Voyage of the Devilfish

Devilfish had arrived at coordinate A21.2-53.6 on top-secret Chart Zl, the position relayed by Donchez. Her position was drawn on the chart on the navigation table. The anticipated coordinate of the OMEGA was shown as an orange dot. Pacino leaned over the chart in the navigation alcove, aware of the ghostly moan of the SHARKTOOTH sonar beams illuminating their way in the ice rafts and stalactites ahead, OOD Stokes giving slight rudder orders to the helm to steer the ship around the pressure ridges, and the creaking of the ice around them as the masses of ice rafts shifted and ground against each other.

The position report from Donchez had given the omega’s approximate position, but even drawing a 30-mile circle around the reported position had not led to a detection. The satellite coordinate must have been subject to some kind of error. There were no sonar detects on the OMEGA on broadband, and none on any of the guessed narrowband frequency gates they were searching in.

Was the OMEGA gone? Or was he going about this the wrong way? Instead of searching for the OMEGA, should he be searching for a polynya? Pacino walked to the SHARKTOOTH sonar console.

“Energize the topsounder,” he told Stokes. Stokes nodded and dialed in a rotary switch that activated the ultrahigh-frequency hydrophones on top of the sail, which pinged upward, and “listened” for two pings— the first a reflection off the bottom of the ice, the second a reflection off the top. The comparison of the two showed distance to the ice overhead as well as its thickness.

“Looks like a pressure ridge above now, sir,” Stokes drawled. “Thick ice. One-hundred-fifty feet.” Pacino called over the Junior Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Brayton.

“JOOD, establish a zigzag search of this area for thin ice.” Pacino drew a square around the omega’s reported position three miles on a side. “Do a search in this block, then search in blocks further outward from the position. Keep plotting ice thickness. And notify me the instant you’ve got thin ice.” Before Pacino left the control room, he glanced over at the SHARKTOOTH’s topsounders. Still thick ice. 125 feet. The possibility of not finding the OMEGA before she turned around and returned to port suddenly hit Pacino hard — the aching in his neck and shoulders feeling like knives going through him. Knives wielded by one Alexi Novskoyy…

All through the night Devilfish moved back and forth under the ice, the secure pulse topsounder clucking, finding only thick ice and pressure ridges. At 0810 GMT Devilfish had to go down to 350 feet to avoid a deep pressure ridge. Back in the control room, Pacino watched in frustration as the ice got thicker. 90 feet. 120 feet. 130 feet. He glanced at the chart, seeing that this was the furthest block to the east they had yet tried. Obviously the east side of the OMEGA position would turn up nothing but thick ice. It was hopeless. Pacino marked on the chart in bold pencil the area to avoid on the east side and again summoned the JOOD.

“Just thick ice here. Get us back west, to this area. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the polynya there.” Brayton plotted a course to get the ship to the new search sector.

“One-hundred-fifty feet, thick ice,” Stokes called out from the SHARKTOOTH console. Brayton moved up beside him and told him the new course. Stokes nodded, giving the overhead-ice-thickness readout a grimace before making the rudder order. He looked over to the helmsman.

“Helm, left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course two seven zero.” After several minutes, for a split second, the ice-thickness readout on the SHARKTOOTH sloped from 145 feet down to five. But as the ship came around, the ice thickness grew back to 175 feet.

“Get back to zero nine zero,” Pacino ordered. Stokes understood. “Helm, shift your rudder!”

“Shift my rudder, helm aye, my rudder is right fifteen degrees, passing course zero one five to the right, no ordered course, sir.”

“Aye, helm,” from Stokes. Pacino patted Stokes on the back as they watched the ice thickness, at the same time Pacino wondering if it had been only a phantom reflection from a void in the ice. But as they got under the thick part of the pressure ridge the ice thickness once again sloped down, from 155 to under five feet in less than thirty seconds. It was an inverted cliff overhead. The polynya.

“Helm, steady as she goes,” Stokes said, trying to contain his excitement. And Devilfish sailed out from under the pressure ridge to the underside of a wide flat lake of thin ice that stretched on for almost four thousand yards. Pacino allowed himself to believe. This had to be it.