"The Vectra!" Vallery glanced at the Admiral, silent now and motionless, and turned to the bridge messenger. "Chrysler!
Get through to W.T. Any way you can.
Ask them to repeat the first message."
He looked again at Turner, following the Admiral's sick gaze over the side. He looked down, recoiled in horror, fighting down the instant nausea.
The gunner in the spon-son below-just another boy like Chrysler-must have seen the falling mast, must have made a panic-stricken attempt to escape.
He had barely cleared his cockpit when the radar screen, a hundred square feet of meshed steel carrying the crushing weight of the mast as it had snapped over the edge of the bridge, had caught him fairly and squarely.
He lay still now, mangled, broken, something less than human, spreadeagled in outflung crucifixion across the twin barrels of his Oerlikon.
Vallery turned away, sick in body and mind.
God, the craziness, the futile insanity of war.
Damn that German cruiser, damn those German gunners, damn them, damn them!...
But why should he?
They, too, were only doing a job-and doing it terribly well.
He gazed sightlessly at the wrecked shambles of his bridge.
What damnably accurate gunnery!
He wondered, vaguely, if the Ulysses had registered any hits.
Probably not, and now, of course, it was impossible.
It was impossible now because the Ulysses, still racing south-east through the fog, was completely blind, both radar eyes gone, victims to the weather and the German guns.
Worse still, all the Fire Control towers were damaged beyond repair.
If this goes on, he thought wryly, all we'll need is a set of grappling irons and a supply of cutlasses.
In terms of modern naval gunnery, even although her main armament was intact, the Ulysses was hopelessly crippled.
She just didn't have a chance.
What was it that Stoker Riley was supposed to have said-" being thrown to the wolves "?
Yes, that was it-" thrown to the wolves."
But only a Nero, he reflected wearily, would have blinded a gladiator before throwing him into the arena.
All firing had ceased.
The bridge was deadly quiet.
Silence, complete silence, except for the sound of rushing water, the muffled roar of the great engine-room intake fans, the monotonous, nerve-drilling pinging of the Asdic-and these, oddly enough, only served to deepen the great silence.
Every eye, Vallery saw, was on Admiral Tyndall.
Old Giles was mumbling something to himself, too faint to catch.
His face, shockingly grey, haggard and blotched, still peered over the side.
He seemed fascinated by the sight of the dead boy.
Or was it the smashed Radar screen?
Had the full significance of the broken scanner and wrecked Director Towers dawned on him yet?
Vallery looked at him for a long moment, then turned away: he knew that it had.
"W.T.-bridge.
W.T.-bridge."
Everyone on the bridge jumped, swung round in nerve-jangled startlement.
Everyone except Tyndall.
He had frozen into a graven immobility.
"Signal from Vectra.
First Signal. Received 0952."
Vallery glanced at his watch.
Only six minutes ago!
Impossible!
"Signal reads: Contacts, contacts, 3, repeat 3.
Amend to 5.
Heavy concentration of U-boats, ahead and abeam.
Am engaging.'"
Every eye on the bridge swung back to Tyndall. His, they knew, the responsibility, his the decision-taken alone, against the advice of his senior officer, to leave the convoy almost unguarded.
Impersonally, Vallery admired the baiting, the timing, the springing of the trap.