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"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.
The messages kept pouring in as Pitt directed the recovery. A still bewildered radio operator turned to him. "Just in from the captain of the Phoenix. He wishes to know if we need assistance?"
"Hell, yes, we need assistance!" Pitt shouted. "Request he bring his ship alongside. We need every available pump he's got and all the damage control men he can spare."
He broke off and dabbed a damp towel on his forehead, waiting impatiently for the answer.
"The message is: 'Hold the fort,' " said the radio operator excitedly. " 'We will tie up on your starboard side.' " Then a few seconds later: "Commander Weeks on the Huron asks if we're abandoning ship."
"He'd like that," Pitt growled. "It would solve all his problems.
"Standing by for an answer."
"Tell him we'll abandon ship when we can step off on the bottom. Then repeat the request for men and pumping equipment-"
"Pitt?" Metz voice broke in over the headset.
"Go ahead."
"Looks like the stern took the brunt of the blast. From midships forward the hull is tight and dry. From there back it's got more cracks than a jigsaw puzzle. I'm afraid we've had it."
"How long can you keep us afloat?"
"At the rate the water's rising it should reach and short the generators in twenty or twenty-five minutes.
Then we lose the pumps. After that, maybe ten minutes."
"Help is on the way. Open the side loading doors so that damage control men and pumping equipment can be transferred from the naval vessels."
"They'd better hustle, or we won't be around to throw a welcome party."
The radio operator gestured and Pitt made his way toward him across the slanting deck.
