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“Sure,” said Brendan. He was eager to get started, eager to qualify something, contribute something. That yearning was a good quality, and at this stage in Brendan’s career, the only aspect of his personality that Jabo cared about. Jabo was already walking forward, to the battery well, where the procedure would start.

“Danny? Can I ask a stupid question?”

Jabo stopped. “Sure.”

“The scrubbers remove carbon monoxide, right? And the burners remove hydrogen and carbon monoxide, right?”

Jabo nodded. He was starting to wonder if they were rushing through this…that was pretty fundamental stuff. “So what’s your question?”

“What about everything else?”

“Everything else?”

“Yeah, I mean, that’s three things we’re actively removing from the atmosphere. All this equipment, all these systems operating, organic compounds breaking down, people living inside here for months at a time, I mean, surely those aren’t the only three things building up on the boat, right?”

“Well, we monitor for a bunch of things, as you know. I suppose if anything else built up to a dangerous point, we’d go up to PD and ventilate.”

“Sure,” said Duggan. “I told you it was a stupid question.”

“No,” said Jabo. “I’d tell you if it was. Actually it’s a pretty good fucking question.”

They’d made it to the battery well, in the lower level of Auxiliary Machinery One, right next to the diesel, the ship’s two most important back up energy supplies sharing a room at the bottom of the submarine in the forward compartment. Jabo knelt next to the hatch of the well. “Okay, what do we have to do now?”

“Get OOD permission.”

“Before that.”

“Oh shit.” Duggan hesitated a minute, and then stood and removed his belt and pens from his pocket.

“That’s right,” said Jabo. “Remove all metal.” He stood to do the same. He didn’t enjoy going in the battery well — one of the reasons he wanted to get Duggan qualified in a hurry. The hundreds of liquid acid cells in that tight compartment emitted a strange, sour smell, and Jabo always left the well feeling itchy for hours. But he couldn’t let Duggan go in by himself. “Are we ready?”

Duggan nodded. Jabo pointed to the phone.

Duggan picked it up, and growled control with the phone’s tiny lever. Slightly nervously, he said, “Chief of the Watch, Ensign Duggan, request permission to enter the battery well. For training.” He awaited a response. Jabo heard the Chief of the Watch relay a request from the officer of the deck. “I’m with Lieutenant Jabo.”

He covered the phone with his hand and looked at Jabo. “He said to wait one.”

“That’s weird,” said Jabo. Surely Hein wanted another officer to qualify for the battery charging line up as much as he did…he started unconsciously reaching for his belt, sensing something was about to happen.

Hein’s voice on the 1MC: “All officers report to the wardroom for navigation brief.”

That explains it, thought Jabo. “We’ll finish this up later,” he said to Duggan, who dejectedly put his belt back on.

• • •

They were assembled in the wardroom once again, for a navigation brief describing the second half of their journey to Taiwan. The mood was considerably less jovial than it had been during the first brief. After two weeks of straight three section watches they were all tired. The fire had shocked them all out of complacency, and the watch officers had become more demanding of the crew, and the senior officers more demanding of the watch officers. Looking around the wardroom table, Jabo saw a lot of hollow eyes, a lot of men who’d been living on caffeine for too long.

The captain rapped the table with a knuckle. “Alright Nav. Let’s get started.”

The Navigator propped up the small scale chart on the tripod once again, showing the great circle route to Taiwan. He’d made a red “X” on the their current location. “Here we are,” he said, hitting it with a pointer.

“Is that your whole brief, nav?” asked the CO. Everyone but the navigator chuckled.

“No sir,” said the Nav. He fumbled to pull another chart down and put it across the easel.

“Just put it on the table, nav,” said the XO. “All you JOs get your greasy fucking elbows off, learn some goddamn manners.”

Everyone backed off and the nav unrolled a huge white chart of the Pacific Ocean across the table. There were boxes marking their assigned areas, and their track, moving relentlessly westward. “Because of the time we lost during the fire, we’ve had to increase our SOA to twenty-two knots. And I’ve built into that going to PD twice a day for the broadcast.”

“Just a half hour per trip, gentlemen,” said the XO. “So no fucking around up there. Slow down, clear baffles, get up, and get the broadcast. We’ll need to shoot trash at the same time, and anything else we need to do slow.”

Jabo stared at the chart. Other than the marks made in the navigator’s neat pencil, it was almost devoid of information, an unmarked expanse of pale blue. He ran his fingers along the ship’s track. “It’s so bare,” he said. “There aren’t even that many soundings.”