The Titanic Enigma by Tom West Read Free Book Online Page A

the floor was no more than a fraction of an inch thick, while green areas marked the safest regions.
    He stopped just short of the doors and pulled on the right-hand one. It opened slowly, the sloped bottom edge scraping on the metal floor of the corridor. Then suddenly, a few inches from his
body, it dropped off the remaining hinge. He jumped and hit Kate with a glancing blow that knocked her off-balance. The door just missed the outer edge of Derham’s suit and dropped through
the water, bouncing and coming to rest.
    ‘You OK?’ the captain asked, spinning round quickly.
    Kate had grabbed a rail to break her fall, but it had come away from the wall. She pulled herself up as Lou leaned down to help her.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
    They stepped through the opening into a wide passageway. Directly opposite, a fire-hose reel was hooked to the wall. A metal sign above it hung by one corner. It said: ‘Emergency Use
Only’.
    This was one of the corridors linking First Class cabins. Seeing it now, it was almost impossible to imagine how it would have once appeared when some of the wealthiest and most celebrated
people of the early twentieth century had walked this way.
    The metal shell of the corridor was still there, but it had been horribly disfigured. There were a dozen doors, six to a side. A single chandelier remained suspended from the ceiling; another
had crashed to the floor, a tangle of brass, a carpet of crystals and glass scattered on the rusted steel. A sumptuous red carpet had once run the length of the corridor. Now almost every strand
and fibre had been consumed by microbes.
    They headed towards the stern. Their helmet beams lit up a wasteland of tangled metal, buckled hull sections and caved-in door frames. Twisted and rusted furniture lay in the corridor –
the frame of a deckchair, half a round steel table. In the middle of the corridor they found a pile of plates and cups and beside this a row of twenty or so bowls. They were almost completely
untouched and gleaming white. Each item carried the White Star Line emblem – a red flag with a white star in the centre and the company name written on a folded banner beneath the flag.
    Kate, Lou and Derham stood transfixed, silent, each trying to take in the immensity of the ruin. Lou crouched down and picked up one of the bowls, turning it in his hands. ‘As perfect as
the day it was manufactured,’ he said, placing it back carefully.
    ‘Where now?’ Kate asked.
    ‘According to the ship schematic, C16 should be just beyond the First Class Grand Staircase and one more level down. This way.’ Derham turned to their left, his helmet light scouring
the corridor ahead.
    The passage curved away left then turned back on itself. Thirty yards along, they came to a sharp right turn. Derham took two steps forward and stopped abruptly. The sonar device in his hand was
beeping loudly in their helmet headsets. They looked down and saw that the floor had dropped away to nothing.
    ‘Goddammit!’ Derham exclaimed.
    ‘Ah!’ Lou commented.
    ‘Yes, “ah”. OK, back we go.’ Derham glanced at his chronometer. They had been gone twenty-two minutes. He squeezed past Lou and Kate and took it slowly, concentrating on
the sonar screen and watching the floor at the same time.
    They retraced their steps back to the last junction and took a right. ‘It’s a longer way round, but it should take us back to a point beyond the chasm,’ Derham said. ‘If
there’s a problem with this route, it’s over.’
    This corridor seemed to be less severely corroded. The walls were streaked with green slime and the tears and rips in the metal were smaller. ‘The wildlife is just getting tucked in
here,’ Kate observed. ‘Give them a few years and it’ll be as decayed as the last corridor.’
    ‘Let’s hope the critters haven’t been too hungry,’ Lou said.
    Ahead, the corridor twisted to the left and then stretched straight for some sixty yards. It was strewn with