“If we get her dug out, run a cable from the generator, maybe we can charge her up enough to start an engine,” Danny said.
“Maybe. Or if the compressed air tanks are still charged, we can turn one over that way. Just give her some fuel, and vroom!” He shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“What are these big poles for, and what are those big, shiny wheels?” Lelaa asked, pointing to port.
“The poles are the periscopes. You know, those two things sticking up on top of the conn tower?”
“One is bent.”
“Yeah, it was damaged when the Japs were depth-charging us. Giving us a treatment kind of like what we did to the mountain fish with the “Y” gun. We use them to see above the water when we’re under it. Those wheels control the bow and stern planes. They make her go up and down underwater. That, and the amount of water we let in.” She looked around.
“Water in here?”
“No. In the ballast tanks. We let water in to go down, and blow it out with compressed air to go back up. That big wheel at the front of the compartment controls the rudder, just like on Simms. It makes the boat turn from side to side.”
“Sounds simple.”
“Believe me, sister. There ain’t nothing simple about it!” Danny quipped.
“Hey!” cautioned Irvin. “I don’t think ‘sister’ is an appropriate way to address the captain of a United States ship!”
Danny blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Bein’ back here on my old ‘sugar boat,’ it started to feel like old times.”
Lelaa blinked in acceptance. “Then let us be about the business of determining whether we can make it more like old times by getting your ‘sugar boat’ off this beach!”
They decided to go forward first, since the bow was buried deeper than the stern. The crew compartment looked much like they’d left it: decks clear, racks chained to the bulkhead. They’d removed some of the mattresses for bedding on the island and the others had turned somewhat gray.
“Here’s where some of the mildew’s from,” Danny said. “High humidity got the fart bags!” Irvin pointed the light, nodded, then looked around. It was the most spacious area in the boat and even some of the wooden folding chairs were still secured. A few had come loose, probably when the boat was rolling with the storm. Danny knelt and raised one of the linoleum-covered deck plates and Irvin shone the light.
“Forward battery looks just like we left it.” Irvin glanced at Lelaa. “We lost a few batteries in here and had some water coming in. Had to seal off the compartment. Some good fellas died. Gas.”
It was a simple statement, but Lelaa could tell the words still hurt. Irvin had already told her the story and explained what happened when seawater and sulfuric acid met. She also knew he’d been a junior officer and the decision wouldn’t have been his. She wondered how she would have felt. Probably the same, she concluded. Not guilty, certainly, but pained that she’d survived as a result of such a decision.
“All the passengers were in the torpedo room.” Irvin gestured forward. “No torpedoes, so it was the logical place to put them. There’s racks in there too.”
They moved to the hatch, which had been left standing open. Sure enough, there were quite a few more racks stowed in the compartment. There was also the most confusing conglomeration of pipes, valves, and instruments Lelaa had ever seen. She watched Irvin and Danny inspect a few gauges here and there and make approving or disapproving sounds. They inspected the bilge in the forwardmost area, in front of the fuel tanks.
“Well, she ain’t dry,” Danny announced, “but she ain’t sunk either. Looks about like normal seepage to me.”
“So?”
“So we look aft,” Danny answered, shrugging.
The aft crew’s quarters and officer’s country looked much the same. The batteries under the plates looked okay too. There was water in the bilge under the engines, but it hadn’t reached the huge machines.
“Those are the engines?” Lelaa asked. She’d seen the steam engines they were building, but the difference in sophistication was stunning.
“Yep,” Irvin said. “Two NELSECO diesels. Twelve hundred horsepower combined. They’ll move this tub at fifteen knots on the surface, if the sea’s calm.”
“And they were both running when you ran out of fuel?”
“That’s right,” said Danny. “They worked the last time we used them.” Lelaa looked at him and twitched her tail. She had much to learn about Amer-i-caans, but the statement sounded… odd.
“What is in the next compartment?”
“The motor room.”
Lelaa was confused now. “I have heard you, your people, use the words ‘motor’ and ‘engine’ interchangeably,” she said. “Why would S-19 need engines and a motor?”
Irvin started to laugh, but then realized it was a perfectly good question.
“Motors, actually. Plural. Okay, here’s the deal. Unlike the new Fleet Boats, S-19 can run her propeller shafts with a direct drive straight off the diesels. She’s actually faster that way. The trouble is, she can only run them one direction-forward. She can’t back up or use her screws for maneuvering with the engines. Since she has to use electric motors underwater-they don’t burn fuel, make exhaust, or need air; that’s how it works-we use the motors for reverse and maneuvering on the surface too. The new system’s really better. They don’t use the engines for anything but charging the batteries, and the motors do all the work. You’ve got forward and reverse and all the maneuvering you want all the time.” He patted one of the NELSECOs. “But these babies do pretty good.”
“I am anxious to see these ‘motors,’ but you did not answer my question: why is one a ‘motor’ and the other an ‘engine’?”
Irvin and Danny looked at each other.
“Ask Sandy,” Irvin said. “He’ll know.”
Danny nodded agreement, but then turned back to Irvin. “So what’s the verdict, Skipper? What do we tell the guys?”
Irvin rubbed his forehead, looked at his two companions, and sighed. “Tomorrow we dig. And I want everybody trying to figure out the best way to dredge a canal this thing’ll fit through!”
CHAPTER 15
U SS Dowden ’s anchor splashed into the almost mirror-clear water off the Lemurian city of Chill-chaap. Jim Ellis barely remembered having been there before-he’d had a fever at the time-and it wasn’t exactly where its human counterpart, Tjilatjap, had been. The human city was east-southeast of the place the Lemurians had once chosen, and Jim remembered it as it had been in the early, chaotic days of the war they’d left behind. Some ships were still getting in and out when they’d seen the old cruiser Marblehead moored there after the pasting she’d taken from Japanese planes. Anyone who saw her was amazed she was still afloat. Her rudder had been jammed hard aport and she was still low by the head. They’d been transferring the wounded ashore, since nobody really expected her to make it out of the area alive. Ellis reflected that he’d never know if she had or not.
Tjilatjap was a dump. The fueling and repair facilities there were inadequate and there were no torpedoes to be had. Worse, from the crew’s perspective, there was virtually zero nightlife. Even though it meant steaming back in the teeth of the Japanese storm, he’d actually been glad when they steered for Surabaya once again. He shook his head. That was another time, another world. Where the Tjilatjap he knew should have been, there was absolutely nothing, and never had been. Of the Chill-chaap their Allies had built on the other side of the peninsula, there was nothing left.
Even before the Grik came in force, a raiding party had sacked the city, eaten or taken its inhabitants, and razed much of what remained to the ground. Since then, a year and a half was all it had taken the jungle to reclaim a city almost as old and large as Baalkpan. It was a dreary, creepy sight. Vines and bizarre, spiderweblike foliage covered the ruins, and the old pathways were choked and impassable. From what Ben, Pam, Brister, and Palmer had told him, there were many bones as well. He figured rodents and other things would have eaten the bones by
