'We have to,' Van Gelder shouted. 'This heat builds up much longer, we'll be forced to abandon ship…A steam entry suit! It might hold long enough to let someone knock down the worst hot spots.'
'In among the flames?'
'I don't see any other way,' Van Gelder said. 'We can't just stay like this, there's too much fallout topside. We start up the diesel now, the NBC filters will be overwhelmed.' Both men ducked as something else exploded. Orange sparks flew into the corridor. A messenger arrived from the control room. Van Gelder withdrew to meet him a safe distance from the fire, both men down on hands and knees. The messenger was gasping, trying hard to catch his breath. He struggled to draw air from his respirator, straining the demand regulator to the limit.
'Sir,' he finally panted, 'Captain says reception's coming back. The satfeed downlink shows many inbound aircraft.'
'British?'
The messenger nodded.
'How far from here?'
'Sixteen hundred kilometers, sir. Halfway from the Falklands.'
'They're supersonic?'
'Yes.'
'How much longer do we have?'
'The navigator says maybe half an hour, then we'd be too tightly localized to get away.'
'All right,' Van Gelder said. 'Listen to me.' He tried to make eye contact, but through his IR imagers the man appeared a spectral aura in pastel blues and pinks. Instead Van Gelder put a hand on the seaman's shoulder. 'Get back to Engineering. Have them send me three steam entry suits.'
'Yes, sir. Three steam entry suits.'
'And on the way, tell the captain I recommend to hold off on the diesel. We might still restore the batteries in time.'
'Hold off on the diesel, might still restore the batteries. Aye, aye, sir.'
'We pull in the outside atmosphere,' Van Gelder said, 'the whole crew will end up with leukemia and lung cancer.'
The messenger dashed aft, and another enlisted man approached Van Gelder, a fire fighter resting between bouts. Van Gelder flipped up his visor. Beneath his mask the crewman's eyes were watering and his nostrils dripped black phlegm. Both men braced themselves as the vessel rolled once more. The seas were dying down somewhat, but the inside air was getting much too hot.
'Sir,' the crewman said, 'why don't we just dive? At least we'd get below these waves.'
'We'd never get back up again,' Van Gelder said. 'We're all out of high-pressure air and hydrazine.'
A crewman brought Van Gelder a Nomex suit and he quickly dressed. He finished debriefing the senior chief on his manpower dispositions and fire-fighting tactics just as the messenger and two other men arrived, lugging the bulky steam suits. The messenger helped Van Gelder put his on over all his other gear.
'Sir,' the young man shouted between breaths, 'the engineer told me to remind you. Xenon's building up in the reactor core. It's been too long now since the scram. If we don't restart soon, we won't be able to for hours.'
'Yes,' Van Gelder said, 'I know.' The iodine 135 from the uranium fission was breaking down to xenon, which had a huge cross section for thermal neutron capture.
With their pre-owned ex-Russian-SSBN core, the xenon 135 would poison the chain reaction until it in turn decayed, making it dangerous to regain criticality in a hurry. Van Gelder knew that was one of the things that went wrong at Chernobyl.
'All right,' Van Gelder said. 'Tell Engineering and the captain we understand. Ask them to hold off as long as possible.'
'You understand, hold off as long as possible, aye aye, sir.' The messenger lowered the big steam suit hood over Van Gelder's head. Van Gelder peered out through the heat-resistant window. The chief fire fighter and a leading seaman finished donning theirs. They looked like men from space, garbed in the silvery reflective costumes.
Van Gelder found it hard now just to walk. With all the insulation and the built-in cooling system, each suit weighed forty kilos. The messenger and his companions checked that the suits were properly sealed, then ran aft. The others signaled they were ready.
'Let's go,' Van Gelder shouted through his hood.
Using his thick gauntlets, he gripped the nozzle. His partners backed him up, shouldering the uncharged hose. Another hose team wearing simple Nomex — seeming now so vulnerable in comparison — started spraying them with water. Van Gelder moved into position.
For the first time he was close enough to see into the room. In infrared he watched the huge fans and motors, piping, ducting, cables, all sheathed in leaping flame. The steel of the bulkheads, the deck, the overhead were warped and bulging — even through his protective gear the heat drove him to the floor. He led the others forward, crawling on their bellies, sloshing through the filmy foam.
'Left!' Van Gelder shouted. 'Let's go left! That near corner!' From there he saw a mass of aluminum ducting actually on fire, fallen from the overhead, piled against the back of the room, twisted and distorted. The burning sheet metal was bright white in his visors.
'There! There!' he yelled. 'That's the hottest point!' Bracing himself on all fours, Van Gelder jerked back the nozzle actuator. The highvelocity water stream fought him viciously. Behind him the other men gave their support. They crawled farther into the room.
Van Gelder drenched the ducting, over and over, working his hose stream back and forth. Then he started at one end, pouring and pouring the water, until the flaming ducting in that spot died down. He manhandled the stream along, pushing the flames backward, forcing them toward the far bulkhead, denying them their metal fuel. Steam hissed so loudly he could hear it even through his hood and helmet and his respirator mask. Boiling water sprayed back at his face. He flinched instinctively, then drew courage as his steam suit did its job. He advanced another meter.
The water roared and roared and so did the fire. Gradually Van Gelder's arms grew sore, his back ached badly, but still he aimed his hose at the relentless flames. He inched farther into the room, feeling the radiant heat of a big electric motor casing close to his right thigh, its insulation and lubrication totally involved. In his peripheral vision, past the edges of his visor, he saw flames leaping toward him, yellow and vicious red. He watched their tendrils bathe his thigh, feeling a gentle warmth there, a surreal caress. The senior chief gestured with his hands to urge Van Gelder onward. Van Gelder's digitized goggles told him the same thing as his eyes: the burning motor was relatively cool compared to the burning aluminum. The motor fire would have to wait. Van Gelder shifted his hose stream yet again, aiming at the center of the aluminum, and the force of the water burst the duct's remains apart. Immediately the temperature grew less, and Van Gelder extinguished the fragments one by one.
'Switch to foam now,' the chief shouted. 'There's too much oil and grease!' Van Gelder handed off the straight-stream nozzle, then took the foam applicator attached to another line. Two freshwater hose teams assumed position in the door, one to cool Van Gelder's group and protect their path of egress, the other to drench both overhead and burning equipment to help put out the fire. Working from the back of the room slowly toward the front, Van Gelder applied the penetrating detergent-soapy foam. It wasn't recommended for use on electrical equipment — it ruined what it touched — but by now the fan room was a total loss.
Van Gelder aimed the applicator into every nook and cranny, blanketing the burning apparatus, cutting off the conflagration's air. His faceplate now was stained with yellow soot. Inside his gear he dripped with sweat, and his breath came fast and ragged. After what seemed endless minutes of brutal toil Van Gelder realized the teams were working at cross-purposes. 'The water from the doorway crews is forcing back my foam!'
The chief ordered the other teams to change their tactics. One nozzleman concentrated on wetting Van Gelder's line so it wouldn't burn right through. The other aimed at the overhead to cool the superheated gases. But that just meant less water on the fire, making Van Gelder's job much harder. He started feeling dizzy, and his mouth was very dry.
'Look out!' the chief shouted, pulling Van Gelder to the side. In slow motion a big fan housing toppled to the deck. Immediately more flames reared up as the housing's innards broke wide open. Unburned aluminum threatened to reignite. Van Gelder's team was losing ground.
