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The oxygen generator was shut down, Freon was creeping up high in machinery two, the ship’s freezers a level below him were warming up, and, most ominously, Howard was not communicating with them from the space where two out of three of these events were taking place. It could be that Howard was simply combating the problem, and whatever was going on he deemed more important than answering the COW’s calls. That was a real possibility, and it was something Jabo was sensitive to, the fact that sometimes a situation demanded action more urgent than updating control. Not more than a few minutes had passed since the oxygen generator shut down; it was very possible that Howard had his hands on the knobs, trying to make the thing safe, recoverable, and that a report was forthcoming.

“Quit calling him,” said Jabo.

“Aye sir.”

Jabo saw Lester at the ladder to control, ready to go.

“Yes,” said Jabo. “Go down there, see what’s going on, see if he needs help.”

“Aye sir,” said Lester, already running down the ladder, giving the timer of the BST buoy a twist as he passed.

Jabo thought it over, trying to connect all the dots. He thought back to his pre-watch tour, remembered seeing Howard in Machinery Two, dutifully on watch a few minutes early, reviewing his logs, something else out of the ordinary that he couldn’t quite remember. The one piece of the puzzle that still didn’t fit was the Freon in machinery two, he couldn’t figure that one out. How did Freon get down there? Would Freon somehow shut down the oxygen generator? Jabo didn’t see how it could, and he remembered that the number one generator was getting a little squirrelly, it had shut down on high cell voltage twice early in the patrol. But somehow the watchstanders had figured out a way to keep it running, some adjustment they could make to it during the watch. Jabo seemed to remember hearing that Howard was the one who’d figured it out, he was always kind of a prodigy with those machines. So why had it shut down? And why did Jabo have a bad feeling that he was missing something, something big?

The 4MC speaker crackled. Jabo knew that whatever was happening was about to start.

“Injured man in Machinery Two!” came Lester’s voice across the scratchy speaker. “Petty Officer Howard is unconscious!” He sounded winded, his breathing heavy.

“It’s the Freon,” said Jabo out loud. He grabbed the 1MC. “Injured man in Machinery two, Petty Officer Howard is unconscious! High Freon levels in Machinery Two, all hands in the missile compartment don EABs.”

He hung up the mike. He heard steps running below and around him as the crew responded to the alarm. Some of those footsteps, he knew, were the captain on his way to control. “All ahead one third,” he said, and the helm’s hand shot to the engine order telegraph, which soon matched the order with a ding of its bell.

“All ahead one third, aye sir. Maneuvering answers ahead one third.”

“Dive make your depth one-six-zero feet.”

“Make my depth one-six-zero feet aye sir,” said the diving officer, and he began giving orders to the helm and lee helm, bringing the ship shallow, ready to clear baffles and go to periscope depth, ready to ventilate. The change in bells and the depth change had already slowed the boat to under fifteen knots. The big rudder as they cleared baffles would slow them more, below ten knots so they could pop up, raise the snorkel mast, and get whatever bad air they needed to off the boat, bring clean air on. Jabo thought about the track on the chart, what this was gong to do to their speed of advance, but he quickly pushed it aside — that was not at all his priority at the moment. Making the ship safe was his duty. And he knew he was missing something…it gnawed at him.

Ensign Duggan stomped into control, started putting on the headphones by the white board on which they tracked casualties. The navigator was right behind him, he would take over making announcements to the ship and run the damage control efforts as Jabo brought the ship to periscope depth.

“Freon?” said Duggan to the navigator as he put his headset on. Jabo was concentrating on the green CODC sonar display, looking for any contacts to come into view that might impede their trip to PD. Things would start materializing now, the sounds of distant ships that had been masked by their own relatively high noise level borne of their high speed. Jabo could feel the up angle in his feet, the dive was aggressively driving up, pleasing him.

“Yes,” said the navigator. He spoke into the 1MC, announcing to the entire ship, “Rig for General Emergency.”

“Freon’s harmless, right?” said Duggan to the nav when he hung up the mike.

“Yes,” said the nav. Jabo could hear the annoyance in his voice, and he felt it too. Now was not the time for Duggan to either seek nor display knowledge; they were fighting a real casualty. “It’s harmless,” continued the nav. “But it’s heavy; it displaces air.”