The survivor Read online

  "So one day we were having this inspection. You know, you take all your gear—the whole works— and lay it out for the DI to inspect. There's only one way to lay it out and that's the Marine Corps way. No other way. So the DI came along, and when he got to this fellow's gear the fellow had his bayonet lying the wrong way. So the DI said, 'Jenkins,'-that was this fellow's name—your bayonet should be lying this way.' So Jenkins picked up the bayonet, but instead of laying it down the way it should be, he swung around with the bayonet and drove it right through the DI's leg, up above the knee. AU the way through, so we could see half that bayonet sticking out the other side of the DI's leg.

  "Well," Jason said, still wondering about it, "the rest of us thought 'Look out!' We thought the roof was going to fall on him and the ground open up and swallow him, and there was going to be lightning and thunder, and this fellow Jenkins would wind up obhterated. Because you just don't pick up a bayonet and ram it through a DI's leg. You don't do that.

  "You know what the DI did?" Jason asked, but before Adam could answer he said, "Nothing. That DI didn't do anything. It's hard to beHeve it, even for me who saw him, but he just stood there without even changing his expression. He didn't show any pain, any surprise, any anger. Nothing!

  After a while he reached down and pulled the bayonet out of his leg. And then you know what he did? He wiped the bayonet oflF and put it down the way it was supposed to be in the first place, and then he straightened up and said to this Jenkins-he said it just like he said everything—he said, 'Jenkins, you and I had better go see the doctor/ We never saw that Jenkins again. I guess the head-shrinkers figured out he was a nut or something. But next day that DI was back with us, and he never said a word about it. He was the first real marine I ever saw," Jason said.

  "The most dangerous weapon in the world is a United States marine with his rifle,** one of them said, in a loud voice and then broke up laughing.

  It started them all laughing, and they were laughing and yakldng when, all of a sudden, the chiefs voice came down on them like thunder. ''Silencer

  It was so loud, so commanding, and so unexpected that for a second the marines went along with it. Then Rebel said, "Now, Chiefy, what's ailin* you?**

  The chief swung aroimd on him and said, *'Shut upr

  This time they all knew that he meant it, and they were silent as they sat there looking at the chief for some explanation.

  The chief was standing in the middle of the torpedo room, leaning a little to his right. His eyes were closed, his mouth a little open, his body

  motionless. Then, without opening his eyes, he walked on tiptoe a few paces and stopped.

  Now the marines heard the sound the chief had heard.

  Ordinarily there were a great many sounds in the torpedo room. Even submerged, with the motors running, there were sounds. Sounds of the motors and auxiharies, sounds of people working, or changing the watch; commands, conversation, music; the sounds of cooking in the galley, of cleaning up. A great many sounds, all blending finally into a steady level sound which, in a little while, you no longer heard.

  When the boat was on the surface at night there were more and different sounds. The diesels made a heavy, throbbing sound and the sea itself made sounds—the waves crashing against the bow of the boat could be clearly heard inside the torpedo room, and if it rained, that could be heard tattooing on the deck above their heads.

  However, when the boat was submerged there was no sound at all from the outside world. No sound at all came from the water around them.

  So now this sound coming from outside the boat was so unusual that it was frightening.

  To Adam it sounded as though someone outside the boat, in the sea, was scraping the steel hull of the submarine with something else made of metal. It was a clear, close sound, not very loud; not with any force, just a metallic scraping.

  The chief yanked the phone out of its cradle on the wall and yelled, "Conl Con! Something's touch-

  ing the boat. Starboardside, forward. Sounds like metal."

  The reaction in the conning tower was instantaneous, the voice of the skipper saying, "Stop all engines! . . . All back, one third . . . All stop."

  Adam, who, with the marines, had unconsciously-got up on his feet, stood now staring at the loudspeaker. As the boat came to a stop in the water the sound also stopped.

  "I don't hear it," the chief said into the phone.

  The skipper's voice now came over the loudspeaker. "Give me a reading, sound."

  "A hundred fathoms, sir."

  ''Quiet in the boatl" the skipper said. "Shut down everything."

  AU the familiar sounds began to disappear. The hum of the electric motors stopped, the httle whines of the auxiliaries dropped in pitch and stopped. The sound of working, cooking, music—everything— stopped. It was the quietest place Adam had ever been in.

  In the wardroom ten of the combat marines, the colonel, and the major sat crowded together in motionless silence, their eyes too fixed on the loudspeaker, which was now a silent metal grille set into the wall.

  In the motor-control room the electricians* mates stood without moving, hardly breathing. In front of them a bank of three-foot-long brass-handled levers which controlled the electric circuits of the motors shone oilily in the bright light. The hands of the

  men were poised near the levers, ready to move whenever the order came.

  In the motor room the motormacs on duty stood near the switchboards, their eyes running nervously over the maze of wires and circuit breakers, gauges and dials.

  In the crew's quarters, the engine room, the radio shack, the galley, the after torpedo room, in the officers' quarters and control room, men stood, waiting, listening . . . silent.

  In the conning tower the skipper, moving without a sound, got to the phone and said, almost whispering, "What do you hear, chief?''

  In the forward torpedo room the chiefs voice, also whispering, sounded, in that silence, almost loud and rasping, "I don't hear it now, sir."

  *T*sfow, hear this, all hands," the skipper said, his voice coming low and quiet through the loudspeakers. "Let's back her out of here. Very slowly. Straight back the way we came in. You men on the planes . . . keep her absolutely level. Helmsman, you hold her straight when she begins to move. Stand by to move her."

  In the torpedo room Adam looked around at the chief and the marines, and for some reason it reminded him of that tense, awful silence that came when you first saw your paper at a big exam in school and read the terrible questions they had asked you.

  The skipper's voice came over, real low and steady, "Okay, all back. Just turn 'em over, mac. But keep 'em even."

  The low humming of the electric motors began, breaking the deep silence in the boat. Adam could feel a slow, slow gentle backward movement begin.

  And with the movement the sound of metal touching the boat on the outside began again, also.

  Now the sound was a terrible thing to hear. An unknown and awful sound.

  *lt's touching us," the chief said into the phone.

  There was no answer from con, no sound from the speaker.

  Adam felt sweat running through his eyebrows and down into his eyes. He let it run, not moving anything except his eyehds, as the rasping, metalHc sound continued.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. There was now no sound except the low hum of the motors.

  *Tt's stopped,** the chief said.

  Then a faint voice came over the speaker, a voice not talking into the microphone—just talking. "I can t hold her. Skipper," the voice said, "the stem's swinging to starboard."

  The chief said into the phone, 'Whatever it is must be caught in the bow plane. Skipper. I don't hear anything now."

  The faint voice said over the speaker, *lt feels like she's caught in something."

  The skipper's voice came loud and clear, **Rig in the starboard bow plane."

  It was the last thing he said.

  Adam listening to the sound of
the bow-plane motor as it slowed against the pressure of the big

  plane moving through the water. Then there was the sound inside the boat of the plane's hinges slowly closing, metal moving on metal.

  The chief had explained to Adam how the bow-planes worked. They were Hke the fins on a fish. Submerged, the planes were unfolded outward into the water, long, flat planes which you could turn on an axis to create pressure either on top or bottom of the plane's surface. This way they kept the boat moving level through the water.

  On the surface, the bow-planes were rigged infolded back into slots in the hull of the submarine, so that they did not break her streamhned form.

  The starboard bow plane was moving now, folding back toward the hollowed-out place in the hull.

  Adam was used to this sound and waited now for the water>' clunk noise the plane would make when it moved into place and was locked there by some mechanism.

  Instead of the clunk the next sound Adam heard was so huge and unexpected that it was not a sound at all. It was a force.

  The deafening explosion jerked the room out from under them and then shook it violently. The last thing Adam saw before the Hghts went out was the torpedo room fiUed with floating bodies. Bodies of marines, sprawled out in the air, of rifles flying around, packs and canteens floating in space.

  This is a Mickey Mouse, Adam thought, as he found that he too was afloat in the air. A cartoon where one character bops another character and the whole world explodes. Lights, colors, whirHgigs

  flash and spin. People go winging off into space, zooming away until they are only little dots. Vast holes appear in the ground and mountains collapse into rubble.

  As he fell, the great sound around him subsided slowly, so that he could hear a multitude of other sounds, none of them familiar.

  It was now black-dark in the torpedo room. Adam struck something on his way down, bounced off it, and struck again, this time the floor. He was trying to get up when someone else landed on him and smashed him back to the deck. Then other things rained down on him.

  **Tum on the Hghts," Adam yelled, trying to get free of the body on top of him, but nothing happened.

  Men were yelling and cursing; some of them were hurt. Adam got back on his feet and stumbled toward the emergency light switch near the door. But now the torpedo room was moving again, not as violently as before, but moving, tilting upward. The movement threw Adam down. He got up and went on, stepping on someone as he moved.

  Above the sound of the men yelling for the lights, for each other, or just plain yelling, Adam could hear other sounds beyond the wall of the torpedo room but could not make them out.

  The dim red emergency lights came on when he moved the switch. The torpedo room was wild. Half-naked marines were trying to get up, or stay up, their arms and legs waving around in the dim light. All their gear was moving around on the

  floor, rifles skidding along, packs rolling, canteens and helmets bouncing down toward Adam.

  The deck of the torpedo room was dropping out from under them and the front end, where the tubes were, was rising.

  As it rose the men could no longer keep their balance, and fell or rolled back down toward the wall.

  Adam, already there, watched. Because he could see nothing beyond the room the only way he knew that it was tilting upward was the pull of gravity. As the front end went on up Adam simply stepped out on the wall. Soon, from the feel of it, Adam guessed that the submarine was now hanging straight up and down in the water, the front end straight up.

  A marine was yelling, **We're going down! We're going down." Nobody paid any attention to him until he started fighting his way toward the door, pushing people aside, throwing the gear around. "I'm getting outta here," he yelled. "Get out of my way! Open the doorl"

  Guns caught him and pinned his arms. "Shape up or ship out," he snapped. "Don't rush the situation."

  Now the torpedo room began to turn slowly around. You couldn't see it, but you could feel it —not a smooth turning; rather a twisting, slow movement.

  The marines who could get up were standing with Adam on the wall. Others, hurt, were still lying in the tangle of gear.

  'Where's the chief?" Adam asked. "Chiefl" he yelled.

  But there was only the babble of voices. "What's happening?" "What hit us?" "We're sinking." "Do something!" And one marine kept saying in a monotonous voice, "Where's my rifle? Anybody seen my rifle?"

  Adam tried to shut out the noise the marines were making, hoping to hear again the old familiar sounds—the motors whining, remote voices over the loudspeaker, the ordinary faint sounds of the boat.

  Instead he heard first a wet, steady, hissing sound coming from somewhere outside and below him. This kept up while other sounds—metals grinding together, small, mufiled explosions, creaking and banging—came and went.

  As the room continued to twist slowly around, Adam noticed that the telephone was off the hook and was swinging back and forth on its cord, hitting against the torpedo tube, then bouncing away, to swing and whirl around.

  Maybe somebody's trying to say something, Adam thought. Maybe I ought to answer it.

  He started climbing up the deck toward the torpedo tubes above him. Jason said, "Where are you going, Adam?"

  "To answer the phone," Adam told him, climbing up along the torpedo racks. Leaning out from the rack he caught the phone as it swung like a pendulum toward him. "Hello," he said. "Hello? Anybody there?"

  There was no answer and the phone sounded dead. Then Adam felt stupid when he noticed the push-to-talk button. He pushed it down and said, "HeUo? Hello?"

  The phone still sounded dead. He shook it, listened, pushed the button. *'Hello. Conning tower. Control? Anybody! This is the forward torpedo room. Do you read me? Do you read me?" He let the button up and listened. The phone was dead.

  Adam was trying to hang it back in its cradle when he was suddenly and violently jerked loose from the torpedo rack and flung down. As he fell he could see the other men staggering and falling.

  The noise around him as he fell was tremendous, but not hke the first great sound. This was slow and long drawn out, the sound of metal grinding on rock or coral, or metal bending and breaking, more and louder small explosions.

  Adam landed on his hands and knees on a pile of gear and some marines, and wasn't hurt.

  Now the torpedo room started moving in a different direction. Slowly the front end came down. The marines who were still on their feet walked down off the wall and out onto the deck as, at last, the room stopped moving down. For a moment longer it rolled a little from side to side as though trying to find a comfortable place to rest, and then all movement stopped.

  For a Httle while longer the sounds outside went on, but then they too stopped and there was, at last, silence.

  Adam pulled himself to his feet by the handle

  which locked the door and looked around. "I think we're on the bottom," he said. "Where's the chief?"

  They didn't know. Slowly (and he wondered why he had not noticed it before) he saw that Guns was covered with blood, that Jason, hurt, was lying face down on the floor. The Rebel, also hurt, had made it over to the lower rack and was sitting down, his head in his hands, blood dripping from his elbows.

  A young corporal, his eyes wild, stumbled toward Adam saying, "Let me outl Let me out of herel"

  That started the rest of them. It was as though a quarterback had given the signal and the line was rushing forward.

  The marines on their feet began yelling and pushing toward the door and, to Adam, they looked Hke wild animals, their eyes crazy and wild sounds coming out of their throats.

  Adam backed up against the door and held his hands out as though to push them away. "Don't open this doorl" he yelled at them. "Keep the door shut!"

  They hit him without seeming to know he was there, knocked him down, pushed him aside. Then all of them began tugging at the heavy steel handle which turned and locked the door into its frame.

  Adam cra
wled away from them, hoping that Guns or the Rebel or somebody would stop them, but Guns and the Rebel and Jason were where they had been before. They were not looking; they ap-

  parently didn't hear the yelHng and cursing at the door.

  "Chief!" Adam yelled. "Chiefr

  No one answered, and then he saw the rifle sticking up out of the tangle of gear. Adam pulled it free and got up on his feet. Holding the rifle low, he stood there and yelled, "Listen to me! Get away from that door or I'll shoot you! Come on, get away from it!"

  It took them a few seconds for the words to get through to them and then they turned, one by one. They looked first at him and then at the rifle, and it seemed to him that the wildness drained out of their faces and they looked like men again-scared men, but men.

  "How do you know what's beyond that door?** Adam said, still yelling.

  "My buddy's back there, flyboy," one of the marines said.

  "The ocean's back there, too," Adam yelled. "Nobody's told us to open that door. This is their boat. Let them open it when it's time to open it."

  A Pfc said, "I'm getting out of here, airedale," and turned back toward the door.

  Adam rammed the rifle into his back. "There's nothing but water beyond that door. Go ahead, you stupid jerk, open it!"

  The Pfc turned slowly around and looked at him. 'Water?"

  "That's right!" Adam yelled. He waved the rifle at him and said, "Come on, get away from it."

  "Water?" the Pfc said, as though he could not be-

  lieve it. Then, as he moved away, he looked down at the rifle. Very slowly he reached out and, delicately, with two fingers, pulled the oily rag out of the muzzle. Then, as though instructing Adam on the rifle range, he said, "Always remove any foreign material from the bore before you fire, Lieutenant."

  ^'Thanks,** Adam said, feeling foolish as he suddenly realized what he had done. He must have looked ridiculous standing there with a rag dripping out of the rifle while he threatened to kill these combat marines. Ridiculous. "Don't open the door,** he said mildly, and carefully put the rifle down on the gear at his feet