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"Conn, sonar."

"Conn, aye," the navigator answered.

"Sir, I got a possible contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint, but it keeps coming back."

"On the way." It was a short five steps into the sonar room. "Show me."

"Right here, sir." The sonarman pointed to a line on the display. Though it looked fuzzy, it was in fact composed of discrete yellow dots in a specific frequency range, and as the time-scale moved vertically upward, more dots kept appearing, regular only in that they seemed to form a vague and fuzzy line. The only change in the line was a slight drift in direction. "I can't tell you what it is yet."

"Tell me what it isn't."

It ain't no surface contact, and I don't think it's random noise either, sir." The petty officer traced it all the way to the top of the tube with a grease pencil. "Right about here, I decided it might actually be something."

"What else you got?"

"Sierra-15 over here is a merchant, heading southeast and way the hell away from us - that's a third-CZ contact we been trackin' since before turn of the last watch, and that's about it, Mr Pitney. I guess it's too bumpy topside for the fishermen to be out this far."

Lieutenant Pitney tapped the screen. "Call it Sierra-16, and I'll get a track started. How's the water?"

"Deep channel seems very good today, sir. Surface noise is a little tough, though. This one's tough to hold."

"Keep an eye on it."

"Aye aye." The sonarman turned back to his scope.

Lieutenant Jeff Pitney returned to the control room, lifted the growler phone, and punched the button for the Captain's cabin. "Gator here, Cap'n. We have a possible sonar contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint. Our friend might be back, sir yes, sir." Pitney hung up and hit the 1-MC speaker system. "Man the fire-control tracking party."

Captain Ricks appeared a minute later, wearing sneakers and his blue overalls. His first stop was to control, to check course, speed, and depth. Then he went into sonar.

"Let's see it."

"Damn thing just faded on me again, sir," the sonarman said sheepishly. He used a piece of toilet paper - there was a roll over each scope - to erase the previous mark, and penciled in another. "I think we have something here, sir."

"I hope you didn't interrupt my sleep for nothing," Ricks noted. Lieutenant Pitney caught the look the two other sonarmen exchanged at that.

"Coming back, sir. You know, if this is an Akula, we should be getting a little pump noise in this spectrum over here "

"Intelligence says he's coming out of overhaul. Ivan is learning how to make them quieter," Ricks said.

"Guess so slow drift to the north, call the current bearing two-nine-seven." Both men knew that figure could be off by ten degrees either way. Even with the enormously expensive system on Maine, really longdistance bearings were pretty vague.

"Anybody else around?" Pitney asked.

"Omaha is supposed to be around somewhere south of Kodiak. Wrong direction. It's not her. Sure it's not a surface contact?"

"No way, Cap'n. If it was diesel, I'd know it, and if it was steam, I'd know that, too. There's no pounding from surface noise. Has to be a submerged contact, Cap'n. Only thing makes sense "

"Pitney, we're on two-eight-one?"

"Yessir."

"Come left to two-six-five. We'll set up a better baseline for the target-motion analysis, try to get a range estimate before we turn in."

Turn in, Pitney thought. Jesus, boomers aren't supposed to do this stuff. He gave the order anyway, of course.

"Where's the layer?"

"One-five-zero feet, sir. Judging by the surface noise, there's twenty-five-footers up there," the sonarman added.

"So he's probably staying deep to smooth the ride out."

"Damn, lost him again we'll see what happens when the tail straightens back out "

Ricks leaned his head out of the sonar room and spoke a single word: "Coffee." It never occurred to him that the sonarmen might like some, too.

It took five more minutes of waiting before the dots started appearing