Phoenix Sub Zero

Frustrated, he flipped the display back to the waterfall broadband display of noise versus bearing, putting north in the center of the tube. The detected noises at an instant were shown by bright dots, each direction except the astern “baffles” heard all at once. The data of that instant dropped down as the next second of data flashed up, and then both data lines dropped again as the next sound information came in, making the screen traces fall downward, earning the display its name. The display was split into three pieces. The top trace was only twenty seconds from the top to the bottom, where the data dropped from view. The middle section was five minutes deep, taking a set of data 300 seconds to drop from view. The bottom area was the long history trace, displaying the last half-hour of waterfall data. The displays were an ingenious means of interpreting sound data because most of the ocean’s noise was random and would go from north to southeast to west instantaneously. The display of this random noise would resemble snow on a TV screen, but a manmade noise, a ship, would continue to generate noise from a single bearing, the continuing bright traces forming a vertical line at the bearing of the sound emission.

Sanderson blinked at the short-time display at the top, concentrating on the bearings to the east. As he watched a slight trace appeared at 087, then winked out. Shrimp or whales farting, Sanderson thought, but kept watching. A moment later the trace returned. The five-minute-history display showed the two traces at a consistent bearing — east.

“Sonar, Conn,” Sanderson’s earphone buzzed. “Coming around to the west in one minute.” “Conn, Sonar, no,” Sanderson said into his mike, leaning over the console. “Ted, get Smoot up here fast,” he ordered Seaman Worster. “Joe, select the athwartships beam of the thinwire and dial up the high freqs. Bill, you take the next lower buckets. Red, you take the 200 sector with a single bucket looking for the 154.” Sanderson had put the sonar crew onto the new trace, trying to squeeze every bit of data from it the computer could process.

“Sonar, Conn, say again?” Lieutenant Commander Schramford, the ship’s engineer, sounded incredulous.

“Conn, Sonar, we’ve got something. Maintain course north.” Sanderson said it as if it were an order. He counted the seconds until Schramford made it to the door. It took only two before the heavy curtain between sonar and control slid open, Schramford’s beefy face glowing greenish in the backwash from the sonar consoles.

“What have you got?”

Sanderson tore off his headset, a flare of anger coming into his eyes. “Goddamnit, Eng, if I knew I’d let you maneuver, now wouldn’t I? Give me as much time on course north as you can while I look at this trace. Go on.”

Schramford was an older officer who, although he had his hands full with the chief engineer job, still stood watch at least four times a week and was one of the ship’s better tactical minds. He disappeared, presumably to check the chart and whisper on the phone to the captain. Sanderson put his headset back on and rotated the cursor ball set into the console panel to the direction of the noise, which was intermittent but getting stronger.

He tried to block out the sound of the whining of the video screens and the roar of the air handlers, reduced now with the rig for ultraquiet. He projected his consciousness out into the sea, thinking of himself as being at one with the ocean, a thought that his buddies in the chief’s quarters — the goat locker — would ridicule as having come from California, but the thought still helped him detect the target, or whatever it was that was making the faint trace at 087, now 088. As Sanderson listened he heard a slight undulation in the sound, a flushing sound. He listened for a few more seconds, then opened his eyes, thinking he knew what he’d heard.

He got up from his seat and scanned the six screens of the other consoles, seeing the picture develop on the sonar traces at each individual frequency. Smoot entered with Seaman Worster.

“What’s up. Chief?”

“Listen to this. Let’s see if you hear the same thing I did.”

Smoot, a tall thin man in his thirties with black hair and a mustache and goatee, pulled on a headset and shut his eyes, weaving slightly on his feet from fading sleep. After a moment he opened his eyes wide and scanned the consoles, then met Sanderson’s eyes.

“Pump jet propulsor.”

Sanderson smiled, then looked up to see Schramford’s face.

“Sir, we’ve got a submerged contact, bearing zero eight eight, distant, with a pump jet propulsor. You can maneuver back to the south and make sure you turn to the right. I don’t want to lose this guy in the baffles.”

“You got it. Senior.”

“Captain know yet?”

“He will in ten seconds.”