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The reception at the dock in the submarine base was exactly as Richardson had imagined it would be, exactly as it had always been for a submarine returning from patrol. The number one docking space in front of the submarine base headquarters had been cleared for Eel. A trim and alert crew of enlisted line handlers stood prominently in the foreground, and a ten-piece band played popular music at the head of the pier. A crowd of khaki- and dungaree-clad submariners had gathered around the place where a long bridgelike wooden structure, the Admiral’s extra-wide ceremonial gangplank, or brow, its rails wrapped in shellacked white cord, was waiting to be put over to Eel’s deck when she came to rest. Conspicuous near the brow, standing in the foreground and a little apart from the others, Rich could see the stocky figures of Admiral Small and his chief of staff, Captain Joe Blunt. Near them a burnished five-gallon milk can stood out among mail sacks, crates of fruit and vegetables, and a large sealed cardboard box which could only contain the traditional ice cream. All these still rested in the small cart that had been wheeled down to the dock, where friendly hands would eagerly pass them across the submarine’s rail and onto Eel’s deck even while the arriving ceremonies were still in progress.

But all did not seem quite the same as usual. At least, not to Richardson. Greater than ordinary warmth exuded from the crowd even before the docking maneuver had been completed. The smiles of welcome were broad, even broader than usual. Were they lacking a little in spontaneity? The wisecracks exchanged with Eel’s crew as her black-and-gray, rust-splotched length slowly eased up alongside the dock into her allotted mooring, on the other hand, seemed less ribald than his memory recalled, somehow more subdued. Everyone present must know how he had destroyed Bungo Pete. His radioed report of the action in which Eel had sunk a submarine, a Q-ship, and a destroyer, and then rammed and sank three lifeboats, had been classified Top Secret and was deliberately sparse of details. But the Pearl Harbor grapevine was renowned.

The patrol report, laboriously composed and typed on mimeograph stencil sheets ready for reproduction, lay sealed in Quin’s tiny yeoman’s office near the wardroom. Contrary to usual practice, it had been typed in two parts. The second part, labeled “Top Secret Addendum to Report of First War Patrol of USS Eel,” contained all the details of the fight with Bungo. This, Richardson planned to hand to Admiral Small or Captain Blunt personally.

Williams, as Officer of the Deck, was making the landing. Keith was on the bridge ready to lend a hand. Richardson could not divest himself of responsibility for the safe handling of the Eel, but he could clearly demonstrate his confidence in Buck Williams and Keith Leone by ostentatiously paying no attention as they maneuvered the ship alongside the dock.

As Eel slowly traversed the last few feet to her appointed mooring space, Richardson quietly left the bridge, climbed down the steel rungs at the break in the cigarette deck rail, and made his way forward to the forecastle.

Instinctively, because he knew exactly what they would be doing and what space they would require, he avoided the practiced maneuvers of the line-handling parties on the submarine deck. As Eel’s way gradually petered out through the last few feet of still oily Pearl Harbor water, he found himself exactly opposite the submarine force commander and his chief of staff.

At about the right time—for it would not do to be premature with the ship not yet fully in, nor to be too late, Rich saluted, encompassing both Admiral Small and Blunt with the same salute.

“Good morning, Admiral,” he said. “Morning, Commodore.”

Neither Small nor Blunt was interested in the traditional formalities. Both returned his salute, Blunt rather condescendingly, Richardson felt. Both called across a welcome.

The admiral’s words could not be faulted. “Rich,” he said loudly, obviously intending that everyone should hear, “that was a magnificent patrol! I’m delighted you had no trouble this morning coming in. Congratulations on a great run!”

Captain Joe Blunt had been Richardson’s greatly admired skipper in Octopus, his first submarine, during the years before the war. He was short and spare, though lately the spareness was less evident and his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair had a lot more “salt” in it. So did the extraordinarily heavy eyebrows. Before the war, sub skippers were older. Blunt must now be in his fifties. His face had always appeared weathered and craggy to Rich, no doubt from the years he had spent on an open submarine bridge. He had been the epitome of the professional submarine officer, considerate and helpful to his subordinates, demanding of performance, confident of himself and his ship. He knew more about Octopus, and could handle any part of her better, than anyone else aboard. Since the Octopus days, he had been squadron commander and training officer at New London for both Richardson’s previous commands, the old S-16 and the new Walrus. Now both Octopus and Walrus were gone, lost somewhere in the Pacific. It was natural that it should be Blunt’s greeting which Richardson would afterward recall most clearly. “Welcome back, Rich,” he said. “We weren’t expecting you until late this afternoon. Didn’t you receive our weather warning this morning? We told you to remain outside until this Kona weather passed!”

Four heaving lines flew out to the pier, to be caught in midair by the line-handling parties at whom they were aimed. Swiftly Eel’s mooring lines were hauled in, the eye splices on their ends placed over the waiting cleats. The cheerful bustle of warping the submarine in the last few feet until she lay snug against the wooden pilings that formed the edge of the pier prevented further conversation. It was just as well. There could be no answer to Blunt, except the obvious one that a message not received was as if never sent. Somehow Richardson had the idea that Admiral Small had not wanted the matter brought up at all.

In a few moments all was secure, the brow placed aboard, and the crowd of well-wishers, preceded by Small and Blunt, took over Eel’s deck.

It was an honor, Richardson realized, for both the submarine force commander and his chief of staff to descend to Eel’s tiny wardroom and drink coffee at the table where he and his officers had held so many councils of war. Certainly they wanted to talk about the patrol just completed, but they must have known this could not be. There were too many others milling about during this first hour of return from patrol. There would be time for confidences later. The visit was a ceremony.

In the far corner of the wardroom, ensconced on the settee which sometimes doubled as a bunk for the most junior of all the officers, Keith Leone was already deep in conversation with someone who could only have been the submarine base engineering and repair officer. They started to rise when the admiral and Captain Blunt entered, but there was obviously nowhere for them to go; Small, in a single motion, bade them retain their seats.

Things were no better in Richardson’s own stateroom, to which the three adjourned briefly after the coffee ritual. Eel’s well-ordered existence had been totally disrupted. There were strangers everywhere bustling up and down the narrow passageway, loud conversation, the general brouhaha of holiday.

“I’m sorry for the confusion, Admiral,” said Rich. “It always seems to be this way when you come in from patrol. . . .”

“I know, Rich,” interrupted the admiral, “I just wanted to get a feel for how you are after that fantastic patrol of yours, and tell you how proud we are of you. I read all your messages personally, and I want you to know I am in complete accord with everything you did.” Small had spent his entire career in submarines, and had many times voiced regret he could not make war patrols himself. He was a short man, though taller than Blunt, and now, in middle age, had begun to verge on stoutness. His face was heavy, elephantine with a prominent hooked nose but his forbidding countenance faded with the genial friendliness he always displayed to his “submarine drivers,” as he sometimes referred to them.

“That’s right, Rich,” said Blunt. “We just want everyone to know we think old Bungo had it coming to him. . . .” Was that a look of disapproval in Small’s unexpectedly bleak eyes? Blunt changed the subject. “How about giving me your patrol report just as it is? I take it you’ve put it on stencils?”

“Yes, sir, Commodore,” said Richardson. “Also, we have a special Top Secret addendum, separately submitted.”

Admiral Small nodded his eyes shifting back to Richardson. “Good thinking, Rich. We’ll take both of them right now.” Richardson rose from his seat on his bunk and pressed a button built into the top of his desk. A moment later Quin thrust aside the green baize curtain which had been pulled across the doorway to the stateroom.

“Let me have our two patrol reports. . . .” began Richardson.

“Here, sir. I figured that’s what you wanted, Captain,” said the yeoman. Quin was always one jump ahead of everybody else, mused Richardson as his guests stood up to leave. In single file, the admiral leading, the three made their way topside.

“Again, Rich, that was a magnificent patrol,” said Small, extending his hand. “I won’t ask you to lunch. I know you have a lot of things to do. But will you join me for dinner at my quarters tonight? We eat early because of the curfew you know, so come on up about five o’clock for a drink, and we’ll see that you get out to the Royal Hawaiian before they chase everybody off the streets at ten.”

“I’ll be there too, Rich,” said Blunt. “The boss has asked a couple of others, too, so you won’t have to do all the talking. We’ll have read your report by then, and we’ll be anxious to hear what went on between the lines.”

Richardson forced himself to show pleasure in accepting, saluted four times as the admiral and his chief of staff in turn went through the departure ritual of saluting first him and then the colors. Then they stepped from Eel’s slotted deck to the brow and walked swiftly ashore.

Having to go to dinner was an ordeal he had expected. Richardson was grateful to be spared the preliminary of luncheon at the admiral’s staff mess, where the current crop of “staffers,” most of them either ex-skippers or Johnny-come-latelys awaiting their turn at a fleet submarine command, would have had free access to him. It was thoughtful of Admiral Small to dispense with this portion of the regular routine.

It was just as well, anyway. For one thing, he would have to go through at least the form of turning over to the “relief commanding officer”—the experienced executive officer of another submarine, now waiting his own command, who in the meantime was designated to take over all responsibility for Eel. This would permit Eel’s own regular crew, except for those to be rotated ashore during the next patrol, to be transported in a body for a two-week vacation at the luxurious Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu.

Boxes, duffel bags, and a couple of small collapsible suitcases were already appearing on deck, and two large navy buses were parked only a short distance away.

Richardson felt alone, detached from it all. This was not the same as the returns from patrol he had experienced before, the joyous release from pressure and travail. If anything, the pressure seemed greater. He felt indecisive, unable to think or hold an idea. Keith, he noticed, had not asked him for a single instruction. Keith was doing it all. Once he thought he saw Keith cast a worried look, quickly masked, in his direction.

It was impossible to move from the spot where he stood. A group of fellow skippers, nearly a dozen in all, surrounded him. All were eager to ask questions about his battle with Bungo Pete: the sinking of the submarine, the fight with the Akikaze-class destroyer, the final destruction of the Q-ship with single shots from stern tubes in a small typhoon.

How had he got Eel into position with weather conditions as they were? Why had not the Q-ship or the destroyer been able to hit him with gunfire? How had he known it was Bungo Pete whom he was fighting? What depth had he set on his torpedoes—had he made any adjustment for the heavy seas running? Why had he not shot at the Q-ship first—how had he identified it as a Q-ship and not an ordinary freighter? How in the world had he gotten away with sinking a submerged submarine right out from Bungo Pete’s formation without alerting Bungo? What did he consider to be the optimum firing range and depth setting of the electric torpedo? Had Richardson heard of the new periscope radar—a radar made small enough to fit right into a periscope so that a radar range could be obtained submerged, thus facilitating more accurate fire control solutions? Had Richardson heard of the latest fleet submarine design, a bigger, faster boat, with even more torpedoes than the twenty-four which were standard?

The professional conversation, normally of huge interest, had nothing for him. Richardson answered the questions as briefly as he could, only with difficulty remembered the depth settings and firing ranges. He asked no questions in his turn about the radar in the periscope or the new, bigger submarines.

The silent arrival of an ambulance provided an excuse to break it up. The rescued aviators brought back from Eel’s “lifeguard” stint would have to be tended to. None were ambulatory. All would need stretchers. “Keith,” he began—but Keith had also seen the ambulance. Several men were already striding purposefully across the brow toward it. They returned with three metal stretchers with assorted straps for holding the patients in as they were lifted vertically up through one of Eel’s deck hatches.

Still, the operation needed supervision. Richardson must say good-bye to the Army Air Corps captain and his two men. They would be coming up from the crew’s dinette, through the deck hatch just abaft the bridge and conning tower structure, this being the shortest lift. Quickly they appeared. Keith’s arrangements had been well made. Richardson shook hands with the lanky pilot, who managed to extend his hand out from under the straps holding him in the basket stretcher. Richardson hoped that the treatment his corpsman had given the westerner’s broken leg would prove satisfactory. A little over a year ago his own broken leg—a compound fracture, to be sure—had had to be rebroken and reset after the return to Pearl Harbor. In consequence he had insisted on hours of study of Eel’s meager medical library by Yancy, the ship’s pharmacist’s mate, Keith Leone, and himself before the first move was made to set the flier’s leg.

He pressed the shoulders of the other two men. More seriously injured, they had been strapped in even tighter. He nodded and smiled at their mumbled gratitude, wished them quick recoveries, and then wandered aft toward the stern, in the vicinity of the motor room, where the skin of Eel’s ballast tanks began to curve in as the hull narrowed.

It was about here, on the port side, that Captain Tateo Nakame had managed to place his hands on Eel’s heaving side, had tried to climb aboard. He would no doubt have continued the unequal fight if he had succeeded in doing so, would have striven somehow to destroy Eel and himself with her, had he been able. It was from this spot that he had cast that last look at Rich, the look which expressed all his hatred, his dedication, his desperation at being destroyed after so many successes.

Richardson would never forget the lines on his face, the agony etched there unutterably as he confronted a fate he must have partly expected, which was now arrived. On sudden impulse, Rich remembered, he put down his binoculars, exposed his own face. It was more a symbolic act than a logical one. It was some unconscious memory, some atavistic tribal recollection of ages past, which had impelled him. Respected enemies at their final confrontation, when one was to die, stood face to face.

There was a discoloration on the smooth black ballast tank surface. Some stray streak of harbor oil, splashed up on the way in. The orange and purple hues contrasted with the black skin of Eel’s hull, shifted shape as he approached. In the changing colors he could suddenly see the streaked outline of a clutching hand—two hands. Bungo’s. It was not possible that the impression of Bungo’s hands could have stayed there, persisted, under three weeks of ceaseless washing by the sea as Eel voyaged homeward from the coast of Japan! Yet, somehow, the kaleidoscopic image was there, oozing, slipping—the fingernails digging—grasping for purchase. Bungo had made a tremendous effort, a superhuman effort, to climb that impossibly slick curve of steel.

Rich had been the only man to see it, to appreciate it, to gaze heartlessly at him as he died.

This had been the end for Captain Tateo Nakame, of the Imperial Japanese Navy. “A mean old bastard,” Blunt had called him. He might well have been all of that; he was also a dedicated officer of the old school who had given his all for his country. At some other time, in some other context, he might have been a friend, a man to admire. He had his counterpart many times over in the U.S. Navy.

“Captain?” he did not recognize the voice. The handprints were dissolving, drifting, were no longer recognizable. “Captain?” Through the fog, it was Keith. “Captain, we’ve got everything set to disembark the crew and shift them over to the Royal Hawaiian. Will you be coming over with us?”

“No, Keith, I’ve got a few things yet to do. . . .”

“Matter of fact, I do too, sir. They’ve secured the galley, but I had them lay on some sandwiches and there’s some coffee left, so we can have a fair lunch. Aren’t you going up to the admiral’s mess?” Whatever Keith’s intention, he had broken the spell. Maybe this was what he had meant to do all along. “There’s only a few of us left aboard, Captain; everybody else is in the bus. Okay if I shove them off? Then I’ll join you down in the wardroom.”

“Okay, Keith.” Now that he had been reminded of it, he was hungry. Breakfast had been early that morning. The crowd on deck had pretty well dissipated. Eel was now just another submarine among the many tied up at the docks in various stages of refit. Soon she would be moved over to a routine berth, to free the space in front of the ComSubPac headquarters for another submarine due to return from patrol. But this would not be his responsibility, nor Keith’s. Someone else would do it—the “refit commanding officer” (who was he, anyway? He should know; the man must have been in that crowd he had tried to talk to on the forecastle, must have introduced himself). Richardson climbed down the ladder into the crew’s dinette. At sea it had always been filled with an active throng of men, either reading, seeing a movie, playing some game, or eating. Now it was deserted, vacant, like the whole submarine. Already silent, devoid of life. Stagnant, the way life usually became. And smelling a little stagnant, too.

He moved forward into the wardroom. There was a pile of official mail, some newspapers, a sheaf of patrol reports of other submarines. By custom, all of it—even the official letters—would be looked at during the next patrol. Things demanding answers immediately would be brought to him by the refit skipper. No point in worrying about it now. No point in thinking about any of it. Keith would be waiting and was probably hungry.

Submarine skippers returning from war patrol generally got the use of an automobile from the ComSubPac motor pool during their stay in port. Favorite skippers always got the best cars, but of course they had to drive them themselves. None so far as he knew, Richardson reflected as he arrived in front of the admiral’s house on Makalapa Hill, had ever been given the admiral’s own car and driver.

“What are your instructions, driver?” he said as he stepped out of the car.

“Deliver you, sir, and return when you or the admiral send for me,” replied the sailor. He was dressed in immaculate whites. His sleeves bore several hashmarks denoting successive enlistments. He wore a silver submarine insignia.

Struck by sudden curiosity, Richardson bluntly asked the obvious question. “How is it that an experienced submariner like you is pushing this sedan around Pearl Harbor?”

“I was on the Nerka, Commander,” said the man, suddenly sober. “They took me off just before Captain Kane took her out on her last run. This is my relief crew assignment, and I guess I was just lucky. In a couple of weeks I’ll be getting my orders back to a new sub in the States.”

“Thanks, sailor,” said Richardson, solemn in his turn. “I’m sorry. Captain Kane was a damn good friend of mine.”

“I know it, sir.” The driver seemed to have difficulty in speaking. “Thank you for what you did for him and my buddies.”

The man wanted to say something more. There was a hint of embarrassment in his eyes, as if ashamed to be caught in a sentimentality. He avoided those of his passenger, stared through the windshield as he began to speak, then wrenched himself around to face Richardson. “We know what you done out there, sir,” he said, “and why you done it. I was with Captain Kane on the R-12 before, and I put in to go with him on the Nerka. He was a great skipper. Everybody on that boat loved him. Now I’m supposed to go back to Mare Island for a new sub, but I was just wondering—my buddies are all out there with him. It’s almost like I jumped ship on them. I should go out one more time, before I go back, because of that. So—I was wondering—do you have room for a spare auxiliaryman on the Eel?”

Richardson made note of the man’s name, service number, and organization in the thin notebook he habitually carried. He had walked nearly the entire distance to Admiral Small’s front door before the despairing realization struck him. “We all know what you did,” the man had said. Richardson should have expected this. Of course everyone knew. Certainly the Nerka’s auxiliaryman did not condemn him, would even support him because of his own feeling of loss. But he knew him for what he was: the man who had killed Bungo Pete by running down the lifeboats of a torpedoed ship.

The admiral’s door swung open before he reached it. A white-jacketed Filipino steward held out his hand for Richardson’s cap. Was there something behind his smile? A smirk? But there was no time to think about it. The party was already going on. Admiral Small had evidently arranged for the other guests to be there before Richardson’s arrival.

Among them, to his astonishment, were three women.

“Rich, you’re the lion of the evening,” said Admiral Small, taking him by the arm. “Let me introduce the others—ladies first; we have to remember our manners. This is Mrs. Elliott, Lieutenant Wood, Miss Lastrada—oh, you already know each other?”

The last time Richardson had seen Joan Lastrada she had been Jim Bledsoe’s date at a hectic between-patrols party just before Walrus had departed on her last voyage. Richardson had felt it before, but even so, when their hands met at the formal introduction, he was unprepared for the sexuality which she was able, wittingly or not, to put into a simple handshake.

Mrs. Elliott, it turned out, had a home in Honolulu, and had somehow avoided being evacuated to the States at the beginning of the war. She was a navy wife, obviously a socially prominent person, and her husband was apparently an old friend of the admiral’s.

Miss Wood, or Lieutenant Wood, to give her correct army title, was a WAC officer, perhaps in her early thirties, stationed at Fort Shafter. Blond and attractive, a little large of feature and a little heavily made up, she was no match for Joan Lastrada, whose slender waist, gently out-thrust bust, and softly rounded hips complemented a finely structured face. Joan still had the overwhelming femininity which Richardson had first noticed, which since the beginning of the world has made men forget the face and figure and follow blindly after that subtle essence.

In addition to Captain Blunt, Admiral Small had also invited two other captains from his staff. And it was immediately clear that Rich was the only operating submariner present. The same white-jacketed steward who had opened the door was now attentive with a tray of drinks. Succulent little canapés were passed around. Richardson found himself telling freely how he had enticed Bungo Pete out to search for him, how he had almost blundered into his own trap, but, by good fortune, had identified the Japanese submarine before it dived, and sank it with a single torpedo fired on sonar information alone.

Perhaps it was the drinks. With the eager attention being paid to him, he found himself very quickly with his second amber-colored drink in his hand. The Jap submarine had dived just outside the entrance to the Bungo Suido. He had seen her dive, and Stafford had picked her up immediately on sonar. Once she had gained a submerged trim, she would be at periscope depth, ready to attack any American sub making a surface attack on the nearly unsinkable Q-ship. She would be on steady course, not zigzagging. There had been no reason to silence her machinery: the submarine she expected to attack would be on the surface. Eel, entirely shut down for silent running, found it absolutely simple to maneuver into perfect firing position. He had not dared to use his active sonar to obtain a “ping” range, had estimated the range, instead, by the ancient triangulation method. But he had compensated for this by firing on a ninety track angle—his torpedo aimed to hit at exactly ninety degrees to the target’s course. In such a case, range drops out of the calculation. No matter what the range, any properly aimed torpedo will hit, if it runs long enough, for the angular geometry of the firing triangle remains identical regardless of its size.

Suddenly aware he was the only one speaking, that he was being loquacious, he stopped, momentarily embarrassed. There was a ring of attentive, eager faces around him. He had set down his drink, was illustrating the maneuvers with his hands. Even the steward, a blue embroidered submarine insignia conspicuous on his starched white jacket and three blue hashmarks on his sleeve, lingered unobtrusively within earshot. Admiral Small, his eyes alight with interest, forced him to continue.

Stafford had switched the sonar from earphones to loudspeaker. Everyone in the conning tower had heard the torpedo running, had heard it merging with the enemy sub’s propeller beats and machinery noise, had unconsciously held his breath waiting for the explosion. It came with startling loudness, eight seconds after the computed running time of the torpedo. Everyone heard the grim results: the water hammer within the doomed hull, the frenzied speeding up of the motors, the blowing of tanks, the bubbling escape of the precious air. All heard the sudden cessation of the propellers, thought they heard but more likely imagined the violent arcs of electricity as sea water shorted out the motors or their controls. The last clearly identifiable sound was the crunch as the now overweighted hull crashed into the bottom. There was no hope for any of the Japanese submariners; the depth of water was too great for escape even if they had escape gear. Admiral Small shook his head solemnly; they had no such equipment, according to the best intelligence reports.

Richardson’s description was followed by a rush of questions. What depth had he set on the torpedo, and how had he made the determination? The submarine had seemed to be about the same size as the Eel herself, and he had simply set the torpedo for what he thought would be the best setting had Eel been the target. Did he know the Japanese submarine periscopes were slightly shorter than those of United States submarines, and that he should have set the torpedo a little more shallow? No, he had not. The few feet involved would have made no difference anyway, provided the torpedo ran at the intended depth which now they all uniformly did.

Why had he not fired a spread of three torpedoes at the submerged submarine instead of only one? Because three torpedoes would be three times as noisy as one. They might have alerted the submarine, given it time to maneuver. Three explosions would undoubtedly have alerted Bungo if all three had hit, or if those which missed had exploded when they reached the end of their runs, as they still so frequently did.

There was no talk about the lifeboats at first, and Richardson had already finished his second drink, or perhaps it was his third, when suddenly the subject was raised. The drinks had been very strong. Already he was feeling their effect, knew he would feel it more. He glanced uneasily at the women.

“It’s all right, Rich,” said the admiral. “Everybody in this room has read your dispatches and your patrol report. The three girls here have a higher clearance than you do.” Mrs. Elliott looked startled. Rich was sure that he caught a sharp glance from her directed at Admiral Small.

The dinner was delicious, the wine warming. Richardson realized that he had been garrulous, had fully described his decision to ram and sink the lifeboats. He had not intended to describe this part of the fight. Suddenly there was release in speaking of it, justifying what he had done. The battle had taken place only a few miles from the coast of Japan. If Nakame had been allowed to return to port, with his primary personnel and their precious expertise, he would have been back in action almost immediately. Measured against the value of Bungo’s services, even with the growing shortage of ships because of the war losses, replacement vessels would not have been a large problem. Merely sinking the Akikaze and the other two ships he was employing that day could have practically no effect on his long-range campaign against U.S. submarines. It would have been a minor setback, nothing more, and he would have come back more dangerous than ever.

Why had Richardson not captured them, taken them on board the Eel? Not possible. The sea was too heavy. It would have been impossible even with maximum cooperation from the Japanese—not to be expected under the circumstances. Nakame still had his rifle, and he had not given up. The Japanese were superior in numbers. They were so close to shore. Picking them up would have exposed Eel’s crew to unacceptable hazard, even assuming, in the storm then raging, they could have been gotten aboard.

The others were nodding agreement. Rich found his highball glass refilled yet another time. It was after dinner. “Time for the movie,” said the admiral. The same steward who had opened the door, served the drinks, and then put on the dinner, now busied himself with rigging a movie theater in the living room of the house. At least, it had been a living room, but it was apparent that Admiral Small had been using it for an office. The room had no rug, but there were a couch and sufficient comfortable chairs. A screen was set up in the entrance hallway, and a small projector was mounted on the top of the admiral’s desk. And now the steward showed himself to be a movie operator in addition to his other talents.

Four people had to sit on the couch intended for three, shoved in front of the desk. Automatically, Richardson was sitting beside Joan. The euphoria induced by drink and the obvious importance which everyone attached to his words throughout the evening had had their effect. The crowding was not uncomfortable.

The movie was a silly story with all the love-conflict clichés. It had no relation to anything that anyone present in that room had been doing for the past several years, received all the more attention because of it, and gradually Rich became more and more conscious of Joan’s thigh pressed close against his as they watched the convoluted situation unfold to its predictable conclusion.

His palms were sweating. Nervously he wiped them dry along the crease of his trousers, felt the backs of his fingers traveling along the smooth softness of Joan’s leg under her light skirt. She was not offended. His hand groped for hers. She returned the tentative pressure of his fingers.

The movie ended. The normally efficient steward seemed to have trouble finding the light switch. During the delay there was a slight bustle from the other two people who had shared the couch, Captain Joe Blunt and First Lieutenant Cordelia Wood.

Admiral Small was looking at his watch, suggested another drink. Mrs. Elliott and the two staff officers refused politely, swiftly bade their adieus, and were gone. The efficient steward appeared again at Richardson’s elbow with yet another very dark highball. But this time, knowing that he had already drunk far too much, and that very possibly it had been the admiral’s and Captain Blunt’s deliberate intention to get him tipsy, he took perverse pleasure in refusing it. Probably the plot had been kindly intended. He was, after all, the submarine skipper home from the wars. In addition, his host might just possibly have divined some of the inner tensions which still possessed him. Joan was standing very close to him, had been since the movie.

“Maybe we had better call it an evening too, Admiral,” Blunt said. “No need to call your driver. Rich and I will take the girls home in my jeep.”

“Okay, Joe,” said Small. “But remember, you’re not so much younger than I am!” The admiral’s smile was genial, but Richardson suddenly sensed something else in it, some reserve. There was an unspoken warning in it, a measure of disapproval. But it was not directed at him. Blunt’s quick, eager grin in response seemed a little strange, out of place. Richardson’s intuitions were not working. The expression on Blunt’s face was not quite the right one. Something lay just beneath the surface, out of reach, some tension of which he was unaware.

There was some difficulty in opening the door. The light-lock, a jerry-built structure of boards and heavy painted canvas, intended to prevent light from showing outside when the door was open, would permit only two to pass through at one time. To facilitate getting through, Joan took Richardson’s arm as a matter of natural course. She did not release it as they passed into the dark outside, instead hugged it to her a little tighter and strode out with him. He could feel her hip against his thigh as they walked toward the street.

The back seat of a wartime jeep will hold two people if they sit very close together. It is high and hard, with only a padded board for a backrest. It is a lot more comfortable if one puts his arm around the girl. Joan curled against his shoulder.

Blunt started the motor. “My quarters are right on the way,” he said. “Why don’t we stop there for that nightcap?” Nobody said anything.

There was a sentry box at the foot of the hill. The curfew sentry was already there. Perhaps it was later than Richardson had realized.

Driving slowly with lights out—in fact, there were no headlights at all on the jeep—Blunt braked to a near-stop. A grin, with a clear trace of envy, showed on the sentry’s face as he saluted and waved them on.

Captain Blunt’s house, like all the others in the general housing area, had been built before the war as quarters for married personnel. The largest houses were on Makalapa Hill, and they ranged on down to near barrackslike triplexes and quadruplexes, ranked row upon row, in the enlisted men’s area on the flat some distance away. Blunt’s house was smaller than Admiral Small’s and there was no steward in evidence. It was even more sparsely furnished.

In conformity with the blackout regulations, there was a light-lock arrangement at the entryway to permit passage without showing light outside the house. Inside, as in the admiral’s house, all the windows had been covered with heavy black paper.

“Rich, you and Joan make yourselves comfortable while Cordy helps me in the kitchen.” Instantly Joan was in his arms.

The man standing inside Richardson’s body who had always been the dispassionate and detached observer, was unaccountably missing. All Richardson’s senses were concentrated on feeling the hard outline of Joan’s hips, the soft tips of her breasts against his chest. One of her hands caressed his ear. Her mouth was partly open, soft, inviting.

This would not do. The others were only in the next room. They would be coming back in a moment. Joan seemed to anticipate his mood. Her tongue flicked the edges of his lips as she swung away.

There had been no sound from the kitchen. “Yoo-hoo,” called Joan.

This brought results. Noise of sudden movement. Ice clattered into glasses. Liquid poured.

The living room contained a slip-covered day bed made up as a sofa with pillows along the wall, and a single overstuffed armchair. Blunt and Cordelia Wood arranged themselves side by side on the day bed, backs to the wall.

Rich found himself seated in the overstuffed chair, with Joan perched on its broad arm. A single dim light burned in a corner. All four were quiet. The other couple was out of Rich’s view, off to the right beyond Joan, whose thigh stretched tight the fabric of her skirt, and whose bronzed legs, unfettered by stockings, dangled and occasionally touched his own.

“Rich,” said Joan softly, “you know I knew Jim?”

“Yes.”

“And that I know how terrible you feel about those lifeboats?”

This he could not answer. He had tried to be matter-of-fact, to avoid being defensive, as he described the action. Obviously he had not fooled Joan.

“You had to do it, Rich. There was no other way.”

Curiously, Richardson felt no objection to Joan’s probing. She held her drink in her right hand. Her left arm rested on the back of the chair, and now he could feel the tips of her fingers gently touching the back of his neck, gently rubbing behind and below the ear, softly stroking. “Jim used to talk about you some, you know, and little by little I came to know how much he admired you. The last time I saw him, he said you were his best friend.” Rich said nothing.

The tapering fingers on his neck stopped, then resumed their gentle stroking. “You haven’t asked me about my job, and please don’t, but what the admiral said is true. I knew about Captain Nakame and how much it meant to you to get even for what he did to the Walrus and the Nerka, and all the others.”

“It wasn’t just to get even . . . .” Rich began.

Imperceptibly, the stroking fingers pressed a little harder. “Hush up, Rich, of course not. It was for Pearl Harbor, and the war, and the Octopus, too. But some of it was for the Walrus and for Jim, and for your old crew. You know that.”

The fingers were doing their work. He felt an ease he had not known for weeks, since that fatal battle with Bungo Pete.

“You’re probably thinking about that German submarine in the Indian Ocean that machine-gunned survivors a couple of years ago. They were merchant seamen, noncombatants. The German skipper did it out of just plain fear for his own skin if they got back to port with the news that a submarine was in that area. Maybe there was some sadism in him, too. With you it was different. The men you ran down were all navy men, combatants, specialists in fighting submarines. You were fighting them, not just their ships. They had not stopped fighting you.”

“Yes,” said Richardson.

His sensuous reaction to Joan’s near presence was as great as ever, but a feeling of relaxation was spreading over his body. The tightness in his mind was subsiding.

“Probably I shouldn’t tell you this, but we know all about what happened to the Walrus. Nakame was riding the submarine that day. His other two ships stayed in port for some reason, so he sent out an old tub of a freighter for bait. It was night, and after Jim sank it, he hove to among the survivors to pick them up. There were only six men on the whole ship, and he had their life raft alongside when the torpedo hit. Everybody on it was killed, too.”

Again the faintly increased pressure of the fingertips, the message of surcease.

Joan said no more, allowed her fingers to speak for her. So this had been Jim’s undoing! An errand of mercy, perhaps an expiation of that time so long ago when the blood lust was on him, and Richardson wrestled his gun away!

There had been no quarter at Pearl Harbor. No quarter for the Yorktown at Midway. No quarter in two wars for submarines of either side. Nakame had even sacrificed his own men.

The fingers continued their restorative work. He did not need the drink, had not touched it. There was no indignation, no despair, no further sorrow. The silence continued: easy, comfortable, warm, intimate. Blunt’s voice broke it. “My God, it’s already past curfew!”

Richardson had forgotten about the curfew, but no one seemed much upset. He had heard that in one form or another this situation happened not infrequently. The rule forbade traveling after 10 P.M. If you were not home by curfew, you simply spent the night where you were.

“I’ve got a spare bedroom upstairs with two bunks in it for you girls. Rich, you can sleep on the couch down here in the living room. We’ll have to make an early reveille, though, and start for Shafter right after daybreak.”

Rich was surprised—perhaps he should not have been—to see that Cordelia had twisted around so that she lay almost in Captain Blunt’s lap. Her arm was around his waist, her skirt hiked up carelessly above her knees, her face flushed. Blunt’s mouth and cheek seemed fuller and redder than usual. There had been no attempt to shift back to a more conventional pose. Neither Blunt nor the girl appeared at all disturbed over missing curfew, and suddenly Rich realized that this was not new to them. Indeed, the whole situation might well have been premeditated. Joan appeared not the least disconcerted. Her fingers had not interrupted their soothing massage.

Stripped to his undershorts, Richardson lay under only a sheet. With lights out he had dared to open a window at the foot of the day bed, but this did little good in the sultry subtropical climate. His body tingled where Joan had last touched him. He knew what must happen, what was going to happen. There was no hurry. He could hardly wait, and yet he could wait. It was her move. There had been no words exchanged, but she would come. He would not rush her. Time did not matter. He could wait for her. She would come when she was ready.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had also lain sleepless, in the narrow bunk of his stateroom in the Eel, reliving the battle with the lifeboats. A combination Bungo Pete and Sammy Sams, cursing, had fired a machine gun at him. Tonight Bungo Pete was gone. Again he was sleepless and uneasy, tingling, acutely conscious of his hands and his feet, and the tiny nipples of his chest where the sheet touched them.

But his uneasiness was for an entirely different reason. He could remember solitude, camping in the mountains. Youthful plans formed by a dominant father, suddenly diverted into a new and more exciting world, still disciplined, but beset with bigger priorities. Until Laura, girls were not a serious thing. But Laura was forever unattainable. . . .

It was a warm night. No breeze, but perfumed. The distant murmur of never-ceasing industry, barely miles away, presided over by the Pearl Harbor odor: crude fuel oil mixed with water and earth. Flowers outside the window vainly sending their fragile aroma into an unheeding world. Ozone from the ever-flashing electric arcs. Hard flux burning, flowing off the welding rods, carbonizing, melting steel plates, joining them, urgently forming them into new and unexpected shapes. Tortured machines, dismantled, revitalized, restored for future torture. Joan’s lingering, subtle fragrance. The gentle pressure of her fingers, that spoke so many words.

The crew of the Eel. The workers in the Navy Yard and Submarine Base shops. The driven—and the common drive that drove them. Reek of old sweat burned into uniforms and work clothes. . . .

The only life he had known. Ultimately, he would follow Jim, Stocker, even Tateo Nakame. This was what everything had aimed him for. He had expected to lose himself in the intense concentration of it all. The huge machine covered half the earth. It had not been made for the parts to have anything for themselves. That was not what it was for. The parts were intended only for the whole machine to work better. . . .

Soft footsteps on the floor above. Sound of a door opening, then shutting. Sound of another door softly clicking shut.

He waited. The door again. Soft footsteps on the stairs. Slow, a little hesitant. “Shy” was a better word, for they did not hesitate.

She came down the steps barefooted, on tiptoe, heels high above the floor. Her luxuriant black hair hung down on the left side of her face. She wore a light cotton bathrobe several sizes too large for her.

He was trembling, holding himself quiet under the sheet. Easy, said the inner voice. Take it easy. She is doing something she has to do. Don’t rush her.

He closed his arms about her. Her lips parted softly when his touched them. Her quivering mouth was a refuge. He felt himself disappearing into it. All other motion in the world stopped. Beneath the cotton robe was only Joan.