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by her father. Dr. Elmore Egan was in a deep sleep, as evidenced by his snoring. A Nobel Prize-winning mechanical genius, he was traveling on the Emerald Dolphin because she carried the revolutionary new engines that he had designed and developed, and he was making a study on how they were performing on their first voyage. He was so engrossed in his state-of-the-art creation that he seldom came up from the engine room, and Kelly had hardly seen him since departing Sydney. The previous night was the first time they had sat down and had dinner together. Egan had finally begun to relax after satisfying himself that his huge magnetic water jet propulsion engines were operating efficiently and without problems.
    Kelly leaned across his bed and shook him lightly by the shoulder. “Dad, wake up.”
    A light sleeper, Egan came instantly awake.
    “What is it?” he asked, staring up at the shadowy form of his daughter. “Are you ill?”
    “I smell smoke,” Kelly answered. “And the floor feels hot.”
    “Are you sure? I don’t hear any alarms.”
    “See for yourself.”
    Fully awake, Egan leaned out of bed and placed both palms on the carpet. His brow raised, and then he sniffed the air. After a moment’s deliberation, he looked up at Kelly and said, “Get dressed. We’re going out on deck.”
    By the time they had left their staterooms and reached the elevator, the smell of smoke had become more pronounced and distinct.
     
    O n the A Deck shopping avenue outside the wedding chapel, the crew was retreating in its battle against the fire. The portable extinguishers were used up. All the fire-control systems were inoperative, and to add to their desperation, the hoses could not be attached because the valve caps were frozen closed and could not be removed by hand. McFerrin sent a man down to the engine room to bring back pipe wrenches, but it was an exercise in futility. Two men using their combined strength still could not untwist the caps from their threads. It was as if they had been welded shut.
    To the men fighting the fire, frustration turned to terror as the situation worsened. With the fire doors unable to close, there was no way to isolate the blaze. McFerrin hailed the bridge. “Tell the captain we’re losing control down here. The fire has burned through onto the salon deck into the casino.”
    “Can’t you keep the fire from spreading?” asked Sheffield.
    “How!” McFerrin yelled back. “Nothing works. We’re running out of extinguishers, we can’t connect the hoses and the sprinkler systems won’t flow. Is there any way the engine room can override the systems and close the fire doors?”
    “Negative,” answered Sheffield, anxiety obvious in his voice. “The entire fire-control program is down. Computers, fire doors, sprinklers, the works—they’ve all failed.”
    “Why haven’t you sounded the alarm?”
    “I can’t alarm the passengers without the captain’s authority.”
    “Where is he?”
    “He went down to judge the situation for himself. Haven’t you seen him?”
    Surprised, McFerrin searched the area but saw no sign of Waitkus. “He’s not here.”
    “Then he must be on his way back to the bridge,” replied Sheffield, becoming uneasy.
    “For the safety of the passengers, give the alarm and send them to their lifeboat stations in preparation for abandoning the ship.”
    Sheffield was aghast. “Order sixteen hundred passengers to abandon the Emerald Dolphin? You’re overreacting.”
    “You don’t know what it’s like down here,” McFerrin said urgently. “Just get the show on the road before it’s too late.”
    “Only Captain Waitkus can give such a command.”
    “Then for the love of God, man, give the alarm and warn the passengers before the fire breaks onto the stateroom decks.”
    Sheffield was swept by indecision. He’d never faced an emergency like this in his eighteen years at sea. It was why he’d never wanted to be a captain. He’d never wanted the