Both captain and lieutenant stared at a 'waterfall' display, looking not at a strobe of light, but instead a disjointed, barely visible vertical line that wasn't as bright as it should have been. The American Ohio-class was quieter than the background noise of the ocean, and both men wondered if somehow environmental conditions were showing them the acoustical shadow of that most sophisticated of missile submarines. It was just as likely, Dubinin thought, that fatigue was playing hallucinatory games with both of their minds.

"We need a transient," Ryskov said, reaching for his tea. "A dropped tool, a slammed hatch a mistake, a mistake "

I could ping him I could duck below the layer and hit him with a blast of active sonar energy and find out NO! Ryskov turned away and nearly swore at himself. Patience, Valentin. They are patient, we must be patient.

"Yevgeniy Nikolay'ch, you look weary."

"I can rest in Petropavlovsk, Captain. I will sleep for a week, and see my wife - well, I will not sleep entirely for that week," he said with an exhausted grin. The lieutenant's face was illuminated by the yellow glow of the screen. "But I will not turn away from a chance like this one!"

"There will be no accidental transients."

"I know, Captain. Those damned American crews I know it's him, I know it's an Ohio! What else could it be?"

"Imagination, Yevgeniy, imagination and too large a wish on our part."

Lieutenant Ryskov turned. "I think my captain knows better than that!"

"I think my lieutenant is right." Such a game this is! Ship against ship, mind against mind. Chess in three dimensions, played in an ever-changing physical environment. And the Americans were the masters of the game. Dubinin knew that. Better equipment, better crews, better training. Of course, the Americans knew that, too, and two generations of advantage had generated arrogance rather than innovation not in all, but certainly in some. A clever commander in the missile submarine would be doing things differently If I had such a submarine, not all the world could find me!

"Twelve more hours, then we must break contact and turn for home."

"Too bad," Ryskov observed, not meaning it. Six weeks at sea was enough for him.

"Make your depth six-zero feet," the Officer of the Deck said.

"Make my depth six-zero feet, aye," the Driving Officer replied. "Ten degrees up on the fairwater planes."

The missile-firing drill had just begun. A regular occurrence, it was intended both to ensure the competence of the crew and desensitize them to their primary war-fighting mission, the launch of twenty-four UGM-93 Trident-II D-5 missiles, each with ten Mark 5 re-entry vehicles of 400 kilotons nominal yield. A total of two hundred forty warheads with a total net yield of 96 megatons. But there was more to it than that, since nuclear weapons depended on the interlocking logic of several physical laws. Small weapons employed their yield with greater efficiencies than larger ones. Most important of all, the Mark 5 RV had a demonstrated accuracy of + or - 50 meters CEP ('Circular Error Probable'), meaning that after a flight of over four thousand nautical miles, half the warheads would land within 164.041 feet of their targets, and nearly all the rest within 300 feet. The 'miss' distance was far smaller than the crater to be expected from such a warhead, as a result of which the D-5 missile was the first sea-launched ballistic missile with counter-force capability. It was designed for a disarming first-strike. Given the normal two-at-one targeting, Maine could eliminate 120 Soviet missiles and/or missile-control bunkers, roughly ten percent of the current Soviet ICBM force, which was itself configured for a counter-force mission.