Free Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

speaking," he said calmly. "Sorry about that bump. Report damage at once."
      A green light flashed in the panel of a box beside him. Swanson touched a switch and a loud-speaker in the deckhead crackled.
      "Maneuvering room." The maneuvering room was in the after end of the upper-level engine room, toward the stern. "Hit was directly above us here. We could do with a box of candles, and some of the dials and gauges are out of kilter. But we still got a roof over our heads."
      "Thank you, Lieutenant. You can cope?"
      "Sure we can."
      Swanson pressed another switch. "Stern room?"
      "We still attached to the ship?" a cautious voice inquired.
      "You're still attached to the ship," Swanson assured him. "Anything to report?"
      "Only that there's going to be an awful lot of dirty laundry by the time we get back to Scotland. The washing machine's had a kind of fit."
      Swanson smiled and switched off. His face was untroubled; he must have had a special sweat-absorbing mechanism on his face. I felt I could have done- with a bath towel. He said to Hansen, "That was bad luck. A combination of a current where a current had no right to be, a temperature inversion where a temperature inversion had no right to be, and a pressure ridge where we least expected it. Not to mention the damned opacity of the water. What's required is a few circuits until we know this polynya like the backs of our hands, a small off-set to allow for drift and a little precautionary flooding as we approach the ninety-foot mark."
      "Yes, sir. That's what's required. Point is, what are we going to do?"
      "Just that. Take her up and try again."
      I had my pride so I refrained from mopping my brow. They took her up and tried again. At two hundred feet and for fifteen minutes Swanson juggled propellers and rudder  until he had the outline of the frozen polynya above as accurately limned on the plot as he could ever expect to have it. Then he positioned the _Dolphin_ just outside one of the boundary lines and gave an order for a slow ascent.
      "One hundred twenty feet," the diving officer said. "One hundred ten."
      "Heavy ice," Saunders intoned. "Still heavy ice."
      Sluggishly the _Dolphin_ continued to rise. Next time in the control room, I promised myself, I wouldn't forget that bath towel. Swanson said, "If we've overestimated the speed of the drift, there's going to be another bump, I'm afraid." He turned to Rawlings, who was still repairing lights. "If I were you, I'd suspend operations for the present. You may have to start all over again in a moment, and we don't carry all that number of spares aboard."
      "One hundred feet," the diving officer said. He didn't sound as unhappy as his face looked.
      "The water's clearing," Hansen said suddenly. "Look."
      The water had cleared, not dramatically so, but enough. We could see the top corner of the sail clearly outlined on the TV screen. And then, suddenly, we could see something else again, heavy, ugly ridged ice not a dozen feet above the sail.
      Water flooded into the tanks. The diving officer didn't have be to told what to do: we'd gone up like an express elevator the first time we'd hit a different water layer, and once like that was enough in the life of any submarine.
      "Ninety feet," he reported. "Still rising." More water flooded in, and then the sound died away. "She's holding. Just under ninety feet."
      "Keep her there." Swanson stared at the TV screen. "We're drifting clear and into the polynya--I hope."
      "Me too," Hansen said. "There can't be more than a couple of feet between the top of the sail and that damned ugly stuff."
      "There isn't much room," Swanson acknowledged. "Sanders?"
      "Just a moment, sir. The graph looks kinda funny-- No, we're clear." He couldn't keep the excitement out of his