"Very well."

Slowly, so as not to make too great a bend in the towed array, USS Maine reversed course. It took three minutes before she settled down on the new course, doing something no US fleet ballistic-missile submarine had ever done before. Lieutenant-Commander Claggett appeared in the control room soon thereafter.

"How long you figure he's going to hold this course?" he asked Ricks.

"What would you do?"

"I think I'd troll along in a ladder pattern," Dutch answered, "and my drift would be south instead of north, reverse of how we do it in the Barents Sea, right? Interval between sweeps will be determined by the performance of his tail. That's one hard piece of intel we can develop, but depending on how that number looks, we'll have to be real careful how we trail him, won't we?"

"Well, I can't approach to less than thirty thousand yards under any circumstances. So we'll close to fifty-K until we have a better feel for him, then ease it in as circumstances permit. One of us should be in here at all times as long as he's in the neighborhood."

"Agreed." Claggett nodded. He paused for a beat before going on. "How the hell," the XO asked very quietly indeed, "did OP-02 ever agree to this?"

"Safer world now, isn't it?"

"I s'pose, sir."

"You're jealous that boomers can do a fast-attack job?"

"Sir, I think that OP-02 slipped a gear, either that or they're trying to impress some folks with our flexibility or something."

"You don't like this?"

"No, Captain, I don't. I know we can do it, but I don't think we should."

"Is that what you talked to Mancuso about?"

"What?" Claggett shook his head. "No, sir. Well, he did ask me that, and I said we could do it. Not my place to enter into that yet."

Then what did you talk to him about? Ricks wanted to ask. He couldn't, of course.