Page 75 of The Girl Out of Time
“Whatever. Point is, you have to get off! I don’t know how, I don’t know what to do, I don’t—”
“Emily,” Will said again, calmer. How ironic thathehad to be the one to sootheher.
She’d blame this one on the pregnancy hormones.
“It can’t happen. It’s impossible,” Will said.
“It’s very, very possible. TheTitanicstruck an iceberg and didn’t have enough lifeboats to evacuate all the passengers.”
Will’s eyebrows drew together. “That wouldn’t be a problem. All such ships have fewer boats than passenger capacity. You wouldn’t use them to evacuate all the passengers at once; you’d use them to evacuate, in groups, to the other ship, then come back for more passengers. And besides…” He shook his head in disbelief. “TheTitaniccan’t go down. She’s the most technologically advanced ship to ever exist. The wireless has the longestreach—if something happened, we could call for help, and other ships would come to our aid.”
Will spoke with such confidence he almost made her believe him. He was a top-notch engineer. He knew what he was talking about! And he lived in that era—he knew the ins and outs of their technology.
“The wireless would work,” Will repeated, and she wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince himself or her. “There are many other ships around us.”
“Give me a second.” Her fingers shook over the keyboard, leading to several misspellings in her search, but she finally got her results. She skimmed over the new article, her heart beating in her throat. “No,” she whispered.
“Emily?”
“The only ship close enough was theCalifornian, but they’d turned their wireless off for the night. They couldn’t hear the signals for help. The rest were too far.” As she scrolled further down, her eyes stopped on an image of theTitanic’s broken two halves, and another of the ship’s remains emerging from the deep-sea mist, blue and gray and not as much frozen in time as slowly dying, its pointed bow covered in rusted, icicle-like structures that made it look like the ship was weeping metal tears.
A heaviness settled in her stomach. Will could be brilliant; he could claim they’d covered all emergencies, but history still happened. And while she was talking to him, he could also be down there—long gone, forgotten in the depths.
She sagged her shoulders, her voice low as she said, “Whatever you did, whatever you will do, it didn’t work.”
“No.” Will stared at her, fear creeping into his eyes. “No. It can’t sink. They’ve taken every precaution. It can’t.”
“Will …”
“Sylvia and all the children are here.”
“I know!”
They looked at each other for long seconds. Emily sniffled and put a hand to her nose.
“How many make it off?” Will asked, his voice shaking.
She had a vague idea in mind, but she scrolled through the article to confirm. “About seven hundred.”
“Seven …” She wasn’t sure what Will did with the tablet, but it spun, and his face disappeared for a moment. “There are over two thousand people on this ship! Two. Thousand.”
“I know.”
“You’re saying two-thirds are going to die.”
“I know, Will, I know!” She got up and started walking, not that it helped her shake off the nerves.
“I have to do something.”
She leaned her elbows on the kitchen counter and bent her head over the tablet. “Whenever I tried to do that—time travel tricks, to change the past—you were the first to tell me no. To tell me one can’t tamper with events like this.”
“It’s not my past.”
“But it is mine.” He had to know what she meant. TheTitanicsank—it was meant to be. But she couldn’t blame him for wanting to try. If she were in his place, she’d do anything she could.
“Okay.” She swallowed. “We’ll figure out something. Perhaps you can travel to the past, just a little bit—”
“I don’t have my watch with me.”
