Free Collision Course by Gordon Korman

the chain locker as long as was humanly possible. Second Officer Lightoller was notthe sort of man who gave up easily. This search was going to take all night.
    He shuddered, which made the grease run up his arms and down his legs. Paddy Burns had survived much in his fourteen years.
    He was not at all certain he was going to survive this.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    RMS
TITANIC

S UNDAY, A PRIL 14, 1912, 6:10 A.M.
    It wasn’t sleep, exactly, but rather a frozen stupor brought on by exhaustion, bone-chilling cold, and the cramping of every muscle in his body in the effort to maintain his perch on the greasy anchor chain. The terror of falling had now become so old that he was losing his sharpness — even dozing a little. And disaster could be the only result of that.
    How long had he been in this otherworldly place? It was impossible to tell. Long enough to lose feeling in his arms and legs. If he ever got out of here — if he ever opened that hatch and returned to the land of the living, he was by no means sure that his body would support him.
    The hatch!
    It was then that he realized that he was looking at the hatch. Its edges were lined with faint light. That meant daylight, morning.
    I’ve survived the night
!
    For all the horror he’d already endured, this next move was surely the riskiest. He was about to open the hatch and quite possibly step into the arms of some stoker, who would deliver him directly to Mr. Lightoller’s swift justice.
    But it had to be done. Five more minutes here and he might never recover enough to save himself. He undid the suspenders that were holding him in place. They fell and he never heard them land. Then he reached over, unlocked the hatch, and swung the door wide. An instant later, with more pain than he’d ever dreamed imaginable, he was standing on the deck, trembling and faint with fatigue.
    But he was alone! By sheer luck, he had managed to find a moment in which all the firemen were gone from their quarters — a shift change, perhaps.
    He took a step toward the door and froze. Slimy lubricating grease dripped from him with every movement. A quick self-inspection revealed that he was covered with the stuff from head to foot.
    The urge to run — to get out of here before the stokers returned — was almost overwhelming. He fought it down. Begrimed with sludge, he’d leave a trail of black wherever he went.
    He stripped off his filthy clothes and stepped into the adjoining shower room. The water was nearly scalding, yet the heat brought life to his numb fingers and toes, and eased the stiffness in his muscles. It was lucky that firemen used strong, gritty soap to combat the boilers’ ash, because the muck on his skin did not remove easily. After much scrubbing, he turned off the spray, feeling strangely awake and alive. For Paddy, a wash usually meant a swim in an ice-cold lake or river. Hot water and real soap was quite a luxury.
    He pulled on a pair of coveralls hanging on a hook, rolling up the cuffs several times at the wrists and ankles. Kicking on his boots, he strode out of the shower room — and very nearly collided with the stoker standing by one of the bunks.
    Paddy cast his gaze down to the deck. “Morning,” he mumbled in the deepest voice he could muster.
    “How do you know my son?” the man demanded. “How do you know Alfie?”
    Oh, Lord, Alfie’s father!
    Paddy toyed with trusting in his natural gift of blarney and trying to talk his way out of this. But more crewmen could be coming any minute — and surely some of them knew about last night’s manhunt.Perhaps Mr. Huggins himself did. There was suspicion in his gruff voice….
    With a cry of “I’m late!” Paddy dove for an access ladder and began a hurried descent, made agonizing by the aching of his arms and legs. He had no idea where he was going — possibly down to the hostile territory of the boiler rooms.
    No. Cargo surrounded him, lashed to angled bulkheads. He was in the forward hold, just aft of the