“Looks like something to shut somebody up in if you never wanted him to get out,” Stan Bigelow said, nodding at the huge gray-painted cylinder with its tiny portholes and small hatch-like door.
“Anyway, we can look out,” March said, “even if the portholes are tiny.”
“I wonder if that psychiatrist will be peeking in one of those deadlights at us,” Stan mused, “making notes about every flicker of an eyelash.”
But then the grizzled old Chief Petty Officer opened the small door to the chamber and ordered the new men inside. Stooping as he stepped in, March saw that the sides of the chamber had long benches, about twenty feet long, on which the men were to sit. The compartment was brightly lighted, and March noticed a fan in one corner.
“I guess it gets a little warm,” he told himself, “with so many people in a small closed space like this.”
Stan Bigelow sat beside him on the bench, and the other students filed in after them. March saw that Scott, the radioman, sitting opposite him, looked a little frightened, and he wondered if he appeared the same to the others.
“Funny how this gets you,” Stan said in a low voice. “There’s not a thing to be afraid of, of course.”
“No, the most that can happen is that your nose will bleed or some small thing like that will show you can’t stand pressure,” March agreed. “But some of the older guys around here have had a lot of fun, particularly with the enlisted men, building up some fancy pictures of what the pressure tank and escape tower are like. They say you get weird sensations in your head, feel flutters in your heart.”
“Oh—just a little bit of subtle freshman hazing,” Stan laughed. “Well, I think the reason I’m nervous is that I don’t want anything to happen to toss me out of submarines.”
They looked toward the door of the compartment as the Chief Petty Officer stepped inside and tossed a bunch of robes on the seat near the door.