The luminous blobs and numbers and arrows swirled before Orsino's eyes as the trim of the ship changed, hatches clanged to and water thundered into the ballast tanks. He staggered and caught himself as the deck angled sharply underfoot.
He knew what Grinnel had meant by saying he was uncommitted, and he knew now that it was no longer true.
He thought for a moment that he might be sick into the face-fitting box, but it passed.
Minutes later, Grinnel was on the mike, his voice sounding metallically through the ship: "To all hands. To all hands. This is Commander Grinnel. We lost the skipper in that emergency dive—but you and I know that that's the way he would have wanted it. As senior line officer aboard, I'm assuming command for the rest of the voyage. We will remain submerged until dark. Division officers report to the wardroom. That's all."
He tapped Orsino on the shoulder. "Take off," he said. Orsino realized that the green blobs—clouds, were they?—no longer showed, and recalled that radar didn't work through water.
He wasn't in on the wardroom meeting, and wandered rather forlornly through the ship, incredibly jammed as it was with sleeping men, coffee-drinking men and booty. Half a dozen times he had to turn away close questioning about his radar experience and the appearance of the aircraft on the radar scope. Each time he managed it, with the feeling that one more question would have cooked his goose.
The men weren't sentimental about the skipper they had lost. Mostly they wondered how much of a cut Grinnel would allot them from the booty of Cape Cod.
At last the word passed for "Wyman" to report to the captain's cabin. He did, sweating after a fifteen-minute chat with a radar technician.
Grinnel closed the door of the minute cabin and smirked at him. "You have trouble, Wyman?" he asked.
"Yes."