The War That Came Early: West and East by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page B

American liner while believing it to be a big freighter, hewasn’t. He was lucky they hadn’t beached him—maybe lucky they hadn’t shot him. No one who remembered the last war wanted to see the USA jump into this one.
    Lemp turned to Gerhart Beilharz, the engineering officer who’d come with the
Schnorkel
. “Is the damned thing behaving?” he asked.
    “Oh, yes, sir,” Beilharz said enthusiastically. He was all for his new toy. Of course he was—he wouldn’t have been messing with it if he weren’t. Normally, an extra engineering officer on a U-boat—especially one two meters tall, who wore an infantry helmet to keep from smashing his head open on the overhead pipes and valves—was about as useful as an extra tail on a cat, but, if they were going to have the
Schnorkel
along, having somebody aboard who knew all about it seemed worthwhile.
    It did have its uses. With it in action, the U-boat could make eight knots just below the surface—better than twice her submerged speed on batteries. And she could keep going indefinitely, instead of running out of juice inside a day. Best of all, with the
Schnorkel
the U-30 could charge the batteries for deep dives without surfacing. That was good for everybody’s life expectancy … except the enemy’s.
    Lemp could have gone twice as fast in approaching the ship or ships making that distant smoke plume had he stayed surfaced. Maybe it was a lone freighter: a fat, tasty target. Maybe, sure, but the odds were against it. Freighters in these waters commonly convoyed and zigzagged. They commonly had destroyers escorting them. And destroyers loved U-boats the way dogs loved cats—even cats with two tails.
    Better to be a cat o’ nine tails
, Lemp thought. With all the torpedoes the U-30 carried, he could flog England even worse than that. If he could keep England from flogging back, he’d bring the U-boat home so he could go out and try it again.
So the English have the chance to kill me again
. As he did every time that thought surfaced, he made it submerge once more.
    He peered through the periscope. Nothing but smoke, not yet. Eight knots was a walk, even if it wasn’t a crawl.
    He could come closer to the enemy with the
Schnorkel
than he could staying on the surface. He did have to give it that. An alert lookout who’dspot a light gray U-boat hull even against a gray sky wouldn’t notice the hollow pole that kept the diesels chugging. If he did spot it, he might think it was a piece of sea junk and keep his big mouth shut.
    “What have we got, Skipper?” somebody asked. The first time he put the question, Lemp heard it without consciously noticing it. Whoever it was asked the same thing again.
    This time, Lemp did notice. “Convoy. They’re zigzagging—away from us, at the moment.” Even tubby freighters could go as fast as the U-30 did on the
Schnorkel
.
    “What kind of escorts?”
    “Warships. Destroyers, corvettes, frigates … I can’t make that out at this distance. I see two—bound to be more on the far side of the convoy.” Lemp muttered to himself. If he was going to get close enough to fire at the enemy ships, either they’d have to swerve back toward him or he’d need to surface and close the gap before diving again. He didn’t much want to do that; if he could see the enemy, they’d be able to see him after he came up. Trouble was, you couldn’t fight a war doing only the things you wanted to do.
    “Can we sneak up on them, sir?” That was Lieutenant Beilharz, both more formal and more optimistic than most of the submariners.
    Unhappily, Lemp shook his head. “Afraid not,” he said, and then, “Prepare to surface.”
    Beilharz grunted as if the skipper had elbowed him in the pit of the stomach. The youngster wanted his pet miracle-worker to solve every problem the sea presented. Well, no matter what he wanted, he wouldn’t get all of it. Lemp wanted to be taller and skinnier than he was. He wanted his hairline to quit receding,