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Sandecker passed a weary hand across his face arid tightened his lips He looked at the tons of steel covering the vault "I leave it with you, Dirk I'll back your play to the last hand I don't really have much choice"

Pitt had other worries, too The two Navy tugs that Admiral Kemper pro the late , for no apparent reason, the Titanic took it into her rees

The ship rode far too low in the water; the crests of the swells lapped at the sealed portholes along E Deck just ten feet below the scuppers And although Spencer and his pu hatches into the cargo holds, they had not been able to fight their way through the debris crowding the coreatest volume of water still lay-remote and inaccessible

Dru around the clock He sipped at a hty years of subeways has fallen and jaia junkyard"

Pitt sat where he'd been all afternoon, bent over a drafting table next to the radio transmitter He stared out of red ri of the Titanic's superstructure

"Can't we thread our way down the main staircase or the elevator shafts?"

"The staircase is filled with tons of loose junk once you get down past D Deck," Spencer declared

"And there isn't a prayer of penetrating the elevator shafts," Gunn added "They're crammed with jumbled masses of corroded cables and wrecked ht double-cylinder doors in the lower compartments are frozen solid in the closed position"

"They were shut automatically by the ship

's first officer i," Pitt said

At that moment, a short bull of a ered into the gym Pitt looked up and faintly smiled "That you, Al?"

Giordino hauled himself over to a cot and collapsed like a sack of wet cement "I'd appreciate it if none of you lit anyto die in a fiery blaze of glory"

"Any luck?" asked Sandecker

"I made it as far as the squash court on F Deck God, it's blacker than sin down therefell down a companionway It was flooded with oil that had seeped up froine room Stopped cold There was no way down"

"A snake ht make it to the boiler rooonna At least, not until he spends a week clearing a passage with dyna crew"