Phillips shook his head. Nonvisible reactor power meant that it would take days for reactor power to come up to the power range, unless they added enough reactivity to it that it might come up uncontrollably, little more than a fission bomb. All the publicity about reactors not being able to explode like atom bombs only applied to tame natural uranium cores in civilian industry.
Navy cores were fueled with highly enriched bombgrade uranium, reactive enough to blow the hull fifty stories in the air and scatter enough radiation to wipe out a three-county area. The core designers called it a “prompt-critical-rapid-disassembly.” Phillips called it an explosion.
“Anyway, the reactor plant is at about a hundred degrees.
It’ll take a long time to warm it up to operating temperature. The pull-and-wait startup will take forty-five hours if we do it by the book, the plant startup another couple hours.”
“Well, we won’t be doing it by the book, I can promise the engineer that.”
“Eng won’t like that.”
The engineer, Lt. Comdr. Walter Hornick, was a by the-book procedure man. He and Phillips had already had words about the reactor startup.
“Fine, he’ll just have to deal with it. What about the forward systems?”
“The combatcontrol system is in good shape, navigation systems are go, ship control is ready. The diesel generator is up and running so we’re divorcing from shorepower now. The only question is the reactor.”
“Maneuvering watch stationed?”
“Fully, sir. We’re ready to go.”
“Tugs?”
“Waiting at the mouth of the slip.”
“Is the ship fully waterborne?” Phillips said, asking about the platform and blocks that had supported the submarine as it was slowly lowered into the Thames River at the manufacturing slip. Was the ship still resting on the blocks, or was it afloat?
“Yes, Captain. The platform is two meters below the keel.”
“Watertight integrity checked?”
“Yes sir. We’re not leaking from any of the systems the yard worked on or from anywhere else.”
“Have the engineer come up to the wardroom.”
Whatney acknowledged and left. Phillips made another tall cup of chilled instant coffee and had halfway gagged it down when Chief Engineer Walt Hornick stepped into the wardroom. He grinned at Phillip’s coffee-drinking method as he poured himself a steaming cup of freshbrewed Columbian into a mug with the Piranha’s emblem painted on it, the ship’s symbol the inevitable toothy fish with the eyes of a menacing wolf.
Hornick was tall, thin, too thin, mid-to-late thirties, with all his hair, a curly black mass. He looked much younger than his years, spoke gently, but what Hornick missed in the fire-and-brimstone area he made up for with cranial power, a brilliant Villanova graduate in mechanical engineering. Hornick had a memory that amazed Phillips, not only in his grasp of procedures and technical manuals but with his men, with the engineering plant’s history, with everything that crossed his desk. His style of giving reports, however, could send Phillips up a wall.
Whatney had described it to Phillips one night in the manufacturing bay.
“Skipper, don’t ever ask Hornick what time it is.”
“Why not, XO?”
“He’ll build you a watch.”
Phillips’s and Hornick’s styles diverged in other areas.
Hornick was a straight arrow, the likes of which Phillips had never seen. In the week since Phillips had taken over Piranha, Hornick had repeatedly declined to go out for beer at the local strip joints. Some of the married men weren’t into that either, but Hornick seemed genuinely uncomfortable at the thought of discussing ship’s business in the company of exposed female breasts. Phillips, on the other hand, did his best thinking in that environment.
“Well, Eng, how do you feel tonight?” Phillips felt his pockets for the stash of Cuban cigars but didn’t pull one out, knowing that Hornick would be annoyed by it.
“I feel like I’m ready for bed. Captain. This whole startup has got me worried.”
“You mean the emergency power range approach, the emergency heatup rates, the emergency steam-plant startup?”
“Yes sir. The plant could blow the roof off. How then will we get to sea? This ship has been critical all of twice, once for the initial crit, once on sea trials, and even then we never got above 35 percent power.”
“Yeah,” Phillips said, sinking into the leather-covered bench seat at the end of the table. An idea began to dawn on him. “What would you do, Walt? You’ll be a commanding officer in a few years if anyone listens to me. What would you do to start this ship’s reactor and steam plant?”
It was another language for Hornick, another culture, to imagine that he was someone other than the ship’s engineer. He took a deep breath.
“Well, sir, I’d—”
“Tell you what, Walt. Here, sit down right here.” Phillips stood, walked to the end of the table and pulled out the end chair, the chair that was reserved for the captain.
Hornick looked stricken at the thought of sitting in the captain’s chair.
