The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3)

by Tom Clancy

“Nichevo!” Petrov breathed. He had to think. His badge was fogged. Its number was 3-4-8: third badge series, frame fifty-four (the medical office, galley section), aft (officers’) accommodations. Though only two centimeters across, the badges were made with variable sensitivity. Ten vertically segmented columns were used to quantify the exposure level. Petrov saw that his was fogged all the way to segment four. The engine room crewmen’s were fogged to segment five, and the torpedomen, who spent all their time forward, showed contamination only in segment one. “Son of a bitch.” He knew the sensitivity levels by heart. He took the manual down to check them anyway. Fortunately, the segments were logarithmic. His exposure was twelve rads. Fifteen to twenty-five for the engineers. Twelve to twenty-five rads in two days, not enough to be dangerous. Not really life threatening, but . . . Petrov went back into his office, careful to leave the films in the labs. He picked up the phone. “Captain Ramius? Petrov here. Could you come aft to my office, please?” “On the way, Comrade Doctor.” Ramius took his time. He knew what the call was about. The day before they sailed, while Petrov had been ashore procuring drugs for his cupboard, Borodin had contaminated the badges with the X-ray machine. “Yes, Petrov?” Ramius closed the door behind him. “Comrade Captain, we have a radiation leak.” “Nonsense. Our instruments would have detected it at once.” Petrov got the films from the lab and hand...