terry the parts directly to the Explorer.”
“What exactly is the problem?” asked Gunn.
“The propeller shaft bearings,” Toft explained. “For some strange reason, because the CIA rushed construction, I guess, the propeller shafts were not balanced properly. During the voyage from San Francisco the vibration cracked the lubricating tubes, cutting off the flow of oil to the shaft bearings. Friction, metal fatigue, overstress, whatever you want to call it, the port shaft froze solid about a hundred miles off Molokai. The starboard shaft was barely able to carry us here before her bearings burned out.”
“As I told you earlier, we’re working under a critical deadline.”
“I fully understand the scope of your dilemma, Admiral. My engine-room crew will work like madmen to get the ship under way again, but they’re only human. I must warn you, the shaft bearings are only part of the problem. The engines may not have many hours on them, having only taken the ship from the East Coast to the middle of the Pacific and then back to California, back in the 1970s, but without proper attention for the last twenty years, they are in a terrible state of neglect. Even if we should get one shaft to turn, there is no guarantee we’ll get past the mouth of the harbor before breaking down again.”
“Do you have the necessary tools to do the job?” Sandecker pressed Toft.
“The caps on the port shaft have been torn down and the bearings removed. Replacement should go fairly smoothly. The port shaft, however, can only be repaired at a shipyard.”
Gunn addressed himself to Captain Quick. “I don’t understand why your company didn’t have the Explorer refitted at a local shipyard after she came out of mothballs in San Francisco.”
“Blame it on the bean-counters.” Quick shrugged. “Chief Toft and I strongly recommended a refit before departing for Hawaii, but management wouldn’t hear of it. The only time spent at the shipyard was for removal of much of the early lifting equipment and the installation of the dredging system. As for standard maintenance, they insisted it was a waste of money and that any mechanical failures could be repaired at sea or after we reached Honolulu, which obviously we failed to do. And on top of that, we’re way undermanned. The original crew was 172 men, I have 60 men and women on board, mostly maritime crewmen, crane and equipment operators and mechanics to maintain the machinery. Twelve of that number are geologists, marine engineers and electronics experts. Unlike your NUMA projects, Commander Gunn, ours is a bare-bones operation.”
“My apologies, Captain,” said Gunn. “I sympathize with your predicament.”
“How soon can you get us under way?” Sandecker asked Toft, trying to keep the fatigue of the past few weeks from showing.
“Thirty-six hours, maybe more.”
The room went silent as every eye was trained on Sandecker. He fixed the chief engineer with a pair of eyes that went as cold as a serial killer’s. “I’ll explain it to you one more time,” he offered sharply, “as candidly as I can put it. If we are not on station at the convergence site with our antenna positioned in the water thirty-five hours from now, more people will die than inhabit most small countries. This is not a harebrained fantasy or the script for a Hollywood science-fiction movie. It’s real life, and I for one do not want to stand there looking at a sea of dead bodies and say `If only I’d made the extra effort, I might have prevented it.’ Whatever magic it takes, Chief, we must have the antenna in the water and positioned before 800 A.M. the day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll not promise the impossible,” Toft came back sternly. “But if we can’t make your schedule, it won’t be for the lack of my engine-room people working themselves to death.” He drained his glass and walked from she room, closing the door heavily behind him.
“I’m afraid you upset my chief engineer,” Quick said to Sandecker. “A bit harsh, weren’t you, laying the blame on him if we fail?”
Sandecker stared at the closed door thoughtfully. “The stakes are too high, Captain. I didn’t plan it this way, certainly not for the burden to sit on Chief Toft’s shoulders. But like it or not, that man holds the fate of every human being on the island of Oahu in his hands.”
At 3:30 P.M. the following afternoon, a haggard and grimy Toft stepped into the wheelhouse and announced to Sandecker, Gunn and Captain Quick, “The bearings in the port shaft have been replaced. I can get us under way, but the best speed I can give you is five knots with a little edge to spare.”
Sandecker pumped Toft’s hand. “Bless you, Chief, bless you.”
“What is the distance to the convergence site?” asked Quick.
“Eighty nautical miles,” Gunn answered without hesitation, having worked the course out in his mind over a dozen times.
“A razor-edge margin,” Quick said uneasily. “Moving at five knots, eighty nautical miles will take sixteen hours, which will put us on your site a few minutes before oh-eight hundred hours.”
“Oh-eight hundred hours,” Gunn repeated in a tone slightly above a whisper. “The precise time Yaeger predicted the convergence.”
“A razor-thin margin,” Sandecker echoed, “but Chief Toft has given us a fighting chance.”
Gunn’s face became drawn. “You realize, I hope, Admiral, that if we reach the area and are hit by the convergence, we all stand a good chance of dying.”
Sandecker looked at the other three men without a change of expression. “Yes,” he said quietly. “A very good chance.”
Shortly after midnight, Pitt took his final sighting of the stars and marked his chart under the light of a half- moon. If his calculations were in the ballpark, they should be sighting Gladiator Island within the next few hours. He instructed Maeve and Giordino to keep a lookout ahead while he allowed himself the luxury of an hour’s sleep. It seemed to him that he had barely drifted off when Maeve gently shook him awake.
“Your navigation was right on the button,” she said, excitement in her tone. “The island is in sight.”
“A beautiful job .of navigating, old buddy,” Giordino congratulated him. “You beat your estimated time of arrival.”
“Just under the wire too,” Maeve said, laughing. “Dead leaves are beginning to fall off the sails.”
Pitt stared into the night but only saw the splash of stars and moon on the sea. He opened his mouth to say he couldn’t see anything when a shaft of light swung across the western horizon, followed by a bright red glow. “Your island has a beacon?” he asked Maeve.
“A small lighthouse on the rim of the southern volcano.”
“At least your family did something to aid marine navigation.”
Maeve laughed. “Thoughts of lost sailors never entered my great-grandfather’s mind when he built it. The purpose has always been to warn ships to steer clear of the island and not to come ashore.”
“Have many vessels come to grief on the island’s coast?”
She looked down at her hands and clasped them. “When I was little, Daddy often talked about ships that were cast on the rocks.”
“Did he describe survivors?”
She shook her head. “There was never talk of rescue attempts. He always said that any man who stepped foot on Gladiator Island without an invitation had a date with Satan.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, the badly injured were murdered and any able-bodied survivor was put to work in the mines until he died. No one has ever escaped from Gladiator to tell of the atrocities.”
“You escaped.”
“A lot of good it did the poor miners,” she said sadly. “No one ever took my word over my family’s. When I tried to explain the situation to authorities, Daddy merely bought them off.”
“And the Chinese laborers working the mines today? How many of them leave the island in one piece?”
Maeve’s face was grim. “Almost all eventually die from the extreme heat in the bottom of the lower mine pits.”
“Heat?” There was curiosity in Pitt’s face. “From what source?”
“Steam vents through cracks in the rock.”
Giordino gave Pitt a pensive look. “A perfect place to organize a union.”
“I make landfall in about three hours,” said Pitt. “Not too late to change our minds, skip the island and try for Australia.”
