The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

captain and the Admiral, technicians called off temperature readings in degrees
Kelvin, which started at absolute zero and used Celsius measurements.
'Any time now . . .' the Master Shipwright breathed.
'You've never seen it in operation?' Dubinin asked.
'No.'
Marvelous, the captain thought, looking up at the sky. What a horrible thing to
see from inside a submarine . . . 'What was that?'
'The pump just kicked in.'
'You're joking.' He looked at the massive, multi-barrel assembly. He couldn't –
Dubinin walked over to the instrument panel and –
Dubinin laughed out loud.
'It works, Captain,' the chief engineer said.
'Keep running up the power,' Dubinin said.
'Ten percent now, and rising.'
'Take it all the way to one-ten.'
'Captain . . .'
'I know, we never go over a hundred.' The reactor was rated for fifty thousand
horsepower, but like most such machines, the maximum power rating was
conservative. It had been run at nearly fifty-eight thousand – once, on
builder's trials, resulting in minor damage to the steam generator's internal
plumbing – and the maximum useful power was fifty-four-point-nine-six. Dubinin
had only done that once, soon after taking command. It was something a ship's
commander did, just as a fighter pilot must find out at least one time how fast
he can make his aircraft lance through the air.
'Very well,' the engineer agreed.
'Keep a close eye on things, Ivan Stepanovich. If you see any problems, shut
down at once.' Dubinin patted him on the shoulder and walked back to the front
of the compartment, hoping the welders had done their jobs properly. He shrugged
at the thought. The welds had all been X-rayed for possible faults. You couldn't
worry about everything, and he had a fine chief engineer to keep an eye on
things.
'Twenty percent power.'
The Master Shipwright looked around. The pump had also been mounted on its own
small raft structure, essentially a table with spring-loaded legs. They largely
prevented transmission of whatever noise the pump generated into the hull, and
from there into the water. That, he thought, had been poorly designed. Well,
there were always things to be done better. Building ships was one of the last
true engineering art forms.
'Twenty-five.'
'I can hear something now,' Dubinin said.
'Speed equivalent?'
'With normal hotel load – ' that meant the power required to operate various
ship's systems ranging from air conditioning to reading lights ' – ten knots.'
The Akula class required a great deal of electric power for her internal
systems. That was due mainly to the primitive air-conditioning systems, which
alone ate up ten percent of reactor output. 'We need seventeen percent power for
hotel loadings before we start turning the screw. Western systems are much more