The Titanic Enigma (25 page)

But he could not move. He was staring across the bridge to where the two women stood and saw the shadows transform, a black shape, the outline of a shark bearing down on Kate and Milford.

‘Lou, come on.’

He could not speak; could not move a muscle.

‘Lou?’ Kate said much louder. ‘What’s wrong? LOU!’

Kate’s voice snapped him out of the horrible delirium; the mirage dissolved.

Lou was on the ladder in a couple of seconds. It was difficult to manoeuvre in the cumbersome LMC suit, but after a few moments he established a rhythm, using the repetition to direct his
thinking, to shake off the panic, the phantoms.

He saw a flash of light at the extreme edge of his vision. It lasted only a moment. He kept going, growing more confident. But then . . . the view through his helmet seemed to judder. It was the
oddest sensation. He had felt something like it once before, in Los Angeles, five years ago when he had experienced a 6.3 earthquake that had shaken his apartment block. He knew instantly what it
was – the ocean floor was moving.

He froze and heard a strange grinding sound over the comms. Gripping the rungs with all his strength, he glimpsed Kate and Jane Milford stumble and lose their footing. The bridge shook. He felt
the vibration shoot along his spine, along his arms. He slipped forward, one hand sliding from the rung in front of him as he tumbled. His helmet hit the nano-carbon structure and his suit yielded,
just as it was meant to do, reshaping itself around the ladder.

Then came another violent jolt. Lou saw Milford pull herself to her feet, lose her balance again and trip forward, breaking her fall with her hands.

The bridge rocked again. Lou rolled to one side. A third, more violent tremor crashed around them. He tried to bring his arm round, grabbed at a rung, missed and slipped. Swinging slowly through
the water, he tried to grasp the edge of the bridge, failed and fell under the nano-carbon struts with just his left foot hooked over a rung.

He heard Kate scream in his headset. All he could see was the featureless gash of the crevasse; his whole world turned black. His helmet light had shut down. His arms flapped, sending small
bobbing rings of illumination all around.

And in that moment Lou suddenly felt relaxed. He was staring into the black void. It was featureless, immense, stretching on and on into oblivion. But he no longer feared it. Part of him wanted
to embrace it. Part of him wanted to simply twist his ankle and he would fall, slowly, slowly through the ink-black water. He would fall miles and he would never again see light.

He felt his ankle move. It was involuntary. He was shifting in the current. But then he realized a hand was holding his calf and pulling him upward. He twisted, swung an arm, and touched the
side of the bridge.

‘Keep swinging, Lou.’ It was Jane Milford. ‘Swing like a pendulum, get some momentum going, then get hold of the bridge.’

Her voice seemed to be coming from far off, but the words made perfect sense. Of course that was what he had to do. He did as he was told and saw the void move, the blackness sweep around . . .
a flash of the far wall of the crevasse, a torch beam, the shimmer of the nano-carbon in the sorry light. He touched the ladder with a finger, fell back, swung forward, clasped the rung, wrapping
his arm around it. Then he brought his other arm about, grabbed the strange lambent material and swung his leg over so that he was once more in a stable position on the bridge.

‘Hurry!’ Milford bellowed in his ear, ‘it won’t hold both of us for long.’ And she was pummelling the rungs, bouncing ahead of him back along the remaining forty
feet of bridge. Lou sprang into action and followed her as fast as he could.

Thirty feet . . . twenty. He caught sight of Milford as she reached the far side and rolled over onto the ocean floor. Staring down, he saw a gash appear in the left strut of the bridge. The
nano-carbon crackled along its entire length. He pushed onward, adrenalin swamping him, propelling him forward with phenomenal speed.

His foot slipped through a broken rung. His helmet hit the ladder hard, jarring his head, but he was almost there. He stretched out his right arm and Kate caught him. He moved his other arm
forward. His foot fell through another rung. Jane had pulled herself up and between them the two women hauled him to the edge and he scrambled across the ocean floor, kicking up whirlpools of water
and sand as he went.

‘Oh, fuck . . . oh, God . . .’

Lou had slivered across the floor at the edge of the crevasse and now lay on his back.

‘Take deep breaths. Try to calm—’

‘God!’

‘Lou . . .’

‘We’ve lost the bridge, Kate. What the fuck are we going to—’

Milford was trying the control room again. There was nothing but static. ‘Lou . . . Please calm down. Panicking won’t help,’ she snapped.

‘Easy for you to say,’ Lou shot back. ‘It makes me feel better, actually.’ Then he stopped and breathed deeply as he knew he should do. ‘OK . . . OK . .
.’

He looked around. Kate was leaning over him, offering a hand up. He could see Jane Milford tapping at the comms control on her arm.

‘What the hell caused that?’ he said.

Preoccupied, Milford said nothing.

‘Any luck?’ Kate asked.

The commander shook her head and tried again.

‘
Armstrong, Armstrong,
come in, please.’

Nothing but a soulless hiss.

‘Captain Derham. Come in, captain. This is a Code Red. I repeat . . . Code Red. Please acknowledge.’

No response.

Milford cursed again.

Lou glanced at the small computer screen on the sleeve of his suit. The numbers ‘4 . . . 1 . . . 5 . . . 6’ shone on the monitor.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he hissed. ‘We’ve been out almost forty-two minutes.’

‘I’m aware of that, Lou.’

‘So what now?’

‘Only one option: we have to get into the hold and hope we can breathe in there without the suits. The radiation level inside the metal hold should be much lower than it is out here, but
we won’t be able to last long, even if the air is breathable. It’ll at least give us a chance to recharge the suits. Maybe the guys up top will get to us in
JV2.
Come
on.’

Lou glanced back at the crack in the ocean bed. The nano-carbon ladder was dangling from its anchor point on the far side. The end that had been perched on their side of the ravine had fallen
away, lost in the blackness of the terrifying opening. A remaining few pieces lay scattered over the sand.

‘We’re still a long way from the hold,’ Milford said. She flicked a look at her monitor as she strode on. ‘356 feet to be precise.’

They marched on, adrenalin pumping through them. As they covered the uneven surface, they began to let go of the fear of seismic activity. With less than twenty minutes of life left in their
suits they had to take the chance.

‘The time limit was measured under lab conditions,’ Kate said breathlessly as she hurried along. ‘It could be inaccurate.’

Neither Lou nor Jane Milford replied. They each knew the obvious . . . the lab results could indeed be inaccurate . . . but either way.

The commander checked her monitor. Eighteen minutes, twenty seconds left. ‘Come on, gotta move faster,’ she snapped, gasping for breath.

‘
Armstrong
,
Armstrong
. . . Come in, please.
Armstrong
. . . Is anyone there?’ she called through the comms link to the surface. ‘This is a Code Red
. . . I repeat . . . a Code Red. We need immediate help. Do you read?’

Static.

‘
Armstrong
. . .’ Milford was on the point of exhaustion.

Then they saw the hold. It appeared suddenly in their torch beams sitting on the hardened sand, a silhouette of sharp edges and ragged, rusted sides.

Lou checked his screen. Thirty-two yards to go and seven minutes, sixteen seconds left for the suits.

The metal box looked more dilapidated than the images had made it out to be. Close up, they could see how the sides were covered in a thick layer of rust, and strange deep-ocean crustaceans.
Chemicals had leached out of the alloy of the container’s walls and run down the rutted sides in potently coloured streaks. It creaked, a sound similar to the one they’d heard as they
approached the
Titanic
three days ago. This was quieter, weaker, but it was the sound of containment under strain, bolts slipping inexorably from nuts, rivets moving a tiny fraction of an
inch. It was the sound of imminent collapse.

Milford dashed to the door in the front of the cargo hold. It was covered with rust, but the oblong outline could just be seen in the beams of their torches. To one side at waist height was the
opening mechanism, a large wheel that sent a bolt into a plate on the wall. It was tempting to imagine they could simply break the mechanism with a crowbar or some special gizmo designed by the
DARPA eggheads, but that wasn’t an option because if they got it open they had to reseal the door, so they could operate the air lock inside, pump out the water and enter the hold itself.

Milford leaned on the wheel. It didn’t move even a fraction of an inch, as though it had been welded into place. ‘Lou, Kate. Come on.’

It was difficult for them to find a position in which they could all exert force on the wheel to open the door; their suits kept getting in the way. But finally they managed it. Lou positioned
himself behind Milford and stretched over to the wheel. Kate slipped into a space beside the commander and just got her hands to it.

Lou saw the numbers on his sleeve display: ‘3 minutes 2 seconds.’

‘On three . . . One, two, three . . . PUSH!’ Milford bellowed through the comms.

They bore down on the wheel, but it was obvious from the feel of it that they hadn’t even come close to loosening the mechanism.

They stood back, knowing there was no chance they could move the wheel this way. Lou unclasped the straps of the plastic container he’d been carrying on his back. Milford crouched down and
opened it up.

‘We need to cut around the wheel without damaging it,’ she said and reached for a small pistol-sized device nestled in a foam tray inside Lou’s pack. Not wasting a second, she
spun round and lifted it to the rusted area around the wheel mechanism. ‘It’s a type of laser,’ she explained and brought it close to the disfigured metal.

Lou checked his watch. ‘1 minute 24 seconds.’ He swallowed hard and refused to let the panic take over.

Milford fired the laser. It produced an intense blue light that sliced through the metal around the wheel. Moving it with precise sweeps, she seared away the chemicals and the fused remains of
dead sea creatures jamming the mechanism. Slivers of jagged metal scattered and tumbled through the water to the ocean floor.

Kate saw the time on her screen: ‘54 seconds.’

‘All right,’ the commander said, snapping off the laser and letting it float down to the sand. ‘Again. Take up positions . . . as before.’

‘One . . . two . . . three . . . push.’

Nothing happened.

‘Again. Push.’

The three of them heaved forward in unison, bearing down with all the strength they could muster. None of them needed to look at their screens now.

The wheel would not budge.

‘Again!’ Milford screamed. And finally . . . some movement. It was slight, but enough to fill them with hope and renewed energy.

‘Step back,’ Milford commanded. ‘Take a deep breath. And push . . . PUSH! . . . PUSH!’

The wheel freed and they stumbled forward as it rotated half a turn. Milford moved the wheel round; it was stiff, but she was charged up, filled with a primal power, a drive to survive. The
wheel began to move faster. It reached the end of its run and they all pulled on it, stepping back as the door began to ease outwards.

‘Yes!’ Lou exclaimed. ‘Yes!’

When the sound came through the comms, Kate and Lou had no idea what it was. It was a sound like no other they had ever heard in their lives. But then they felt a vibration through the water and
subconsciously they knew what that meant.

Spinning in unison, they saw that Commander Jane Milford had turned to a solid block of carbon.

Approximately 600 miles SE of Newfoundland. Sunday, 13 April 1912.

Fortescue had ordered a second breakfast, this one for himself When the steward arrived with it, the scientist made a big fuss about how insatiably hungry he
was feeling The man, who had also brought the first tray to the room half an hour earlier, gave him a puzzled look that quickly transformed into a polite smile and he retreated with the remains of
the first breakfast, the one Billy had consumed.

It was over his third slice of toast that Fortescue decided he would not wait until he reached New York to talk to Billy’s relatives. Satiated with a pair of kippers, fine
pastries and a pot of tea, he pulled on his jacket and headed out of his room en route to the barber’s one deck up on B. He had just reached the end of his corridor and was emerging onto the
main reception area close to the Grand Staircase when he was almost thrown off his feet by a fast young body charging straight into him. He looked down to see the petrified face of Billy
O’Donnell.

‘What the devil?’ Fortescue exclaimed.

‘Mr Wick . . .’

Fortescue saw a steward in a badly stained white uniform pick himself up and dust himself down. Then turning, he watched as a maintenance worker arrived breathing heavily. ‘You
little ’orror!’ he exclaimed and made a grab for Billy.

Fortescue stepped forward, gently manoeuvring the boy to one side. ‘It’s quite all right,’ he began.

At that moment, a man in an officer’s uniform arrived. It was Herbert Pitman, the ship’s Third Officer. He stood a few feet away from the tableau, hands on hips, a pained
expression beginning to spread across his face. He took a step towards Fortescue. The stricken young steward who had been carrying the breakfast tray was clearing up the mess.