"I've reestablished contact with Sappho I," he said. "I'll tie you in on the phone."
"Sappho I, this is Pitt, please reply."
"This is Klinger on Sappho I, or what's left of us."
"What is your condition?"
"We're lying about a hundred and fifty meters southeast of the wreck with our bow buried in the mud.
The hull stood up to the concussion-it was like sitting inside a clanging bell-but one of the view ports cracked and we're taking on water."
"Are your life-support systems functioning?"
"Roger. They should keep us healthy for a while yet. The problem is, we'll drown a good fifteen hours before our oxygen supply goes."
"Can you make a free ascent?"
"I might," replied Klinger. "I only lost a tooth from the jolt. Marv Powers, though, is in a bad way. Both his arms are busted and he took a bad crack on the head
. He'd never make it to the surface."
Pitt closed his eyes for a moment. He did not relish playing God with men's lives, designating priorities over who was saved first or last. When he looked up again, he had made his decision.
"You'll have to hold on for a while, Klinger. We'll get to you just as soon as we can. Keep me posted every ten minutes."
Pitt stepped out on the bridge wingpnd peered down. Four divers were disappearing over the side.
"I have a picture," said Hoker in triumph as one of the video monitors brightened into life.
The monitor showed a view of the excavation pit as seen from the upper promenade deck. The support columns were collapsed and the decks below had fallen inward. There was no sign of the two JIM suits or the saturation divers.
The cold, abstract eye of the camera saw only a crater ringed with grotesquely distorted steel, but to Pitt it was as though he was staring into an open grave.
"God help them," Hoker muttered under his breath. "They must all be dead."
Seventy miles away, Captain Toshio Yubari, a solid, weatherworn man in the prime of his early forties, sat erect in a bridge chair, intent on the small boat traffic that dotted the water ahead. The tide was running home toward the sea, and the 665-foot containership Honjo Maru loafed along at a steady fifteen knots. Yubari had decided to wait and ring for twenty knots once the ship had rounded Cape Breton Island.
The Honjo Maru had carried 400 new electric mini cars from Kobe, Japan, and was making the return voyage with a cargo of newsprint paper from the great pulp mills of Quebec. The massive rolls that filled the containers were far heavier per unit volume than the small cars, and the hull rode low in the water, a scant three inches above the waterline.
First Officer Shigaharu Sakai stepped from the wheelhouse and stood beside the captain. He stifled a yawn and rubbed his reddened eyes.
"Fun night ashore?" Yubari asked, smiling.
Sakai mumbled an unintelligible reply and changed the subject.
"Lucky we didn't cast off on a Sunday," he said, nodding at a fleet of sailing sloops that were racing around a buoyed course about a mile off their port bow.
"Yes, I'm told the traffic is so heavy on weekends you can almost walk across the river on the yachts."
"Shall I take the bridge, captain, while you enjoy a noonday meal?"
"Thank you," replied Yubari, keeping his gaze straight ahead, "but I prefer to remain until we reach the gulf. You might ask the steward, though, to bring me a bowl of noodles with duck and a beer."
Sakai started to comply and then stopped in mid-turn, pointing down the river. "There comes a brave soul or a very reckless one."
Yubari had already spotted the hydroplane and stared with the fascination men have with high speed.
"He must be doing close to ninety knots."