The Titanic Mission

by Dan Gutman

  Julia was really getting into it. She loved everything having to do with fashion.

  “And jewelry,” she continued. “Lots of jewelry. Pearl earrings and necklaces, diamond rings—”

  “What about the men?” interrupted Miss Z. “What did they wear?”

  “Oh, the men pretty much all dressed the same, like they do today,” Julia replied. “You know, pinstriped pants. Shiny black shoes. Overcoats. Gloves. Tuxedos. They looked like a bunch of penguins.”

  “Okay, thank you, Julia,” Miss Z said, reaching into her desk drawer. “You’ve all done a great job. Now it’s time to get down to business. Here’s a new TTT . . .”

  She pulled out a small black box with two buttons on it and handed it to Isabel. The device was about the size of a cell phone.

  TTT stands for Text Through Time. Miss Z had spent more than a billion dollars—a good chunk of her fortune—to create this gizmo that enables a person from one time period to communicate—by text—with a person in another time period. It’s a breakthrough technology.

  Someday, maybe in your lifetime, you’ll be able to swap texts with your long lost relatives. Or you’ll be able to send a text to yourself in the future—and receive a reply. It’s hard to imagine, I know. It sounds like magic, but as the famous futurist Arthur Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

  In any case, the TTT will change the world. And Isabel was holding the only one in existence. She examined it carefully, turning it over in her hand.

  “I want you to keep me informed every step of the way,” Miss Z told the kids. “If something goes wrong, you need to text me immediately so I can get you out of there fast. Believe it or not, safety is more important to me than getting a picture of the Titanic. You are my responsibility. Your parents put their faith in me when they signed these permission forms.”

  Luke, Julia, David, and Isabel tried not to look at one another. They all knew that none of their parents had actually given permission for them to go on such a dangerous mission.

  “If something happens to any of you, it will be my fault,” Miss Z said seriously. “So whatever you do, don’t lose the TTT this time.”

  “We didn’t lose it the last time,” Luke replied, a bit defensively. “After they locked us in jail at Gettysburg, the sheriff there smashed it.”

  “Well, don’t let that happen again,” Miss Z told him. “It will cost me almost a billion dollars to build another one. This is the only one of its kind. Now, you’ll need a camera, of course . . .”

  She opened her desk drawer again.

  “Do we have to take such a big camera this time?” Luke asked. “That was our problem at Gettysburg. When the people in 1863 saw me pointing that thing at President Lincoln, they just freaked out. They had never seen a camera that looked like that. They thought I was going to shoot the president. I mean, shoot him with bullets.”

  “I hear you, and I’m listening,” Miss Z said, pulling out a small box and handing it to Luke. “No more big cameras. This is a simple point-and-shoot. It fits in your pocket. Just turn it on, aim, press the button, and fire. Think you can handle that?”

  “Oh yeah,” Luke replied. “It will be, uh . . . duck soup.”

  “Good. Any questions?” Miss Z asked.

  None of the kids had a question, but David clearly had something on his mind. He was looking down at the floor, refusing to make eye contact with anybody.

  “David, is something bothering you?” Miss Z asked.

  “Yeah,” he finally replied. “I just don’t see how you’re going to drop us on a ship in the middle of the ocean.”

  “I was wondering that too,” Luke said. “Isn’t it sort of like landing a plane on a moving aircraft carrier? What if you miss? What if we end up in the water instead of on the Titanic?”

  “Good question,” Miss Z replied. “The answer is, don’t worry about it. I know the exact coordinates of the Titanic.”

  “Huh?” the kids mumbled.

  “The what?” asked Julia.

  Miss Z rolled her eyes, the way grown-ups do when they can’t believe kids don’t know something that everybody is supposed to know.

  “Didn’t they teach you about latitude and longitude in school?” she asked the group.

  “No.”

  “I think I was absent that day,” Luke added.

  Miss Z let out a sigh and mumbled something under her breath about kids today. Then she asked Luke to go over to the windowsill and get the globe that was sitting there. He brought it back and the Flashback Four leaned in to examine it.

  “Look,” Miss Z said. “The Titanic was built in Belfast. That’s a city in Ireland. Here.”

  She pointed to Ireland on the globe and slid her finger slightly to the right.

  “On April third, Titanic sailed to England. That’s here. Some lucky people got off in England, and a bunch of not-so-lucky people got on board there. A week later, on Wednesday, April tenth, the Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, and stopped off in France to pick up some more passengers. Here. Then it headed across the Atlantic Ocean toward New York. Here. But of course, Titanic never reached New York. After three and a half days at sea, it hit the iceberg at this spot, about 370 miles southeast of Newfoundland. Right here.”

  She traced a line with her finger across the Atlantic and stopped before she reached North America.

  “I still don’t see how you’re going to land us on a moving ship,” David said. “The ocean is so big.”

  “I’m getting to that,” Miss Z explained. “You kids know what the equator is, right?”

  “It’s like, an imaginary line that goes around the middle of the Earth,” Isabel replied, pointing to it on the globe.

  “That’s right,” Miss Z said. “The equator is at zero degrees. Latitude is measured above and below the equator. So the North Pole is at ninety degrees north, and the South Pole is at ninety degrees south. See? That’s 180 degrees from pole to pole, and twice that—360 degrees—if you went all the way around the globe. There are 360 degrees in a complete circle. Do you kids know that?”

  “Yeah,” everyone said, with varying amounts of assurance.

  “When you do a 360 on a skateboard or a bike,” Luke said, “you spin all the way around one time.”

  “Right,” Miss Z continued. “When it hit the iceberg, the Titanic was a little less than halfway between the equator and the North Pole. To be precise, it was forty-one degrees and forty-six minutes north of the equator. Still with me?”

  “I think so,” Isabel said, even though she didn’t quite understand why distance would be measured in degrees and minutes instead of miles or kilometers. But she decided to just go with the flow.

  “Good,” Miss Z said. “So that’s the ship’s latitude. Similarly, we can locate exactly where Titanic was east or west by its longitude.”

  “What’s that?” David asked.

  “There’s no equator that cuts the Earth in half in this direction,” Miss Z explained. “So back in 1851, it was agreed that zero degrees would cut through a point in Greenwich, England. The numbers get bigger from there, the same as they do with latitude. So if you head west from England, as the Titanic did, it struck the iceberg at exactly fifty degrees and fourteen minutes longitude. Here. So latitude and longitude are basically a grid of intersecting lines that allow us to pinpoint very precisely any spot on the globe. That is, if you have the right coordinates.”

  David still looked apprehensive about the whole thing.

  “But how do you know the exact coordinates?” he asked. “What if your numbers are wrong?”

  “I know they’re right because the wireless had recently been invented, and the Titanic had one,” Miss Z told him. “When it hit the iceberg, the ship stopped moving and the crew immediately began sending out distress signals. They broadcast their exact location, hoping that another ship would rescue them. Unfortunately, the nearest ship was four hours away, and by the time it got t
here, Titanic was gone. It sank at exactly 2:20 in the morning on April fifteenth.”

  “So you’re going to send us to that exact spot and that exact time?” Julia asked.

  “No, of course not,” Miss Z said. “That would be foolish. I’m going to put you on the Titanic a couple of hours before the collision, so you’ll have time to move around the ship and get your bearings before all the excitement begins.”

  “Wait a minute,” Luke said. “A couple of hours before the collision, the Titanic wasn’t at that exact location. Right? Because it was moving.”

  “Very good, Luke,” Miss Z said. “Here’s the thing. We know exactly how fast Titanic was moving that night. Twenty-four miles per hour. So I can extrapolate—do you know that word?—and figure out exactly where it was two hours before the collision.”

  “So it’s sort of like in football when a quarterback throws a pass to his receiver, right?” Luke said. “He doesn’t throw the ball where the receiver is. He throws it where the receiver is going to be.”

  “Precisely!” said Miss Z. “I’m not going to throw you kids on the Titanic at the moment it sinks. You would drown! I’m going to throw you on the Titanic where it was two hours before it hit the iceberg.”

  “But not every football pass gets completed,” David said, a worried look still on his face. “Sometimes the receiver drops the ball, or it gets intercepted. Sometimes the quarterback misses the target entirely.”

  “I promise you I won’t miss the target,” Miss Z assured David, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Okay,” David said grudgingly.

  “So, are you kids pumped?” asked Miss Z.

  “I’m pumped!” said Luke.

  “Totally pumped,” said Julia.

  “Me too,” said Isabel.

  Everyone looked at David, who still seemed apprehensive.

  “What’s the matter, David?” asked Miss Z.

  He looked down silently again. It seemed like he might be on the verge of crying.

  “You can tell us,” Julia said, putting an arm around David.

  “I’m afraid,” he mumbled.

  “Afraid of what?” Isabel asked. “Are you afraid because of the way African Americans were treated back in those days?”

  “No.”

  David didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “I . . . don’t know how to swim, okay?” he finally admitted. “I’m afraid we’re going to miss the ship and land in the water. And I’ll drown. Okay? There, I said it.”

  The others went over to David and wrapped their arms around him. That only made his sobbing worse.

  “It’s okay,” Isabel said.

  “Dude,” said Luke, “you really don’t know how to swim? Seriously?”

  “It wasn’t a priority when I was little,” David said, wiping his face with his sleeve. “So I never learned.”

  “Hey, I’ve got your back, man,” Luke told him. “I took a lifesaving course a couple years ago. I swim like a fish. I won’t let you drown.”

  David sniffled a bit and tried to pull himself together.

  “David,” Miss Z said, “you’re in good hands. I know exactly when the collision took place. I know exactly where the Titanic sank. I know exactly how fast it was moving. I’m going to drop you right on that ship at exactly 9:40 p.m. on April fourteenth, 1912. Then I’m going to scoop you up and bring you back here at exactly 2:05 the next morning. That’s fifteen minutes before the Titanic will sink.”

  “What if we need you to pick us up before that?” asked Isabel.

  “Then I will,” Miss Z assured her. “Just text me. As soon as you take the picture, send me a text and I’ll get you out of there. I won’t let anything happen to you. Everything is going to run smoothly. Can you trust me?”

  “I guess so,” David said.

  “Here,” Miss Z said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a watch. “You’re going to need this. I want you to wear it at all times, David.”

  “What’s that?” Julia asked. “Some kind of new high-tech heart monitor?”

  “It’s a watch, you dope!” Luke told her, shaking his head in amazement.

  “Hey, don’t call me a dope!” Julia shot back. “You’re the dope.”

  “It’s an analog watch,” Miss Z told Julia. “I hope you kids know how to read an analog watch. When the little hand is on the four and the big hand—”

  “I know how to read an analog watch,” David told her.

  “Why can’t we get a nice digital watch?” Julia asked. “They’re much more accurate than analog.”

  “If the people in 1912 see a digital watch, they will totally freak out,” Isabel told her.

  “That’s right,” said Miss Z. “Don’t take it off, don’t break it, and whatever you do, don’t put it under water. It’s water-resistant, but it’s not waterproof. Got it?”

  “Got it,” David said.

  “Good,” said Miss Z. “One last thing. We need to choose a meeting place where I can scoop you up after you take the photo. The Titanic is a very big ship, of course. We need to pick one spot we can all agree on.”

  “How about the main deck?” suggested Luke.

  “The ship is huge,” Miss Z said. “We have to pick a specific place on it.”

  “What about the king-of-the-world spot?” suggested Julia.

  For a moment, all she got were blank looks.

  “Remember the movie?” Julia asked. “You know that place at the front of the ship where Jack stood, and he yelled, ‘I’m the king of the world’?”

  “Oh yeah!” everyone replied.

  “Perfect!” said Miss Z. “You need to be at that spot at exactly 2:05 a.m. I will bring you home from there.”

  “We’ll be there,” Isabel said, making a mental note of the time.

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” Miss Z said, looking at the Flashback Four one at a time. “This is more dangerous than your trip to Gettysburg. We have no margin for error this time. If you mess up, it could be the end of you.”

  “And if you mess up, it could be the end of us too,” said Luke.

  “So let’s not mess up.”

  CHAPTER 4

  GOING BACK

  “YOU KIDS HAD BETTER GET DRESSED FOR THE trip,” Miss Z said. “Boys first.”

  Mrs. Vader escorted Luke and David into a changing room next to her office, which Miss Z had thoughtfully built after the first Flashback Four trip. There were two outfits hanging in there, one for David (taller and thinner) and one for Luke (shorter and stockier). The girls waited excitedly for the boys to emerge from the changing room.

  Five minutes passed.

  “Boys!” hollered Miss Z. “Are you coming out?”

  “No!” Luke and David shouted from behind the door.

  “Come on,” hollered Julia. “How bad could it be?”

  “Bad!” the boys hollered back.

  David came out of the changing room first, looking completely embarrassed. Both girls had to stifle their giggles when they saw what he was wearing—a dark wool suit, a white shirt with a stiffly starched collar, a bow tie, leather boots, and loose-fitting short pants that gathered just below the knee.

  “What’s with those pants?” asked Isabel.

  “They’re knickers,” Miss Z and Mrs. Vader said together.

  “I’m not wearing this monkey suit.”

  “But that’s the way fashionable young men dressed in 1912,” Miss Z told him. “Boys didn’t wear long pants in those days until they were sixteen years old. You want to fit in, don’t you?”

  “No!” said David.

  “You look good,” Julia assured him, still trying not to laugh.

  “Yeah, you look really cool, David!” Isabel said.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “No, I’m just trying to make you feel good.”

  “Gee, thanks,” David said. “This thing doesn’t even have a zipper on it. How can they have pants without zippers?”

  “The zip
per hadn’t been invented in 1912,” said Julia. “Remember?”

  “At least I don’t look as pathetic as Luke,” David grumbled.

  “Get out here, Luke!” shouted Miss Z.

  “No!” he shouted back. “I’m never coming out.”

  “Oh, stop being a baby!” hollered Isabel.

  Finally, the door to the changing room opened and Luke came out.

  He was wearing a sailor suit.

  Yes, he was dressed up like a sailor. Julia and Isabel just about fell off their chairs.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” said Julia, trying to regain her composure.

  “Now I don’t feel so bad,” David said. “Compared to him, I look cool.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have come out,” Luke said. “I look ridiculous.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Miss Z. “Lots of boys wore sailor suits in 1912. Especially boys who were going on a transatlantic cruise. It was very trendy in those days. You’ll be on the cutting edge of fashion.”

  “The cutting edge of nerditude,” Luke whined.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Mrs. Vader said as she rummaged through a box. “You boys need hats.”

  “What, so we can hide our faces?” asked David.

  “A polite gentleman would never go outside without a hat on,” Miss Z explained while Mrs. Vader took a few hats out of the box. “And he would never come inside without taking his hat off. That’s just the way things were in those days.”

  Mrs. Vader gave Luke a sailor hat, of course. David picked out a plain dark wool hat and put it on his head backward.

  “Ooh, look at me,” he said, dancing around. “I have this cloth thing on my head. It makes me more polite.”

  “Oh stop it,” Miss Z said, laughing. “It’s just a hat. Be a good sport. Okay, girls, it’s your turn.”

  The boys sat down. Julia and Isabel went to the fitting room, where Mrs. Vader had hung an outfit for each of them. They both came out a few minutes later, whirling around to show off their fancy dresses. Isabel was wearing a red flannel gown, and Julia had on a white cotton dress with puffed sleeves. Both girls were sporting oversized bonnets tied with large silk bows.