Page 78 of The Girl Out of Time
Should he go find his family? Prepare them for the inevitable? But he still had time and opportunities to prevent the inevitable. If he could do that, all would be well, and Sylvia and the children would never need to know. They’d never feel the panic he was feeling.
He got up and started walking, out to the hallway, toward the staircase, before he finally decided on the course of action and reoriented himself. He’d learned from time travel that adjustments to events were a finicky thing—easier to do in advance than to fix in retrospect and much easier to make in small measures rather than big swings. There were the obvious solutions for the ship—it stopping right now, for example—but Will couldn’t see how he could do that. A passenger emergency would propel them forward, if anything, and he could hardly sabotage the boilers to make the ship stop.
No, he had to start from the easiest, least intrusive option. He couldn’t stop the ship, but he could make sure help would be there when they needed it. He headed up the stairs to the boat deck.The wireless.Emily had said help wouldn’t come in time because the other ships were too far away or didn’t hear the signal, like theCalifornian. So all he had to do was make up a business emergency that would require sending a wireless to theCalifornianand assure their operator wouldn’t leave for the night until theTitanicsent out the distress signal.
Nerves gathered in his stomach and reached up, contracting his lungs. He’d have to lie and cheat, and annoy some people in the process, but he had to do it. He squared his shoulders, ran through the lines he’d say to theoperator in his head, and knocked on the door of the Marconi room. After no response, he tried again, then pried the door open.
The main room was empty. By the wall, the operating table was left in disarray. The operator’s headphones lay abandoned in front of the long, metallic cylinder of the emergency transmitter, with stacks of notes left nearby, held down by a paperweight.
Panic rose in Will’s throat for a moment—was he somehow too late already?—but noises wafted in from the adjoining room. He gently pushed in the door, left ajar, and found the two operators, Phillips and Bride, sitting on the floor, tinkering with an open machinery box, overcrowding the already small, tightly packed room.
This room held most of the machinery used to operate the wireless. On their earlier visit, Bride even allowed Tristan to take a peek in here, and Tristanooh-ed andaah-ed as he observed the bright blue sparks from the rotary spark discharger. The bulky motor generator set, with a large wooden box to the side, took about a third of the floor. Above it was a regulator panel full of switches and dial gauges. Brass wires hung from the walls, reaching across the room. To most, it would look terrifying, if not dangerous; to Will, it was more like a standard day at the office.
Phillips looked up as Will entered. “Mr. Marshall?”
“I …” the surprising sight almost made him forget his prepared lie. “I need to send an urgent message to theCalifornian.”
“Sorry, you’re out of luck. Wireless has broken.”
The ball of nerves sank back into the bottom of his stomach.Five hours.“How?”
“No idea,” Bride said. “Might be too many messages overwhelming it. We’ve been swamped with passenger messages and ice warnings all day. Butat least Jack doesn’t need to listen to theCalifornian’s operator screeching into his ear anymore, huh?” He lightly punched his friend in the shoulder.
Phillips smiled and shook his head.
“Anyway, we think it might be the condenser,” Bride continued. “We’re working on fixing it.”
“I thought only certified technicians were allowed to do repairs?”
“Yes, sir.” Phillips turned his attention back to the box.
Will thought in silence for a moment. “Would you like a hand?”
“You don’t have a license, do you?” Phillips asked.
“Not for this one, unfortunately.”
Phillips weighed his head. “Well, you’ll fit right in, then. Sit down.”
Will did, and they got to work.
“You filthy bastard. Got you.” Phillips knocked on the open lid of the transformer box. After trying everything they could with the condenser—with no success—they figured the problem must lie elsewhere.
“The insulation on the wire is burned through,” Phillips said. “Came in contact with the casing, caused a short.”
“Then we only need to re-insulate it,” Will said.
“Mm-hmm. Tape?” Phillips turned to Bride, who nodded and left the room, returning shortly with a roll of insulating tape. Phillips worked swiftly and efficiently and fixed the problem in minutes.
“Let’s get back on track, then.” He sat down behind the operating table and put on the headphones. “Would you mind waiting a bit, Mr. Marshall? I have a stack of messages to transmit first, now that Cape Race is in range.”
Will’s first instinct was to say, “Of course, take your time,” before he remembered time was the one thing they didn’t have, and he couldn’t afford to be polite. “It really is urgent,” he said instead.
Phillips wavered.
“I’ll pay you double,” Will tried. Wireless, as incredible as it was, wasn’t profitable for the ships unless they charged the affluent passengers, eager to boast to their friends by sending a message from the middle of the ocean.
“Boss is going to be happy,” Bride said.
