The commander's gray eyes studied Barney's red-veined ones. "Just bring yourselves back, Barney. We'll settle for that." He touched the minisub. "All I can say is we think we're in the sector where the picket buoys shorted out. There've been such meager appropriations for hydrographic surveys in the Arctic Ocean, we haven't a very clear picture of fathometer landmarks even in this sector. So the navigator has depended pretty heavily on his dead reckoning and inertial navigation. What I'm getting at is don't spend too much time looking. Use conservative search patterns. Give yourself plenty of margin to find your way home to us. We'll do our best to hold this position."
Slowly, the commander smiled. "We'll keep the coffee hot until you get back."
The Murderer watched them roll the minisub along on its cradle and into the chamber. From the stern, the minisub looked less like a torpedo. Instead of the compact round propeller blades associated with high speeds under water, the minisub had long narrow blades which might have looked more appropriate on a Wright Brother's airplane. These would unwind through the water so slowly there would be no cavitation, no tell-tale bubbling sounds.
"One last thing," the commander said, including the Murderer in his gray gaze. "No aggressive action. If you should meet—someone—break off contact in a dignified manner and come home."
Strangely, the commander smiled again and glanced at his watch. "Right about now, my two kids are waking from their afternoon naps and running out into the backyard in their underpants to swing on the swings. No aggressive action, O.K.?"
The Murderer felt thankful he was not the commander—with the responsibility for sixteen hydrogen-warheaded Polaris missiles on his back.
Weighted down by his air tanks, the Murderer crawled into the chamber beside the minisub and reached into the stern cockpit. He unreeled a few feet of the red wire and plugged it into the chest socket of his electric suit warmer. Out there, you couldn't search very long without battery heat from the minisub.
Automatically checking his full-face mask, he connected with the black wire and tested his throat mike, earplug circuit. "One—two—three—"
"Four—shut the door," Barney's voice croaked weirdly. For complicated two-man disassemblies underwater, the traditional hand signals were not enough. The minisub acted as a telephone exchange.