Free Lost Republic by Paul B. Thompson

burned when the ship ran aground, knelt in front of Jenny. Her right arm was bandaged at the wrist in white stretch wrap.
    â€œWake up!” she said. “The sun’s out!”
    Jenny worked her sleep-cramped shoulders. “So? The sun’s out. Why all the noise?”
    She understood when she stood up and looked out the lounge window. The beach, which had been a ghostly vision yesterday, now stood out clear as a Your/World video. It was an ordinary white sand beach, flat and without dunes. Behind the wide strip of sand was a line of dark trees, and beyond them, pastel hills in blue and gray. One of the Irishmen said it didn’t look like their coast—not rocky enough.
    Carleton
lay stranded about two hundred yards from shore. The water level hadn’t changed. They were just as solidly aground as before. Captain Viega ordered soundings made to find out how deep the water was. Sailors took a bright yellow nylon rope with a lead weight on it and dropped it over the side. On the port, or high, side of the ship, no bottom could be found. When dropped to starboard, the lead quickly came to rest within plain sight of the surface. Then something strange happened. As the crew and interested passengers looked on, the lead weight slowly sank out of sight.
    Hans Bachmann and the navigator exchanged what-the- hell? looks. Captain Viega was summoned. They hauled the lead up and repeated the procedure. As the larger crowd looked on, the yellow line slowly wound out of view, attached to the sinking weight.
    â€œIt’s not solid at all!” Hans said.
    The captain had seen enough. He simply turned his back and went to argue with Engineer Pascal about how to free the ship. Barely had the captain started talking when a distant booming sound echoed across the water from the land. It wasn’t thunder—the sky was bright and blue—it sounded almost mechanical, like a giant door slamming shut.
    Clouds of dust rose from the hills and hung in the still air.
    The sea around the
Carleton
rippled like a pool with a pebble dropped in it.
    Wham! The deck heaved up and fell back hard enough to throw everyone off their feet. Windows shattered and portholes cracked. One of the
Carleton
’s weakened radio masts gave up and came crashing down on the boat deck.
    At once, everyone was talking, yelling, screeching. Leigh Morrison struggled to his feet in time to see a second cloud of dust billowing up from unknown hills. The unseen force flashed over the water. It struck the ship, heeling the
Carleton
almost upright before letting it crash back at a worse list than before.
    Crew members boiled out on deck, most of them soaked to the skin. Some of the ship’s seams had split open. Water was pouring in belowdecks, into every compartment along the starboard side. Without power for the pumps, there was no way to stop the flooding.
    As one, the terrified people swarmed to the boat deck where the lifeboats were stowed. Captain Viega, Purser Brock, and Signals Officer Señales appeared between them and the starboard-side lifeboats.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Viega demanded.
    â€œTo the boats! The ship is sinking!” several people replied.
    For a moment, the captain stood between the frightened passengers and the lifeboats. He could not speak the words. At last he stood aside, and with a curt wave of his hand allowed the people to abandon his ship.
    Dirty white nylon covers were peeled off the boats. Julie was glad to see they weren’t just empty wooden rowboats. Each lifeboat had a deck, collapsible awnings, engines, emergency rations, and battery-powered satellite phones. There was no power for the electric winches, but enormous steel cranks turned by three or four men, raised the lifeboats from their blocks. With much cursing and many bruised knuckles, the boats were swung out over the side. The list, now close to twenty degrees, made pushing the heavy boats even harder, but at last they had four