The Last Ship (80 page)

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Thus at McMurdo Station we first stayed, virtually all of us moving ashore. Life has settled into a pleasant if quite vigorous rhythm. Mornings, starting early, we are aboard
Pushkin
for the meticulous indoctrination of the American sailors, including myself, including the women, by the Russian sailors, in the peculiarities of submarines, converting our destroyer skills into submarine skills; learning to be submariners, respective ratings working under their counterparts—enginemen with enginemen, helmsmen under helmsmen, and so on. Hard, exacting work, requiring the closest concentration. Fascinating work to most of us, if nothing else for destroyer men to learn so precisely how their great traditional foe functions. Most of all, the stern awareness that
Pushkin
is now all, that in her lies our salvation, that therefore we must know her intimate ways in order to keep her healthy, sound, safe; profoundly aware, deeply grateful, of the fact that in her, unlike the destroyer, by proceeding in the ocean depths, we can go anywhere in perfect safety; all this giving us a growing affection toward her. Afternoons are given over to something equally intensive, equally vital—language courses in which every single member of ship’s company, American and Russian, is enrolled, each learning the other’s language (the rather considerable library we also discovered at the base containing language-instruction books, materials, in not just these two but as well in the several other languages of the Antarctica Pact member nations): full four hours in the Mess Hall, occupying the entire afternoon; this mastery indispensable not just to our two peoples becoming one community, but to the two ship’s companies becoming one, to the very safety of the submarine, watch-standers needing to understand and execute instantly commands given in either language.

Two afternoons a week are liberty time. R and R including excursions on the ice shelf on skis, among the stores at the base being large numbers of skis of all sizes, or, to a restricted degree, in some of the vehicles, motor toboggans and others, we have discovered garaged in another of the buildings, all hands under strictest orders not to venture beyond prescribed distances—a ferocious blizzard, a whiteout capable of appearance with absolutely no warning. The library is an excellent one, so that we have not lost Dickens, Shakespeare, Dostoevski, the Bible, others, as I had at first sadly thought. So that also off-watch: Insofar as the Americans are concerned, they continue their almost ferocity of reading of anything, everything, that had so strangely commenced on the island; an absolutely curious phenomenon, as if they were under an obsession to soak up all the knowledge available; an infectious thing, the Russian sailors, observing this, hastening with their English lessons (the library containing few Russian books) so that they may join the Americans in what seems like a treasure hunt. Evenings always, after the serving of an excellent supper from our new supply of variegated stores, the showing of one of the approximately 1,000 videocassettes we have found, nearly all of them American movies, on the base’s enlarged viewing screen (accoutrements we decidedly intend to take aboard the submarine); also, much awaited, another discovery, a pure luxury that required an inordinate amount of time for the Russian captain and myself to reach a decision as to its use—a large cache of beer and liquor, immediately wisely put by himself under lock and key, beer now issued on a ration of one bottle per hand every other night, the liquor withheld entirely. To say we are living well is of course to understate the matter. (The only difficulty, at first, one of sleeping patterns, of circadian rhythms, adjusting to the twenty-four-hour daylight.) Altogether, taking to the place to the degree that some of ship’s company now are beginning to look with a certain regret, even a touch of apprehension, on the idea of leaving it and returning to the more uncertain and emphatically less unconstricted life of the submarine, to the ocean depths.

For of course we have to leave; as to that, there is no choice at all; that Sound now navigable that we look out on will soon undergo a profound transformation, immobilized for ship passage by ice nine feet thick; have to take the
Pushkin
out before she is imprisoned. We knew that some ships had survived the experience of spending a winter in the irons of Antarctic ice; knew also that that same ice had crushed and devoured others like match wood; into which category
Pushkin
would fall is impossible to predict; the risk of its being the latter absolutely unacceptable, forever cutting off as it would any means of escape. Together, and in consultation with other officers, both Russian and American, the Russian captain and I have worked out a plan which we presented to all ship’s company gathered in the Mess Hall. Its principal lines go as follows.

We will cast off on
Pushkin
before the ice closes in, before the onset of the long twenty-four-hour-dark Antarctic winter. For approximately eight months we will proceed on
Pushkin
’s originally designed “Magellan” mission of discovering what else there may be in the world, in especial whether there exist other human beings. The mission, with no island of our own to return to as in the original plan, now drastically altered as to principal purpose: to determine whether there is another habitable, sustaining place somewhere on the planet and in a more temperate latitude on which we can establish another community. Barring the finding of it, we will return here for the Antarctic summer, settle in as now, again embark on
Pushkin
when winter comes, continue our search in other regions of the earth not previously reconnoitered. If necessary, repeating the submarine-and-Antarctica living cycle until we find a place that will accept us. That happening, we will undertake a series of voyages between that place and this one, to cram the
Pushkin
full of the stores we have discovered, to empty those two warehouses to the last item, as many trips as may be required to transport their contents to our new home. If finding nothing, as I say, return here anyhow as our home for the Antarctic summer. That being as far as planning could now take us.

What the availability of this contamination-free place offers us is beyond price; not a hand but is all aware of it. It is quite possible that for virtually the entire eight months of each year on
Pushkin,
passing through zones of irradiation unforgivingly lethal on surface, we will be forced to remain submerged, never seeing the light of day. We can return here, move ashore, and during the Antarctic summer, with its exact opposite of twenty-four-hour daylight, breathe in the wonderful air and enjoy the sunshine, generally refresh and recoup ourselves before returning once again to the darkness of the underwater seas and our search. Also, of course, replenishing our food and other stores from the bounty of the two warehouses. In a way we will be living like hibernating bears, disappearing into our caves of the deep ocean for the cold months, surfacing during the summer months to fatten up again in the Antarctic day of McMurdo.

It is a prospect full of incertitudes but, realizing how far worse our circumstance could have been, our hopes burn bright; trusting, the majority of us, in the belief that long before the ten years have elapsed, we will have found somewhere on all the spaces of the earth our new home.

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Meantime, a word as to our present home, the
Pushkin;
a remarkable vessel. She has turned out to be all her captain claimed for her, as we discovered on our passage here. Actually built for operations in the Arctic ice pack with her high-rise hull and stub sail structure permitting her to break through the ice for missile launch, her forward diving planes bow-mounted, submersibles normally having sail-mounted diving planes, so they can be retracted to prevent ice damage, she has proved herself equally at home in Antarctic waters. How fortunate above all else, as I have noted, are we to have her, otherwise also a chosen instrument for our now joint company; her vast size of 561 feet, eighty-five-foot beam, her 25,000-ton displacement, her astonishing speed of forty knots submerged thrown in for good measure. And above all: In her we are safe; no radiation can reach us if we come into it; we need only dive.

Almost immediately we came aboard the Russian captain initiated changes. As starters, “officers’ country” became “women’s country,” the officers’ staterooms turned over to the women. By a charming coincidence we have almost exactly the same number of women now as there had been officers in the submarine’s original company. Also the space available in the submarine has been incomparably enlarged, and by a single stroke. Now the most extraordinary, intensive conversion involving the major part of the interior of the
Pushkin
is taking place. Here is how it began.

We had completed about two-thirds of our 4,500-mile passage from the island to Antarctica when one day the Russian captain mentioned that he would like to see me in his cabin. He shut the door and we settled in. I knew something was up. Something in his face; a wry, almost anticipatory look. From the first there had been an unspoken agreement between us that all major decisions would be made jointly by the two of us. I waited.

“Captain, I think we’re a bit cramped, don’t you? For space, I mean.”

“We can’t complain. We feel so lucky to have you . . .”

“I know all of that.” He waved his hand as if to cut off any expression of gratitude, which seemed only to embarrass him. “I’ve decided to get rid of them.”

“Sir?”

“The missiles. They take up too much space.” He spoke as of redundant ballast.

The hugeness of the submarine was in that sense deceiving. The great SS-N-20’s, extending up through two decks, in fact accounted for two-thirds of all of
Pushkin
’s space. They were the real passengers, any people aboard essentially their servants.

“We’d have a lot more room if they were gone,” he continued. “A little work by the metalsmiths, that remarkable carpenter of yours . . . what’s his name?”

“Travis. Noisy Travis.” He had already seen plenty of Noisy’s handiwork on the island.

“They and a few more of the hands could turn all that space into quite acceptable living quarters. A great deal more privacy for everybody. Elbow room, you call it?”

“Elbow room we call it. That would be most favorable,” I said, hardly able to take his intention in.

“You approve of the decision, Captain?” His eyes had a glint in them.

“Absolutely. Certainly we could use the space.”

Not absent from my consciousness, my something like elation at this proposal, a tearing moment of what had happened to the
Nathan James
—maybe himself, too, thinking of that as an even more real reason to jettison than the one given. I would not ask. I was deliberately staying away from this aspect of the immense step he had chosen that would accomplish this desired thing. But he was not.

“Won’t ever possibly need them.” He spoke offhandedly.

“Won’t ever possibly . . . need them,” I agreed.

Our eyes came together, locked, saying all. A tremendous moment really. Then on his lips the barest hint of a smile—wonderfully, with it, a trace of mischievousness.

“I thought perhaps you might concur. We will consider it done.”

It happened as simply as that. Next day we accomplished it. Without surfacing. I remember looking at the chart in the navigation room and noting that we had just entered the Antarctic Circle. The exploding mechanisms of the one hundred and ninety-two 500 kt warheads safed. Then one by one, the vehicles sent off, their castrated hulks entombed in the Pacific, to lie forever on its ocean floor for the fishes to be curious about. When it was over and we were standing in the launch control room, he turned to me, spoke quietly.

“Let’s trust there are no more, Captain,” he said. “Let’s trust that’s the last of them. Anywhere.”

I remember how casual it all was, no heavy, ponderous thoughts. Then even what there was of that gone as he and I proceeded, altogether like some homeowner having had completed an addition to his house, anxious to see it, to where they had been and gazing in incredulity at the enormity of that now-vacant space, thinking only homeowner’s thoughts, of how better, people no longer tripping over one another, things were going to be all around.

Initial work was commenced even as we were in passage to McMurdo. But it was the discoveries of tools, implements and materials here that opened up the full possibilities. Among the base’s considerable inventory were supplies of seasoned timber, welding tools, even a blacksmith’s forge. Provided with these, a Russian-American crew of about thirty shipfitters, molders, machinist’s mates is beginning to transform where once the great titans resided—adding staterooms, a larger crew’s compartment needed for the joint companies, a library; above all, perhaps, infinitely better berthing compartment (one of my delicate, diplomatic chores had been to get across to the Russian captain, once he had made his decision to jettison the missiles, that American sailors were accustomed to far less spartan spaces than his vessel provided, including on our own submarines; he is a quick study, and now both American and Russian ratings will find these much improved). When we cast off again on our inaugural eight-month journey, with the
Pushkin
’s living space more than trebled, a far more comfortable permanent home she will be for our submarine colony of seventy-four Russians and eighty-five Americans, the Americans including thirteen women, eight going down with the
James.
Considering how long we will be in her and how long, in every likelihood, submerged, a great blessing.

So it is that while we have no way of knowing what the future holds, we remain steadfast in hope. To those who have come through so much, hope comes quite easily. And, of course, not to hope is a sin. Soon we cast off on our voyage; penetrating, as we expect, into the most deadly of irradiated zones, hoping to find within them one or more contamination-free “pockets” of habitability, perhaps even with live human beings in it. We will certainly take a close look at, among other places, the United States of America.