"So far, so good," Pitt answered. "If the Wetsteel pressure seals hold up against the concussions, we'll stand a fighting chance."
Sandecker stared at the color images and his brow furrowed as he perceived great streams of bubbles issuing from the liner's hulk. "She's losing a lot of air," he said.
"Excess pressure escaping through the bleeder valves," Pitt said tonelessly. "We switched from the electrolyte pumps back to the compressors in order to cram as much extra air as we can into the upper compartments." He paused to fine-tune a picture and then continued. "The Capricorn's compressors put out ten thousand cubic feet of air an hour, so it didn't take long to raise the pressure inside the hull another ten pounds per inch, just enough to pop the bleeder valves."
Drummer ambled over from the computers and checked off a series of notations on a clipboard. "As near as we can figure, ninety per cent of the ship's compartments are unwatered," he said. "The main problem, as I see it, is that we have more lift than the computers say is necessary. If and when the suction gives way, she'll come up like a kite."
"The Sea Slug just dropped her last charge," Curly reported.
"Ask her to make a swing by the Deep Fathom before she starts for the surface," Pitt said, "and see if she can make visual contact with Merker and his crew."
"Eleven minutes to go," Giordino announced.
"What in hell is keeping the Sappho II?" Sandecker asked no one in particular.
Pitt looked across the room to Spencer. "Are the charges ready to fire?"
Spencer nodded. "Each row is tuned to a different transmitter frequency. All we have to do is turn a dial and they'll go off in their proper sequence."
"What do you bet we see first, the bow or the stern?"
"There's no contest. The bow is buried twenty feet deeper in the sediment than the rudder. I'm counting on the stern breaking free and then using its buoyant leverage to pull up the rest of the keel. She should rise on very nearly the same angle she sank-providing she's agreeable and rises at all."
"Last charge secured," droned Curly. "Sappho II is making her getaway."
"Anything from the Sea Slug?"
"She reports no visual contact with Deep Fathom's crew."
"Okay, tell her to hightail it toward the surface," Pitt said. "We fire the first row of charges in nine minutes."
"They're dead," . Drummer suddenly cried, his voice breaking "We're too late, they're all dead."
Pitt took two steps and gripped Drummer by the shoulders. "Cut the hysterics. The last thing we need is a premature eulogy."
Drummer dropped his shoulders, his face ashen and frozen in a stonelike expression of dread. Then he silently nodded and walked unsteadily back to the computer console.
"The water must only be a couple of feet from the sub's cabin ceiling by now," Giordino said. It came out about half an octave higher than his normal tone.
"If pessimism sold by the pound, you guys would all be millionaires," Pitt said dryly.
"The Sappho I has reached the safety zone at six thousand feet." This from the sonar operator.
"One down, two to go," murmured Sandecker.
There was nothing left to do now but wait for the other submersibles to rise above the danger level of the approaching concussion waves. Eight minutes passed, eight interminable minutes that saw the sweat begin to ooze on two dozen foreheads.
"Sappho II and Sea Slug now approaching safety zone."
"Sea and weather?" Pitt demanded.
"Four-foot swells, clear skies, wind out of the northeast at five knots," answered Farquar, the weatherman. "You couldn't ask for better conditions."
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."