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family house there as her home base. She loved the science projects she could tap into at the university she had attended for so many years, and she felt at home at the church she had attended since her teens. But the five years working in Chicago were marked by two relationships that had not worked out, and she didn’t know who else in her circle of acquaintances there would think to ask her out on a date if they hadn’t done so in prior years. With the move to Boulder she’d had two years dating Kevin and a chance for what she dreamed of to come true. She’d just have to try again.
    Go west, she decided. Work on her sonar ideas. Ask for Jeff’s help. It was at least a plan. Better than staying in Boulder and trying to find polite things to say when those encounters with Kevin brought back the sadness of a dream that was dying.
    Have Jeff introduce her to Navy guys he liked, keep an open mind. She would make a concerted effort not to dismiss any guy who showed an interest, regardless of how unlikely she thought he might be from their initial introduction. She wasn’t dreaming about a perfect match anymore. A good guy would be fine. Someone willing to commit to building a good marriage. She just had to figure out where he was, put herself in his path, say hello, and hope for the best.

    Bishop thanked the petty officer who brought him more coffee, put his fork through a stack of pancakes, and reviewedthe drill plan for the next watch. Fresh eggs, milk, and fruit ran out three weeks into a patrol, and the sub didn’t resurface for more supplies unless there was a major equipment failure aboard and provisions could be picked up as an incidental extra. Bishop chose to stick with pancakes and bacon, occasionally cinnamon rolls, rather than adapt to powdered milk and an egg substitute.
    He wanted two more fire drills focused on the command-and-control center before this patrol was finished. They were complex drills, and he didn’t want to run them too close to reaching the continental shelf or when they were sailing under a shipping channel. He penciled in the drills for 6 and 18 hours out, added a note for the drill coordinator that he wanted to also have the sonar room face an equipment failure during the first of the fire drills.
    Back on base they would run the fire drills at the Trident Training Facility with real flames, heat, and suffocating smoke. But at sea they would simply use waving red flags. The alarm would sound, the rush of the fire crew from all locations in the boat would jam ladders, fire suits would be donned, equipment would be hauled in, and tight places to work in would get even tighter as others in the crew raced to get the boat to the surface to vent the invisible smoke.
    As the fire took out communications and navigation controls, the crew would find conditions rapidly deteriorating. With actions they needed to take no longer available by turning a knob or setting a switch on a panel, they would have to revert to coordinating manual overrides with crewmen elsewhere in the boat to conduct operations—all while the drill was running against the clock. Men would be sweating and adrenaline would be running high before it was over. Inthe after-action assessment, Bishop and the drill coordinator would declare the submarine lost or saved based on the speed and sequence of the crew’s actions.
    The drills were intense for a reason. Bishop worried as much about fire as he did flooding. A fire became very hot, very fast, inside the confined circular construction of a submarine, the heat and smoke forced into a swirling, expanding inferno that would make it impossible to breathe in a matter of minutes. Fire was one of the nightmare scenarios, and when it hit the control room, the switch you needed to save your life could be on the panel that had just lit up in flames. Submarines were basically computer hardware, electrical equipment, audio equipment, power plants, missiles,