The reactor was reactivated.  Five minutes later the pressure went all the way to normal power.  Melekhin held a counter under the spout for ten minutes—and got nothing, even on the number two setting.  He walked to the phone to tell the captain the leak was fixed.

Melekhin had the enlisted men let back into the compartment to return the tools to their places.

"You see how it is done, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, Comrade.  Was that one leak sufficient to cause all of our contamination?"

"Obviously."

Svyadov wondered about this.  The reactor spaces were nothing but a collection of pipes and fittings, and this bit of sabotage could not have taken long.  What if other such time bombs were hidden in the system?

"Perhaps you worry too much, Comrade," Melekhin said.  "Yes, I have considered this.  When we get to Cuba, I will have a full-power static test made to check the whole system, but for the moment I do not think this is a good idea.  We will continue the two-hour watch cycle.  There is the possibility that one of our own crewmen is the saboteur.  If so, I will not have people in these spaces long enough to commit more mischief.  You will watch the crew closely."

THE TWELFTH DAY

TUESDAY 14, DECEMBER

The Dallas

"Crazy Ivan!" Jones shouted loudly enough to be heard in the attack center. "Turning to starboard!"

"Skipper!" Thompson repeated the warning.

"All stop!" Mancuso ordered quickly. "Rig ship for ultra-quiet!"

A thousand yards ahead of the Dallas, her contact had just begun a radical turn to the right. She had been doing so about every two hours since they had regained contact, though not regularly enough for the Dallas to settle into a comfortable pattern. Whoever is driving that boomer knows his business, Mancuso thought. The Soviet missile submarine was making a complete circle so her bow-mounted sonar could check for anyone hiding in her baffles.

Countering this maneuver was more than just tricky—it was dangerous, especially the way Mancuso did it. When the Red October changed course, her stern, like those of all ships, moved in the direction opposite the turn. She was a steel barrier directly in the Dallas' path for as long as it took her to move through the first part of the turn, and the 7,000-ton attack submarine took a lot of space to stop.

The exact number of collisions that had occurred between Soviet and American submarines was a closely guarded secret; that there had been such collisions was not. One characteristically Russian tactic for forcing Americans to keep their distance was a stylized turn called the Crazy Ivan in the U.S. Navy.