Collapse Depth

The lights were on and the stateroom was, as always, neat and organized. His desktop was closed as were all his cabinets. The bed was made with the kind of anxious rigor that was the mark of most Academy-trained officers. The only thing out of order on it was the old book in the center of the rack: Rig for Dive, by Crush Martin. He stepped in and flipped it over; saw the black and white photo of Martin, a stern looking man with scars on his face and neck not completely hidden by the old-fashioned khaki dress uniform. He had commander’s shoulder boards, but other than that the only insignia on his uniform were his gold dolphins and a war patrol pin. Jabo flipped through it and saw, to his surprise, that the pages and margins were filled with dense notes in the nav’s tiny handwriting. Every page had passages highlighted, and on some pages every word had been highlighted. The notes seemed to bear little relation to the page, or to Martin’s story at all. On an early page detailing Martin’s childhood in rural Florida, Jabo saw where the nav had written the formula for the reactor average temperature calculation in three different colors of ink. It bothered Jabo: the formula was classified. Not exactly a state secret, but an odd lapse in discipline from a man as buttoned-up as the navigator.

He hesitated, then opened the top cabinet above the nav’s desk, where he knew he kept hardcopies of every broadcast. And there they were, neatly organized in white, three-inch binders across the shelf, each with a range of dates printed in the navigator’s neat script across the spine. Jabo pulled the most recent one down, paged through it looking for the Freon message. He remembered the approximate date, remembered some of the other things in the broadcast, but couldn’t be certain where it would be exactly. It would take hours to page through them all to find it, if it was even in there. Jabo hoped that the navigator had pulled it for some reason, maybe because of the incident. Otherwise…it would be yet another set of hours Jabo would have to find, to pour through the binders one page at a time to look for the misplaced message.

Jabo saw, as he removed the binder, a metal clipboard flat against the back of the cabinet: hidden? It was one of the thin clipboards used to move a single classified message around the boat, two thin sheets of metal joined by a hinge. He pulled it down.

No classification page marked the front of it. Which would normally mean it was empty. But when Jabo opened it, there were several sheets of paper. He knew in an instant it was the Freon message.

“Having a look around, Lieutenant?”

Jabo almost dropped the board; it was the navigator, standing at the door to his stateroom. “Jesus, Nav, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Guilty conscience?” He had a weird look on his face, twitchy and uncomfortable.

“No, Nav, not at all. Just looking for this message…” Jabo realized suddenly that he was in the wrong, that he had no business digging through the nav’s stateroom like that. He saw the navigator glance toward his other hand, which held Rig for Dive. He tossed it back on the rack.

“You’re the communicator, shouldn’t you have access to all this in radio?”

“There’s a message missing…”

“How come no one’s told me about it?”

“I guess I’m telling you now. And it’s not missing anymore.” He held up the clipboard.

There was a sudden shift between them. Jabo realized how small a man the navigator was. Jabo had been defensive at first, caught doing something he shouldn’t. But the nav, who’d looked absolutely haunted for days, suddenly looked off balance, almost frightened.

The navigator gathered himself, trying to recapture the initiative. “Lieutenant Jabo, I really don’t appreciate you tearing through my stateroom. And I don’t appreciate the way you’ve decided to tell me about this lapse in radio. I think I’d like you to meet me in the captain’s stateroom in about ten minutes, after I’ve had chance to brief him about your work. Your attitude.”

“Fine,” said Jabo. He welcomed the chance; wanted to put all the pieces of the puzzle in front of the captain and see what he could make out of it. The navigator’s face twitched again, and then he turned around, walking toward the captain’s stateroom.

Jabo stood there, the thin clipboard still in his hand. He checked his watch, intending to the give the nav exactly his requested ten minutes. He tried to think of a legitimate reason the nav might have that message, by itself, hidden in his stateroom, while no one else in communications could find a copy. There were possibilities; perhaps the he had been tasked with his own investigation. Perhaps the Nav had pulled the message on the night of the incident, and just never returned it.