His relationship to the submarine was much like that of an astronaut to his craft during a spacewalk: There was an illusion of stillness, though they were both moving at considerable speeds.
Cautious, but conscious of the need for haste, he continued to pull himself hand over hand along the cleat line, searching for the air-lock hatch that Timoshenko had described over the radio.
11:51
A warning siren shrieked.
The green numerals and dimensional diagrams disappeared from the central video display directly above the command pad. Red letters replaced them: EMERGENCY.
Gorov punched a consol key labeled DISPLAY. The screen cleared immediately, and the siren shut off. A new message appeared in the usual green letters: MUZZLE DOOR COLLAPSED ON FORWARD TORPEDO NUMBER FIVE. TUBE FILLED WITH WATER TO BREECH DOOR.
“It's happening,” Zhukov said.
Number five tube must have torqued when they had collided with the ice floe earlier in the night. Now the muzzle door at the outer hull had given way.
Gorov said quickly, “Only the outer door collapsed. Just the
A seaman monitoring on of the safety boards said, “Captain, our visitors have opened the topside hatch to the air lock.”
“We're going to make it,” Gorov told the control-room crew. “We're damned well going to make it.”
11:52
The air-lock hatch on the forward escape trunk was unlocked by someone at a control panel in the submarine. Harry gazed down into a tiny, brightly lighted, water-filled compartment. As Lieutenant Timoshenko had warned them, it was large enough to accommodate only four divers at a time — and even at that size, it was twice as large as the escape trunks on many submarines.
One by one, Brian, Claude, Rita, and George went down into the round room and sat on the floor with their backs pressed to the walls.
From outside, Harry closed the hatch, which was faster than waiting for someone inside to use a lanyard to pull it down and then spin the sealing wheel.
He looked at his luminous watch.
11:53
Gorov anxiously watched the bank of VDTs.
“Escape trunk ready,” Zhukov said, repeating the message that he received on his headset, and simultaneously the same information appeared on one of the VDTs.
“Process the divers,” Gorov said.
11:54
In the air lock, Rita held on to wall grips as powerful pumps extracted the water from the chamber in thirty seconds. She didn't remove her mask, but continued to breather the mixture of gases in her scuba tank, as they had been instructed to do.
A hatch opened in the center of the floor. A young Russian seaman appeared, smiled almost shyly, and beckoned with one finger.
They moved quickly from the air lock, down a ladder into the escape-chamber control room. The seaman climbed the ladder again behind them, pulled the inner hatch shut, sealed it, and descended quickly to the control room. With a roar, water flooded into the upper chamber again.
Acutely aware that a huge island of ice, mined with explosives, loomed directly above the boat, Rita went with the others into an adjoining decompression chamber.
11:56
Harry tried the hatch again, and it swung open.
He waited until Franz and Pete had entered, and then he followed them and dogged down the hatch from inside.
They sat with their backs to the walls.
He didn't even have to look at his watch. An internal crisis clock told him that they were about four minutes from detonation.
The drain dilated, and the pumps drained the escape trunk.
11:57
A mountain of ice on the verge of violent disintegration loomed over them, and if it went to pieces when they were under it, the boat would most likely be battered to junk. Death would be so swift that many of them might not even have a chance to scream.
Gorov pulled down an overhead microphone, called the maneuvering room, and ordered the boat into immediate full reverse.
The maneuvering room confirmed the order, and a moment later the ship shuddered in response to the abrupt change of engine thrust.
Gorov was thrown against the command-pad railing, and Zhukov almost fell.
From the overhead speaker: “Maneuvering room to Captain. Engines full reverse.”
“Rudder amidships.”
“Rudder amidships.”
The iceberg was moving southward at nine knots. The submarine was reversing
Gorov didn't know if that was sufficient speed to save them, but it was the best that they could do at the moment, because to build to greater speed, they needed more time than remained until detonation.
“Ice overhead,” the surface-Fathometer operator announced. They were out from under the funnel-shaped concavity in the center of the berg. “Sixty feet. Ice overhead at sixty feet.”
11:58
Harry entered the decompression chamber and sat beside Rita. They held hands and stared at his watch.
11:59
The center of attention in the control room was the six-figure digital clock aft of the command pad. Nikita Gorov imagined that he could detect a twitch in his crewmen with the passage of each second.
11:59:10.
11:59:11.
“Whichever way it goes,” Emil Zhukov said, “I'm glad that I named my son Nikita.”
“You may have named him after a fool.”
“But an interesting fool.”
Gorov smiled.
11:59:30.
11:59:31.
The technician at the surface-Fathometer said, “Clear water. No ice overhead.”
“We're out from under,” someone said.
“But we're not yet out of the way,” Gorov cautioned, aware that they were well within the fallout pattern of blast-hurled ice.
11:59:46.
