A strange mist, a swirling, reddish mist curtained off the light and swam thickly in front of Pitt's eyes. Once, twice, several times he tried desperately to struggle through to the other side, reaching out in front of him like a blind man.
There had been no time to prepare for the shock, no time for his mind to comprehend, no time even to wonder. He wiped away the claret that trickled over his brows and probed a gash on his forehead four inches long and thankfully not skull-deep.
Pitt dragged himself to his feet, staring in disbelief at the litter of bodies around him.
Rudi Gunn's pale face looked up at Pitt, eyes lost and uncomprehending, and devoid of expression. He swayed on hands and knees, muttering softly. "Oh, God! Oh, God! What happened?"
"I don't know," Pitt answered in a strained voice, foreign even to himself. "I don't know."
On shore Shaw froze in hunched paralysis, lips compressed until his mouth no longer showed, face contorted in blind and bitter rage, a bitterness directed at his own sense of guilt.
Ignoring Villon's order to leave Canada, he had set up camp on the eastern tip of Father's Point, two-and-a-half miles from the salvage site. He had assembled a British army S-66 long range reconnaissance scope that could read a newspaper headline at five miles, and had begun the tedious routine of observing the small fleet of ships moored over the Empress of Ireland.
Launches were charging back and forth between the two naval vessels like ferries held to a schedule. Shaw amused himself by imagining the heated negotiations going on between the American and Canadian officers.
The Ocean Venturer appeared still and dead. No one moved about its decks, but he could clearly see that the derrick was still in operation as its huge winch pulled up slime-covered scrap from the hulk below.
Shaw sat back to rest his eyes for a moment and munch a couple of candy bars that passed for breakfast. He noticed a small outboard hydroplane coming down the river at great speed, somewhere between ninety and a hundred miles an hour as it blasted off the wave tops and trailed a ten-foot rooster tail in its wake.
His curious nature aroused, he turned the scope on it.
The hull was painted a metallic gold with a burgundy stripe that flared at the stern. The effect was that of an arrow as it banked and tracked into the sun. Shaw waited until the glare subsided and then he zeroed in on the driver. The single figure behind the windscreen wore goggles, but Shaw recognized the squat nose, the cold, hard face.
It was Foss Gly.
Shaw gazed fascinated as the hydroplane cut a large circle around the three ships, leaping clear of the water with only the props submerged, then thumping down with a kettledrum impact that carried to where Shaw was standing.
It was difficult to keep the scope trained on the bouncing boat, but he locked in when it swung on an opposite course and gave him a clear view of the exposed cockpit over the transom.
Gly was clutching the wheel with his right hand while his left hand held aloft a small box. A thin shaft gleamed in the sun, and Shaw identified it as an antenna.
"No!" he shouted to the un hearing wind as the awful truth of Gly's intent struck him. "No, damn you, no!"
Suddenly the stillness of the morning was shattered by a rumbling thunder that seemed to come from far away and then heighten with terrible swiftness, and a caldron of boiling water erupted and burst toward the sky arouqd the Ocean Venturer as the explosives on the bow of the Empress detonated.
The research vessel seemed to porpoise above the maelstrom, hang suspended for a few seconds, and then fall back on its starboard side, down, down until it seemed to drown under the massive column of water.
Even on shore the violence of the explosion was shocking. Shaw steadied himself on the tripod of the scope and stared, numb with disbelief.
The spray rose whitely in a vast cloud, swirling above the masts of Huron and Phoenix, fighting gravity and finally raining in a drenching torrent that entirely saturated the superstructures of both ships. There wasn't a man left standing on any deck. They were all knocked flat or overboard by the force of the blast.
When Shaw retrained the scope of Gly, the hydroplane was hurtling far up the river toward Quebec. Stony-faced, bitter at his helplessness, Shaw could only watch in agonized frustration as Gly once again escaped.
He turned back to the Ocean Venturer.
It looked like a dead ship. Its stern had settled ominously and its hull was heeled far over to starboard. Slowly and frighteningly the derrick teetered crazily sideways, hung, then ponderously toppled over the side with a great splash, leaving an incredible tangle of debris and cable heaped on the decks. God only knew how many men had been killed or maimed inside the steel walls.
Shaw could not bear to see any more. He picked up the scope and walked heavily away. from the shoreline, the deep rumble of the explosion rolling across the river and echoing back in his ears.
For some inexplicable reason the Ocean Venturer refused to die.
Perhaps it was the heavy double hull, especially designed for ramming through ice, that saved the ship. Many of the outer plates were smashed, the seams split and the keel twisted. The damage was extensive and severe, but still the ship survived.
Pitt had watched the derrick go over. He stared numbly through the shattered windows of the control room, released his grip on a doorway and staggered uncontrollably into Hoker's console, his sense of balance telling him what his eyes refused. The deck was tilting at an angle of thirty degrees.
His first thought was the grim appreciation that the ship was mortally hurt. Hard on the heels of that came the sickening realization of what the frightful blast must have done to the divers on the wreck. He shook off the fog and the dull ache that tried to creep back in his mind. He logically categorized the steps to be taken. Then he went into action.
He grabbed the phone and rang up the chief engineer. Nearly a minute crawled by before an impersonal voice replied in dazed shock. "Engine room."
"Metz, is that you?"
"You'll have to speak louder, I can't hear."
It dawned on Pitt that to the men on the lower decks and in the engine room, the roar and concussion must have been ear shattering He shouted into the mouthpiece. "Metz, this is Pitt!"
"Okay, that's better," Metz replied in a metallic monotone. "What in hell is going on?"
"My best guess, my only guess is an explosion from below."
"Damn, I thought the Canadians stuck a torpedo in us."
"Report on damage."
"It's like working under a hundred running faucets down here. Water is gushing in everywhere. I doubt if the pumps have the capability to handle it. That's all I can tell you until I sound the hull."
"What about injuries?"
"We were catapulted around like drunken gymnasts. I think Jackson has a broken knee, and Gilmore a skull fracture. Beyond that, a few battered eardrums and a gang of bruises."
"Come back to me every five minutes," Pitt ordered. "And whatever you do, keep the generators turning."
"I don't have to be reminded. If they go, we go."
"You got the idea."
Pitt crammed the phone in its receiver and looked worriedly at Heidi. Gunn was kneeling over her, cradling her head in his arms. She lay crumpled against the chart table, barely conscious, staring through vacant eyes at her left leg. It lay at a queer angle.
"Funny," she whispered. "It doesn't hurt a bit."
The pain would come, thought Pitt. Already her face was flour-white from shock. He took her hand. "Just lie still until we can get a stretcher."
He wanted to say more, to comfort her, but there was no time. Reluctantly he turned away at the anguished interruption of Hoker's voice.
"The board is out." Hoker was fighting to recover, picking his fallen chair off the deck, staring dumbly at his darkened console panel and monitors.
"Then fix the damned thing!" Pitt rapped out. "We've got to know what happened to the underwater crew."
He took a headset and patched himself into all the stations of the Ocean Venturer. On and below decks the scientists and engineers of NUMA began pulling their senses together and toiling like madmen to save their ship. The more seriously injured were carried to the hospital bay, where they soon overfilled the facilities and were placed in rows outside in the hallway. Those who did not have critical jobs labored to tear aside the wreckage of the derrick or seal the cracks in the hull as they stood in waist-high frigid water. A team of divers was hurriedly assembled to go below.