twenty-five days later, U.S.S. Scorpion was approaching the first objective of her cruise. It was ten days since she had submerged thirty degrees south of the equator. She had made her landfall at San Nicolas Island off Los Angeles and had given the city a wide berth, troubled about unknown minefields. She had set a course outside Santa Rosa and had closed the coast to the west of Santa Barbara; from there she had followed it northwards cruising at periscope depth about two miles offshore. She had ventured cautiously into Monterey Bay and had inspected the fishing port, seeing no sign of life on shore and learning very little. Radioactivity was uniformly high, so that they judged it prudent to keep the hull submerged.

They inspected San Francisco from five miles outside the Golden Gate. All they learned was that the bridge was down. The supporting tower at the south end seemed to have been overthrown. The houses visible from the sea around Golden Gate Park had suffered much from fire and blast; it did not look as if any of them were habitable. They saw no evidence of any human life, and the radiation level made it seem improbable that life could still exist in that vicinity.

They stayed there for some hours, taking photographs through the periscope and making such a survey as was possible. They went back southwards as far as Half Moon Bay and closed the coast to within half a mile, surfacing for a time and calling through the loud hailer. The houses here did not appear to be much damaged, but there was no sign of any life on shore. They stayed in the vicinity till dusk, and then set course towards the north, rounding Point Reyes and going on three or four miles offshore, following the coast.

Since crossing the equator it had been their habit to surface once in every watch to get the maximum antenna height, and to listen for the radio transmission from Seattle. They had heard it once, in latitude five north; it had gone on for about forty minutes, a random, meaningless transmission, and then had stopped. They had not heard it since. That night, somewhere off Fort Bragg, they surfaced in a stiff northwesterly wind and a rising sea, and directly they switched on the direction finder they heard it again. This time they were able to pinpoint it fairly accurately.

Dwight bent over the navigation table with Lieutenant Sunderstrom as he plotted the bearing. "Santa Maria," he said. "Looks like you were right."

They stood listening to the meaningless jumble coming out of the speaker. "It's fortuitous," the lieutenant said at last. "That's not someone keying, even somebody that doesn't know about radio. That's something that's just happening."

"Sounds like it." He stood listening. "There's power there," he said. "Where there's power there's people."

"It's not absolutely necessary," the lieutenant said.

"Hydroelectric," Dwight said. "I know it. But hell, those turbines won't run two years without maintenance."

"You wouldn't think so. Some of them are mighty good machinery."

Dwight grunted, and turned back to the charts. "I’ll aim to be off Cape Flattery at dawn. We'll go on as we're going now and get a fix around midday, and adjust speed then. If it looks all right from there, I'll take her in, periscope depth, so we can blow tanks if we hit anything that shouldn't be there. Maybe we'll be able to go right up to Santa Maria. Maybe we won't. You ready to go on shore if we do?"

"Sure," said the lieutenant. "I'd kind of like to get out of the ship for a while.

Dwight smiled. They had been submerged now for eleven days, and though health was still good they were all suffering from nervous tension. "Let's keep our fingers crossed," he said, "and hope we can make it."

"You know something?" said the lieutenant. "If we can't get through the strait, maybe I could make it overland." He pulled out a chart. "If we got in to Grays Harbor I could get on shore at Hoquiam or Aberdeen. This road runs right through to Bremerton and Santa Maria."

"It's a hundred miles."

"I could probably pick up a car, and gas."

The captain shook his head. Two hundred miles in a light radiation suit, driving a hot car with hot gas over hot country was not practical. "You've only got a two hours' air supply," he said. "I know you could take extra cylinders. But it's not practical. We'd lose you, one way or another. It's not that important, anyway."

They submerged again, and carried on upon the course. When they surfaced four hours later the transmission had stopped.

They carried on towards the north all the next day, most of the time at periscope depth. The morale of his crew was now becoming important to the captain. The close confinement was telling on them; no broadcast entertainment had been available for a long time, and the recordings they could play over the speakers had long grown stale. To stimulate their minds and give them something to talk about he gave free access to the periscope to anyone who cared to use it, though there was little to look at. This rocky and somewhat uninteresting coast was their home country and the sight of a cafe with a Buick parked outside it was enough to set them talking and revive starved minds.

At midnight they surfaced according to their routine, off the mouth of the Columbia River. Lieutenant Benson was coming to relieve Lieutenant Commander Farrell. The lieutenant commander raised the periscope from the well and put his face to it, swinging it around. Then he turned quickly to the other officer. "Say, go and call the captain. Lights on shore, thirty to forty degrees on the starboard bow."

In a minute or two they were all looking through the periscope in turn and studying the chart, Peter Holmes and John Osborne with them. Dwight bent over the chart with his executive officer. "On the Washington side of the entrance," he said. "They'll be around these places Long Beach and Ilwaco. There's nothing in the State of Oregon."

From, behind him, Lieutenant Sunderstrom said, "Hydroelectric."

"I guess so. If there's lights it would explain a lot." He turned to the scientist. "What's the outside radiation level, Mr. Osborne?"

"Thirty in the red, sir."

The captain nodded. Much too high for life to be maintained, though not immediately lethal; there had been little change in the last five or six days. He went to the periscope himself and stood there for a long time. He did not care to take his vessel closer to the shore, at night. "Okay," he said at last. "We'll carry on the way we're going now. Log it, Mr. Benson."

He went back to bed. Tomorrow would be an anxious, trying day; he must get his sleep. In the privacy of his little curtained cabin he unlocked the safe that held the confidential books and took out the bracelet; it glowed in the synthetic light. She would love it. He put it carefully in the breast pocket of his uniform suit. Then he went to bed again, his hand upon the fishing rod, and slept.

They surfaced again at four in the morning, just before dawn, a little to the north of Grays Harbor. No lights were visible on shore, but as there were no towns and few roads in the district that evidence was inconclusive. They went down to periscope depth and carried on. When Dwight came to the control room at six o'clock the day was bright through the periscope and the crew off duty were taking turns to look at the desolate shore. He went to breakfast and then stood smoking at the chart table, studying the minefield chart that he already knew so well, and the well-remembered entrance to the Juan de Fuca Strait.

At seven forty-five his executive officer reported that Cape Flattery was abeam. The captain stubbed out his cigarette. "Okay," he said. "Take her in, Commander. Course is zero seven five. Fifteen knots."

The hum of the motors dropped to a lower note for the first time in three weeks; within the hull the relative silence was almost oppressive. All morning they made their way southeastwards down the strait between Canada and the United States, taking continuous bearings through the periscope, keeping a running plot at the chart table and altering course many times. They saw little change on shore, except in one place on Vancouver Island near Jordan River where a huge area on the southern slopes of Mount Valentine seemed to have been burned and blasted. They judged this area to be no less than seven miles long and five miles wide; in it no vegetation seemed to grow although the surface of the ground seemed undisturbed.

"I'd say that's an air burst," the captain said, turning from the periscope. "Perhaps a guided missile got one there."

As they approached more populous districts there were always one or two men waiting to look through the periscope as soon as the officers relinquished it. Soon after midday they were off Port Townsend and turning southwards into Puget Sound. They went on, leaving Whidbey Island on the port hand, and in the early afternoon they came to the mainland at the little town of Edmonds, fifteen miles north of the centre of Seattle. They were well past the mine defences by that time. From the sea the place seemed quite undamaged, but the radiation level was still high.

The captain stood studying it through the periscope. If the Geiger counter was correct no life could exist there for more than a few days, and yet it all looked so normal in the spring sunlight that he felt there must be people there. There did not seem to be glass broken in the windows, even, save for a pane here and there. He turned from the periscope. "Left ten, seven knots," he said. "We'll close the shore here, and lie off the jetty, and hail for a while."

He relinquished the command to his executive, and ordered the loud hailer to be tested and made ready. Lieutenant Commander Farrell brought the vessel to the surface and took her in, and they lay to a hundred yards from the boat jetty, watching the shore.

The chief of the boat touched the executive officer on the shoulder. "Be all right for Swain to have a look, sir?" he inquired. "This is his home town." Yeoman First Class Ralph Swain was a radar operator.

"Oh, sure."

He stepped aside, and the yeoman went to the periscope. He stood there for a long while, and then raised his head. "Ken Puglia's got his drugstore open," he said. "The door's open and the shades are up. But he's left his neon sign on. It's not like Ken to leave that burning in the daytime."