The Circle (24 page)

“Keep the rudder out of the stops,” muttered Evlin. “Or it'll jam.”

“Mind your rudder. Keep her out of the stops,” he said.

The engine-order telegraph pinged as the order went down. “Mind my rudder, aye.”
Ping, ping.
“Engine room answers, starboard ahead full.”

“Very well.” Sweat tickled his spine. God, he thought, we don't need a jammed rudder tonight. Without control, a ship would fall off, drift helplessly around till she fell into the troughs. Then she'd roll like death itself, gathering energy with each cycle, till she went far enough to capsize.

The red-lighted numerals of the compass were ticking slowly left when another bridge-high sea crashed over the bow, bludgeoning them bodily to starboard before the helmsman could bring her back. The old destroyer reeled, the pilothouse swinging through the sky in great sweeps. Dan clutched the radar as water sprang into his mouth. He thought briefly, for no particular reason, of
Pargo.
Hundreds of miles away by now, and hundreds of feet down. Storms didn't reach down there. They'd be eating ice cream and watching movies, no doubt, wondering why
Ryan
had stayed behind.

“She seems tender, sir,” Evlin was saying to Packer. His words were faint above the clanking clatter of gear aft. “Last time we hit major seas, on the way back from the Med, she seemed to ride better than this.”

“It's the added weight aft. Long moment arm on that hoist. Just like a fat kid on a seesaw.”

“Should I call main control, get another boiler on the line?”

“No. I want to conserve fuel. We should be able to ride this out without going to full power. Have them stand by, though.”

“We haven't ballasted yet, have we, sir?”

He didn't hear the captain's answer to that. Something had broken free aft and was hammering on the hull, a dull, heavy thudding every time they pitched.

“Mr. Lenson,” said Evlin. “Find out what that noise is.”

“Aye aye, sir.” He swallowed scorching bile as
Ryan
flung herself into the air, then fell away, floating his stomach free like the drop of a roller coaster. “Bos'n, go see what that noise is.”

“I don't feel so good, sir.”

“Well, neither do I, Pettus! Do as you're told!”

His guts soared again as the old destroyer hesitated, halfway aloft, then aimed herself suddenly for the bottom two thousand fathoms down. For a moment it seemed she might make it. The sea rumbled like a herd of cattle stampeding below the pilothouse. He heard retching behind him, and turned, to see the quartermaster chief bury his face in the wastebasket.

That did it. He muttered thickly, “Al, you got the conn,” and staggered toward Yardner. They vomited together, tottering back and forth across the deck, leaning into each other like sumo wrestlers, their hands gripping the slimy bucket and each other's clothes. When he came up, gasping, his face was a few feet from someone else's. He stared blearily. “Who's that?”

“Pettus … sir.”

“I told you to check out that … banging.…” Then he doubled again as a fresh accession of nausea racked him. When he looked up, spitting and drooling, the boatswain's mate was gone. “Pitch that overboard,” he said to the quartermaster, who had also straightened and was breathing heavily, his arms flung out against the aft bulkhead like a man crucified.

Wiping his mouth, he dragged himself behind the helmsman.

Coffey had taken over. The black seaman stood before the wheel with his legs straddled wide. The dim glow of the binnacle silhouetted him. He crouched, listening, as the ship debated with herself whether to roll or not. Then, as she decided, flung the wheel to port with all his strength. “Coffey, you doing all right?” Dan asked hoarsely.

“Holdin' out, man.”

“Don't let her get away from you. Let me know if you get tired.”

“Ali X. don't get tired, sir.”

“You ready to take the conn back, Ensign?”

“Uh, yessir, Lieutenant. This is Ensign Lenson; I have the conn.”

A murmured chorus of moans and coughs answered him. Only Coffey's voice sounded strong.

Pettus came back a few minutes later, dripping wet. “What was it?” Dan asked him.

“Whaleboat, sir. Shifting in the chocks. I got a couple of guys and tightened the gripes down.”

“Good work. Look—I'm sorry I yelled at you.”

“No problem, sir. I ain't feeling too good myself.”

Barfing made him feel weak but better. He pressed himself against the helm console and forced his consciousness out along the ship. The bow he could see. The lashings on the tackle were holding, but it looked like the range of motion of the chains was increasing. Still, as long as the brakes held on the wildcat, the stoppers could go and the anchors would still stay aboard. From what he'd overheard, the fish was in danger, and it was too late to hoist it. Well, at least no one would have to go out on the exposed fantail.

He wondered what it was like below. In the berthing compartments, shoehorned full of swaying men in the close, sickening darkness; in the offices—he'd seen publications a foot deep in the ops shack. It must be hell itself in the engine spaces. Worse; neither Dante nor Jonathan Edwards had thrown in fifty-degree rolls.

He gauged the angle of the deck and when it was downhill, let go and slid back to the radar. The screen was solid light, the whole scope face smeared with the sparkling acne of sea return.

The ship snapped back and he grabbed for the overhead. Packer, taken by surprise as he was climbing into his chair, almost fell. Dan caught his arm just in time. The captain settled himself without a word, but Lenson heard the seat belt click.

It was still black-dark when Ohlmeyer relieved him at 2000. He crept below, legs so shaky he had to stop halfway down the enclosed ladder and sit for a few minutes, hugging the handrail as the corridor spun around him in huge slow circles. He wondered where he was heading. His stateroom? Forget it. No point trying to sleep tonight.

The wardroom was a wilderness of tumbled chairs. The drawers had broken open on the sideboard and coffee and sugar and silverware lay scattered across the carpet. Saltshakers and glasses patrolled the slanting deck with each roll, clattering over knives and salad forks like little trains going over switches. Silver, Norden, and Talliaferro sat in a stiff row on the sofa, as if posing for a daguerreotype, their arms gripping the back. Trachsler and Reed and Johnson had lashed chairs down in the corners with light line. “Hello, Dan,” said someone as he came in. “Help yourself to midrats.”

“Very funny.”

“No, ‘Fredo made sandwiches. They're in the reefer.”

“Don't mention food, Rich. Ever again. Please.”

“Have some crackers. That'll settle your stomach,” said Talliaferro. The engineer had filled one black-nailed hand with a sandwich and the other with a glass of powdered milk. He looked exhausted, the pockets under his eyes matching the grease on his coveralls.

A roar of water came from outside and the ship staggered over to starboard. It took him by surprise. Their previous bad rolls had been to port. The chairs began to slide. The fiddleboards on the shelves gave way and magazines, books, and a chess set he'd never seen before cascaded out. The phone sprang free of its holder and extended rigidly on the end of its cord as if being pulled by a ghost. Talliaferro began to slide off the couch and had to decide what to let go of. The sandwich lost. It flew the length of the wardroom parallel to the deck, separating in midair into three separate projectiles. The ham hit Commodore Ryan's portrait, stuck for a moment, then dropped into a corner of the frame.

A splintering crash of crockery came from inside the wardroom galley, followed by screaming in Filipino. Dan closed his eyes, remembering he was the mess treasurer.

“How's things topside, Dan?”

“Holding, sir. I made a tour before I went on and the captain made one around nineteen hundred. We regriped the whaleboat. The fo'c'sle looks okay but the stoppers are working loose.”

“We need to put somebody on it?”

“We've got line, pelican hooks, and the brake. I don't want to send anybody up there in this weather.”

“Not even if it means letting the anchor go?”

“Well, I don't know about that, sir,” he said rather weakly. “I'll keep an eye on it.”

Norden shook his head. The weapons officer was clinging to the sofa with both hands, very pale. “What the hell are we doing here, anyway? We ought to just run for it.”

“What's that mean?” said Talliaferro.

“Oh, nothing. I like to hang around in the dangerous semicircle of extratropical storms. Has he ballasted yet, Ed?”

“No,” said Talliaferro. He took a dainty sip at his milk.

“Shouldn't he?”

“I asked permission to. Service tanks are drawn down to zero. Lot of free surface down there. What's more, we got at least a hundred and fifty tons of ice topside by now.”

“What does that do to metacentric height?” Dan asked him.

“You don't want to hear it, kiddo.”

“It's up to him,” said Norden. “But didn't they lose some of these cans in a typhoon because they weren't ballasted? Those were
Gearings,
weren't they?”

“Why don't you ask him, Rich, if it upsets you so much?”

“Because you're the engineering officer.”

“Then let me and him worry about it,” said Talliaferro.

“So. Everyone taking it easy, eh?”

Bryce had come in in his T-shirt, an unlighted cigarette in his mouth. He described a wavering walk across the deck as
Ryan
began another roll. Dan could tell by the way she gathered herself that this would be a bad one.

Trachsler half-rose. Apparently he meant to offer the XO a seat, but it was a misjudgment. The roll broke his grip on his chair. He staggered forward, lost his footing, and was catapulted onto the wardroom table. He slid down it on his stomach, too startled to brake himself, and went off headfirst into a tangle of chairs at the opposite end. The other officers jumped up, more cautiously, and slid and crawled across the floor toward him. “Ken! You all right?”

“Watch his head.”

“You okay?”

“I think something's busted,” said the damage-control officer. His mouth was strained and uncertain. He held his right arm with his left.

“Can you move your hand?”

“Shit. Shit! I don't think so.”

“Get on the phone, call the bridge. And call sick bay. We need the corpsman here.”

The medic arrived quickly. He'd been up already, he said, a couple of guys had gotten whacked by bunk frames in M Division berthing, and a boilerman had burned himself on a boiler casing. A few minutes later, the 1MC came on.

“This is the captain speaking,” it said. “For the next few hours, we'll be taking heavy rolls in cross seas. Exercise caution moving about the ship. Stay in your berthing compartments if at all possible.”

Dan upended his chair, which had fallen on its side, and took another turn around it with the line. “Is it like this often?” he asked Reed.

“Well, we hit one coming back from the Med that was pretty hairy. We figured twenty-, twenty-five-foot seas max that time. But this here's already as rough as I've seen it, and as the eye approaches—”

Talliaferro got up, clinging to the back of the couch. “I'm going up to the bridge. We got to ballast, right now.”

“Be careful, Ed.”

After the engineer left the conversation lagged. The ship continued pitching, varying it by flinging herself sharply to port and starboard and hanging there for endless seconds before staggering back. Spray or rain drummed on the hull. Dan wondered vaguely what was going on topside, but was too sick and weak to go find out. He clung to the chair with bruised arms and legs, far from sleep, but passing moment to moment from half dream to an exhausted semi-consciousness.

At 2330, the phone squealed. Then someone was calling his name. He coughed and rubbed his eyes, coming back from a confused, nauseated dream of Pennsylvania hills rolling in a heavy green sea.

“Dan! You hear me?”

“I'm coming, goddamn it,” he grunted, unwrapping his aching arms and legs, understanding at last through the groggy sick tiredness that once again it was his turn on watch.

12

STILL half asleep, Dan hauled himself through the flickering, slanting corridors like a disoriented ape. A hundred feet aft through the port passageway, past the gunners' workshop and armory, past the department office and Norden's stateroom. Grab his gear, rub his face with a mildew-smelling towel, then forward again in the dim red light past Radio III and the Dash equipment room, Repair 3, the electrical workshop, all of them closed, the corridors of the sleeping ship empty, empty.

His mouth tasted like a used bedpan. He bent to a scuttlebutt, but the button brought forth only a hiss of air. A sudden rapid tattoo drummed above him like an automatic wash on the roof of a car. He realized with a shudder that it was coming down on the Asroc deck between the stacks. Seas that heavy on the 01 level …

Forward, staggering as the passageway rolled till he had to support himself with his arms … empty as the sewers of Paris, and as dark … the spray roared above him. Past ship's office and sick bay, the smells of electricity and disinfectant and steam were joined by the ghosts of departed donkey dicks, sauerkraut, two generations of stale cigarette smoke and rancid grease from the empty mess decks.
Ryan
dropped into a hole with a crash that quivered the steel under his feet. He reached the starboard side, grabbed the hand-smoothed dogging bar, and yanked it up.

And realized instantly he'd screwed up. He should've come up the port side. This way led to a ladder, but on the weather decks.

The heavy steel door blew open suddenly, driven by air pressure like a cork from a popgun.