Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(38)
“He’s less than thrilled, sir,” Rainy says.
“Oh? Not yet enamored of the submariner’s life?”
“Are we underwater? Right now are we underwater?” Cisco demands, an edge of panic speeding his syllables and raising his voice to a near squeak.
“May I take it that you suffer from a touch of claustrophobia?”
“I just want to know, are we underwater?” The urgency is unmistakable and almost excuses the rudeness. Cisco is a frightened man, and Alger has dealt with frightened men before this.
“Not a bit,” Alger says airily. “We are making eleven knots on the surface, with light cloud cover, intermittent rain, and moderate swell. If we were submerged, you would not be feeling that rising and falling of the deck.”
“I want to get out. I need some air,” Cisco says, eyes bulging and darting in every direction, a cornered animal looking for an escape.
“You may certainly climb up to the superstructure, the conning tower or con, I believe it’s called in the American service, for a moment or two, once you have been briefed on our procedures.”
“I don’t give a damn about your procedures!”
The commander’s pleasant informality evaporates in a heartbeat. The man with the mild expression, the diffident air, and the relaxed stance disappears, replaced by a taller, sterner, unsmiling officer with distinctly chilly blue eyes.
“Let me explain it this way, Mr. Smith.” He uses the transparently false name Cisco’s traveling under. “Should we spot a German plane or ship I will order the boat to dive. The men under my command know their places and how to reach them by the most expeditious means possible. A straggler, a civilian, blundering about on deck once we have begun our dive is quite likely to find the hatches battened and his shoes getting very wet indeed.”
“You wouldn’t—”
“Shut your bleeding mouth when the commander addresses you,” a petty officer who is more grizzled beard and hair than face snaps in unfeigned outrage. “Pardon, sir,” he adds, nodding slightly at the commander.
Alger takes no notice of his petty officer’s outburst. “Rather than risk my men, I will, with the greatest regret, watch through the periscope as you attempt to swim to land,” Alger says. Then, he is all casual friendliness again. “Sergeant Schulterman, may I have a moment? Jones, you will keep an eye on our passenger, won’t you?”
Jones, the hairy petty officer—a sergeant by any other name—flashes teeth through his beard. “Oh yes, Commander, that I will.”
“If he becomes unruly you may wish to place him into one of the tubes until he calms down.”
Petty Officer Jones manages with some difficulty to avoid laughing in gleeful anticipation. Rainy follows the captain back toward the control room amidships.
The control room is hardly the roomy expanse Rainy has seen in war movies where officers have plenty of space to rush about yelling. The control room of a T-class submarine is the size of a long, narrow bedroom or parlor, a room where every square inch of wall (bulkhead) or overhead is festooned with an astounding array of equipment. It’s as if some ambitious shopper has ordered every sort of pipe, dial, wheel, gauge, handle, cathode tube, switch, meter, or valve ever created by the human species and welded them onto every square inch of possible space. It’s like being inside an explosion at a junkyard. There are spots where it seems to Rainy’s bewildered eye that gauges have been attached to other gauges, which are themselves attached to still more gauges, with the entire assembly positioned carefully to make human movement dangerous to the point of impossibility.
Half a dozen sailors sit stiffly, facing outward or forward, eyes glassily focused on the slow sweep of a radar beam, or listening intently within headphones the size of coffee mugs. Others stand poring over a bright-lit chart on a sort of table not large enough to comfortably hold a tea service. As discreetly as possible the sailors look up from their stations to take in the fact that there is a female—an actual living, breathing female—aboard. Looks are exchanged, heads are tilted, eyebrows rise. But there are no whistles or catcalls—she’s with the commander, after all. Alger checks in with one of his officers, perhaps his number two, Rainy is far from sure, then turns to Rainy and says, “Do you believe your passenger can be managed?”
“Sir, I barely know him.”
“And yet you were chosen to accompany him.”
“I follow orders, Commander, I don’t write them.”
He likes that answer well enough and forms a crookedly wry smile made more engaging by the scar that causes one side of his mouth to rise more easily than the other. “As do we all. As do we all. Well, Sergeant, you’ll be bunking in the chief’s room, hot-bunking as they say, meaning that the cot is yours when he pulls a watch. Then you should take what leisure you can in the petty officers’ mess.”
“I’ll be fine, sir, thank you.”
“It’s important that you find a . . . a comfortable place.”
Rainy grins. “You mean stay out of the way.”
“I should never wish to be so blunt, but yes, in effect. There are sixty-one officers and men aboard the Topaz, and we are far from being a roomy craft.” He starts to say something more, then stops himself and looks at her with frank curiosity, head back a little so he seems to be looking down his nose. “We do not have women in our service.”