Ghostboat Read Free

Somebody swore.
    On the bridge they heard Basquine’s familiar “Now nobody get your bowels in an uproar” boom through the ship’s comm line and up the open hatch. “Stanhill, sonar and radar don’t have a thing. What’s the sea like?”
    Stanhill looked over the side. If anything, the water had grown calmer, more subdued. Hardy looked over too, and could make out glassy smoothness through the thick patches of fog. It felt as if the sub weren’t moving at all... Yet she must be. The diesels were still going. He checked his watch. It was 2130.
    Without warning, the sub took a rending shudder that whipped her stern sideways. Hardy’s feet shot out from under him. He caromed off the TBT and slammed into Stanhill, cold-cocking him on the jaw with his elbow. Both men fell. Hardy’s Cyclops made a lazy arc in the air and landed with a sickening clank on the cigarette deck aft. Hardy tried to sit up, but this time the shaking wouldn’t stop; the sub was gripped by a series of tremors. Hardy reached out to protect Stanhill from the heaving deck plates. He wondered fleetingly what it was like below—
    Basquine, in the well under the conning-tower hatch, managed to hang on. Bates was okay, but Jordan was down. He must have hit the chart table. The Captain took a fast nose count, then hollered up the well, “Bridge! Do you see any shell splashes?”
    The sub took another shake and leaned starboard. Lopez’s head filled the hatch. “Mr. Stanhill’s out cold—Mr. Hardy’s shaken up a bit—but nothing else, sir!”
    Basquine lurched over to the intercom. “All compartments, report!”
    The Candlefish’s superstructure took one quivering jolt after another, and Hardy heard responsive cursing from the con.
    From the forward engine room came Walinsky’s distraught bellow: “Skipper—we’re getting screwy readings! I think we should shift to batteries!”
     
    Hardy struggled to his feet when the diesels cut out. He grabbed the Target Bearing Transmitter as the sub heeled sharply to port, whipping and bucking like a long steel shake. The panic welling up inside him subsided as the boat righted herself in a shower of spray. He ducked instinctively, then straightened and looked forward. Swirling fog was closing in, drifting higher. Then, as the bow disappeared in the mist, the Candlefish bucked again. Hardy gaped at seas that he could barely glimpse around the boat. The glassy smoothness was gone, replaced by churning, frothing waters. A teeth-rattling crash and flying spray blurred his vision. The sub was trembling and twitching in the throes of some incomprehensible disease. Hardy’s grip on the TBT loosened. He tried to shield his head as he fell. He got a fleeting glimpse of Lopez and the lookouts hanging on to the shearwaters. Stanhill was still down.
    The next crunch slammed Basquine into the periscope shaft. Stunned and hanging on, he watched Jordan slide past him, his head bouncing off the back of Collins’s seat. He was dimly aware of a cry of pain, then saw the quartermaster clutch his face and reel back, blood streaming through his hands.
    “Bates! Get topside! Report!” Bates nodded to the Captain, then staggered to the ladder and started up. Water showered through the hatch and knocked him loose. Doggedly, trying to match his steps to the now constant spasms of the submarine, he started up again.
    Hardy felt the next big shake coming—a flutter fast and hard, rippling through the boat, followed by a wrenching convulsion. The juggernaut churning through the Candlefish refused to stop. And then he heard a godawful metal-grinding screech coming from somewhere below—somewhere aft—
    “Main engine number one just jumped its mounting—God, what a mess!” The voice boomed up through the con. Basquine cut Mm off and screamed something unintelligible through the mike.
    The submarine took to plunging up and down, in addition to its rapid sideward shakes. Two hands shot out of the dark, and Bates pulled