BEGINNINGS- BUILDING A SPACE STATION
SPACE
Day 1
Alan had always had the unhappy experience of watching his four brothers excel in areas where he couldn't compete. Scott was the daring, athletic brother whose charisma attracted girls like honey drew flies. Virgil was almost as bad. He played multiple instruments, painted gallery quality work and drew the artistic girls that weren't attracted to Scott. John was a genius with a bright future in astronomy or physics and could think circles around any of his brothers. Gordon was an Olympic swimmer.
Oh, and Alan was the youngest, adding to the pain. When you're the youngest, especially when there's a good age gap, there are two truths your life is ruled by: 1) You will always be the baby, even when you're an old man and 2) Your older siblings will feel it's their duty to watch out for you like an extra set of parents, the numerical amount of extra parents being equal to the number of older siblings. Alan wasn't sure he wanted FOUR extra fathers, but that's essentially what he'd been stuck with.
He'd gone into the NASA training program with good grades in math and physics, although nowhere near as good as John's. Still, he had the smarts to be an astronaut and made up for the differences by working his tail off and the extra discipline made a difference. Now Dad was offering the chance to be a real astronaut with his own ship; he wouldn't have to fight for command of the limited number of ships available through NASA or IASA. He found that very satisfying, as well as the chance to do some good in International Rescue simply by rescuing those who would otherwise die without IR help. His mother had died when he was too young to know her and that loss still reverberated through his family. He'd be glad to help some other kid keep his mother and not know that loss.
It wasn't until he started NASA training in a zero-G environment that Alan realized he had some abilities not shared by his older brothers. Alan had never gotten air or carsick in his life. The same held true for free fall. When the other trainees were losing their lunches, breakfasts and yesterday's dinners in the training shuttle, Alan felt fine. Invigorated, even.
And when he took his first spacewalk, Alan discovered that he was the only newbie who wasn't bothered by the lack of a defined up or down. Everyone else seemed to need to orient himself to a defined relative 'floor' and 'ceiling' but Alan was content just floating freely in open space.
Jeff Tracy had leased a large shuttle similar to the training shuttles used in orbit by NASA. Under John's supervision, they all experienced weightlessness for the first time. They wore plain jumpsuits since the shuttle was pressurized and the interior walls were padded. John went in first, then Scott floated in, followed by Virgil, Gordon and then Alan, since he'd had free fall training.
Within ten minutes, Scott was upchucking, followed by Virgil. Even Gordon looked very green in the face. John and Alan controlled their impulse to grin and floated around with the hand vacs, handing out air-sickness bags.
"I can't stand this," Virgil hung onto a strap and continued filling his air sickness bag at intervals.
"Can't go to space unless you adapt," Alan said sympathetically, taking the old one and sealing it, then handing Virgil a new one.
"You knew this could happen," John reminded them. "How are you doing, Gordon?"
Gordon was floating miserably in a corner with arms wrapped around himself. "Fine," he said briefly, then his eyes widened and he grabbed for his own bag and began to retch into it.
"How about you, Scott?" John asked his older brother. Scott looked up, then grimly continued filling his bag. John finally let the grin out. "So, Alan, what do you think? Where's Scott on the Garn scale?"
"I don't know, John," Alan replied. "I think he's at about one tenth of a Garn. It's Virgil who's really in contention." Alan eyed Virgil and patted him on the back. "Don't worry, Virg, it really does end."
"What's a Garn?" Gordon asked, gulping in air.
John shrugged and cast a glance at Alan, who smiled and floated upside down, then replied, "It's an old tradition from the twentieth century space program at NASA. Senator Jake Garn took a ride on the Space Shuttle in 1985 and was so incredibly space-sick that astronauts have since defined your level of illness by the Garn scale. The mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn, but most astronauts only get to about one tenth of a Garn."
Virgil shuddered and said, "Thank you for sharing that, Alan."
"Don't we have any anti-nausea drugs for this?" Scott muttered.
John floated over to give Scott another air-sick bag and took the used one. "I'm sorry, Scott, but if you take anti-nausea drugs, it'll just slow down the adaptation process. In a day or two your body will adjust to the change in gravity and the nausea will fade away."
"You mean we have to feel like this for two days?" Gordon asked blearily. "How will we get any work done? And why aren't you two affected? Some NASA magic?"
Alan looked uncomfortably at John, who answered, "Good genes, as far as we can tell. Dad has never had any kind of motion sickness, even flying to the moon. Alan and I haven't had any problems either. On long road trips, usually it was Virgil and Scott who decorated the pavement. And Gordon never got car sick, but I don't know about seasickness."
Gordon grinned. "You didn't see me in the bathyscaphe. Small space, recirculated air and unpredictable motion? You bet I got sick. I just had drugs for it then. But if you say the barf bag is my friend, then I guess I just have to put up with it. Besides," he paused reflectively. "I don't feel so bad anymore. Just don't feed me any enchiladas for lunch again, okay?"
"Enchiladas?" Virgil's eyes widened. He grabbed the bag and began to use it heartily.
"It's okay, Virg," Alan said soothingly. "We have saltine crackers and tea. When…uh…if you get hungry, you can have that."
"When are we going to learn to spacewalk?" Scott asked tiredly. "Not today, I hope?"
"No, we'll give you guys a couple of days to acclimate before we do anything serious," John said. "For the time being, just try to enjoy being weightless. Tomorrow we'll go over the space suit safety and the basic rules of free fall."
"Yeah," said Gordon. "The first rule is to keep your barf bag close!"
The rest of the day went more smoothly, Alan reflected. While Alan and John had eaten a hearty dinner of chili and tortillas, their brothers had simply blanched and huddled as far away as possible so they couldn't smell the food. John, noticing the trouble Virgil was having, had Alan watching over him while he himself kept an eye on Gordon and Scott.
Finally, when Scott, Virgil and Gordon each looked thoroughly wiped out, although none of them would admit it, John bit back a smile and suggested they all go to bed. "I don't know about you," he said with a yawn. "But I'm ready for a good night's sleep." He stretched his arms out and rotated end to end before stopping himself with a hand on the ceiling grip.
Scott and Virgil watched him wistfully, still clutching their air-sickness bags, while Gordon took note of just how John had managed to orient himself. Finally, Virgil decided that his pride just wasn't worth it. "I'm pretty tired, I guess. I'd like to hit the sack," he said and ineffectively tried to swim toward his 'bunk', which was a cloth bag anchored to the far wall. Scott leaned forward as if to give Virgil a helpful push, when Alan intervened.
"Don't push him, Scott," Alan cautioned. "Remember Newton's third law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction? You'll find yourself hitting the far wall. Come on, Virgil, let's get you tucked in for the night." He grabbed Virgil's coverall with one hand and began to pull himself forward using the other hand and the ceiling grabs."
Alan helped Virgil into the sack, then anchored a water bottle nearby. "You need to stay hydrated, Virg, no matter how nauseated you feel," he said, snapping the sleep sack closed. "You'll feel better tomorrow."
"I sure hope so," Virgil replied. "I think I've got a migraine on top of the nausea."
Gordon took hold of a ceiling grab and managed to haul himself over to his own 'bed'. "Come on, Scott, this is fun!" he laughed from the wall.
Gamely, Scott grabbed his own handhold and pulled himself forward slowly and carefully and was soon in his own sleep sack.
"Well, get some sleep. We'll see you in eight hours, huh?" Alan dimmed the lights and floated over to John at the opposite end of the shuttle.
"How's he doing?" John asked softly, nodding his head toward Virgil.
Alan frowned. "He isn't at a full Garn yet, but he's getting there. He might be someone who can't adapt, John. What do we do then?"
John's eyes narrowed as he looked over his dozing brothers. "Well, if he gets that bad, we'll give him some thoramin and you can take him down in the rocket. But let's give him some more time. He might just be slow in adjusting. I sure hope that Brains can make that artificial gravity system of his work, then none of this will be a problem on the space station or Thunderbird Three. "
"Unless Virgil has to EVA, then he'll just throw up in his space suit, endangering himself and the mission," Alan replied with a frown. "But in any case, there's nothing we can do now but work with him and hope the nausea clears up. So, what's the game plan for tomorrow? Not EVA yet, I hope."
"No," John replied. "They need more time to adjust to weightlessness and especially how to move themselves around in it. We'll work on that tomorrow and maybe try each of them on a jet pack one at a time and hope nobody goes crashing into a wall."
"Does this feel as weird to you as it does to me?" Alan asked.
"What?" said John.
"Teaching stuff to your big brothers when they're the ones who taught you how to drive a car and tie your shoes," Alan said with a shiver. "It just doesn't feel right to be telling Scott how to cope with weightlessness or supervise Virgil."
"I don't know, Alan," John said with a smile. "I kind of like it. You taking first watch?" He reached for his own sleep sack.
"Yeah. I'll relieve you in four hours then," Alan replied and grabbed a handle to propel himself into the cockpit of the shuttle. They had agreed that someone should be awake at all times in case of emergency or call from Tracy Island. As the youngest, Alan had drawn first watch. Not that he minded. He strapped himself into the pilot's seat and set the computer for a nice peaceful game of computer solitaire. It was nice when he was the only one awake and he was left to admire the stars. John wasn't the only Tracy with an interest in space, although Alan's was more of the adventuring type. He was a bit worried about Virgil, though. By the end of the day, his other brothers had stopped vomiting and were keeping down water at least. Poor Virg had just kept going through air-sickness bags.
John relieved him in four hours and Alan floated back to his own sleep sack. He stopped to check on Virgil before he went to bed, though. The water bottle had gone down a few inches, which heartened him. It would hurt if Virgil couldn't join the rest of the Tracy boys in space, like losing an arm or something.
He folded himself into his sack and closed his eyes, relishing the comfort of sleeping in free fall. No earthly mattress could compare to it. He wondered what Tin-Tin was doing tonight. She was still at school, studying for finals the last he'd heard. It was looking like she'd be as good an engineer as Virgil and a close second to Brains. That would be helpful to International Rescue and to him personally. He smiled, glad that his girl was going to be so close, and drifted off to sleep.