than we’d have otherwise.”
“Can
“Depend on it,” Blackburn replied. “We can kill any one, maybe any two of these four groups in an hour. The ones nearest shore will be your job, Max.”
“How long did you two characters rehearse this?” General Maxwell, commandant of the marine corps, asked the operations officer. Everyone chuckled.
Chief Engineer Melekhin cleared the reactor compartment before beginning the check for the leak. Ramius and Petrov were there also, plus the engineering duty officers and one of the young lieutenants, Svyadov. Three of the officers carried Geiger counters.
The reactor room was quite large. It had to be to accommodate the massive, barrel-shaped steel vessel. The object was warm to the touch despite being inactive. Automatic radiation detectors were in every corner of the room, each surrounded by a red circle. More were hanging on the fore and aft bulkheads. Of all the compartments on the submarine, this was the cleanest. The deck and bulkheads were spotless white-painted steel. The reason was obvious: the smallest leak of reactor coolant had to be instantly visible even if all the detectors failed.
Svyadov climbed an aluminum ladder affixed to the side of the reactor vessel to run the detachable probe from his counter over every welded pipe joint. The speaker-annunciator on the hand-held box was turned to maximum so that everyone in the compartment could hear it, and Svyadov had an earpiece plugged in for even greater sensitivity. A youngster of twenty-one, he was nervous. Only a fool would feel entirely safe looking for a radiation leak. There is a joke in the Soviet Navy: How do you tell a sailor from the Northern Fleet? He glows in the dark. It had been a good laugh on the beach, but not now. He knew that he was conducting the search because he was the youngest, least experienced, and most expendable officer. It was an effort to keep his knees from wobbling as he strained to reach all over and around the reactor piping.
The counter was not entirely silent, and Svyadov’s stomach cringed at each click generated by the passage of a random particle through the tube of ionized gas. Every few seconds his eyes flickered to the dial that measured intensity. It was well inside the safe range, hardly registering at all. The reactor vessel was a quadruple-layer design, each layer several centimeters of tough stainless steel. The three inner spaces were filled with a barium- water mixture, then a barrier of lead, then polyethylene, all designed to prevent the escape of neutrons and gamma particles. The combination of steel, barium, lead, and plastic successfully contained the dangerous elements of the reaction, allowing only a few degrees of heat to escape, and the dial showed, much to his relief, that the radiation level was less than that on the beach at Sochi. The highest reading was made next to a light bulb. This made the lieutenant smile.
“All readings in normal range, comrades,” Svyadov reported.
“Start over,” Melekhin ordered, “from the beginning.”
Twenty minutes later Svyadov, now sweating from the warm air that gathered at the top of the compartment, made an identical report. He came down awkwardly, his arms and legs tired.
“Have a cigarette,” Ramius suggested. “You did well, Svyadov.”
“Thank you, Comrade Captain. It’s warm up there from the lights and the coolant pipes.” The lieutenant handed the counter to Melekhin. The lower dial showed a cumulative count, well within the safe range.
“Probably some contaminated badges,” the chief engineer commented sourly. “It would not be the first time. Some joker in the factory or at the yard supply office — something for our friends in the GRU to check into. ‘Wreckers!’ A joke like this ought to earn somebody a bullet.”
“Perhaps,” Ramius chuckled. “Remember the incident on
Melekhin rolled his eyes. “I remember it! I was a staff engineering officer then. The captain had asked for a Kazakh cook—”
“He liked horsemeat with his kasha,” Ramius said.
“—and the fool didn’t know the first thing about a ship. Killed himself and three other men, contaminated the whole fucking compartment for twenty months. The captain only got out of the gulag last year.”
“I bet the cook got his pans cleaned, though,” Ramius observed.
“Indeed, Marko Aleksandrovich — they may even be safe to use in another fifty years.” Melekhin laughed raucously.
That was a hell of a thing to say in front of a young officer, Petrov thought. There was nothing, nothing at all funny about a reactor leak. But Melekhin was known for his heavy sense of humor, and the doctor imagined that twenty years of working on reactors allowed him and the captain to view the potential dangers phlegmatically. Then, there was the implicit lesson in the story: never let someone who does not belong into the reactor spaces.
“Very well,” Melekhin said, “now we check the pipes in the generator room. Come, Svyadov, we still need your young legs.”
The next compartment aft contained the heat exchanger/steam generator, turboalternators, and auxiliary equipment. The main turbines were in the next compartment, now inactive while the electrically driven caterpillar was operating. In any case, the steam that turned them was supposed to be clean. The only radioactivity was in the inside loop. The reactor coolant, which carried short-lived but dangerous radioactivity, never flashed to steam. This was in the outside loop and boiled from uncontaminated water. The two water supplies met but never mixed inside the heat exchanger, the most likely site for a coolant leak because of its more numerous fittings and valves.
The more complex piping required a full fifty minutes to check. These pipes were not as well insulated as those forward. Svyadov nearly burned himself twice, and his face was bathed in perspiration by the time he finished his first sweep.
“Readings all safe again, comrades.”
“Good,” Melekhin said. “Come down and rest a moment before you check it again.”
Svyadov almost thanked his chief for that, but this would not have done at all. As a young, dedicated officer and member of the Komsomol, no exertion was too great. He came down carefully, and Melekhin handed him another cigarette. The chief engineer was a gray-haired perfectionist who took decent care of his men.
“Why, thank you, Comrade,” Svyadov said.
Petrov got a folding chair. “Sit, Comrade Lieutenant, rest your legs.”
The lieutenant sat down at once, stretching his legs to work out the knots. The officers at VVMUPP had told him how lucky he was to draw this assignment. Ramius and Melekhin were the two best teachers in the fleet, men whose crews appreciated their kindness along with their competence.
“They really should insulate those pipes,” Ramius said. Melekhin shook his head.
“Then they’d be too hard to inspect.” He handed the counter to his captain.
“Entirely safe,” the captain read off the cumulative dial. “You get more exposure tending a garden.”
“Indeed,” Melekhin said. “Coal miners get more exposure than we do, from the release of radon gas in the mines. Bad badges, that’s what it has to be. Why not take out a whole batch and check it?”
“I could, Comrade,” Petrov answered. “But then, due to the extended nature of our cruise, we’d have to run for several days without any. Contrary to regulations. I’m afraid.”
“You are correct. In any case the badges are only a backup to our instruments.” Ramius gestured to the red- circled detectors all over the compartment.
“Do you really want to recheck the piping?” Melekhin asked.
“I think we should,” Ramius said.
Svyadov swore to himself, looking down at the deck.
“There is no extravagance in the pursuit of safety,” Petrov quoted doctrine. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” The doctor was not a bit sorry. He had been genuinely worried, and was now feeling a lot better.
An hour later the second check had been completed. Petrov took Svyadov forward for salt tablets and tea to rehydrate himself. The senior officers left, and Melekhin ordered the reactor plant restarted.
The enlisted men filed back to their duty stations, looking at one another. Their officers had just checked the
