here.'
Merker's abrupt reference to the Titanic's dead left every man in the operations room a shade paler; every man that is, except Pitt. He touched the transmit button. 'Just see to it you leave a clean ship. We may want to use it again. Pitt out.'
It was interesting to see the reaction to Pitt's seemingly callous remark. Giordino, Gunn, Spencer, and the others just stared at him. Only Drummer displayed an expression of anger.
Pitt touched Curly, the radio operator, on the shoulder. 'Patch me into the admiral on the Bomberger, but use a different frequency.'
Curly looked up. 'You don't want those guys on the Deep Fathom to hear?'
'What they don't know won't hurt them,' said Pitt coldly. 'Now hurry it up.'
Moments later Sandecker's voice boomed over the speaker. 'Capricorn, this is Admiral Sandecker. Over.'
'Pitt here, Admiral.'
Sandecker wasted no time on niceties. 'You're aware of what we're up against?'
''Gunn has briefed me,' Pitt replied.
'Then you know we have exhausted every avenue. No matter how you slice it, time is the enemy. If we could stall the inevitable for another ten hours, we'd have a fighting chance of saving them.' '
'There's one other way,' Pitt said. 'The odds are high but mathematically, it's possible.'
'I'm open to suggestions.'
Pitt hesitated. 'To begin with, we forget the Deep Fathom for the moment and turn our energies in another direction.'
Drummer came close to him. 'What are you saying, Pitt? What goes on here? 'Forget the Deep Fathom',' he shouted through twitching lips. 'Are you mad?'
Pitt smiled a disarming smile. 'The last desperate roll of the dice, Drummer. You people failed, and failed miserably. You may be God's gift to the world of marine salvage, but as a rescue force, you come off like a bunch of amateurs. Bad luck compounded your mistakes, and now you sit around whining that all is lost. Well all is not lost, gentlemen. We're going to change the rules of the game and put the Deep Fathom on the surface before the six- hour deadline, which, if my watch serves me, is now down to five hours and forty-three minutes.'
Giordino looked at Pitt. 'Do you really think it can be done?'
'I really think it can be done.'
47
The structural engineers and the marine scientists huddled around in small circles, mumbling to themselves as they frantically shoved their slide rules back and forth. Every so often, one of them would break away and walk over to the computers and check the readout sheets. Admiral Sandecker, who had just arrived from the Bomberger, sat behind a desk gripping a mug of coffee and shaking his head.
'This will never be written into the textbooks on salvage,' he murmured. 'Blowing a derelict off the bottom with explosives. God, it's insane.'
'What other choice do we have?' Pitt said. 'If we can kick the Titanic out of the mud, the Deep Fathom will be carried up with her.'
'The whole idea is crazy,' Gunn muttered. 'The concussion will only expand the cracked seam in the submersible's hull and cause instant implosion.'
'Maybe. Maybe not,' Pitt said. 'But even if that occurs, it's probably best that Merker, Kiel, and Chavez die instantly from the sea's crush than suffer the prolonged agony of slow suffocation.'
'And what about the Titanic?' Gunn persisted 'We could blow everything we've worked for all these months all over the abyssal landscape.'
'Score that as a calculated risk,' Pitt said. 'The Titanic's construction is of a greater strength than most ships afloat today. Her beams, girders, bulkheads, and decks are as sound as the night she sank. The old girl can take whatever we dish out. Make no mistake about it.'
'Do you honestly think it will work?' Sandecker asked.
'I do.'
'I could order you not to do this thing. You know that.'
'I know that,' Pitt replied. 'I'm banking on you to keep me in the ball game until the final inning.'
Sandecker rubbed his hand across his eyes, then shook his head slowly as if to clear it. Finally he said, 'Okay. Dirk, it's your baby.'
Pitt nodded and turned away.
There were just five hours and ten minutes to go.
Two and a half miles below, the three men in the Deep Fathom, cold and alone in a remote, uncharitable environment, watched the water creep up the cabin walls inch by inch until it flooded the main circuitry and shorted out the instruments, throwing the interior of the cabin into blackness. Then they began to feel the sting of the thirty-four-degree water in earnest as it swirled around their legs. Standing there shivering under the torment of certain death, they still nurtured the spark to survive.
'As soon as we get topside,' Kiel murmured, 'I'm going to take a day off, and I don't care who knows it.'
'Come again?' Chavez said in the darkness.
'They can fire me if they want to, but I'm sleeping in tomorrow.'
Chavez groped for and found Kiel's arm, gripping it roughly. 'What are you babbling about?'
'Take it easy,' Merker said. 'With the life-support system gone, the carbon-dioxide buildup is getting to him. I'm beginning to feel a bit giddy myself.'
'Foul air on top of everything else,' Chavez grumbled. 'If we don't drown, we get crushed when the hull bursts, and if we don't get mashed like eggshells, we suffocate on our own air. Our future looks none too bright.'
'You left out exposure,' Merker added sardonically. 'If we don't climb above this freezing water, we won't get a chance at the other three.'
Kiel said nothing but limply allowed Chavez to shove him into the uppermost sleeping bunk. Then Chavez followed and sat on the edge, his feet dangling over the side.
Merker struggled through the crotch-deep water to the forward viewport and looked out. He could see only the haloed outline of the Sappho II through the blinding glare of her lights. Even though the other craft hovered only ten feet away, there was nothing she could do for the stricken Deep Fathom while they were both surrounded by the relentless pressure of the hostile deep. As long as she is still there, Merker thought, they haven't written us off. He took no small consolation in the fact that they were not alone. It wasn't much to lean on, but it was all they had.
On board the supply ship Alhambra, camera crews from the three major networks, swept up in the swirling tide of expectation, feverishly struggled to get their equipment into action. Along every available foot of starboard- deck railing, wire-service reporters peered through binoculars in hypnotic concentration at the Capricorn floating two miles away, while photographers aimed their telephoto lenses on the surface of the water between the ships. Trapped in one corner of a makeshift pressroom, Dana Seagram pulled a foul-weather jacket tightly around her shoulders and gamely stood up to the dozen news people armed with tape recorders who were pushing microphones toward her face as though they were lollipops.
'Is it true, Ms. Seagram, that attempting to raise the Titanic three days ahead of schedule is in reality a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of the men trapped below?'
'It is only one of several solutions,' Dana replied.
'Are we to understand that all other attempts have failed?'
'There have been complications,' Dana admitted.
Inside one of the jacket's pockets, Dana nervously twisted a handkerchief until her fingers turned sore. The long months of give-and-take with the men and women of the press were beginning to tell.
'Since the loss of communications with the Deep Fathom, how can you know for certain whether the crew is still alive?'
'Computer data assure us that their situation will not turn critical for another four hours and forty minutes.'
