He turned abruptly, hurried off the bridge.
Tyndall looked after him, perplexed, uncomprehending.
Then he swore, softly, savagely, and jumped for the radar handset.
"Bridge.
Admiral speaking.
Lieutenant Bowden at once!"
The loudspeaker crackled into immediate life. "Bowden speaking, sir."
"What the devil are you doing down there?" Tyndall's voice was low, vicious. "Asleep, or what?
We are being attacked, Lieutenant Bowden.
By a surface craft.
This may be news to you."
He broke off, ducked low as another salvo screamed overhead and crashed into the water less than half a mile ahead: the spray cascaded over the decks of a merchantman, glimpsed momentarily in a clear lane between two rolling fog-banks.
Tyndall straightened up quickly, snarled into the mouth-piece.
"He's got our range, and got it accurately.
In God's name, Bowden, where is he?"
"Sorry, sir." Bowden was cool, unruffled. "We can't seem to pick him up.
We still have the Adventurer on our screens, and there appears to be a very slight distortion on his bearing, sir, approximately 300... I suggest the enemy ship is still screened by the Adventurer or, if she's closer, is on the Adventurer's direct bearing."
"How near?" Tyndall barked.
"Not near, sir.
Very close to the Adventurer.
We can't distinguish either by size or distance."
Tyndall dangled the transmitter from his hand. He turned to Vallery.
"Does Bowden really expect me to believe that yarn?" he asked angrily. "A million to one coincidence like that, an enemy ship accidentally chose and holds the only possible course to screen her from our radar.
Fantastic!"
Vallery looked at him, his face without expression.
"Well?" Tyndall was impatient. "Isn't it?"
"No, sir," Vallery answered quietly. "It's not.
Not really.
And it wasn't accidental.
The U-pack would have radioed her, given our bearing and course.
The rest was easy."
Tyndall gazed at him through a long moment of comprehension, screwed his eyes shut and shook his head in short fierce jerks.
It was a gesture compounded of self-criticism, the death of disbelief, the attempt to clear a woolly, exhausted mind.
Hell, a six-year-old could have seen that... A shell whistled into the sea a bare fifty yards to port.
Tyndall didn't flinch, might never have seen or heard it.
"Bowden?" He had the transmitter to his mouth again.
"Sir?"
"Any change in the screen?"
"No, sir.
None."
"And are you still of the same opinion?"
"Yes, sir!
Can't be anything else."
"And close to the Adventurer, you say?"
"Very close, I would say."
"But, good God, man, the Adventurer must be ten miles astern by now!"
"Yes, sir. I know.
So is the bandit."
"What!
Ten miles!