скачать книгу бесплатно
Benson shuddered. He made to leave the galley, stopped and pointed at a heavy bronze ten-inch tube that stood about four feet above the deck of the galley. It had a heavy hinged lid and screwed clamps to keep the lid in position. ‘This might interest you, Dr Carpenter. Guess what?’
‘A pressure cooker?’
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? This is our garbage disposal unit. In the old days when a submarine had to surface every few hours garbage disposal was no problem, you just tipped the stuff over the side. But when you spend weeks on end cruising at three hundred feet you can’t just walk up to the upper deck and tip the waste over the side: garbage disposal becomes quite a problem. This tube goes right down to the bottom of the Dolphin. There’s a heavy watertight door at the lower end corresponding to this one, with interlocking controls which make it impossible for both doors to be open at the same time – it would be curtains for the Dolphin if they were. Sam here, or one of his henchmen, sticks the garbage into nylon mesh or polythene bags, weighs them with bricks –’
‘Bricks, you said?’
‘Bricks. Sam, how many bricks aboard this ship?’
‘Just over a thousand at the latest count, Doc.’
‘Regular builder’s yard, aren’t we?’ Benson grinned. ‘Those bricks are to ensure that the garbage bags sink to the bottom of the sea and not float to the surface – even in peacetime we don’t want to give our position away to anyone. In go three or four bags, the top door is clamped shut and the bags pumped out under pressure. Then the outer door is closed again. Simple.’
‘Yes.’ For some reason or other this odd contraption had a curious fascination for me. Days later I was to remember my inexplicable interest in it and wonder whether, after all, I wasn’t becoming psychic with advancing years.
‘It’s not worth all that attention,’ Benson said good-humouredly. ‘Just an up-to-date version of the old rubbish chute. Come on, a long way to go yet.’
He led the way from the galley to a heavy steel door set in a transverse bulkhead. Eight massive clips to release, then replace after we had passed through the doorway.
‘The for’ard torpedo storage room.’ Benson’s voice was lowered, for at least half of the sixteen or so bunks that lined the bulkheads or were jammed up close to the torpedoes and racks were occupied and every man occupying them was sound asleep. ‘Only six torpedoes as you can see. Normally there’s stowage for twelve plus another six constantly kept loaded in the torpedo tubes. But those six are all we have just now. We had a malfunction in two of our torpedoes of the newest and more or less untested radio-controlled type – during the Nato exercises just ended – and Admiral Garvie ordered the lot removed for inspection when we got back to the Holy Loch. The Hunley, that’s our depot ship, carries experts for working on those things. However, they were no sooner taken off yesterday morning than this Drift Station operation came our way and Commander Swanson insisted on having at least six of them put back on straight away.’ Benson grinned. ‘If there’s one thing a submarine skipper hates it’s putting to sea without his torpedoes. He feels he might just as well stay at home.’
‘Those torpedoes are still not operational?’
‘I don’t know whether they are or not. Our sleeping warriors here will do their best to find out when they come to.’
‘Why aren’t they working on them now?’
‘Because before our return to the Clyde they were working on them for nearly sixty hours non-stop trying to find out the cause of the malfunction – and if it existed in the other torpedoes. I told the skipper that if he wanted to blow up the Dolphin as good a way as any was to let those torpedomen keep on working – they were starting to stagger around like zombies and a zombie is the last person you want to have working on the highly-complicated innards of a torpedo. So he pulled them off.’
He walked the length of the gleaming torpedoes and halted before another steel door in a cross bulkhead. He opened this, and beyond, four feet away, was another such heavy door set in another such bulkhead. The sills were about eighteen inches above deck level.
‘You don’t take many chances in building these boats, do you?’ I asked. ‘It’s like breaking into the Bank of England.’
‘Being a nuclear sub doesn’t mean that we’re not as vulnerable to underwater hazards as the older ships,’ Benson said. ‘We are. Ships have been lost before because the collision bulkhead gave way. The hull of the Dolphin can withstand terrific pressures, but a relatively minor tap from a sharp-edged object can rip us wide like an electric can-opener. The biggest danger is surface collision which nearly always happens at the bows. So, to make doubly sure in the event of a bows collision, we have those double collision bulkheads – the first submarine ever to have them. Makes fore and aft movement here a bit difficult but you’ve no idea how much more soundly we all sleep at night.’
He closed the after door behind him and opened the for’ard one: we found ourselves in the for’ard torpedo room, a narrow cramped compartment barely long enough to permit torpedoes to be loaded or withdrawn from their tubes. Those tubes, with their heavy-hinged rear doors, were arranged close together in two vertical banks of three. Overhead were the loading rails with heavy chain tackles attached. And that was all. No bunks in here and I didn’t wonder: I wouldn’t have liked to be the one to sleep for’ard of those collision bulkheads.
We began to work our way aft and had reached the mess hall when a sailor came up and said that the captain wanted to see me. I followed him up the wide central stairway into the control room, Dr Benson a few paces behind to show that he wasn’t being too inquisitive. Commander Swanson was waiting for me by the door of the radio room.
‘Morning, Doctor. Slept well?’
‘Fifteen hours. What do you think? And breakfasted even better. What’s up, Commander?’ Something was up, that was for sure: for once, Commander Swanson wasn’t smiling.
‘Message coming through about Drift Station Zebra. Has to be decoded first but that should take minutes only.’ Decoding or not, it seemed to me that Swanson already had a fair idea of the content of that message.
‘When did we surface?’ I asked. A submarine loses radio contact as soon as it submerges.
‘Not since we left the Clyde. We are close on three hundred feet down right now.’
‘This is a radio message that’s coming through?’
‘What else? Times have changed. We still have to surface to transmit but we can receive down to our maximum depth. Somewhere in Connecticut is the world’s largest radio transmitter using an extremely low frequency which can contact us at this depth far more easily than any other radio station can contact a surface ship. While we’re waiting, come and meet the drivers.’
He introduced me to some of his control centre crew – as with Benson it seemed to be a matter of complete indifference to him whether it was officer or enlisted man – finally stopped by an officer sitting just aft of the periscope stand, a youngster who looked as if he should still be in high school. ‘Will Raeburn,’ Swanson said. ‘Normally we pay no attention to him but after we move under the ice he becomes the most important man on the ship. Our navigation officer. Are we lost, Will?’
‘We’re just there, Captain.’ He pointed to a tiny pinpoint of light on the Norwegian Sea chart spread out below the glass on the plotting-table. ‘Gyro and sins are checking to a hair.’
‘Sins?’ I said.
‘You may well look surprised, Dr Carpenter,’ Swanson said. ‘Lieutenant Raeburn here is far too young to have any sins. He is referring to S.I.N.S. – Ship’s Inertial Navigational System – a device once used for guiding intercontinental missiles and now adapted for submarine use, specifically nuclear submarines. No point in my elaborating, Will’s ready to talk your head off about it if he manages to corner you.’ He glanced at the chart position. ‘Are we getting along quickly enough to suit you, Doctor?’
‘I still don’t believe it,’ I said.
‘We cleared the Holy Loch a bit earlier than I expected, before seven,’ Swanson admitted. ‘I had intended to carry out some slow-time dives to adjust trim – but it wasn’t necessary. Even the lack of twelve torpedoes up in the nose didn’t make her as stern-heavy as I’d expected. She’s so damned big that a few tons more or less here or there doesn’t seem to make any difference to her. So we just came haring on up –’
He broke off to accept a signal sheet from a sailor, and read through it slowly, taking his time about it. Then he jerked his head, walked to a quiet corner of the control centre and faced me as I came up to him. He still wasn’t smiling.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Major Halliwell, the commandant of the Drift Station – you said last night he was a very close friend of yours?’
I felt my mouth begin to go dry. I nodded, took the message from him. It read: ‘A further radio message, very broken and difficult to decipher, was received 0945 Greenwich Mean Time from Drift Ice Station Zebra by the British trawler Morning Star, the vessel that picked up the previous broadcast. Message stated that Major Halliwell, Officer Commanding, and three others unnamed critically injured or dead, no indication who or how many of the four are dead. Others, number again unknown, suffering severely from burns and exposure. Some message about food and fuel, atmospheric conditions and weakness in transmission made it quite indecipherable. Understood from very garbled signal that survivors in one hut, unable to move because of weather. Word ‘ice-storm’ clearly picked up. Apparently details of wind speed and temperature but unable to make out.
‘Morning Star several times attempted contact Drift Station Zebra immediately afterwards. No acknowledgment.
‘Morning Star, at request of British Admiralty, has abandoned fishing grounds and is moving closer in to Barrier to act as listening post. Message ends.’
I folded the paper and handed it back to Swanson. He said again: ‘Sorry about this, Carpenter.’
‘Critically injured or dead,’ I said. ‘In a burnt-out station on the ice-cap in winter, what’s the difference?’ My voice fell upon my ears as the voice of another man, a voice flat and lifeless, a voice empty of all emotion. ‘Johnny Halliwell and three of his men. Johnny Halliwell. Not the kind of man you would meet often, Commander. A remarkable man. Left school at fifteen when his parents died to devote himself to the support of a brother eight years younger than himself. He slaved, he scraped, he sacrificed, he devoted many of the best years of his life to doing everything for his young brother, including putting him through a six-year University course. Not till then did he think of himself, not till then did he get married. He leaves a lovely wife and three marvellous kids. Two nieces and a nephew not yet six months old.’
‘Two nieces –’ He broke off and stared at me. ‘Good God, your brother? Your brother?’ He didn’t, for the moment, seem to find anything peculiar in the difference of surname.
I nodded silently. Young Lieutenant Raeburn approached us, an odd expression of anxiety on his face, but Swanson abruptly waved him away without seeming even to glance in his direction. He shook his head slowly and was still shaking it when I said abruptly: ‘He’s tough. He may be one of the survivors. He may live. We must get Drift Station Zebra’s position. We must get it.’
‘Maybe they haven’t got it themselves,’ Swanson said. You could see he was grateful for something to talk about. ‘It is a drifting station, remember. The weather being what it is, it may have been days since they got their last fixes – and for all we know their sextants, chronometers and radio direction finders have been lost in the fire.’
‘They must know what their latest fix was, even although it was a week ago. They must have a fairly accurate idea of the speed and direction of their drift. They’ll be able to provide approximate data. The Morning Star must be told to keep transmitting non-stop with a continuous request for their position. If you surface now, can you contact the Morning Star?’
‘I doubt it. The trawler must be the best part of a thousand miles north of us. His receiver wouldn’t be big enough to pull us in – which is another way of saying that our transmitter is too small.’
‘The B.B.C. have plenty of transmitters that are big enough. So have the Admiralty. Please ask one or other to contact the Morning Star and ask it to make a continuous send for Zebra’s position.’
‘They could do that themselves direct.’
‘Sure they could. But they couldn’t hear the reply. The Morning Star can – if there’s any reply. And she’s getting closer to them all the time.’
‘We’ll surface now,’ Swanson nodded. He turned away from the chart table we’d been standing beside and headed for the diving stand. As he passed the plotting table he said to the navigator: ‘What was it you wanted, Will?’
Lieutenant Raeburn turned his back on me and lowered his voice, but my hearing has always been a little abnormal. He whispered: ‘Did you see his face, Captain? I thought he was going to haul off and clobber you one.’
‘I thought the same thing myself,’ Swanson murmured. ‘For a moment. But I think I just happened to be in his line of vision, that’s all.’
I went forward to my cabin and lay down in the cot.
THREE (#ulink_7a0c4084-bed3-5bb5-a9fe-3d7e92da6b49)
‘There it is, then,’ said Swanson. ‘That’s the Barrier.’
The Dolphin, heading due north, her great cylindrical bulk at one moment completely submerged, the next showing clear as she rolled heavily through the steep quartering seas, was making less than three knots through the water, the great nuclear-powered engines providing just enough thrust to the big twin eight-foot propellers to provide steerage way and no more: thirty feet below where we stood on the bridge the finest sonar equipment in the world was ceaselessly probing the waters all around us but even so Swanson was taking no chances on the effects of collision with a drifting ice-block. The noonday Arctic sky was so overcast that the light was no better than that of late dusk. The bridge thermometer showed the sea temperature as 28° F., the air temperature as –16° F. The gale-force wind from the north-east was snatching the tops off the rolling steel-grey waves and subjecting the steep-walled sides of the great conning-tower – sail, the crew called it – to the ceaseless battering of a bullet-driven spray that turned to solid ice even as it struck. The cold was intense.
Shivering uncontrollably, wrapped in heavy duffel-coat and oilskins and huddled against the illusory shelter of the canvas wind-dodger, I followed the line of Swanson’s pointing arm: even above the high thin shrill whine of the wind and the drum-fire of the flying spray against the sail, I could hear the violent chattering of his teeth. Less than two miles away a long, thin, greyish-white line, at that distance apparently smooth and regular, seemed to stretch the entire width of the northern horizon. I’d seen it before and it wasn’t much to look at but it was a sight a man never got used to, not because of itself but because of what it represented, the beginning of the polar ice-cap that covered the top of the world, at this time of year a solid compacted mass of ice that stretched clear from where we lay right across to Alaska on the other side of the world. And we had to go under that mass. We had to go under it to find men hundreds of miles away, men who might be already dying, men who might be already dead. Who probably were dead. Men, dying or dead, whom we had to seek out by guess and by God in that great wasteland of ice stretching out endlessly before us, for we did not know where they were.
The relayed radio message we had received just forty-nine hours previously had been the last. Since then, there had been only silence. The trawler Morning Star had been sending almost continuously in the intervening two days, trying to raise Drift Station Zebra, but out of that bleak desert of ice to the north had come nothing but silence. No word, no signal, no faintest whisper of sound had come out of that desolation.
Eighteen hours previously the Russian atomic-engined Dvina had reached the Barrier and had started on an all-out and desperate attempt to smash its way into the heart of the ice-cap. In this early stage of winter the ice was neither so thick nor so compacted as it would be at the time of its maximum density, in March, and the very heavily armoured and powerfully engined Dvina was reputed to be able to break through ice up to a thickness of eighteen feet: given fair conditions, the Dvina was widely believed to be capable of battering its way to the North Pole. But the conditions of the rafted ice had proved abnormal to a degree and the attempt a hopeless one. The Dvina had managed to crash its way over forty miles into the ice-cap before being permanently stopped by a thick wall of rafted ice over twenty feet in height and probably more than a hundred deep. The Dvina, according to reports, had sustained heavy damage to its bows and was still in the process of extricating itself, with the greatest difficulty, from the pack. A very gallant effort that had achieved nothing except an improvement in East-West relations to an extent undreamed of for many years.
Nor had the Russian efforts stopped there. Both they and the Americans had made several flights over the area with front-line long-range bombers. Through the deep overcast and driving ice- and snow-filled winds those planes had criss-crossed the suspected area a hundred times, searching with their fantastically accurate radar. But not one single radar sighting had been reported. Various reasons had been put forward to explain the failure, especially the failure of the Strategic Air Command’s B52 bomber whose radar was known to be easily capable of picking out a hut against contrasting background from ten thousand feet and in pitch darkness. It had been suggested that the huts were no longer there: that the radar’s eye was unable to distinguish between an ice-sheathed hut and the thousands of ice-hummocks which dot the polar cap in winter; and that they had been searching in the wrong area in the first place. The most probable explanation was that the radar waves had been blurred and deflated by the dense clouds of ice-spicules blowing over the area. Whatever the reason, Drift Ice Station Zebra remained as silent as if no life had ever been there, as lost as if it had never existed.
‘There’s no percentage in staying up here and getting frozen to death.’ Commander Swanson’s voice was a half-shout, it had to be to make him heard. ‘If we’re going under that ice, we might as well go now.’ He turned his back to the wind and stared out to the west where a big broad-beamed trawler was rolling heavily and sluggishly in the seas less than a quarter of a mile away. The Morning Star, which had closed right up to the edge of the ice-pack over the last two days, listening, waiting, and all in vain, was about to return to Hull: her fuel reserves were running low.
‘Make a signal,’ Swanson said to the seaman by his side. ‘“We are about to dive and proceed under the ice. We do not expect to emerge for minimum four days, are prepared to remain maximum fourteen.”’ He turned to me and said: ‘If we can’t find them in that time …’ and left the sentence unfinished.
I nodded, and he went on: ‘“Many thanks for your splendid co-operation. Good luck and a safe trip home.”’ As the signalman’s lamp started chattering out its message, he said wonderingly: ‘Do those fishermen trawl up in the Arctic the entire winter?’
‘They do.’
‘The whole winter. Fifteen minutes and I’m about dead. Just a bunch of decadent Limeys, that’s what they are.’ A lamp aboard the Morning Star flickered for some seconds and Swanson said: ‘What reply?’
‘“Mind your heads under that ice. Good luck and goodbye.”’
‘Everybody below,’ Swanson said. As the signalman began to strip the canvas dodger I dropped down a ladder into a small compartment beneath, wriggled through a hatch and down a second ladder to the pressure hull of the submarine, another hatch, a third ladder and then I was on the control deck of the Dolphin. Swanson and the signalman followed, then last of all Hansen, who had to close the two heavy watertight doors above.
Commander Swanson’s diving technique would have proved a vast disappointment to those brought up on a diet of movie submarines. No frenzied activity, no tense steely-eyed men hovering over controls, no Tannoy calls of ‘Dive, dive, dive,’ no blaring of klaxons. Swanson reached down a steel-spring microphone, said quietly: ‘This is the captain. We are about to move under the ice. Diving now,’ hung up and said: ‘Three hundred feet.’
The chief electronics technician leisurely checked the rows of lights indicating all hatches, surface openings and valves closed to the sea. The disc lights were out: the slot lights burned brightly. Just as leisurely he re-checked them, glanced at Swanson and said: ‘Straight line shut, sir.’ Swanson nodded. Air hissed loudly out of the ballast tanks, and that was it. We were on our way. It was about as wildly exciting as watching a man push a wheelbarrow. And there was something oddly reassuring about it all.
Ten minutes later Swanson came up to me. In the past two days I’d come to know Commander Swanson fairly well, like him a lot and respect him tremendously. The crew had complete and implicit faith in him. I was beginning to have the same thing. He was a kindly genial man with a vast knowledge of every aspect of submarining, a remarkable eye for detail, an even more remarkably acute mind and an imperturbability that remained absolute under all conditions. Hansen, his executive officer and clearly no respecter of persons, had said flatly that Swanson was the best submarine officer in the Navy. I hoped he was right, that was the kind of man I wanted around in conditions like those.
‘We’re about to move under the ice now, Dr Carpenter,’ he said. ‘How do you feel about it?’
‘I’d feel better if I could see where we were going.’
‘We can see,’ he said. ‘We’ve the best eyes in the world aboard the Dolphin. We’ve got eyes that look down, around, ahead and straight up. Our downward eye is the fathometer or echo-sounder that tells us just how deep the water below our keel is – and as we have about five thousand feet of water below our keel at this particular spot we’re hardly likely to bump into underwater projections and its use right now is purely a formality. But no responsible navigation officer would ever think of switching it off. We have two sonar eyes for looking around and ahead, one sweeping the ship, another searching out a fifteen-degree path on either side of the bow. Sees everything, hears everything. You drop a spanner on a warship twenty miles away and we know all about it. Fact. Again it seems purely a formality. The sonar is searching for underwater ice stalactites forced down by the pressure of rafted ice above, but in five trips under the ice and two to the Pole I’ve never seen underwater stalactites or ridges deeper than 200 feet, and we’re at 300 feet now. But we still keep them on.’
‘You might bump into a whale?’ I suggested.
‘We might bump into another submarine.’ He wasn’t smiling. ‘And that would be the end of both of us. What with the Russian and our own nuclear submarines busy criss-crossing to and fro across the top of the world the underside of the polar ice-cap is getting more like Times Square every day.’
‘But surely the chances –’
‘What are the chances of mid-air collision to the only two aircraft occupying ten thousand square miles of sky? On paper, they don’t exist. There have been three such collisions this year already. So we keep the sonar pinging. But the really important eye, when you’re under the ice, is the one that looks up. Come and have a squint at it.’
He led the way to the after starboard end of the control room where Dr Benson and another man were busy studying a glassed-in eye-level machine which outwardly consisted of a seven-inch-wide moving ribbon of paper and an inked stylus that was tracing a narrow straight black line along it. Benson was engrossed in adjusting some of the calibrated controls.
‘The surface fathometer,’ Swanson said. ‘Better known as the ice-machine. It’s not really Dr Benson’s machine at all, we have two trained operators aboard, but as we see no way of separating him from it without actually court-martialling him, we take the easy way out and let him be.’ Benson grinned, but his eye didn’t leave the line traced by the stylus. ‘Same principle as the echo-sounding machine, it just bounces an echo back from the ice – when there is any. That thin black line you see means open water above. When we move under the ice the stylus has an added vertical motion which not only indicates the presence of ice but also gives us its thickness.’
‘Ingenious,’ I said.
‘It’s more than that. Under the ice it can be life or death for the Dolphin. It certainly means life or death for Drift Station Zebra. If we ever get its position we can’t get at it until we break through the ice and this is the only machine that can tell us where the ice is thinnest.’
‘No open water at this time of year? No leads?’
‘Polynyas, we call them. None. Mind you, the ice-pack is never static, not even in winter, and surface pressure changes can very occasionally tear the ice apart and expose open water. With air temperatures such as you get in winter you can guess how long the open water stays in a liquid condition. There’s a skin of ice on it in five minutes, an inch in an hour and a foot inside two days. If we get to one of those frozen over polynyas inside, say, three days, we’ve a fair chance of breaking through.’
‘With the conning-tower?’
‘That’s it. The sail. All new nuclear subs have specially strengthened sails designed for one purpose only – breaking through Arctic ice. Even so we have to go pretty gently as the shock, of course, is transmitted to the pressure hull.’
I thought about this a bit then said: ‘What happens to the pressure hull if you come up too fast – as I understand may happen with a sudden change in salinity and sea temperature – and you find out at the last minute that you’ve drifted away from the indicated area of thin ice and have ten solid feet of the stuff above you?’
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Like you say, it’s the last minute. Don’t even think about such things, far less talk about them: I can’t afford to have nightmares on this job.’ I looked at him closely, but he wasn’t smiling any more. He lowered his voice. ‘I don’t honestly think that there is one member of the crew of the Dolphin who doesn’t get a little bit scared when we move in under the ice. I know I do. I think this is the finest ship in the world, Dr Carpenter, but there are still a hundred things that can go wrong with it and if anything happens to the reactor or the steam turbines or the electrical generators – then we’re already in our coffin and the lid screwed down. The ice-pack above is the coffin lid. In the open sea most of those things don’t matter a damn – we just surface or go to snorkel depth and proceed on our diesels. But for diesels you need air – and there’s no air under the ice-pack. So if anything happens we either find a polynya to surface in, one chance in ten thousand at this time of year, before our standby battery packs up or – well, that’s it.’
‘This is all very encouraging,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it?’ He smiled, none too soon for me. ‘It’ll never happen. What’s the worthy Benson making all the racket about?’
‘Here it is,’ Benson called. ‘The first drift-block. And another. And another! Come and have a look, Doctor.’
I had a look. The stylus, making a faint soft hissing sound, was no longer tracing out a continuously horizontal line but was moving rapidly up and down across the paper, tracing out the outline of the block of ice passing astern above us. Another thin straight line, more agitated vertical movements of the stylus, and again another block of ice had gone. Even as I watched the number of thin horizontal lines became fewer and fewer and shorter and shorter until eventually they disappeared altogether.
‘That’s it, then,’ Swanson nodded. ‘We’ll take her deep now, real deep, and open up all the stops.’
When Commander Swanson had said he was going to hurry, he’d meant every word of it. In the early hours of the following morning I was awakened from a deep sleep by a heavy hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes, blinked against the glare of the overhead light then saw Lieutenant Hansen.
‘Sorry about the beauty sleep, Doc,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But this is it.’
‘This is what?’ I said irritably.
‘85° 35′ north, 21° 20′ east – the last estimated position of Drift Station Zebra. At least, the last estimated position with estimated correction for polar drift.’
‘Already?’ I glanced at my watch, not believing it. ‘We’re there already?’
‘We have not,’ Hansen said modestly, ‘been idling. The skipper suggests you come along and watch us at work.’
‘I’ll be right with you.’ When and if the Dolphin managed to break through the ice and began to try her one in a million chance of contacting Drift Station Zebra, I wanted to be there.
We left Hansen’s cabin and had almost reached the control room when I lurched, staggered and would have fallen but for a quick grab at a handrail that ran along one side of the passageway. I hung on grimly as the Dolphin banked violently sideways and round like a fighter plane in a tight turn. No submarine in my experience had ever been able to begin to behave even remotely in that fashion. I understood now the reasons for the safety belts on the diving control seats.
‘What the hell’s up?’ I said to Hansen. ‘Avoiding some underwater obstruction ahead?’
