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Korvettenkapitän Hans Kruger glanced down at the circle of light from the open hatch at his feet. It was like the entrance to hell, glowing red from the night vision lights below. How many times, he wondered, had that literally been true for so many of his contemporaries? How many had entered the red-lit hull of a U-boat, only to find themselves minutes later facing eternity? It didn't bear thinking.

Kruger lifted his Zeiss glasses and scanned the dark horizon. U-702 was surfaced, making good a steady 12 knots on her powerful diesels. On the deck, two of the engineering ratings were working in the dark, trying to repair the damage to the Schnorchel head.

It was too dangerous to be on the surface, even at night, Kruger knew. But with the Schnorchel damaged there was no choice. The batteries had to be charged, so they had surfaced after dark. If they could repair the Schnorchel while doing so, then they would submerge and continue charging in a slightly safer manner.

He glanced at the radar detector, mounted at the side of the bridge. It was the newest model; the engineers believed it would detect anything the Allies were using. But Kruger had heard those promises before. So had countless others, who had discovered the truth during their final moments of life.

Technology was a race. Once, before the war, the British had believed their Asdic had rendered the U-boat impotent as an offensive weapon. They had been wrong, but each advance in U-boat technology had shortly been followed by an advance in detection gear. As radar entered the picture, detectors had been fitted. But, again, the enemy was always upgrading their radar, learning to use ever-shorter wavelengths, which both increased its accuracy and made it harder to detect.

Was their detector still useful, he wondered, or had the enemy already made it obsolete?

Behind him, the lookouts were carefully scanning their assigned sectors through powerful glasses. Where would the enemy be? Would the danger be on the surface, with enemy warships raining heavy shells on the fragile hull of the elderly submarine? Would their last moments be marked by the roar of aero engines, and the sudden, sun-like glare of a Leigh light? Or was there an enemy submarine lurking just under the surface, waiting quietly for them to cross her path before firing a torpedo?

Kruger frowned. U-702's tubes were empty, her last torpedo fired 12 days before. It had missed, but that miss had been followed by 78 hours of depth charging. There was the damage to the Schnorchel, and a British hedgehog mortar had broken the barrel off the deck gun. A lucky break, that one, Kruger thought, for had the mortar missed the gun it would have gone through the deck to explode against the pressure hull and U-702's career would have ended at the bottom of the North Atlantic, like so many of her sisters.

So now she was in the Skagerrak, steaming south, on her way back to Kiel, where she would undergo a complete refit. It would be a homecoming for the boat. She had been built in Kiel, two years earlier.

In the Ubootwaffe, U-702 was considered a "lucky" boat. Kruger had commissioned her, just after his promotion to Kapitänleutnant. In the two years since, he had built up a tonnage record that rivaled the best of the early commanders, earning the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, with Oak Leaves and Swords, in the process.

During that time he had endured countless hours of slow, blind manoeuvring as the enemy escorts tried to kill him, yet he was still alive. More importantly, in those two years U-702 had never lost a man, either to enemy action, or to accident or disease. The crew had become a perfectly-functioning team, seemingly able to read each other's thoughts. It was probably why they were all still alive.

His thoughts were interupted by a sudden flash in the near distance. "Clear the bridge!" he shouted, his hand slamming against the red button under the screen. "Alarm!!!"

The boat was angling down, the sea rushing over her forecasing, even as Kruger dropped down the hatch, pulling it shut behind him and spinning the wheel. It had taken precious extra seconds to get the two engineering ratings below, but now they were under.

"Sixty metres," Kruger ordered, dropping down into the control room. "Steer two-seven-zero, revolutions for 3 knots."

He looked across the control room at the sound operator, who would have been monitoring the radar detector while they were surfaced. "No radar warning?"

The operator shook his head. "Nothing, sir. Never made a sound."

So the technology race, Kruger thought, had again shifted to the enemy.

"What do you have, Krause?" he asked.

"Appears to be four contacts, about red nine-zero, and a fifth well beyond them. First four are on a converging course; fifth contact is steaming east."

Kruger nodded. There were reports of a British killer group operating in the Skagerrak. So the closest contacts, the ones closing on U-702,would be the anti-submarine ships -- frigates, probably -- and the more distant contact was most likely the carrier. In the dark, the frigates would be the real threat, for it was unlikely the carrier's planes would be risked except in an emergency. It was dangerous enough landing a plane at night at a proper airfield; it would be doubly so on the tiny deck of an escort carrier.

There had been no explosion, nor any sound of the enemy's shell striking the sea. So it had probably been a star shell. If it was still drifting beneath its parachute, it would be illuminating only empty sea. But the enemy had fired, and that almost certainly meant they had got a radar contact. They knew something had been there; that there was nothing now meant a submarine.

So the hunt would begin.

Beneath U-702's keel, the hulks of old High Seas Fleet units lay together with their victims from the Grand Fleet. That had been a grand action, huge fleets of battleships and battle-cruisers manoeuvring for advantage in history's last great sea battle. Swift destroyers flanking their giant consorts, darting in to attack with their lighter guns and torpedoes.

Kruger's father had been there, as a junior gunnery officer in a battle-cruiser. He had survived, though his ship had not.

There was a soft sound coming from the hull, like someone running a metal brush against the casing.

Richter, the Exec, was at his side. "I hope they're not paying attention," he said.

"So do I, Number One," Kruger said. He knew better, but it was important to appear confident. The crew expected it.

Again, there was the metallic brushing sound, louder this time, and followed by the roar of a warship's screws as she rushed through the sea directly overhead.

"Full speed!" Kruger ordered. "Steer one-nine-zero!"

"Depth charges coming down!" the sound operator shouted, pulling off his padded earphones to avoid being deafened by the explosions.

U-702 swung around onto her new course, her speed creeping up to six knots as the e-motors wound up to full speed.

The stern lifted and slewed to port as the pattern detonated perhaps 30 metres astern, and slightly below, the boat.

"All stop! Damage report!"

Quickly, the reports came in from the sealed compartments. Nothing was leaking; no obvious damage reported.

For the next three hours, the rain of depth charges and hedgehog mortars was almost continuous. U-702 would constantly change depth, sometimes sprinting as the enemy charged in for the attack, then sitting still as the enemy did the same, listening to determine if his depth charges had done their job. There had been so many course changes that Kruger had begun to lose track of their position, which was an added worry.

Above them, the four British frigates alternately attacked and listened. Their commander recognised the skill of his opponent. But he had a long string of victories to his credit, and was determined to add another. He knew he had the advantage. He could continue attacking for as long as it took. His intended victim could stay down only so long before running out of air, or exhausting his batteries. After that, he would be forced to surface or die.

By now, the air was beginning to go bad in the battered U-boat. Kruger remained by the plot table, calling course and depth changes as he reacted to the enemy's attacks. He couldn't even shoot back, with his tubes empty!

Another pattern exploded, much too close, throwing U-702 violently off course. Something was banging against the casing, making a horrible racket.

"All stop."

The noise subsided as they slowed. The last pattern had clearly blasted something loose. The damage did not appear to be fatal, but the noise almost certainly would be. If they attempted to move, the banging would betray their position to the enemy. If they stayed still, it would be only a matter of time before the enemy pinned them down in their Asdic and destroyed them.

He could see it on the faces of the other men in the control room. A U-boat's most valuable defensive asset was silence. If the enemy couldn't hear you, he probably couldn't kill you.

Again, one of the enemy warships passed over the boat, the sound of her Asdic audible against the hull. But there were no depth charges. Had something malfunctioned? Kruger wondered.

"Enemy is breaking off," Krause reported.

"Why?" Richter wondered aloud.

"There's a lot of high speed HE, about green four-five," Krause reported. "Enemy are turning to intercept."

Kruger looked at the chart. That would put the new HE to the east. If the enemy frigates were turning toward it, it would mean friendly forces, coming out from Denmark.

"What do the newcomers sound like, Krause?"

"Very fast. Estimate about 40 knots, sir."

Kruger smiled. Schnellboote, then. They'd keep the enemy busy, perhaps even sink something. But the important thing was that they would give the British killer group something more immediate to worry about. Kruger had never shot back, so they had to at least suspect he was out of torpedoes. The S-boats would undoubtedly be fully armed.

"Enemy have increased speed and are engaging with guns," Krause reported. "They should be making too much noise to hear us now."

"Then we'll take advantage of it," Kruger said. "Steer one-eight-four. Revolutions for three knots."

Slowly, her damaged casing banging in the flow, U-702 turned south and worked her way out of the danger zone. They had survived.

For now.