On The Beach

Peter was embarrassed, and could have kicked himself for his indiscretion. He checked the steward. "Don't you drink in port, sir?"

The captain smiled. "Why, no. Uncle Sam doesn't like it. But you go right ahead. This is a British ship."

"I'd rather have it your way, if you don't mind," Peter replied. "Seven orangeades."

"Seven it is," said the captain nonchalantly. The steward went away. "Some navies have it one way and some another," he remarked. "I never noticed that it made much difference in the end result."

They lunched in Sidney, a dozen officers at one end of one of the long, empty tables. Then they went down into Scorpion, moored alongside. She was the biggest submarine that Peter Holmes had ever seen; she displaced about six thousand tons and her atomic-powered turbines developed well over ten thousand horsepower. Besides her eleven officers she carried a crew of about seventy petty officers and enlisted men. All these men messed and slept amongst a maze of pipes and wiring as is common in all submarines, but she was well equipped for the tropics with good air conditioning and a very large cold store. Peter Holmes was no submariner and could not judge her from a technical point of view, but the captain told him that she was easy on controls and quite manoeuvrable in spite of her great length.

Most of her armament and warlike stores had been taken off her during her refit, and all but two of her torpedo tubes had been removed. This made more room for mess decks and amenities than is usual in a submarine, and the removal of the aft tubes and torpedo stowage made conditions in the engine room a good deal easier for the engineers. Peter spent an hour in this part of the ship with the engineering officer, Lieutenant Commander Lundgren. He had never served in an atomic-powered ship, and as much of the equipment was classified for security a great deal of it was novel to him. He spent some time absorbing the general layout of the liquid sodium circuit to take heat from the reactor, the various heat exchangers, and the closed cycle helium circuits for the twin high-speed turbines that drove the ship through the enormous reduction gears, so much larger and more sensitive than the other units of the power plant.

He came back to the captain's tiny cabin in the end. Commander Towers rang for the coloured steward, ordered coffee for two, and let down the folding seat for Peter. "Have a good look at the engines?" he asked.

The Australian nodded. "I'm not an engineer," he said. "Much of it is just a bit over my head, but it was very interesting. Do they give you much trouble?"

The captain shook his head. "They never have so far. There's nothing much that you can do with them at sea if they do. Just keep your fingers crossed and hope they'll keep on spinning around."

The coffee came and they sipped it in silence. "My orders are to report to you on Tuesday," Peter said. "What time would you like me here, sir?"

"We sail on Tuesday on sea trials," the captain said. "It might be Wednesday, but I don't think we'll be so late as that. We're taking on stores Monday and the crew come aboard."

"I'd better report to you on Monday, then," said the Australian. "Some time in the forenoon?"

"That might be a good thing," said the captain. "I think we'll get away by Tuesday noon. I told the admiral I'd like to take a little cruise in Bass Strait as a shakedown, and come back maybe on Friday and report operational readiness. I'd say if you're on board any time Monday forenoon that would be okay."

"Is there anything that I can do for you in the meantime? I'd come aboard on Saturday if I could help at all."

"I appreciate that, Commander, but there's not a thing. Half the crew are off on leave right now, and I'm letting the other half go off on week-end pass tomorrow noon. There'll be nobody here Saturday and Sunday barring one officer and six men on watch. No, Monday forenoon will be time enough for you."

He glanced at Peter. "Anybody tell you what they want us to do?"

The Australian was surprised. "Haven't they told you, sir?"

The American laughed. "Not a thing. I'd say the last person to hear the sailing orders is the captain."

"The Second Naval Member sent for me about this posting," Peter said. "He told me that you were making a cruise to Carins, Port Moresby, and Darwin, and that it was going to take eleven days."

"Your Captain Nixon in the Operations Division, he asked me how long that would take," the captain remarked. "I haven't had it as an order yet."

"The admiral said, this morning, that after that was over there'd be a much longer cruise, that would take about two months."

Commander Towers paused, motionless, his cup suspended in mid-air. "That's news to me," he remarked. "Did he say where we were going?"

Peter shook his head. "He just said it would take about two months."