On The Beach

Since crossing the equator it had been their habit to surface once in every watch to get the maximum antenna height, and to listen for the radio transmission from Seattle. They had heard it once, in latitude five north; it had gone on for about forty minutes, a random, meaningless transmission, and then had stopped. They had not heard it since. That night, somewhere off Fort Bragg, they surfaced in a stiff northwesterly wind and a rising sea, and directly they switched on the direction finder they heard it again. This time they were able to pinpoint it fairly accurately.

Dwight bent over the navigation table with Lieutenant Sunderstrom as he plotted the bearing. "Santa Maria," he said. "Looks like you were right."

They stood listening to the meaningless jumble coming out of the speaker. "It's fortuitous," the lieutenant said at last. "That's not someone keying, even somebody that doesn't know about radio. That's something that's just happening."

"Sounds like it." He stood listening. "There's power there," he said. "Where there's power there's people."

"It's not absolutely necessary," the lieutenant said.

"Hydroelectric," Dwight said. "I know it. But hell, those turbines won't run two years without maintenance."

"You wouldn't think so. Some of them are mighty good machinery."

Dwight grunted, and turned back to the charts. "I’ll aim to be off Cape Flattery at dawn. We'll go on as we're going now and get a fix around midday, and adjust speed then. If it looks all right from there, I'll take her in, periscope depth, so we can blow tanks if we hit anything that shouldn't be there. Maybe we'll be able to go right up to Santa Maria. Maybe we won't. You ready to go on shore if we do?"

"Sure," said the lieutenant. "I'd kind of like to get out of the ship for a while.

Dwight smiled. They had been submerged now for eleven days, and though health was still good they were all suffering from nervous tension. "Let's keep our fingers crossed," he said, "and hope we can make it."

"You know something?" said the lieutenant. "If we can't get through the strait, maybe I could make it overland." He pulled out a chart. "If we got in to Grays Harbor I could get on shore at Hoquiam or Aberdeen. This road runs right through to Bremerton and Santa Maria."

"It's a hundred miles."

"I could probably pick up a car, and gas."

The captain shook his head. Two hundred miles in a light radiation suit, driving a hot car with hot gas over hot country was not practical. "You've only got a two hours' air supply," he said. "I know you could take extra cylinders. But it's not practical. We'd lose you, one way or another. It's not that important, anyway."

They submerged again, and carried on upon the course. When they surfaced four hours later the transmission had stopped.

They carried on towards the north all the next day, most of the time at periscope depth. The morale of his crew was now becoming important to the captain. The close confinement was telling on them; no broadcast entertainment had been available for a long time, and the recordings they could play over the speakers had long grown stale. To stimulate their minds and give them something to talk about he gave free access to the periscope to anyone who cared to use it, though there was little to look at. This rocky and somewhat uninteresting coast was their home country and the sight of a cafe with a Buick parked outside it was enough to set them talking and revive starved minds.

At midnight they surfaced according to their routine, off the mouth of the Columbia River. Lieutenant Benson was coming to relieve Lieutenant Commander Farrell. The lieutenant commander raised the periscope from the well and put his face to it, swinging it around. Then he turned quickly to the other officer. "Say, go and call the captain. Lights on shore, thirty to forty degrees on the starboard bow."

In a minute or two they were all looking through the periscope in turn and studying the chart, Peter Holmes and John Osborne with them. Dwight bent over the chart with his executive officer. "On the Washington side of the entrance," he said. "They'll be around these places Long Beach and Ilwaco. There's nothing in the State of Oregon."

From, behind him, Lieutenant Sunderstrom said, "Hydroelectric."

"I guess so. If there's lights it would explain a lot." He turned to the scientist. "What's the outside radiation level, Mr. Osborne?"

"Thirty in the red, sir."

The captain nodded. Much too high for life to be maintained, though not immediately lethal; there had been little change in the last five or six days. He went to the periscope himself and stood there for a long time. He did not care to take his vessel closer to the shore, at night. "Okay," he said at last. "We'll carry on the way we're going now. Log it, Mr. Benson."