For several moments no one spoke. Then Pitt said, "Well, gentlemen, the time has come." His voice was level and relaxed, and no trace of apprehension showed in his tone or manner. "Okay, Spencer, count it down."

    Spencer began repeating the announcements with clocklike regularity. "Thirty seconds . . . fifteen seconds . . . five seconds . . . signal transmitting . . . mark." Then he unhesitatingly went right into the next firing order. "Eight seconds . . . four seconds . . . signal transmitting . . . mark."

    Everyone clustered around the TV monitors and the sonar operator, their only contacts now with the bottom. The first explosion barely caused a tremor through the decks of the Capricorn, and the volume of sound came to their ears like that of faraway thunder. The cloud of anxiety could be slashed with a sword. Every single eye was trained straight ahead on the monitors, on the quivering lines that distorted the images when the charges went off. Tense, strained, numb with the expectant look of men who feared the worst but hoped for the best, they stood there immobile as Spencer droned on with his countdowns.

    The shudders from the deck became more pronounced as shock wave followed shock wave and broke on the surface of the ocean. Then, abruptly, the monitors all flickered in a kaleidoscope of fused light and went black.

     "Damn!" Sandecker muttered. "We've lost picture contact."

    "The concussions must have jolted loose the main relay connector," Gunn surmised.

    Their attention quickly turned to the sonar scope, but few of them could see it; the operator had drawn himself up so close to the glass that his head obscured it. Finally, Spencer straightened up. He sighed deeply to himself, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and rubbed his face and neck. "That's all she wrote," he said hoarsely. "There isn't any more."

    "Still stationary," said the sonar operator. "The Big T is still stationary."

    "Go baby!" Giordino pleaded. "Get your big ass up!"

    "Oh God, dear God," Drummer mumbled. "The suction is still holding her to the bottom."

    "Come on, damn you," Sandecker joined in. "Lift . . . lift."

    If it was humanly possible for the mind to will 46,328 tons of steel to release its hold on the grave it had occupied for seventy-six long years and return to the sunlight, the men crowded around the sonarscope would have surely made it so. But there was to be no psychokinetic phenomenon this day. The Titanic stayed stubbornly clutched to the sea floor.

    "A dirty, rotten break," Farquar said.

    Drummer held his hands over his face, turned away, and stumbled from the room.

    "Woodson on the Sappho II requests permission to descend for a look-see," said Curly.

    Pitt shrugged. "Permission granted."

    Slowly, wearily, Admiral Sandecker sank into a chair. "What price failure?" he said.

    The bitter taste of hopelessness flooded the room, swept by the grim tide of total defeat.

    "What now?" Giordino asked, staring vacantly at the deck.

    "What we came here to do," answered Pitt tiredly. "We go on with the salvage operation. Tomorrow we'll begin again to..."

    "She's moved!"

    No one reacted immediately.

    "She moved," the sonar operator repeated. His voice had a quiver to it.

    "Are you sure?" Sandecker whispered.

    "Stake my life on it."

    Spencer was too stunned to speak. He could only stare at the sonarscope with an expression of abject incredulity. Then his lips began working. "The aftershocks!" he said. "The aftershocks caused a delayed reaction."

    "Rising," the sonar operator shouted, banging his fist on the arm of his chair. "That gorgeous old bucket of bolts has broken free. She's coming up."

48

    At first everybody was too dumbstruck to move. The moment they had prayed for, had spent eight tortuous months struggling for, had sneaked up behind them and somehow they couldn't accept it as actually happening. Then the electrifying news began to sink in and they all began shouting at the same time, like a crowd of mission control space engineers during a rocket liftoff.

    "Go baby, go!" Sandecker shouted as joyfully as a schoolboy.

    "Move, you mother!" Giordino yelled. "Move, move!"

    "Keep coming, you big beautiful rusty old floating palace, you," Spencer murmured.

    Suddenly, Pitt rushed across to the radio and clutched Curly's shoulder in a viselike grip.

    "Quick, contact Woodson on the Sappho II. Tell him the Titanic is on her way up and to get the hell out of the way before he's run over."

    "Still on a surface course," the sonar operator said. "Speed of ascent accelerating."

    "We haven't weathered the storm yet," Pitt said. "A hundred and one things can still go wrong before she breaks surface. If only-"

    "Yeah," Giordino cut in, "like, if only the Wetsteel maintains its bond, or if only the bleeder valves can keep up with the sudden drop in water pressure, or if the hull doesn't take it in its mind to go snap, crackle, and pop. `If' . . . it's a mighty big word."

    "Still coming and coming fast," the sonar operator said, staring at his scope. "Six hundred feet in the last minute."

    Pitt swung to Giordino. "Al, find Doc Bailey and the pilot of the helicopter, and get in the air like a mad bull was on your ass. Then, as soon as the Titanic stabilizes herself, drop down on her forecastle deck. I don't care how you do it-rope ladder, winch, and bucket chair-crash-land the copter if you have to, but you and the good doctor drop down fast and pop the Deep Fathom's hatch cover and lift those men out of that hellhole!"

    "We're halfway there." Giordino grinned. He was already out the door before Pitt could issue his next order to Spencer.

    "Rick, stand by to hoist the portable diesel pumps on board the derelict. The sooner we can get ahead of any leaks, the better."

    "We'll need cutting torches to get inside her," Spencer said, his eyes wide with excitement.

    "Then see to it."

    Pitt turned back to the sonar panel.

    "Rate of ascent?"

    "Eight hundred and fifty feet a minute," the sonar operator called back.

    "Too fast," Pitt said.

    "It's what we didn't want," Sandecker muttered through his cigar. "Her interior compartments are overfilled with air and she's soaring to the surface out of control."

    "And, if we've miscalculated the amount of ballast water left in her lower holds, she could rocket two-thirds her length out of the water and capsize," Pitt added.

    Sandecker looked him in the eye. "And that would spell finish to the Deep Fathom's crew." Then without another word, the admiral turned and led the exodus from the operations room to the deck outside, where everyone began scanning the restless swells in heart-pounding anticipation.

    Only Pitt hung back. "What depth is she?" This to the sonar operator.

    "Passing the eight-thousand-foot mark."

    "Woodson reporting in," Curly intoned. "He says the Big T just went by the Sappho II like a greased pig."

    "Acknowledge and tell him to surface. Relay the same message to the Sea Slug and Sappho I. " There was nothing left to do here so he stepped out the door and up the ladder to the port bridge wing, where he joined Gunn and Sandecker.