I lied about the operations compartment's three man stateroom being my home-away-from-home. The truth is, this was home. The aft two thirds of the boat, the Engineering Department. At Frame 57 the operations compartment ends and Disneyland begins. When you walk through the upper level hatch at Frame 57, you walk into the shielded tunnel of the reactor compartment. Gamma, alpha and neutron radiation are going through your tissue like bullets, even with the plant shutdown. The sleeping monster beneath you makes the room intensely hot at sea, but pierside, the air conditioning is roaring, and the tunnel is a freezer. There's not much to see except a hatch to the interior of the reactor compartment, which is locked and covered with high radiation signs. You step through the tunnel aft hatch and go down the steps of AMR2 upper level, where AMR stands for auxiliary machinery room. AMR1 is aft of the torpedo room, but AMR2 is a compartment all its own, surrounded by a ballast tank, with electrical circuit breakers, starters and switchgear the size of telephone booths lining the aisles. Below the room is more of a chemical plant, with pipes and machinery. The main feed pumps are on the forward bulkhead, and in the center of the room is "The Bomb," the oxygen generator, which takes pure distilled water from the evaporator and turns it into hydrogen and oxygen (and when it has a problem, the problem blows a hole in the hull, hence its moniker). Other atmospheric control gear resides here, as well as the outboard, a small thruster that can be lowered into the sea to help maneuver the boat from the pier.

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