Captain Jack Waitkus died horribly, never knowing that his ship was about to die, too.

Kelly Egan awoke from a nightmare. It was a kind she often dreamed, in which she was being chased by some sort of indescribable animal or insect. In this one, she was swimming and a huge fish brushed up against her. She moaned in her sleep and popped her eyes open, seeing only the glow from the night-light in the bathroom.

She wrinkled her nose and sat up, slowly becoming aware of the faint smell of smoke. She inhaled, trying to trace its origin, but it was barely a whiff. Satisfied that it was not coming from inside her stateroom, she lay back down and sleepily wondered if it was only her imagination. But after a few minutes, the scent seemed to become stronger. She also sensed that the temperature in her stateroom had risen. She threw back the covers and set her bare feet on the carpet. The carpet seemed abnormally warm. The heat seemed to be emanating from the deck below. Kelly stood on a chair and placed her hand on the ornate copper ceiling above. It felt cool.

Concerned, she pulled a robe over her shoulders and padded across the floor to the door leading to the adjoining stateroom occupied 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.

On 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.