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is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.'" He
looked at Bonnett. "Paul wrote that to the Romans two thousand years ago."
"A pretty wise fellow," said Bonnett.
A bos'n's whistle sounded at the head of the dock. A swifty crane came darting up to take away the
boarding ramp. Ratings hurried to attach the hooks, looked inquiringly at the two officers.
Men hurried along the pier, a new purposefulness in their movements. Sparrow swept his gaze over the
scene. "We're being asked to perform," he said. He gestured for Bonnett to precede him up the ramp.
"Like the man said: Let's get with it"
They climbed to the conning tower. Bonnett ducked for the cable rack which mounted the float for their
TV periscope. As a matter of routine, he glanced at the housing, saw that it was secured for dive. He
grasped the ladder arms, slid down into the subtug.
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Sparrow remained topside. Around him, the mooring basin appeared a vast lake. He looked at the rock
ceiling's blackness.
There should be stars, he thought. Men should get one last look at stars before they go under the sea.
On the pier below, scurrying figures moved to cast off the magnetic grapples. For a moment, Sparrow
felt like a useless pawn being thrown into a sacrifice position. There had been a time, he knew, when
captains conned their vessels away from the dock, shouting orders through a megaphone. Now, it was all
automatic -- done by machines and by men who were like machines.
A surface tug swung up to their bow, slapped its tow grapples onto them. White water boiled from
beneath the tug's stern. The Fenian Ram resisted momentarily, as though reluctant to leave, then began a
slow, ponderous movement out into the basin.
They cleared the slot, and another tug slid alongside their stern. The magna-shoe men leaped onto the
Ram's silencer planes, hitched the tow and guide cables of the long plastic tube which stretched out
across the dark water of the basin. Their shouts came up to Sparrow in the tower like the clear noise of
children. He tasted a sudden oil-tainted breeze and knew they had crossed the path of a ventilator duct.
No special fanfare, no brass bands, no ceremony for the departure of a raider, he thought. We are as a
reed shaken with the wind. And what go we out into the wilderness to see? No John the Baptist awaits
us. But it's a kind of baptism all the same.
Somewhere in the darkness a klaxon hooted. Turn and identify the man next to you. Another Security
scheme: Show your identification when the horn sounds. Damn Security! Out here I identify myself to my
God and none other.
Sparrow looked astern at the set of the tow. Oil. War demanded the pure substance born in the
sediment of rising continents. Vegetable oil wouldn't do. War was no vegetarian. War was a carnivore.
The tow tug shifted to the side of the Ram and now the sub was being nosed into the traveler rack which
would carry it down to the underwater canyon and the gulf.
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Sparrow looked at the control console in the conning tower, and the green clear-away light. He flashed
the standby signal to the tug below him and, with a practiced motion, touched the controls to retract the
tower. It slid smoothly into the sub, its plasteel lid twisting into the groove seats.
A chest microphone hung beside the tower console. Sparrow slipped it on, spoke into it: "Rig for dive."
He focused his attention on the dive board in front of him.
Back came Bonnett's voice, robbed of life by the metallic mutes of the intercom: "Pressure in the hull."
One by one, the lights on Sparrow's dive board shifted from red to green. "Green board," he said.
"Stand by." Now he could feel the hull pressure and another pressure in his stomach. He closed the signal
circuit which told the outside crews that the subtug was ready to go down tunnel.
The Ram shifted, lurched. A dull clang resonated through the boat. Across the top of the dive board
amber lights flashed: they were in the grip of the tunnel elevator. Twenty hours of free ride.
Sparrow grasped a handhold beside the dive board, swung down and out onto the engine-room [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]