Mayo stretched and watched the helmsman. ‘Yes, sir. Course one seven five. Revs for twenty-five knots.’

  Oxley wrote rapidly in the log. It was somehow final.

  Jermain waited a moment longer. Gone was the wind and choppy sea. Here all was calm and ordered. He felt a sensation of inner pride in this machinery-crammed world.

  He said, ‘Make a signal to escort. Will proceed as scheduled. Thank you and goodbye,’ He watched the signalman writing busily. ‘No, scrub out that “goodbye”. Better make it “until next time”.’

  The deck trembled suddenly as the power began to increase. The build-up of speed would carry them clear of the busy traffic lanes, down to the open sea of the Atlantic and still further south.

  ‘Up periscope.’ He leaned his forehead against the rubber pad and peered through the powerful lenses. He saw the little escort turning stoically through a black-sided roller. Her shape blurred even as he watched. By nightfall she would be tied up at her berth, her crew scattered through the bars and cinemas.

  ‘Signal from escort, sir. “Bon voyage and keep clear of dinghies!”’

  Jermain smiled wearily. ‘Down periscope. Secure radar.’ He looked across at Wolfe. ‘Take her down to eighty feet and fall out diving stations. Commence passage routine.’

  Fiske, the petty officer cook, raised his head through the hatch and blinked at the activity. In a stage whisper he asked, ‘Is it all right to get the lamb chops goin’?’

  Oxley stared at him and said, ‘Plenty of gravy, Chef.’

  The cook vanished. For him the business of diving was just a plain inconvenience.

  *  *  *

  Jermain finished writing his personal diary as Ross leaned inwards through the cabin door and said, ‘Running like a dream. I just wondered if you were going to perform the usual rite?’

  Jermain smiled and gestured to the cupboard. ‘Help yourself, Chief. That was a pretty good dive.’

  Ross poured two horses’ necks and stood them on the deck. He pointed at them and exclaimed, ‘Look at that! Not a quiver!’

  ‘Cheers!’ Jermain tilted the glass. Probably the last one before Singapore. ‘We’d better go to lunch, Chief. There are a few points I want to discuss with you this afternoon about store space.’ He looked up as Lieutenant Kitson, the electrical officer, hovered awkwardly in the entrance.

  Kitson was a thickset, sad-looking man who appeared too clumsy for the task of controlling every electrical device and supervising many hundreds of miles of wiring which fed the boat like arteries. Yet he was as alert as he was busy, and even found the time to act as the Temeraire’s entertainments and sports officer. The latter duty was almost as demanding as the first. To keep the men fit and free from boredom the boat was equipped with films and taped music, as well as keep-fit devices and a whole cabinet of correspondence courses which covered just about everything from gardening to public speaking.

  Jermain grinned. ‘Not now. If one of your lads has broken the rowing machine it’ll just have to wait till one of the artificers can fix it!’

  Kitson did not smile. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I must speak to you.’

  Ross stood up and drained his glass. ‘I’ll be off.’

  ‘No, Chief. This may concern you too.’ Kitson shifted uncomfortably.

  Jermain eyed him steadily. ‘Well, what is it?’

  ‘I’ve just finished my rounds, sir.’ He held out his gloved hand across which there was a smear of fresh paint. ‘I found this on the steering circuit, just forrard of the reactor control compartment.’

  Ross scowled. ‘So what? Christ, with all the dockyard mateys we’ve had aboard, I’m surprised there’s any paint at all!’

  Kitson swallowed hard. ‘The paint was over the circuit wiring, sir.’

  Jermain leaned forward. ‘Just what are you telling me?’

  ‘The paint was put there deliberately, sir.’ He looked as if he was-going to be sick. ‘Underneath it the wires were half sawn through!’

  Ross trembled. ‘Do you know what you’re saying, man?’

  Kitson faced him stubbornly. ‘The paint was still wet. There have been no strangers aboard for twenty-four hours.’

  Jermain stared past him, his eyes empty of expression. ‘Thank you. Carry on to your lunch now, will you? I don’t have to tell you to keep quiet about this.’

  When Kitson had gone Ross exploded, ‘God Almighty, he’s saying it’s one of the crew! That would be sabotage!’

  Jermain pushed away the half-empty glass. ‘An ugly word, Chief. I’ll have to think about it.’

  3

  Taking the Strain

  Lieutenant-Commander Ian Wolfe walked wearily into the deserted wardroom and stared for several seconds at the table. He had just completed the 1800 to 2000 watch in the control rooni, yet somehow the thought of food and rest seemed to jar on his nerves. The long table was laid for two only. For himself and his watchkeeping companion, Sub-Lieutenant Colquhoun. Every officer did two hours on watch and six off, working in pairs. Apart from the doctor, and Luard, the supply officer, no one was exempt, and even Ross and Kitson, the electrical officer, stood their watches in addition to their other duties. The latter seemed to enjoy the change, and kept their watches alive with questions and playful mistakes as they grappled with the mysteries of navigation and seamanship.

  Wolfe slumped in a chair and heard Baldwin, the senior steward, stirring into action behind his pantry hatch. It was hard to get used to the wardroom’s sudden emptiness after the dose-knit world of conventional submarines. Here there were double cabins for the officers, places where they could hide their faces from their companions and find moments of peace.

  Colquhoun entered the wardroom and sat at the other side of the table, an old magazine already open at his side. Wolfe watched him thoughtfully and pondered back over the last seven days. Seven days since leaving the Gareloch, many hours of silent running south and further south, while the daily routine went on, and the captain put the boat through one exerdse and drill after another.

  When Wolfe had handed over the watch to Lieutenant Oxley the Temeraire’s position had been off the West African coast, two hundred miles from Senegal, while to the east lay the Cape Verde Islands. Nearly three and a half thousand miles since they had last seen the Scottish hills, yet with little or nothing to show any change.

  Every day of the voyage Jermain would bring the boat up to periscope depth, and only the brief glimpse through the powerful lenses would show any sort of difference. Gone were the short, steep waves of the Irish Sea, the great, sullen rollers of the Atlantic. Now the sea was bright blue and unbroken, with a sky which was so clear it seemed to mock at their stealthy passage.

  At first there had always been a queue of seamen to peer through the periscopes on such occasions, but now there were hardly any who seemed interested. This was their world, and they were looking inwards, at each other, at themselves. Even now, in the lower crew space, there was a cinema show taking place, which accounted for the air of desertion. Jules Verne would never have visualised such an improbability, Wolfe thought. The big, whale-shaped submarine gliding through the dark water at some twenty knots while her crew whistled and jeered at the exploits of an escapist film show.

  Baldwin pattered into the wardroom and placed some soup on the table. Wolfe sipped slowly and watched his silent companion. Nerves were getting tense already, and there had been several small outbreaks of temper. The captain never let up on the drills, and Wolfe guessed that it was partly to keep the men from getting bored, as well as his own way of carrying on with tests and trials left over from the curtailed working-up exercises.

  Wolfe’s thoughts kept returning to the unknown saboteur. The idea of such a man sharing his every hour aboard grated on his mind like a saw. And the more he thought about it, the more he found himself watching Colquhoun.

  Ever since the young officer’s first outburst when Jermain had confirmed the sailing orders Wolfe had watched him and worried. He had pondered on Colquhoun’s friendship with the C.N.D. demonstrators, and added to it his belief that Colquhoun was in real fear of going to Singapore, where his father was a very senior officer.

  Colquhoun looked tired and pale, and his eyes were only moving slowly across the open magazine, as if he was incapable of making the effort to read.

  Jermain had approached the problem very carefully. He had spoken to each officer, and to all the senior ratings. It was to be kept quiet, a close watch was to be maintained and, above all, everything was to carry on as normal. It was unlikely that the culprit would strike again yet. His own life would be in danger, too. But once in Singapore anything might happen.

  In spite of every precaution, however, Wolfe had sensed a difference in the boat. In the Navy the lower-deck telegraph was usually very active. Here, confined within the Black Pig’s fat hull, the rumours moved quietly and uneasily, like an unseen gas.

  Cruising on the surface it might have been different, Wolfe decided. A touch of spray, the sight of another ship, no matter how distant, would take the edge off the tension. But the Temeraire was not just a submersible boat, she was a submarine. She was built to stay under water, and her speed and manoeuvrability depended on it.

  He looked up at the brightly coloured reproduction of Turner’s Fighting Temer aire which hung facing him on the opposite bulkhead. It depicted the old ship of the line being towed up the Thames to the breaker’s yard in 1838. She was being towed by a steam tug, and Wolfe wondered if people shook their heads then over the change from sail to coal, as they did over nuclear power. It again reminded him of Colquhoun’s quiet evasiveness that night on the pier, and he heard himself say sharply, ‘I suppose you’ll see your father when we reach Singapore?’

  Colquhoun did not look up. ‘I expect so, Number One.’

  He could feel Wolfe watching him like a cat, and he had to force himself to stare blindly at the open pages. Each swing of the Temeraire’s big screw was carrying him closer and closer. He had not seen his father for nearly a year, and even although he knew the separation could not last for ever, he had enjoyed every minute of it.

  Colquhoun was the vice-admiral’s only son. Like all his remembered ancestors it was expected that he too would enter the Navy as the only career. Colquhoun had fought his father right up to the last. He had never wanted to follow in his foot steps, and the conflict of wills leading up to bis own final capitulation had broadened his resentment into hatred.

  His father had been a submarine ace in the Second World War, yet it was hard to think of him as ever being young like Oxley, or Drew. It was equally difficult to compare him with Jermain’s calm composure, or any of the other commanding officers he had met.

  He glanced quickly across at Wolfe. He could well imagine his father being something like him, he thought bitterly.

  Wolfe seemed to be two persons. Watchful and competent one minute, then giving way to short bursts of violent sarcasmj just like his father.

  He thought about the dinghy escapade and the girl, Julie, who had nearly lost her life in the mad seconds before she was hauled aboard. He would just have to forget her now. Before, with the submarine going from the Gareloch or from Rosyth it had been easy to see her, to make the most of her exciting company. But she moved with a group, and Colquhoun tortured himself a little longer as he thought of her at this moment. Probably laughing and dancing with one of the others, while he might already be a faded memory.

  They had met at the little club in Rosyth, a place frequented by students and others like Colquhoun who sought after their true identities. He had known it was wrong to tell them about the Temeraire’s sailing time, but how was he to know that her destination was Singapore and not Rosyth as originally planned?

  He felt the cold resentment and hostility welling up as he saw Wolfe studying him with those grey, empty eyes. Perhaps he imagined that he had committed the sabotage! Colquhoun felt like laughing. It was probably a poor sailor who did not want to leave his wife, or some fool working off an old, vague grievance. It never failed to annoy him. The way that some people reacted to these small acts of wilful damage. It never seemed to occur to anyone that these clean and tidy ratings who said ‘Aye, aye, sir’ and saluted you at the right moments, who were competent and skilled at their jobs, had any problems of their own. Only occasionally, when a man came to his particular officer and asked his advice about mortgages, an unfaithful wife, about promotion prospects or changing his religion did the hidden part of the iceberg show itself.

  Colquhoun pushed the picture of the unknown culprit from his thoughts and considered how he would react when he again met his father.

  Vice-Admiral Sir John Colquhoun, a compact, steely-eyed man who seemed so like the many framed paintings of past Colquhouns in the old Hampshire home which had been in the family for generations. Before Nelson had joined the Navy, before the Dutch had sailed insolently up the Thames, there had been a Colquhoun in the Service. Now, in his fifties, the admiral seemed as far off and unreal as one of those paintings.

  Colquhoun could remember his father’s rage when he had found him at home during his very first leave from Dartmouth. He had been reading a book about ballet, but if he had been studying a work of absolute filth and depravity his father could not have appeared more furious.

  ‘My God! What sort of a son have I produced? You’re too spineless for a son of mine!’ And so on and so forth.

  Colquhoun usually gave in, if only for his mother’s sake. She was quiet and frail, unable any longer to withstand the admiral’s sudden changes of temperament.

  He did not really know why he had entered the submarine service. Whether it was because or in spite of his father’s past record was a point he could not decide. His mother had said, ‘Your father will be proud of you, Max.’ But the admiral had been strangely silent on the matter. Did he perhaps see his son’s progress as some sort of challenge? It was indeed odd to realise that only within the same service had Colquhoun been able to show any sort of independence from his father.

  He could well imagine what he would have thought of Julie. Like all his other girl friends, Colquhoun thought bitterly. The admiral used such words as decadent and gutless, and a disgrace to their country! He seemed to expect the whole country to be permanently under arms.

  Colquhoun realised that Wolfe was saying, ‘I thought your sonar department was a bit sloppy this morning. Sub. If we’re called on to go into some sort of action you’ll not get any second chances!’

  Colquhoun kept his face non-committal. There had been another drill involving both the sonar and T.A.S. departments, and one of his men, a young seaman named Lightfoot, had made a complete hash of his settings. The result had been swift and disturbing. All the little pent-up tensions had flared and died like star shells, with yoice-pipes and intercom snapping and barking complaints and reprimands until the error was sorted out and rectified.

  He replied carefully, ‘Lieutenant Oxley was in charge. He didn’t seem too worried.’

  ‘Covering up for you, I shouldn’t wonder!’ Wolfe seemed to control himself with an effort. ‘Just keep an eye on your men in future. They don’t respect softness.’

  The first lieutenant stood up suddenly and walked from the wardroom.

  Alone at the table Colquhoun stayed staring after him. When he gets a command of his own, that’s one submarine I’ll not join, he thought grimly.

  *  *  *

  Two decks below Colquhoun’s lonely table the second crew space was equally quiet, and for a normally crowded compartment almost deserted.

  It was crossed and lined by tiers of neat bunks and brightly enamelled lockers, and piped music insinuated itself from the tannoy loudspeakers at either end. Several seamen were sitting in their underwear around one of the tables intent on the serious game of uckers, and another solitary sailor was carving a model ship from a piece of wood.

  Ordinary Seaman John Lightfoot lay in his bunk, his hands behind his head, and tried to make himself fall asleep. Through an open hatch in the deckhead he could hear the crack of gunfire and the muffled thunder of horses as the main body of the crew settled down to enjoy the Western in the main crew space.

  Lightfoot was twenty years old, with wide eyes and a troubled mouth which added to his appearance of nervous expectancy. He tried to turn his mind away from his nagging, insistent apprehension, and he was almost inclined to leave the bunk and join the others at the table.

  It was seven days since he had tried to cut through the wiring. Seven wretched and fearful days of waiting to be discovered and unmasked in front of the others. But although rumour passed upon rumour, nothing had happened. Sometimes he imagined that people were watching him, speaking about him behind his back and waiting for him to slip up. Innocent remarks became barbed and full of meaning. Casual comment could become immediately suspect. Nervously, like a badly injured man feeling the extent of his wounds, Lightfoot explored the terrible events which had driven him to an act of sabotage.

  From the film show above he imagined he could hear a familiar laugh, and he felt the tears of anger and shame pricking his eyes like needles. Able Seaman Bruce, the tough, devil-may-care Scouse from the dock area of Liverpool who had started him on this nightmare train of events.

  Unlike Bruce and the majority of the crew Lightfoot was a ‘pressed’ man. He had been happy in general service, but like many others of the sonar branch had been forced into the submarine fleet without consultation. The submarine service was growing too rapidly to depend on volunteers, and Lightfoot had found himself installed in the unnatural surroundings of submarine life for a period of five years.

  His early misgivings had given way to awe and pride, and within a few weeks he had settled down completely. A Londoner, Lightfoot bad rarely made the long journey south from the Gareloch when his brief leaves became due. He had been content to wander around the strange Scottish countryside, which in itself was as different to him as the submarine herself.

  His home was in Battersea, that soot-encrusted area of decaying buildings which sprawled between the great railway yards of Clapham Junction and the Thames. The place was slow to change even in the face of the advancing blocks of soulless council flats, and the Lightfoot family had survived want and unemployment, wars and personal unrest in the same street for four generations. In his mind’s eye he could see his mother, old before her time, in the peeling kitchen of the little terraced house. It was sandwiched between one of the many railway arches and a soap factory, and when the fast trains went through the junction every piece of furniture would rattle and a fine film of dust would defy even his mother’s busy efforts.