“She’s going to roll!” Mitchell shouted. “Get out!”
Cool-headed Ray Corbin proved the hero this time. At the first sign of danger, when the lights went out, he had wisely groped his way to the base of the conning tower. “I’m at the ladder,” he said calmly. “Follow my voice.”
Mitchell found him first, and with the captain in position to guide the others, Corbin stated loudly enough for all to hear, “I’m going out with the raft.”
Little light entered when the first officer opened the outer hatch; the sky above was starless and pitch-black. Undaunted, he threw out the raft, designed to hold twenty men, and blindly scrambled onto it as it inflated.
Reinheiser was next up the ladder, then Doc Brady.
“Hurry up!” Mitchell urged as the sub listed farther to starboard.
But Del had a problem: Thompson was frozen in terror, refusing to move despite Del’s pleas. As time seeped away, anger replaced diplomacy, and Del finally grabbed Thompson’s shirt and hauled the man up the incline.
“Help me!” he yelled to Mitchell. The captain latched on to the terrified seaman’s shirt and heaved him up the ladder, where Billy Shank was waiting.
But just as they got Thompson safely onto the raft, the Unicorn listed again. Mitchell was braced by the ladder, but Del lost his footing and skidded away into the darkness.
“DelGiudice!” Mitchell cried.
“I’m okay,” Del replied, rubbing a new bruise on his shoulder. Unmercifully, the Unicorn assumed an even steeper angle. “I’ll make it,” he assured Mitchell. “Go ahead up.”
Mitchell shook his head, not so certain that Del could get back to the ladder. But the captain had no way to help, no ropes, or even wires, close at hand that he might throw to the distant man. He moved out of the sub.
Del heard his companions calling as he groped around on all fours. Even for those moments that he managed the steep incline, he could not find the ladder. Then the sub rolled some more, practically on its side, and the ocean streamed in through the open hatch, hungry to claim its prize.
“She’s on her side!” came Billy’s distant cry as the raft drifted away. “She’s going over! Del!”
Del slumped back against the now vertical floor, resigned to his fate. He didn’t even notice that the water pouring in was strangely warm.
Suddenly he felt himself rising, and not with the water; it wasn’t deep enough to buoy him. His eyes darted around. What sort of delirium gripped him? He was floating in the air! And then, miraculously, he was at the ladder!
“How?” Del asked aloud, but he didn’t wait for any answers. He fought his way out the hatch, plunged into the warm ocean and swam toward the dim outline of the raft and her six passengers.
They hauled Del aboard silently and gathered at the edge of the huge raft.
All was quiet save the rustle of wet clothes and the occasional groan of a soft-soled shoe on the rubber raft. Behind them, far off now and racing away, the wild storm raged, but the men took no notice. They stood solemn, peering into the blackness, waiting for a part of their lives to come to an end. And then, with a mere gurgle, the vast, unconquerable ocean took the Unicorn.
“Well, she’s gone,” Corbin said, staring vacantly into the black void.
What more could they say?
They settled in for the night along the perimeter of the raft and lay quietly, remembering and wondering in blackness as the empty hours passed. The crisis and great loss of the past few days forced Del into a contemplation of his own mortality. Despite all his efforts, death remained unanswerable and irreversible, a frustrating and terrifying concept because he simply could not know.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Jeff DelGiudice experienced the emptiness of his rational inability to accept faith.
A few hours later, without warning, dawn exploded over the eastern horizon, shattering the black calm of night and whatever tranquility the men might have had. Startled from their dreams and thoughts, they faced the surprising, stunning light.
Even though its lip had just broken the horizon, the raging sun burned at their eyes, and as it climbed into full view, the sky turned a bright red and the temperature soared. Waves of heat ripped through the air above them. The ocean flashed bloodred as choppy swells caught the sky’s fire in brilliant reflections, appearing as sheets of flame flicking against the sides of the raft.
“What the hell is going on?” Mitchell cried as he reflexively dodged the splash of red water. The very sky above them seemed battered and torn.
“They must have done it,” Corbin realized, scrambling unsteadily to his feet. “They finally did it!”
“War?” Mitchell gasped. He turned to Reinheiser, who was staring blankly at the merciless sun. “Nuclear war?”
Reinheiser shrugged his shoulders listlessly. “There could be other explanations,” he said unconvincingly, overwhelmed by the apparent betrayal of his cherished science. What had the idiots done-or failed to do-with the marvelous tools and inventions?
“Whatever happened, we’ve got to get some protection from this sun before it burns our skin away,” Doc Brady said.
“Get the cover out,” Mitchell said absently, his voice subdued. This horror transcended anger, leaving nothing but emptiness in its wake.
“We are gathered together on a most solemn occasion,” Ray Corbin proclaimed, still standing. The men watched him with unchanging expressions as he deliberately reached down and picked up one of Mitchell’s rifles. “We stand alone as witnesses to the ultimate stupidity of mankind. We have come to bury the dead.” He raised the rifle above his head in uplifted palms, then tossed his offering into the red water.
The shoulders of the sitting men visibly slumped. Mitchell wanted to rush over and choke Corbin, more for destroying what little morale was left than for throwing away the rifle. But the furious captain found that he couldn’t even shout at the man. Corbin’s sarcasm had touched him, had made him realize his own frustration at the very real possibility of an escape that had brought them back to a barren earth.
Billy Shank took many more shifts than the others outside the tent of the raft’s cover, and he stayed out hours at a stretch, until his eyes burned from the dazzling light and he lay near dehydration in a puddle of sweat. It wasn’t a form of self-persecution; Billy was simply determined to live the last few days of his life in defiance of the horror.
Black thoughts and empty silence dominated the atmosphere under the tent. The men faced the grim reality in private, more alone than any of them had ever been. For Del, though, a sliver of hope fought back against the despair. Tugging uncomfortably at the rational side of him, which refused to admit blind faith, was the notion that a miracle had saved him on the bridge of the sinking Unicorn. And on a deeper, still unfathomable level, the thought of intervention by some angelic overseer hinted at a sense of comfort beyond anything Del had ever experienced.
Day was a brutal trial of endurance in the sweltering 120-degree heat. Even outside the stuffy tent, a good breath of air was hard to come by. Lungs and throats ached with fire in the parching dryness and lips cracked within cracks. Strained eyes, bloodshot from the uncanny brilliance, stung relentlessly even when closed.
Nights were better. When the temperature dropped to more tolerable levels, some of the men ventured out to join Billy, hoping for a nostalgic glimpse of normalcy, a relief from the constant pressure. And yet they were always disappointed, for the night sky was ever the same, unblemished black. Not a single star would grace them with its fantasy-spawning light, nor did the moon arise with her alluring glow. Del focused on this perversion, and to him it became the greatest tragedy of all. He desperately wanted to see a star again before he died.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, their water supply nearly exhausted, Billy lay alone outside the tent. The sea sat calmer this day, a smooth, dull crimson below the thin mist that hugged the surface. Billy sprawled across the edge of the raft, his hand drawing shapes in the water. He fell asleep in that position, unaware that the raft had entered a strong current and was steadily accelerating. Several hours and many miles later, Billy woke and looked up with a start. Dead ahead, his sweat-filled eyes beheld a beautiful sight.