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Sentry.”
    The small band of the general public gazed at Ferguson, who was alternately blowing on his hands and making marks in a saturated note-book to note the number of visitors boarding the ship.
    “He ain’t good-looking, but like me and unlike you he’s only here because he’s gotta be.”
    “Why haven’t you got a gun?” asked a tall pale man in a cloth cap and a plastic raincoat.
    “Can’t afford one,” said the Second Coxswain shortly. “Forrard, we have the anchor and cable. We’ve got one capstan, that’s that little drum. . . .”
    “What’s your job in this submarine, mister?” asked a youth in a black leather jacket and a crash-helmet.
    “When the submarine dives, I run forrard as fast as I can and hold its nose. Back here, we’ve got the tower, where the awficer of the watch keeps ’is lonely vigil. . . “
    “Don’t you get claustrophobia in a submarine?”
    “Only when I laugh,” said the Second Coxswain grimly.
    In the engine room, Derek was entertaining the party of boffins. The Admiralty Research Establishment had provided an assorted collection of representatives, who were led by a senior scientist. There were four physicists, two marine biologists, three metallurgists, a specialist in wave formations, and a visiting professor from Harvard.
    Derek led the way on to the engine room platform. In front of them were two panels of gauges, one for each engine, and all about them were the valves and systems for starting, controlling and stopping the engines. The party looked around in silence for a few moments.
    “Holy Cow,” said the visiting professor from Harvard, at last. “Rock-crushers! “
    Derek bristled. He had cherished these engines from their earliest days. He had watched them grow from bare skeleton frames, lying on a shop floor, to thundering monsters capable of driving the submarine across the world. “They’re a little more than that,” he said coldly.
    “Tell me,” said the Senior Scientist, “do you go everywhere dived?”
    “No. When we’re on passage we go on the surface. In peacetime anyway.”
    “Do the engines give you much trouble?” asked one of the metallurgists.
    “Only when the Chief E.R.A. has a wash.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “It seems to be traditional that the Chief E.R.A. of a submarine never washes at sea. If he does, something goes wrong with the engines to get him dirty again.”
    The Wavemaker looked at the tangle of pipes around him. “How do you figure out all these pipe systems? They don’t seem to lead anywhere.”
    “Actually, these systems are better than most,” Derek said. “They’ve been planned on a mock-up first, before they were ever put into a submarine. Most submarine systems look as though they were designed by Salvador Dali. Of course, they were put in under the old Olympic System.”
    “The Olympic System?” The Senior Scientist shook his head.
    “The fastest dockyard matie won, sir. Every morning while the submarine was building the men from the various dockyard departments lined up on the dockside holding their bits of pipe. Then when the whistle blew they all doubled on board and the man who got there first had a straight run. The others had to bend their pipes around his. The beauty of the system was that it didn’t matter what size the pipes were. If the electrician was particularly agile he could put his bit of quarter-inch electric cable in first and watch the boiler-maker bend his length of eight-inch diameter special steel piping round it.”
    “Really?” said the Senior Scientist.
    “Yes,” said Derek, looking the Wavemaker, who appeared to be sceptical, defiantly in the eye. “Now, gentlemen, was there anything in particular you wished to see?”
    One of the physicists had a special request.
    “May we see the distiller, please? I’ve been designing a special gauge for them and I would love to see where it’s actually got to go.”
    Derek showed them the distiller. The Physicist was