Crawford smiled. The doctor was a nice guy and could even be quite interesting to talk with once you got past all the gobbledygook. When he got wound up on the subject of his favorite whales, the conversations could be interminable. Crawford figured it was much like a submariner talking to civilians. They, too, tended to get verbose, speaking a language not understood by normal folk.

“Yeah, sorry, Doc. I better get up there. Mr. Wittstrom is coming along nicely. He’ll make a good officer of the deck when he qualifies. Tonight will be a special challenge for him, though. You better make sure everything is stowed for sea, XO. We’re going to get knocked around a lot while we’re up there.”

Crawford pointed to the overhead as he rose. He stepped out of the wardroom and into the centerline passageway. Barely shoulder-width wide and running from the chief’s quarters in the bow to the crew’s mess, this hallway was the major artery for the ship. On the port side were the corpsman’s diminutive office and the crew’s berthing spaces. To the starboard were the wardroom and officers’ staterooms. Ladders led from the passageway down to the torpedo room and up to the control room.

Commander Crawford bounded up a ladder and entered the control room. He stepped to the forward starboard corner and watched the sonar repeater for several minutes. The furious storm above them created a din that drowned out most noises a surface ship might make. Miami’s sophisticated BQQ-10 sonar system computer enhanced the signals to counteract some of the storm’s racket, but it couldn’t be one hundred percent effective. Crawford saw no trace of another ship anywhere nearby, nor did he expect one in this lonely stretch of ocean on such a blustery night.

“Okay, Mr. Wittstrom, you ready to go to periscope depth?”

The young junior officer gulped, but his voice seemed assured when he replied, “Yes, sir. I think so. I’m coming up to one-five-zero feet to clear baffles.”

Crawford nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

As Miami rose from the calm depths, the churning of the sea became more obvious, and the submarine’s pitching and rolling increased. By the time she leveled off at one hundred fifty feet below the roiling surface, the sub was rolling more than twenty degrees to either side. The bow rose and fell at least fifteen degrees. By then, everyone had to hold on to something solid just to keep from being thrown off balance onto the deck or down a ladder.

Wittstrom turned the sub to make sure that no ship was approaching them from astern. The sonar was blanked in that direction by the sub’s bulk. Its screen still showed only the noise of the storm.

“Captain, no sonar contacts,” the junior officer reported. “Request permission to come to periscope depth to copy the broadcast.”