down, at a little below waist height. By the time the Volgan submarine had reached apogee, the string was touching the floor, that's how much the surrounding pressure had compressed the hull.
One of Meg's crew, Guillermo Aleman, had done the same across the control room. The string was still taut, of course, the boat was practically on the surface. Yet it was a reminder to everyone of just how far down they intended, eventually, to go.
In theory, using the thickness and type of plastic that had gone into the construction of Meg, a spherical diving chamber could submerge to about twenty-four hundred meters before collapsing. The sub, however, was not spherical but cylindrical and it was believed they could do no more than a fraction of that depth safely. They couldn't have done even that fraction if the boat had been driven by a shaft running through the hull, rather than the six externally-mounted, electrically-driven impellor pumps it used. These breached the hull only in the form of leads cast right into the sections concerned.
But only a tenth of theoretical depth for today, Chu thought, as he descended a ladder and then reached overhead to pull the hatch shut behind him. He dogged the hatch, thinking, A tenth and we'll call ourselves lucky.
* * *
The boat's exec—another senior warrant, though junior to Chu—evacuated Chu's chair as soon as he saw the senior's boots. Chu sat, leaning onto the arm of the chair and cupping his mouth and chin in one hand.
Chu said, 'Chief of Watch report rig for dive.'
It was a tiny crew; the boat's exec, Junior Warrant Officer Ibarra, served as Chief of the Watch for the nonce. Indeed, the crew and sub were so comparatively small that the usual procedures were quite truncated and simplified.
The XO glanced at the buoyancy compensation panel and reported, 'I have a straight board, Captain.'
A straight board meant that there were no illuminated circles, indicating open hatches. Had there been such, instead of a series of dashes forming a straight line, there would have been one or more circles, indicating an undesired opening.
'Dive the boat. Make your depth twenty meters.'
'Aye, Captain, twenty—two zero—meters,' answered Ibarra.
From the diving station another submariner announced, 'Make my depth twenty meters, aye, sir.' Another, beside the diving station, added, 'Chilling the rubbers, aye, sir.' A third said, 'Helm, fifteen degree down angle on planes. Making my depth twenty meters.'
The exec said, without facing Chu, 'Forward group admitting ballast, Captain . . . aft group admitting ballast.'
They could feel the boat sinking, a feeling that was not yet remotely comfortable. Automatically, the crew leveled the boat as it reached its depth. As the boat leveled off at the depth ordered, Chu again thought of odd foreigners with odder senses of humor. 'Check for leaks,' he said.
* * *
The Meg had an odd—really a unique—method of flooding and evacuating its ballast tanks. Like the pressure hull, these were cylindrical. Basically, the boat took advantage of the very low boiling temperature of ammonia. The ammonia was kept inside of flexible tubing made of fluorocarbon elastomer with a seven hundred and fifty angstrom thick layer of sputtered aluminum, followed by a five hundred angstrom layer of silicon monoxide with an aerogel insulation layer. Heating elements inside the tubes—called 'rubbers' by the sailors and designers, both—heated the ammonia into a gas, which expanded the 'rubbers' and forced out the water. To dive, the ammonia was allowed to chill to a liquid rather than heated to a gas. Chilling was really only a factor when quite near the surface, and then only if the water was warm.
* * *
'Engineering, no leaks, Skipper . . . Power room, no leaks, Captain . . . Forward sonar chamber; she's dry as a bone . . .'
So far, so good, thought Chu. 'Make your depth fifty meters.'
* * *
Quijana sat apart from Carrera. Whether this was because he was shy, because he had an exaggerated notion of the importance of rank, or for some other reason, Carrera didn't know.
Quite possibly he's embarrassed to still be alive when his shipmates are dead, Carrera thought. Should I invite him over and make it clear . . . or at least hint . . . that I don't think he deserted his boat? He thought about that for long minutes before finally deciding, No, it would be too obvious that that was what I was doing. Which would embarrass the poor shit even more.
* * *
He thinks I am a coward, Quijana thought to himself, seated at the edge of the dock above the water, his legs dangling free over the edge. How could he not? How could he not when I, alone of all my crew, survived the battle in the Nicobar Straits?
And, too, was I not relieved when Pedraz booted me over the side? I know I was, even if I'll only admit it to God. Are you a coward, Miguel? Or are you just afraid that you are? Didn't you volunteer for submarine duty precisely to prove to yourself that you're a man? You know you did.
I remember that day. I see and feel it in my dreams, the smoke and the flying tracers, Pedraz's boot in my ass. Then sinking in the water and struggling up to the surface. A last glimpse of the Trinidad, engines smoking, as it charged for the enemy's hull. And then the blast, a plume of smoke and debris, the shock wave that knocked me senseless until I was picked up by the Agustin.
And so I've done everything I can to convince myself, not others but myself, that I am as good as any other man, as brave.
But has it worked? No, not entirely. I still wonder. Perhaps I always will.
