“Skipper, it would be my pleasure,” Hornick said, clamping his own cigar between his teeth. “You give me a half-hour and I’ll give you main engine shaft horsepower, all fifty-seven thousand of them.” Phillips clapped Hornick on the back. “Good man, you let me know.” He winked at Hornick and ducked through the tunnel hatch and vanished. Hornick smiled, shaking his head, then walked quickly aft to the maneuvering room. The reactor tunnel’s forward hatch opened out into the forward compartment middle level. After the bright lights of the engineering spaces, the forward compartment’s red lights seemed strange. Phillips followed a dogleg in the passageway to a central passage that went past his and Whatney’s staterooms to port, the electronics rooms — radio and countermeasures — to starboard, the passageway stopping at a door labeled control ROOM — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Phillips Went in, the space crowded with watchstanders, and hot. The room was larger than the Greeneville’s control room, but even though Piranha’ control space was the full width of the ship, over forty feet wide, it still seemed cramped. “Navigator, sounding please!” Phillips shouted, the cigar still clamped in his teeth. “Forty-nine fathoms, sir.”
“Close enough.
Offsa’deck, where’s the officer of the deck?”
“Here, sir.” Meritson’s voice was muffled as he was hugging the thick periscope module of the type-twenty periscope, the scope extending from the overhead all the way to the well in the deck of the periscope stand. The module would be hot, at least 105 degrees from the electronics it bristled with. An hour at the periscope would leave the front of a man’s shirt wet with sweat — the reason periscope time was known as “dancing with the fat lady.”
“Status, please.”
“Yes sir, the bridge is rigged for dive, control is in the control room, I have the watch, ship is rigged for dive with the exception of the forward escape trunk hatch. I have two men topside ready to cast off the tug line on your orders.”
“Very well, coordinate with the tug, come to all stop and cast off the tugline.”
“Aye, sir.”
Phillips was beginning to smell progress now. It took five minutes, but finally Piranha was officially on her own, on her diesel engine, her reactor still in a coma, but without tugs.
“Offsa’deck, submerge the ship to snorkel depth,” Phillips called. The order began a flurry of activity. A phone talker called for Phillips.
“Captain, Engineer on the one-jay-vee phone.”
Phillips reached for the phone. “Captain.”
“Engineer, sir. Reactor’s critical, performing an emergency heatup now.”
“Excellent, Eng. How did it go? Any overpowering?”
“No, Sir, it came right up to one decade per minute, just like you said.”
“I didn’t say anything, Eng, that’s your startup. Remember that, Walt. Now, how long till you’re answering bells on the mains?”
“We’re at thirty degrees per minute, that’s about twelve minutes to the green band, then we’ll warm the steam plant. I’d say another twenty minutes.”
“Battery?”
“Holding up, but don’t give it more than four knots.”
“Aye. Hurry up, Eng.”
“Yes sir.”
Phillips found a seat in the captain’s chair aft of the periscope stand, the “conn,” from which the ship was controlled. It would be a long night, he thought.
Submerging without the reactor! The last thing he thought he’d be doing with the newest ship in the fleet, but then, if it kept him from being peeked at by the Galaxy satellites so much the better. He settled back into the chair and watched Meritson submerge the ship, the vessel sinking slowly into the Atlantic as the main ballast tanks gave up the air. Soon, he thought, he’d be driving on nuclear power. He waited, puffing the cigar.
The deck trembled with the power of the main engines at flank speed. Capt. David Kane walked into the wardroom, crowded with officers waiting for his briefing.
