Antony Trew
TWO HOURS TO DARKNESS
Producer's Note
Trew, Anthony (1906 – 1996)
About Internet Archive Daisy Books
This book was produced in DAISY format by the Internet Archive. The book pages were scanned and converted to DAISY format automatically. This process relies on optical character recognition, and is somewhat susceptible to errors. These errors may include weird characters, non-words, and incorrect guesses at structure. Page numbers and headers or footers may remain from the scanned page. The Internet Archive is working to improve the scanning process and resulting books, but in the meantime, we hope that this book will be useful to you.
'Two Hours to Darkness," © copyright 1962 by Antony Trew, is published by Random House, Inc.
* * *
WHY IS Commander Shadde so concerned about discipline on board Her Majesty's Polaris submarine Retaliate, cruising in Scandinavian waters within easy missile range of Leningrad? Could the ship's company contain a saboteur?
The time is 1964. Britain has bought the latest nuclear submarines from the United States, put them under the command of the Navy's most experienced officers, and sent them off on routine summer duty. But something is wrong on Retaliate. There are tensions among the crew. The captain suspects the loyalty of his staff. The threatened breakup of his marriage obsesses him.
From its first uneasy moments, Antony Trew's story rises with terrifying crescendo to a moment of decision when the fate of men everywhere is at stake.
COMMANDER SHADDE, Captain
LIEUT. COMMANDER CAVAN, First Lieutenant
LIEUT. SYMINGTON, Navigating Officer
SURGEON LIEUT. O'SHEA, Doctor
LIEUT. COMMANDER (E) RHYS EVANS, Chief Engineer
LIEUT. COMMANDER GALLAGHER, U. S. N. Nuclear Weapons Control Officer
CHIEF P.O. TELEGRAPHIST GRACIE
MR. BUDDINGTON
TWO HOURS TO DARKNESS
It was dark and cold and there was a fine drizzle. Pools of rainwater gathered in the dents on the chart-table screen, overflowed and splashed onto the steel deck. In the glare of the running lights the rain hung like fine muslin, green to starboard and red to port.
Sublieutenant Keely called the bearings and Lieutenant Symington plotted them with cold and fumbling hands. Drops of water from his oilskins fell onto the chart and left dark smudges of damp. He dabbed at them with a towel.
"Great Karlso one-six-eight; Vastergarn zero-five-seven." Keely's voice was deep and sonorous, much older than his years.
"Five point two," Symington muttered. "Five point two from Great Karlso—making good sixteen point three—slight set against."
Symington copied the position from the chart of Gotland onto the general chart of the eastern Baltic and moved across to the voice pipe. The dreaded moment had arrived. The sighting of the light must be reported. That might bring Shadde to the bridge, and that meant trouble.
"Captain!" He spoke quietly. There was silence; then Shadde's voice came back, cold, incisive: "What is it?"
"Sighted Great Karlso light, one-six-eight, five miles, sir." "What's the time?" "O-one-sixteen, sir."
"Visibility?"
"Poor, sir."
"Weather?"
"Fine drizzle—light breeze—gentle swell."
"Very well, I'm coming up."
Symington moved to the forepart of the bridge. "Skipper's coming up, Keely. Tell the lookouts."
There was a call from the control room. "Captain's coming up, sir." The quartermaster's voice was urgent and conspiratorial.
"Very good." Involuntarily, Symington shuddered.
Shadde lifted his angular body up the conning-tower ladder, massive in his oilskins. As he stepped out onto the bridge, the rain struck into his face, sudden, chilling. Eyes not yet accustomed to the dark, he felt his way back past the periscope standards to the chart table. The flashlight flicked on, then off. "Symington!"
"Sir."
"Only one fix on the chart—why?"
Symington stiffened. "In fact, sir, there are . . ."
"Don't 'in fact' me, Symington," Shadde interrupted. "I can assess the facts for myself. You've been officer of the watch since midnight. It's o-one-twenty-one. Retaliates steaming at sixteen and a half knots. We're in sight of land. My standing orders require the officer of the watch to plot a fix every half hour. There's only one on the chart. Why?"
Symington cleared his throat. "There are three fixes, sir."
Shadde's voice was cold. "Are you suggesting that I'm a liar?"
"No, sir, but . . ."
"But what?"
"When we picked up the light, I used the large-scale chart, sir." He was quiet, deferential, anxious to avoid a scene. "All three fixes are on the general chart. . . . Chart twenty-eight-forty-two."
"Where is it?" snapped Shadde.
"On the table, under the large-scale chart, sir."
Shadde glared through the darkness at the younger man, fingers clenching and unclenching. "Symington, is it too much to ask you to see that the appropriate chart is always uppermost on the chart table when I come onto the bridge?" Without waiting for a reply he turned and disappeared down the conning-tower ladder.
Keely swore eloquently. Then came Symington's nervous, unsure laugh. "It's the hangover from that night at Skansen. Number One warned me. Said Shadde was after my blood."
"Always is, isn't he? Doesn't need you, does he?"
"No. Can't think why. When my old man heard I was coming here he was very bucked. Said Shadde was first-class."
"When did he know him?"
"In the war. In Sabre. He was skipper and Shadde was his Third Hand. Best he'd ever had, he said."
"Unpredictable cuss," Keely muttered. "Gay one moment, chewing you out the next."
"Can't be fun being that moody," Symington said. "Makes such a fool of himself. That display just now. What do the lookouts and signalman think? Vulgar. Bloody unnecessary."
They stood together at the bridge screen, caught up again in the routine of the watch. The messenger with hot cocoa; reports from the lookouts; voice pipes and instrument repeaters calling and chattering. Ranges and bearings from radar and asdics; soundings from fathometers; sea and air temperatures; air analyses in compartments; position by Ship's Inertial Navigation System, by long-range radio, by direction finder; signals from the wireless-telegraphy, or W/T, office; reports from the engine room, from the reactor-control and missile rooms.
Bustle and activity reached a peak as Symington handed over to Lieutenant Commander Cavan, the first lieutenant. Tired and wet, Symington wrote up the logbook. Keely compared a line of soundings from the fathometer with those charted. Then they went down a steel ladder to the small cabin in the officers' quarters that they shared with the torpedo officer, Lieutenant Allistair.
They undressed. Symington knelt and said his prayers, then climbed into the bunk below Keely. He lay awake, tired and unhappy. Why did Shadde hate him so? He thought about the party at Skansen. That had triggered off this latest business.
Retaliate should have left Stockholm the day before, but there'd been condenser trouble. She had been in harbor for five days on a routine showing-the-flag visit. For security reasons she was not alongside but at a buoy in the Strommen. She was closed to the public, but many people gazed out curiously, even apprehensively, to where she lay. There was something sinister about her long whalelike steel hull and immense conning tower.
The round of official entertainment had ended the day before. On this unexpected extra day in Stockholm the submarine's crew were left to their own devices. In the evening, after dinner, Symington and the doctor, with Cavan and Keely, had taken a taxi out to the park at Skansen. They wandered among quaint medieval farmhouses, mills and belfries, looked in on some folk dancing, and then made for the Solliden for a drink.