"Where did you get this information?"

    "It's been smeared all over the newspapers and television since yesterday. If you don't believe me, teletype NUMA headquarters in Washington and confirm."

    "Screw the teletype," Prescott growled. He rushed across the room, snatched up a telephone and shouted into the receiver. "Punch me on a direct line to our headquarters in Washington. I want to speak with someone's who's connected with the Titanic project."

    While he waited for his call to go through, he peered over his glasses at the X on the wall chart. "Here's hoping those poor bastards have a weatherman on board with uncanny foresight," he muttered to himself, "or about this time tomorrow they'll forever learn the meaning of the fury of the sea.

    There was a vague expression on Farquar's face as he stared at the weather maps laid out before him on the table. His mind was so numb and woolly from lack of sleep that he had difficulty in defining the markings he had made only minutes before. The indications of temperature, wind velocity, barometric pressure, and the approaching stormfront all melted together into one indistinct blur.

    He rubbed his eyes in a useless attempt to get them to focus. Then he shook his head to clear the cobwebs, trying to remember what it was that he had been about to conclude,

    The hurricane. Yes, that was it. Farquar slowly came to the realization that he had made a serious miscalculation. The hurricane had not veered into Cape Hatteras as he'd predicted. Instead, a high-pressure area along the eastern coast held it over the ocean on a northerly course. And what was worse, it had begun to move faster after recurving and was now hurtling toward the Titanic's position with forward speed approaching forty-five knots.

    He had watched the hurricane's birth on the satellite photos and had closely studied the warnings from the NUMA station in Tampa, but nothing in all his years of forecasting had prepared him for the violence and the speed that this monstrosity had achieved in such a short time.

    A hurricane in May? It was unthinkable. Then his words to Pitt came back to haunt him. What was it he had said? "Only God can make a storm." Farquar suddenly felt sick, his face beaded with sweat, hands clenching and unclenching.

    "God help the Titanic this time," he murmured under his breath. "He's the only one who can save her now."

56

    The U.S.Navy salvage tugs Thomas J. Morse and Samual R. Wallace arrived just before 1500 hours and slowly began circling the Titanic. The vast size and the strange deathlike aura of the derelict filled the tugs' crews with the same feeling of awe that was experienced by the NUMA salvage people the day before.

    After a half an hour of visual inspection, the tugs pulled parallel to the great rusty hull and lay to in the heavy swells, their engines on "stop." Then, as if in unison, their cutters were lowered and the captains came across and began climbing a hastily thrown boarding ladder to the Titanic's shelter deck.

    Lieutenant George Uphill of the Morse was a short, plump, ruddy faced man who sported an immense Bismarck mustache, while Lieutenant Commander Scotty Butera of the Wallace nearly scraped the ceiling at six feet six and buried his chin in a magnificent black beard. No spick-and-span fleet officers these two. They looked and acted every bit the part of tough, no-nonsense salvage men

    "You don't know how happy we are to see you, gentlemen," Gunn said, shaking their hands. "Admiral Sandecker and Mr. Dirk Pitt, our special projects director, are awaiting you in, if you'll pardon the expression, our operations room."

    The tug captains tailed after Gunn up the stairways and across the Boat Deck, staring in trancelike rapture at the remains of the once beautiful ship. They reached the gymnasium and Gunn made the introductions.

    "It's positively incredible," Uphill murmured. "I never thought in my wildest imagination that I would ever live to walk the decks of the Titanic.

    "My sentiments exactly," Butera added.

    "I wish we could give you a guided tour," Pitt said, "but each minute adds to the risk of losing her to the sea again."

    Admiral Sandecker motioned them to a long table laden with weather maps, diagrams, and charts, and they all settled in with steaming mugs of coffee. "Our chief concern at the moment is weather," he said, "Our weatherman on board the Capricorn has suddenly taken to imagining himself as the 'prophet of doom'."

    Pitt unrolled a large weather map and flattened it on the table. "There's no ducking the bad news. Our weather is deteriorating rapidly. The barometer has fallen half an inch in the last twenty-four hours. Wind force four, blowing north northeast and building. We're in for it, gentlemen, make no mistake. Unless a miracle occurs and Hurricane Amanda decides to cut a quick left turn to the west, we should be well into her front quadrant by this time tomorrow."

    "Hurricane Amanda," Butera repeated the name. "How nasty is she?"

    "Joel Farquar, our weatherman, assures me they don't come any meaner than this baby," Pitt replied. "She's already reported winds of force fifteen on the Beaufort scale."

    "Force fifteen?" Gunn repeated in astonishment. "My God, force twelve is considered a maximum hurricane."

    "This, I'm afraid," said Sandecker, "is every salvage man's nightmare come true-raise a derelict only to have it snatched away by a whim of the weather." He looked grimly at Uphill and Butera. "It looks as though you two made the trip for nothing. You'd better get back to your ships and make a run for it."

    "Make a run for it, hell!" Uphill boomed. "We just got here."

    "I couldn't have said it better." Butera grinned and looked up at Sandecker. "The Morse and the Wallace can tow an aircraft earner through a swamp in a tornado if they have to. They're designed to slug it out with anything Mother Nature can dish out. If we can get a cable on board the Titanic and get her under tow, she'll stand a fighting chance of riding out the storm intact."

    "Pulling a forty-five-thousand-ton ship through the jaws of a hurricane," Sandecker murmured. "That's a pretty heady boast."

    "No boast." Butera came back dead-serious. "By fastening a cable from the stern of the Morse to the bow of the Wallace, our combined power can tow the Titanic in the same manner as a pair of railroad engines in tandem can pull a freight train."

    "And, we can do it in thirty-foot seas at a speed of five to six knots," Uphill added.

    Sandecker looked at the two tug captains and let them go on.

    Butera charged ahead. "Those aren't run-of-the-mill harbor tugs floating out there, Admiral. They're deep-sea, ocean-rescue tugs, two hundred and fifty feet in length with five-thousand-horse diesel power plants, each boat capable of hauling twenty thousand tons of dead weight at ten knots for two thousand miles without running out of fuel. If any two tugs in the world can pull the Titanic through a hurricane, these can."

    "I appreciate your enthusiasm," Sandecker said, "but, I won't be responsible for the lives of you and your crews on what has to be an impossible gamble. The Titanic will have to drift out the storm as best she can. I'm ordering you both to shove off and head into a safe area."

    Uphill looked at Butera. "Tell me, Commander, when was the last time you defied a direct command from an admiral?"