The Titanic Mission Read online

  “I don’t know,” replied Julia, who knew very well that meeting at the bow had been her idea.

  “Miss Z should have known,” Isabel said as she struggled to catch up to the others. “She should have told us. It’s her fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” Luke said. “Let’s go!”

  Finally, after traveling the entire length of the huge ship, the Flashback Four reached the bow—the meeting spot. It was still above water, but just barely.

  “That’s it!” Isabel shouted, pointing at the railing she remembered from the movie. “That’s the spot where Jack said he was king of the world!”

  “We’re going to be saved!” Julia shouted gleefully.

  Unfortunately, there was an obstacle in front of the meeting spot. It was a guy, a big guy with big muscles. He wasn’t wearing a White Star Line uniform. He looked like a bouncer. His arms were folded in front of his chest, and he didn’t look very happy.

  “Run along, you kids,” he said with a gruff Irish accent. “This part of the ship is off limits to passengers. There are lifeboats at the port side. If you hurry, you can still get into one of them.”

  “Oh man,” David mumbled wearily to Luke, “are we going to have to fight this guy now?”

  “It’s two against one,” Luke whispered back. “He’s big, but we can take him. You go for his legs and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  But before they could start the big fight, Julia stepped forward. She did a curtsy in front of the big man, a smile on her face.

  “My name is Julia Brennan,” she said. “What is your name, sir?”

  “Thomas Maloney,” he grunted.

  “Mr. Maloney, my friends and I just want to snap a photo. You know, so we’ll have a little souvenir of our trip on the Titanic.”

  “This is no time to be taking pictures,” Mr. Maloney told her. “It’s very dangerous here. You could get washed overboard.”

  “We know. We’re being very careful,” Julia replied politely as she reached into her pocket. “Tell me something, Mr. Maloney. If I gave you this, would you let us take a picture?”

  She peeled off ten bills and handed them to Mr. Maloney. He looked at them, counted them, then looked up at Julia with astonishment.

  “You’re gonna give me a thousand bucks to let you take a picture?” Maloney asked. The angry look had left his face and suddenly he was all smiles.

  “Yes,” Julia told him, “if you’ll pose for it.”

  “Go right ahead,” he replied. “Take all the pictures you want.”

  “Great,” Julia said. “Okay Luke, you take the picture. Isabel, maybe you should tell Miss Z it’s time to pick us up.”

  While Luke set up the shot with Mr. Maloney, Isabel discreetly pulled out the TTT. She texted, WE R READY TO BE PICKED UP.

  Luke got down on one knee and instructed Mr. Maloney to stand in front of the railing. It would be the perfect shot. Water was already creeping up on deck and the bottom of the rail was submerged.

  “Smile!” Luke instructed.

  Mr. Maloney smiled.

  At that moment, the front of the ship abruptly lurched down a foot or so, sending everyone sprawling. Water splashed across the bow. Mr. Maloney grabbed on to the railing to avoid falling overboard. So did David. Luke bobbled the camera, nearly dropping it in the water.

  As Isabel fell down, the TTT slipped out of her hand and slid forward across the slippery bow. She desperately reached out to retrieve it, but the TTT fell into the ocean.

  CHAPTER 11

  KING OF THE WORLD

  DID U SHOOT THE PHOTO? MISS Z TEXTED, USING THE COMPUTER on her desk.

  It was not yet 2:05, the time she had agreed to pick up the Flashback Four. She wanted to make sure they got the picture before she brought them back home.

  Miss Z waited a few seconds for a response. When it didn’t come, she texted again.

  REPEAT. DID U GET THE SHOT?

  No response.

  Miss Z called over her assistant, Mrs. Vader, for help as she fiddled with the computer. Up until this moment, Isabel had been very prompt in replying to every text. Maybe something was wrong with the TTT, Miss Z thought.

  ARE U THERE? she texted.

  Nothing.

  “Kids!” said Mrs. Vader. “If they don’t want to communicate, they just don’t. My son does the same thing. It’s their way of having some control over authority figures.”

  “Something might be wrong out there,” said Miss Z, in perhaps the understatement of the year. She had no idea that the TTT, which she had spent a billion dollars developing, was at that moment sinking down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

  WERE ARE U? she texted so quickly that she misspelled words. ANSER PLEEASE.

  “I know it’s early, but maybe you should think about bringing them back now,” Mrs. Vader suggested. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Miss Z fired up the Board and quickly tapped out a series of commands on her computer. After a few seconds, the Board buzzed and lit up in a flash of bright blue. The blue screen split into five bands of color, and then they merged together to form a single band of bright white light. There was something beautiful about it.

  “Let’s hope this works,” Miss Z said, as the room was filled with an intense humming sound. “I wasn’t planning to bring them back until five minutes after two. But I’m worried about them. Those kids are my responsibility.”

  Mrs. Vader crossed her fingers. After a few more seconds, the screen began to flicker. An image began to appear.

  “It’s working!” shouted Mrs. Vader.

  The image on the screen flickered faster and faster, and then there was a bright white flash. When it went out, there was one lone figure standing in front of the Board.

  Thomas Maloney.

  The big man landed on his feet and shook his head, as if he had just woken up from an intense dream.

  Mrs. Vader screamed.

  “Who are you?” shouted Miss Z.

  “My name is Thomas Maloney,” he replied as he looked around the room. “I might ask the same question of you, ma’am. And where am I? What am I doing here?”

  “Mr. Maloney, were you on the Titanic just a minute ago?” asked Miss Z.

  “I sure was,” he replied. “And she was sinkin’ fast.”

  “Well, we just saved your life,” Miss Z told him. “You’re probably the luckiest man in the world.”

  “I don’t feel lucky. Where am I?”

  “You are in Boston, Massachusetts, Mr. Maloney,” said Mrs. Vader.

  “That’s most amusing, ma’am,” he said, chuckling.

  “We’re dead serious,” said Miss Z. “This is the twenty-first century.”

  “Twenty-first? That’s impossible,” Maloney said. “This is 1912. Everybody knows that. You must be mixed up in the head, lady. What is that thing?”

  “It’s called a computer,” explained Miss Z. “It’s interfaced with the smartboard behind you. That’s what I used to bring you here.”

  “Interfaced?” Maloney said. “I never seen one of them contraptions before.”

  “Who cares about that?” shouted Mrs. Vader. “What about the kids?”

  “Mr. Maloney, when you were on the Titanic, did you happen to see four children, about twelve years old?” asked Miss Z. “Two boys, two girls? One of the boys is African American?”

  “African American? What’s that mean?” Maloney replied. “But yeah, I was talkin’ with four kids just before this happened.”

  “Where were they?” asked Mrs. Vader.

  “They were standin’ right in front of me a minute ago,” he said, “at the very front of the ship. They were takin’ my picture. They even gave me a thousand bucks to do it. And the next thing I knew . . . I was here. I guess they must still be there.”

  Mr. Maloney pulled the bills out of his pocket and showed them to Miss Z.

  “This is bad,” Miss Z said, furiously ty
ping on her keyboard. “This is very bad.”

  On the Titanic, the Flashback Four were in full-scale panic mode.

  “No!” Isabel shrieked, reaching into the water in a desperate attempt to grab the TTT.

  It was no use. The TTT was gone. There would be no way for them to communicate with Miss Z anymore.

  Furthermore, Mr. Maloney was gone. One moment he had been in front of them posing for a picture, and the next moment he had disappeared. He didn’t fall overboard. He just vanished. The Flashback Four were in shock.

  “Did you see that?” asked David, rubbing his eyes.

  “He’s gone!” shouted Julia. “Where did he go?”

  “Miss Z must have zapped him back instead of us,” Luke guessed.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” asked Isabel, her eyes filling with tears. “We can’t talk with her. It’s all my fault. Now we’re stuck here. We gave up our spots on a lifeboat. We don’t even have life jackets. I knew we shouldn’t have come here. Now we’re going to die here!”

  Isabel collapsed into full-blown, shoulder-heaving, blubbering sobs. Julia put an arm around her to comfort her, but soon she was crying too. David was doing his best to fight back tears.

  By all rights, this is where the story of the Flashback Four should come to an end. But you’ve probably noticed there are a few more chapters left in this book.

  CHAPTER 12

  EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

  EVERYBODY RESPONDS TO STRESS DIFFERENTLY. Some people collapse. Some give up. Some lash out. Some take charge.

  While the others were crying their eyes out, the wheels were turning in Luke’s head. He’s the kind of person whose response to a stressful situation is to try to find a solution.

  Luke assessed the situation. The TTT was gone. Mr. Maloney was gone. In a few minutes, the meeting spot would be gone. And soon after that, the whole Titanic would be gone, with the Flashback Four on it.

  Everything would be gone. Getting back to their own time was out of the question now.

  There was only one hope for survival, and that was to get onto one of the remaining lifeboats. If they could do that, they might be rescued. They would have to start their lives all over again in 1912, of course. But at least they would live.

  Maybe starting over wouldn’t be so terrible, Luke thought. They would know a lot of things the people in 1912 didn’t know, and that could come in handy. Plus, they still had a thousand dollars left, and that could go a long way. In any case, it was their only chance. It was either try to get on a lifeboat, or give up and go down with the ship.

  “Come on, get up!” Luke commanded David, Isabel, and Julia. “Hurry! I’ve got a plan.”

  He didn’t really have a plan. But he needed to motivate the others and get them out of their funk. People like it when somebody has a plan.

  Two more distress rockets shot up in the air and exploded like Fourth of July fireworks. But none of the passengers were paying attention to them anymore. The water had already covered the meeting spot and was slowly creeping up the deck.

  “How could such a tiny bump cause so much damage?” a lady commented.

  It was almost two o’clock in the morning now. Time was running out and everyone was exhausted. The ship would sink in about twenty minutes. One by one, David, Isabel, and Julia pulled themselves together, got to their feet, and followed Luke.

  Even now, as they ran down the deck, it still didn’t feel like Titanic was sinking. The ship was so big that it felt like the water was rising around it, as though they were at the beach and the tide was coming in.

  “Maybe they’ll send some helicopters to pick up the rest of us,” Julia hollered as they ran down the deck.

  “Helicopters?” David yelled back. “Are you out of your mind? They didn’t have helicopters in 1912!”

  (True. The first practical helicopter was invented in 1939. In 1912, the airplane was only eight years old.)

  When the Flashback Four got back to the area on the starboard side where the lifeboats were stored, they were in for a surprise. Not only were all eight lifeboats on that side of the ship full, but they were also gone. They could be seen in the distance, rowing away from the Titanic.

  “What do we do now?” Isabel asked, stopping to catch her breath.

  “We’ve got to go over to the other side of the ship!” Luke hollered. “Quick! Follow me!”

  After hitting a few dead ends, Luke found a narrow passageway that cut across the deck.

  “I thought you said you had a plan!” David shouted as he followed Luke.

  “This is the plan!” Luke hollered back.

  “Wait up!” Isabel shouted.

  Isabel and Julia were finding it hard to run in their heavy dresses, and it was even harder now that they were wet.

  It was hard to run at all. The deck was tilted at a crazy angle. They were bumping into the walls of the passageway, running like a bunch of drunks. The water and ice covering the wood floor didn’t make things easier.

  Finally, they reached the other side of the ship. Fortunately, there were a few lifeboats that hadn’t been launched yet.

  The musicians were still out on the deck, bravely playing “Frankie and Johnny.” But there was nothing they could play that was going to keep the passengers calm anymore. Order had turned into chaos. Confidence had turned into doom.

  People were everywhere. The third-class passengers, who had been locked down in steerage while the wealthier people filled the lifeboats, had managed to break down the gates. Now they were streaming up on the deck. Large families were hauling all their worldly possessions—baby carriages, heavy wooden trunks, big suitcases. Mind you, this was long before suitcases had wheels on them. You had to carry them.

  “Leave your things behind!” shouted a member of the crew who was loading people onto a lifeboat. “You cannot take any bags with you! There simply isn’t enough room!”

  It didn’t do any good. Many of the third-class passengers were foreigners who didn’t understand a word of English.

  People were pushing and shoving to get close to the front of the line. Nobody was hanging back. It no longer looked safer to be on the Titanic than it did on a lifeboat.

  “I don’t think we’re gonna get on,” David said as the Flashback Four joined the crush of people waiting in line.

  “We gotta find a way,” Luke replied.

  “I told you, women and children first!” shouted a steward at the front who seemed to be in charge of deciding who got on the lifeboat. Another steward was tearing wives away from their husbands and throwing them roughly into the boat.

  “I’m a child!” hollered David, who was almost six feet tall and could easily be mistaken for a grown-up. He was slumping down, trying to appear a few inches shorter.

  “Where are our lifeboats?” demanded a man carrying a big sack over his shoulder. “Where are the lifeboats reserved for the men?”

  There was no need to answer him. Everybody knew there were no lifeboats reserved for the men.

  The steward put two more ladies on board, and then he held up his arms and blew a whistle.

  “This boat is full,” he announced. “Let it go, boys!”

  Some crew members turned cranks to lower the boat down to the water. The people waiting in line were furious.

  “But my sister and I have been waiting here for a half an hour!” a lady complained.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the steward explained. “The boat can only hold sixty-five people. Any more than that will swamp it.”

  There was no point in trying to change his mind, but people argued with him anyway. A few passengers threw their suitcases onto the lifeboat, hoping it would get them a seat. The women in the boat screamed as the suitcases landed on them.

  “Dude, I can’t swim,” David whispered to Luke. “We gotta get on a boat.”

  “I’ll take care of you,” Luke shouted in David’s ear. “I think there are more boats down this way. Come on!”

  The Flashback Four ran abo
ut thirty yards up the deck until they found another lifeboat. There was room in it because some passengers had gotten out and gone back to their staterooms to get their jewelry and valuables. Big mistake. The staterooms were underwater at this point.

  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Stewards had gone through the ship locking the empty staterooms to prevent the third-class passengers from looting them. The people who went back for their valuables would not be on the list of survivors.

  Isabel counted about a dozen seats still empty on the lifeboat. Then she counted the people in line ahead of her. It looked like the Flashback Four might possibly be able to get on.

  The steward in charge of this lifeboat was fighting with a woman at the front of the line, trying to pull the suitcase out of her hands before letting her on board.

  “But I need my clothes!” she screamed in a foreign accent.

  He grabbed the suitcase and threw it overboard.

  “That’s what you can do with your clothes, lady!” he shouted at her as the suitcase splashed into the water below. “Go get ’em if you want ’em.”

  People were pushing and shoving. A baby girl was crying.

  “Be patient!” one of the stewards announced. “There’s plenty of room for everyone.”

  It was another lie too, of course. People were getting hysterical as they realized there wasn’t nearly enough room in the lifeboat for all the passengers who were left.

  People who were stuck at the back of the line began grabbing tables and chairs off the deck and throwing them overboard. They picked up anything that might float and could be used as a raft.

  The line inched forward. There were only a few open seats left. Isabel prayed silently that she and her friends would get them. A man with a cane tried to muscle his way to the front of the line, as if brute force would intimidate the stewards.

  “I’m a first-class passenger,” he bellowed. “I paid good money for this cruise. I should be allowed on a lifeboat before the third-class people.”

  The steward pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants and fired two shots in the air.

  Bang! Bang!

  For a moment, everybody stopped pushing and shoving.