Things really did start the next day for March! In the morning he had a physical examination that made all his previous examinations look like quick once-overs. Eyes, ears, lungs, heart, stomach—they went over March’s body so thoroughly that he felt not a microbe, not a blood cell, had escaped their detection. But he knew, without waiting for the report, that he had no difficulty in meeting all the requirements.

In the afternoon there was the official call on the Commandant, which was not the stiff and formal ceremony such Naval customs often are, but an interesting and heart-warming experience. The “Old Man” really took the time to talk informally and in very friendly fashion with the new officers who came to the school.

March met the new officers who were just beginning their work at the school with him, got his schedule of duties for the next few days, and managed to work in a letter to his mother in the evening.

The next day, when March learned that he had passed his physical examination with flying colors, he also learned that one of the doctors examining him had been a psychiatrist.

“That’s the smartest thing yet!” he muttered to Ensign Bigelow, another new officer-student who had just come from a teaching assignment at one of the Navy’s technical schools. “Usually the psychological examination is separate. You know you’re going to be questioned by a psychiatrist who will ask you all sorts of strange questions about how you get along with girls and what you thought of your fifth-grade teacher, and—”

“And what your dreams are like,” added Bigelow.

“Sure, and you’re self conscious,” March went on. “A smart doctor probably sees through that and gets the real dope as to what makes your personality tick, but it has always struck me as a sort of silly business.”

“Same here,” Bigelow agreed. “Even though I know those Navy psychiatrists have been right about ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“But this was wonderful!” March exclaimed. “I just thought those three docs were all looking at blood pressure and listening to my heart and such things. Sure, one of them was especially friendly and talked to me a lot, but that was just natural. And, come to think of it, he talked a lot about what I did when I was on the Plymouth, and how I liked its Skipper, and where I’d gone to school.”

“I remember now,” Bigelow said, “that he asked me about my leave before I came here. Mentioned big drinking parties. I didn’t go in for any and said so. I thought he must be a heavy drinker from the way he talked, but he was just finding out whether I was or not.”

“He pulled the same line on me,” March said, “and I just thought it was making talk—you know, the way a dentist does before he does something that hurts, to take your mind off what’s happening.”

“Well, that won’t be the end of the psychological tests,” Bigelow said. “I understand that a psychiatrist is always there when we make our first dives, and he’s just happening to be around in the escape-tower tests. He’s keeping an eye on us all the time.”

“Some people might not like that idea,” March said. “I suppose they wouldn’t like the idea of having somebody looking them over to spot their bad reactions to everything that goes on.”

“Like a guilty conscience,” Bigelow added.

“Always on hand,” March grinned. “But I don’t think it’s a bad idea. After all, it’s for our own protection. They’ve got to try to weed out the guys who will crack at the wrong time. And nobody thinks he will, so you can’t find it out just by asking. If I’m that kind, then you don’t want to find yourself out in the Pacific undergoing a depth-charge attack with me alongside you, suddenly going nuts inside a very small submarine.”

“I should say not,” Bigelow said. “And it’s nothing especially against a fellow if he can’t stand this particular kind of strain that he gets in a sub. Maybe he’s got a kind of claustrophobia—fear of being shut up in small places—without knowing it. Maybe he’d make a swell aviator or bombardier or the bravest PT-boat Skipper in the world! It’s just that submarining takes certain qualities, that’s all. You’ve either got ’em or you haven’t.”

“And those docs find it out before you go out,” March agreed.

March spent the evening with Bigelow and began to like the red-headed young man more as he got to know him better. Stan Bigelow was a chunky, broad-shouldered fellow who looked so hard that a tank could not bowl him over. A broken nose, covered with freckles, added greatly to his appearance of toughness, even though it had come, as he told March, from nothing more pugilistic than a fall out of a tree when he was sixteen years old.

“Landed just wrong on a pile of rocks,” he said. “Didn’t hurt a thing but my nose. I was at a summer camp and the doc there didn’t fix it up right. By the time somebody tried to put it back into a decent shape the bones had set too well.”

Despite Stan’s look of a waterfront bruiser, he was really a serious-minded student. He had graduated from one of the country’s top-flight engineering schools just before going into the Navy, and then had attended one of the Navy’s technical schools. Diesel engines were his specialty and he felt sure that this knowledge would quickly get him into submarine work where he wanted to be. But his work at the technical school had been so brilliant that they kept him on as an instructor despite his pleas for transfer to New London. Finally, after a year of teaching, he had been recommended for submarines by an understanding commanding officer.

“So here I am,” he concluded. “And right now I’m scared to death that it won’t make any difference how much I want to be a submariner or how much I know about Diesels. If I get jittery in the pressure tank tomorrow—out I’ll go!”

“You don’t even need to get jittery,” March laughed. “How do you know whether you can stand pressure or not? Even in perfect physical shape, some people just can’t, that’s all. I don’t mean because they’re nervous. Maybe their noses bleed or their ears won’t make the right adjustment or something.”

“Well—we won’t know until we try it!” Stan exclaimed. “I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed.”

After breakfast the next morning March and Stan Bigelow, along with the other new officer-students, reported to the little building at the base of the tall escape tower. They were joined by the new class of enlisted men who were to undergo the same tests. During preliminary training, there was no difference between officers and men in the examinations and work they had to undergo. Only later, when actual classes of study began, did they separate—for the enlisted men to learn their particular trades in reference to submarines and for the officers to get the highly technical studies and executive training they must have.

March saw Scott, the radio petty officer, and the others who had ridden to the sub base on the same bus with him. He called a friendly hello to them as they all stood waiting for the Chief Petty Officer in charge to call the roll.

After roll was called all the students were instructed to strip to the swimming trunks they had been instructed to wear, eyeing the pressure chamber suspiciously all the time.

“Looks like something to shut somebody up in if you never wanted him to get out,” Stan Bigelow said, nodding at the huge gray-painted cylinder with its tiny portholes and small hatch-like door.

“Anyway, we can look out,” March said, “even if the portholes are tiny.”

“I wonder if that psychiatrist will be peeking in one of those deadlights at us,” Stan mused, “making notes about every flicker of an eyelash.”

But then the grizzled old Chief Petty Officer opened the small door to the chamber and ordered the new men inside. Stooping as he stepped in, March saw that the sides of the chamber had long benches, about twenty feet long, on which the men were to sit. The compartment was brightly lighted, and March noticed a fan in one corner.

“I guess it gets a little warm,” he told himself, “with so many people in a small closed space like this.”

Stan Bigelow sat beside him on the bench, and the other students filed in after them. March saw that Scott, the radioman, sitting opposite him, looked a little frightened, and he wondered if he appeared the same to the others.

“Funny how this gets you,” Stan said in a low voice. “There’s not a thing to be afraid of, of course.”

“No, the most that can happen is that your nose will bleed or some small thing like that will show you can’t stand pressure,” March agreed. “But some of the older guys around here have had a lot of fun, particularly with the enlisted men, building up some fancy pictures of what the pressure tank and escape tower are like. They say you get weird sensations in your head, feel flutters in your heart.”

“Oh—just a little bit of subtle freshman hazing,” Stan laughed. “Well, I think the reason I’m nervous is that I don’t want anything to happen to toss me out of submarines.”

They looked toward the door of the compartment as the Chief Petty Officer stepped inside and tossed a bunch of robes on the seat near the door.

“Wonder why the robes?” March muttered. “If anything, it’s going to be too hot in here—that’s why there’s a fan.”

“Maybe this is a combination test,” Stan said with a grin. “They want to see if we can stand pressure—and heat.”

The CPO closed and fastened securely the door, and they all heard someone on the outside testing it to be certain it was tightly shut.

“You’re goin’ to be out of here pretty fast,” the officer said to the students, “so don’t fret. We get fifty pounds of pressure in here, that’s all.”

His tone was casual and reassuring, but none of the men sat back in relaxed positions, even though they tried to appear completely at ease and even unconcerned. They almost jumped when the CPO banged his fist lustily against the end of the chamber as a signal to the man handling the valves outside.

They jumped again as a hissing sound filled the small compartment. The air was pouring in, and the men sat listening to it in silence. March saw that the Chief had his eyes on a dial at the end of the chamber and he looked there, too. Stan noted the direction of his glance, and in another moment every student was staring at the hand that moved up slowly to indicate one pound of pressure, then two pounds, then three pounds....

The CPO banged on the side of the chamber again. The hissing stopped. Everyone looked up in surprise, wondering if there was something wrong. March glanced around quickly. Was one of the students too jittery? Had a nosebleed started already? But everyone looked all right, except for an expression of worry.

“There’s only three pounds pressure now,” the Chief said. “Even fifty’s not really a lot, but three’s almost nothing. Still, just to give you an idea that air pressure is real pressure and not just something like a billowy cloud, I thought I’d tell you that we couldn’t possibly open that hatch now. You see—when I say three pounds of pressure, that means per square inch. There’s about a ton and a half of pressure on that door right now. Figure out how much there is on you.”

With another bang the hissing of the inrushing air began once more and the hand on the dial began to creep around again, passing the figure five, then the figure ten, then fifteen. March began to feel uncomfortably warm, and then he saw that most of the other men were beginning to sweat. Stan leaned over and put his lips close to March’s ear so that he could be heard over the sound of the air.

“Air under pressure gets hot,” Stan said. “Remember your physics? It’s the whole basis of a Diesel engine, incidentally, but the pressure is considerably greater. The temperature in a cylinder gets up to about a thousand degrees.”

“Around a hundred in here now, I’d say,” March replied in a loud whisper, and Stan nodded in agreement. Then he swallowed with some difficulty, and smiled in some surprise afterward.

“My ears popped when I swallowed;” he said. “Feels better.”

“That’s right,” boomed the CPO, who had apparently noticed what Stan did. “Everybody try swallowing a few times if your ears feel funny.”

March swallowed and then almost laughed as he saw the two rows of students earnestly swallowing. Then he realized he had not looked at the pressure dial for some time. He was startled to see it at thirty-five pounds. It was a good deal hotter now and everyone was sweating profusely. March looked around at the others carefully, forgetting his concern about himself in his interest in the others.

There seemed to be less tension now than at the very beginning. A few of the men talked to each other, comparing their reactions, laughing at the way their ears popped, expressing surprise at the increasing heat. Suddenly there was another banging on the wall of the chamber, and the hissing stopped. Everyone’s eyes went to the pressure dial, and saw the hand standing at fifty pounds.

So this was it! Well, it wasn’t so bad. March felt that way himself and saw the same feeling spreading to all the others, who smiled slightly as they knew they had withstood the pressure test successfully.

“So far, anyway,” March told himself. “Some things happen occasionally, I guess, when the pressure is reduced.”

Already the hand on the dial was moving downward again, as the air was released from the chamber by a man handling the valves on the outside. March began to feel cooler, and in a few minutes he shivered suddenly.

“Better put on the robes,” the Chief said, tossing the robes to the men on the benches. “The temperature was up to a hundred and thirty for a while there, and it drops just as fast as the pressure drops.”

“Feels good!” Stan said, as he slipped into the robe.

“Sure, but I’d like a couple of blankets, too,” March replied, feeling his teeth begin to chatter.

They heard another pound on the wall and saw that the dial hand stood at ten pounds of pressure inside.

“We’ve got to stop it here for a while,” the CPO explained. “There’s a regular rate at which a man’s got to come out of pressure to keep from getting the bends. You probably know something about the bends—every sailor does—but here’s the idea. Your blood’s under pressure in the arteries and veins, too, just like the rest of you, and there’s oxygen and other things carried in that blood. When pressure is reduced too much too suddenly, some of the gases in your blood form bubbles—just like a kettle boiling. And those bubbles in your blood can cause plenty of trouble.”

Stan turned to March. “Sure,” he said. “Remember those experiments everybody has in first-year chemistry? Making water boil when you put it on a cake of ice? The water’s under pressure in a closed container, and cooling it condenses the steam vapor so that pressure is reduced. So the air forms bubbles which escape when pressure goes down.”

“I remember,” March said. “They’ve got the bends licked now, though, since they know just how fast to reduce pressure.”

More air was let out until the dial showed five pounds of pressure for a while, and then it was reduced to zero. The door was swung open by the Chief and the men stepped out of the chamber with smiles on their faces.

“One test passed,” March said. “What’s next?”

“The escape tower,” Stan replied. “Tomorrow.”