Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler Page B

arrival. There were only two within a hundred miles. One was the Earl of Wattlesfield, the British containership the radio operator had contacted earlier. Her captain had quickly responded and was coming at full speed, but he was thirty-seven miles to the east. The second vessel was an Australian missile cruiser that had changed course and was charging toward the position given by Burch from the south. But she had sixty-three miles to go.
    Satisfied there was nothing left to consider, Burch joined Pitt on the bridge wing. Every soul that did not have a duty to perform lined the rails of the Deep Encounter, staring at the red glow lighting up the sky. Closer and closer, the survey ship pounded toward the burning cruise liner. Loud talk trailed off into murmurs as the extent of the disaster became more shocking with each passing mile. Fifteen minutes later, they all stood as if put in a trance by the incredible drama unfolding before them. What had once been a luxurious floating palace filled with laughing, happy people was now a fiery funeral pyre.
    Seventy percent of the once-beautiful ship was a vortex of flames. Already, her superstructure was a twisted, seething tangle of red-hot steel that virtually divided the ship in two. Her once-emerald-and-white color scheme was blackened and charred. The interior support bulkheads had contorted into an indescribable mass of melted and scorched metal. The lifeboats, or what was left of them, hung in their davits, barely recognizable.
    It was a grotesque monster beyond the imagining of the most demented horror writer.
    Studying the Emerald Dolphin as she drifted broadside to the rising wind and building sea, Pitt and Burch stood stunned, uncertain that the survey ship, its scientists and crew could cope with the enormity of the tragedy.
    “Good lord,” mumbled Burch. “No one got away in the boats.”
    “Looks as if they were all burned before they could be launched,” Pitt said grimly.
    Flames roared and towered into the sky, reflecting like terrible demons in the water around the ship. She looked like a ghastly torch, dead in the water, waiting to be put out of her misery by slipping beneath the sea. There came a screeching roar, more like a wail, as the interior decks collapsed. For anyone within two hundred yards, it would have felt as if someone had opened the door of a blast furnace. It was light enough now to observe the charred debris littered around the burning liner, floating on a blanket of gray and white ash. Burning bits of paint and shards of fiberglass filled the air in swirling clouds. Their first impression was that nobody could have been left alive in such a holocaust, but then the great mob of people became visible, choked together on five of the liner’s open stern decks. At the sight of the Deep Encounter, a steady stream of them begin to leap into the water and swim toward her.
    Burch trained his binoculars on the water around the Emerald Dolphin’s stern. “People are jumping off the lower decks like lemmings,” he exclaimed. “Those crammed higher up on the stern seem frozen.”
    “Can’t really blame them,” said Pitt. “The upper decks are nine to ten stories high. From their viewpoint, the water must look like it’s a mile away.”
    Burch leaned over the railing and shouted an order to his crew. “Away the boats. Get to those people swimming in the water before they float out of sight.”
    “Can you bring Deep Encounter under the stern?” asked Pitt.
    “You mean put our ship alongside?”
    “Yes.”
    Burch looked skeptical. “I won’t be able to get close enough for them to jump on board.”
    “The nearer the fire gets to them, the more will leap over the side. Hundreds will die before we can pick them all out of the water. If we tie up to the stern, her crew can throw lines for the passengers to slide down to our deck.”
    Burch looked at Pitt. “In this sea, we’ll beat hell out of Deep Encounter against that monster. Our hull