were those of ships and fishing boats.
Yenev said, ‘Plot these lighthouse bearings as I call them.’ From the chart-table Kulchev replied, ‘Ready, Captain.’ Yenev trained the periscope, steadied it on a flashing light. ‘Distant light — flashing white and red-fifteen second intervals — bears that…’
‘One-eight-three,’ called the seaman on the bearing indicator.
There was a moment’s pause before Kulchev reported from the chart-table. ‘That’s Frugga on Langoy, Captain.’
‘Distant light occulting white, red and green, bears that… ’
‘One-four-seven,’ said the seaman.
Kulchev laid the bearing off on the chart. ‘That’s Anda, Captain.’
‘Medium range-light flashing white-ten second intervals.’
‘That’s the Fyrbergnes light on Vrakoy, Captain.’
‘Give me a position,’ demanded Yenev.
Kulchek ran the parallel rulers across to the compass rose, plotted the last of the three bearings, drew a neat circle round their point of intersection and noted it against the time. ‘Position, Captain. Three-two-zero Fyrberg light, distant twelve kilometres.’