Chapter 1: How many Astrophysicists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

His hand slid smoothly over the cold metal control panel, feeling blindly for the button that would activate his holographic display. It was right where he knew it would be—he could walk blindly from room to room and know where every button and switch was in that place—not that there were many. Most of the controls were motion sensitive. In fact it was a sensor rather than a button he searched for and as soon as his gloved hand ran over it a holographic keyboard popped up in front of him. He typed in a set of commands that accessed the mainframe and brought out of its storage the blueprints for Thunderbird 5.

A fraction of a moment later the plans were displayed before him and he pushed the keyboard out of his way so he could manipulate the holographic image himself. He zoomed in on the space station, accessing details about an internal section and looked over the plans for the piece of detail he was searching for. There, he laid a finger on a junction in the crawlspace above his living quarters, that was where he needed to go. He turned on his heel, leaving the schematics floating in mid-air and walked from the command room.

"John, what are you doing?" A high sweet voice asked from a small camera that followed him down a narrow track in the ceiling.

"Have you seen my bathroom?" John smirked up at the camera.

"I do not go into your living quarters. It was a rule you established."

"And I appreciate that you following them." John chuckled quietly. It was silly, EOS had no intention of spying at him, but for some reason he was still embarrassed at the thought of her watching him when he was getting dressed or taking a shower. "A pipe burst in the bathroom, and it is quickly turning into a swimming pool."

"I thought you liked swimming."

"I do, but not in space. Even Gordon would have trouble with that." John continued smiling as he walked down the hall looking at the ceiling as he did.

He stopped just before the door to his living quarters and frowned at the hatch above him. EOS' track made a small detour around it and was looking from it to him. He reached up and pulled the release, the access door flopped down almost hitting him in the head. Dust exploded from the hatch causing John to cough a few times. The public image of the space station was clean and pristine, under the hatch it was stale and dusty.

He looked up at the black hole above him and knew he could jump and grab the edges and pull himself up, but there was an easier way. He reached over to a nearby command pad and stopped the gravity ring. Slowly he could feel the weight leave his feet, and with a small push he was at the opening.

He wasn't claustrophobic—wouldn't be able to live in the cramped Thunderbird 5 if he was. However the space on the other side of the access panel was quite small. John didn't really have any choice though, so he turned on a small flashlight, stuck it between his teeth, and pulled himself in.

It had been a good thing that John had turned off the gravity. The space he was now in would have been too small for him to crawl on hands and knees. Without gravity, however, he was able to stretch himself out and pull his way to his target. The wires and tubes in the crawlspace were neatly tucked away so he had no worries of accidentally pulling on any of them, but that also meant that he had to be careful not to miss the valve he was looking for. The schematics said it was three hundred feet from the hatch, it shouldn't be too much farther.

There, on the left side, he could see two levers. One had cold written in blue letters and hot written in red. Not entirely sure which pipe had busted he reached forward and pulled on the first lever. Unfortunately, the only effect that had was to pull him forward. Right, so that was why he needed gravity. He found a small bare spot on the wall near the levers that he could use an an anchor point, set one hand in that spot, and tried pulling on the lever again. It still did not move. Not ready to give up so easily, he readjusted himself and tried again. This time it moved, a hair.

He thought for a moment about leaving the crawlspace and going on the hunt for some tools but knew that they were on the other side of the station and that he needed to get the water turned off as soon as possible so he tried again. This time the cold lever moved freely and he was able to bash it into the off position.

Next was the hot lever. Problem was it needed to go in the other direction which would push him back unless he could find someplace to put his feet. He felt around, but the walls were covered with wires and tubes and he didn't want to accidentally knock any of that out, but he also didn't have a lot of options so he used the toe of his boot and wiggled it between a row of tubes and wires. Once he thought it was secure he used his leg to push the lever.

He had thought it had moved a bit and tried to push harder when his boot slipped and he was pushed back. Frowning he pulled himself forward and tried to wedge his boot back into the wall. Again he pushed on the lever, grunting a little as he did and after a moment the lever moved halfway into the closed position.

He pulled on his leg trying to pull his boot free, only to find that it was actually stuck in the wiring of the wall. Cursing to himself he pulled again and was able to free it only to knock himself against one of the walls. He carefully reached up and felt his head. It stung when he touched the wound and brought back a bit of blood on his fingers. It wasn't a bad bump, just a scrape but he'd have to take care of it as soon as he was out of the crawl space.

He looked back at the hot lever and tried to pound it the rest of the way closed with the side of his hand. The only thing that accomplished, was giving him a sore hand. He then decided to move a little farther forwarded so that he was basically floating over the lever. There wasn't enough room to bring his arm down next to him, so he used his shoulder and pushed himself from the ceiling onto the lever.

He hadn't hit it hard, but the bolt on the top of the knob hit him just right to make him exclaim a bit in pain.

"John, are you okay?" EOS' voice echoed through the door of the hatch.

"Yeah, fine." John frowned as he pushed himself back to see if it had worked. The hot lever had moved a bit more, and John used the side of his hand to pound it as hard as he could, which caused it to to fall firmly into the closed position.

He was not going to enjoy opening those valves when that time came. Though maybe then he would remember to bring a wrench with him.

He pushed himself back down toward the hatch and pulled himself through. Using the handholds on the walls he rited himself and punched in the command to start the gravity wheel once again. Slowly his weight returned to him and he made his way into his living quarters.

His room was small, but all he did was sleep there so he didn't need a big one. There was a small dresser along one wall, the bed along the other with a reading light and a small bookcase.

The bookcase had been an addition to the room after TB5's completion. John liked to read before he went to sleep but didn't like reading off of a tablet, complained that the light hurt his eyes after awhile. The black on white of a real book was relaxing, and he could never resist rubbing the paper between his fingers as he read. Something about the feel of the paper on his skin made what he read more real, be it an adventure or just an old physics book.

John took the half dozen steps to the clear glass door that separated his sleeping space from his bathroom. The bathroom was about the same size as his bedroom and filled halfway with water. The good news; the water wasn't rising anymore, but it wasn't lowering either. The bathroom was designed like most of the other rooms in the station—glass walls and floor, color coded lines to help the unfamiliar find their way. The shower only took up one corner of the room but that was where the drain was. The majority of the pipes were hidden behind the wall that covered one side of the room. It was designed this way so that if a pipe should break the water would be contained in the wall and not in the same crawl space as most of the station's wiring. The station was also designed to recognize when there was an excess of water and seal the doors. This was also to help keep the water from reaching important systems and damaging them. Of course that also meant that John couldn't get into the bathroom until he could drain the water.

Getting quite fed up with the whole situation, John turned and left his room.

"Did you fix your problem?" EOS was waiting for John outside of his room.

"No." John sighed as he passed by the camera and made his way back to the schematics in the control room.

"Will it be fixed soon?"

"I don't know." John was smart, really smart. He was an astrophysicist—one of the best in the world, not to mention the awards he's won in computer coding. But it was a broken water pipe in the bathroom that he was struggling with. He figured Virgil would have had it fixed and working by now, but there was little chance of getting that kid off the Earth.

Virgil avoided space duty like the plague. It wasn't that he didn't want to help, it was that his body didn't agree with space in general. If he wasn't sick to his stomach he was complaining of vertigo or even doing both. It had been decided by all that Virgil was best left on solid ground.

John stood in front of the schematic and zoomed in on the bathroom drain. There was access to it from outside the station, but as soon as he exposed the water to space it would just freeze and that wouldn't help anything. He stood there thinking when it suddenly hit him. There was an automatic plug in the drain that he used when he set the shower on automatic clean. He swiped away the old blueprints and brought up the status chart of TB5. This looked just like the blueprints, only this was an up to date status report of all moving parts of the station.

He had of course tried to turn the water off from the control pad in his bedroom but for some reason the water would not stop. That led him on the hunt for the manual shut offs in the crawlspace. John zoomed in on the bathroom, the status chart showed that the water had thankfully stopped and also what he was hoping to expect, the plug was active. He pulled up the control panel for the bathroom and triumphantly hit the button to deactivate the plug. The little dot on the schematic turned green and John smiled.

John frowned. He stood once again in front of the door to his bathroom, the water was still waist high. He walked over to the command pad in his room and brought up the controls for the bathroom once again, it showed that the plug was once again activated. He hit the button to deactivate it and turned to look at the door. The water did not move. Looking back at the control pad it had turned red again. It looked as if the plug was stuck. Now what was he going to do?

"I even looked to see if there was a hatch in the ceiling that I could go through to get into the bathroom, but no luck." John sighed as he relayed his issue to Brains.

"No. We didn't want any way for water to interact with the wires in the crawl space." Brains was in his lab, his own copy of the TB5's schematics brought up before him. "What is odd is that plug is not supposed to s-stop the water unless the c-cleaning protocol is active. Do you know why the pipe b-broke?"

"No. Just woke up to the sound of water." John floated aimlessly his face turned from Brains and looking out into space. "I'm starting to think Thunderbird 5 is infected with pixies."

"P-pixies?" Brains widened his eyes and raised an eyebrow at John.

"You know, little fairies." Virgil walked into Brains' lab and leaned on the counter waving at John's hologram.

"I know what p-pixies are."

"Hey, John, What's up? Did you ever figure out what was up with those breakers?"

"B-breakers? John what is going on up there?"

"Like I said. Pixies." John laughed a little. "It started when my lightbulb burnt out in my bedroom. I called it a night and went to bed, but the next morning when I went to get a replacement. The lights in the storage room were out. So I went to check the breaker thinking that they couldn't all go out at the same time, but the breaker wasn't flipped. So I went back with a flashlight and changed out all the bulbs."

"Those bulbs weren't due for a change for a c-couple more years." Brains was rubbing his chin scrolling through the schematics before him.

"Well, they were busted, that's all I can say. I got them all changed and got my bulb for my room, but the second I replaced the one in my reading light, it blew again."

"That is v-very strange."

"I figured it was a bad bulb, it happens. But when I went back to the storage room, those bulbs were out again too."

"Did you look to see if the b-breakers were functioning? Maybe there was some s-sort of power surge that was slipping by them?"

"That's what I said." Virgil shrugged. "But he had already done that by the time I had talked to him."

"W-what did you find?"

"Not much. According to my system checks they're working fine."

"A-are you still having issues with them now?"

"Haven't read a book for a few days if that's what you mean."

"Has a-anything else happened?" Brains had now brought up the coding and had started looking through it.

"Well, the day before all my bagels were burnt, and I mean black. I took the toaster apart but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it, but the second I hooked it up to the station it overcooked them again. I miss my warm bagel of a morning."

"A toaster, breakers, and a pipe b-breakage. They are not systems that are connected, but it is odd that they happened so close t-together." Brains blinked at the code trying to find anything that seemed out of place.

"Wait, pipe breakage?" Virgil looked at his floating brother, his eyes wide.

"My bathroom's turned into a wading pool." John sighed and shrugged.

Virgil barked with laughter. "I bet Gordon would love the opportunity to swim in weightless water."

"I'm surprised he hasn't tried alr—" There was a soft whomp of a sound that stopped John from finishing his thought.

"John, what was that?" Brains was typing away at his keyboard trying to find the source from his place in the lab.

"I don't know." John had righted himself and pulled up his own status report only to see that everything was seemingly working perfectly.

"John." EOS' camera zoomed into the room on her little track. "I think you need to come see this."

"And where have you been?" John frowned looking up at the camera.

"I've been reviewing the data logs from this week, but that's not important. You need to follow me."

"I'll talk to you guys later." John swiped the holographic image of Brains and Virgil away before they could reply.

"Brains, do you think these incidents are going to be a problem." Virgil frowned at the place where his brother's image had once been.

"I-I don't know, Virgil. Something d-doesn't seem right."

"Do you think we should have John come down until we figure out what's going on?"

"That might be a p-possib—"

"Brains." John's torso once again popped into view. "I have a little bit of a problem."

"What happened John?" Virgil pushed himself off of the counter and turned to look at his brother.

"A water pipe busted in another part of the station. I went to try and shut it off at the source, but I can't get in. Something has locked me out."

"Where did it b-bust?"

"In the med bay."

"There is not much water in the reclaimer at any one time. It should run itself out s-soon."

"What about the equipment? There's some pretty delicate stuff in there."

"With the water floating in zero G it should not be a p-problem." Brains explained as he continued to tap away at his computer. "Virgil, I think S-Scott should know of the situa—"

"Ah!"

Both Brains and Virgil turned just in time to see Johns picture disappear. The signal was still there, just not John.

"J-John? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." John's voice was distant over the comm signal. Slowly he reappeared on the screen.

"The gravity was turned on. EOS?"

"It wasn't me John, I swear."

"Brains?" John looked at the engineer his brow raised.

"N-not me. Though I will look into it." Brains turned back to his computer.

"I think it might be a good time for you to come back down to Earth, till we can figure out what's going on." Virgil frowned at his brother, his foot tapping on the floor.

"I think I agree with you." John nodded and sighed. "I'll be there soon."

"F.A.B." Virgil nodded and turned off the communication. "I'll go inform Scott. We'll need to transfer control to the island till we can figure out what's going on."

"J-just what I was g-going to suggest." Brains smiled a little, but it vanished quickly as he kept his eyes on the coding in front of him.

"Hey, what's going on?" Alan yawned as he stumbled into the lounge. "Virgil said there were ghosts on Thunderbird 5."

"Ghosts?" Gordon raised an eyebrow as he came up from the kitchen with his breakfast in hand, Virgil behind him.

"Yeah, spirits." Alan yawned again.

"I said sprites." Virgil shook his head handing him a bagel. "Eat."

"Let me wake up first, will ya?"

"Well, I doubt it's either of those two things." Scott laughed at his youngest brother. "But something odd is going on. John was supposed to be heading down, but the elevator hasn't budged."

"Maybe he's packing his things, figuring it might be a long weekend." Gordon shrugged as he flopped down on one of the couches.

"John, are you there." Scott tapped at his earpiece.

"I'm here, and stuck for the time being." John's hologram appeared above the table and sighed.

"The elevator isn't responding. It won't even let me in. In addition to that, EOS thinks these mishaps aren't accidental."

"Not accidental? then what are they?" Scott frowned and crossed his arms not liking the way this was going.

"She hasn't found proof, but she thinks someone might actually be hacking into Thunderbird 5."

"Hacking into Thunderbird 5!" Everyone in the room jumped to their feet.

"I-I have been thinking along the s-same lines." Brains walked into the room his tablet in his hands and MAX behind him. The coding for Thunderbird 5 was brought up in front of him. "I have safeguards in place to keep things like these from happening. It l-looks like all of my safeties have been b-bypassed. I even have MAX running scans as well and there is definitely something going on."

"Alright, Alan, chug some coffee. You're going up to get your brother." Scott turned to Alan who was almost dancing in anticipation.

"F.A.B." Alan nodded stiffly, took a bite of his bagel, and jumped into one of the seats that would take him to his bird.

"And actually, I think I'll go with you. I just have a bad feeling about this."

"I'll be waiting." John nodded and disappeared.

"Come on Scott, I'm rearing to go." Alan patted the seat next to him, his legs swinging in the air.

"Tracy Island, come in. This is Thunderbird Shadow. Tracy Island, can you hear me?"

Scott stopped and turned to the jumpy image of their friend. "Kayo, there's some static, but we are receiving your signal."

"Scott—I've found—need—help—"

"Can you repeat that, you're breaking up." Scott turned to Brains an eyebrow raised as he tried to make out what Kayo was saying.

Brains quickly made his way down to the table console and brought up the communications to try and boost the signal.

"Thunder—crash—need—back—"

"Kayo where are you?"

"I c-can get her location." Brains brought up another window and started typing away on that.

"Th—One—back—crash—" There was one last crackle of static and the line suddenly went quiet.

"Brains?"

"The t-transmission was being bounced around, but it s-seems to be originating from the Indian Ocean."

Alright, change of plans." Scott turned and surveyed his brothers. "Gordon, you're coming with me in Thunderbird 2. Virgil, you'll go with Alan."

"Wait, what?" Virgil gapped at Scott. "Why can't Gordon go with Alan?"

"Because I want him with me."

"I can do anything he can." Virgil had tightened his shoulders, and clenched his jaw, ready for any kind of confrontation Scott would throw at him. It wasn't often that he directly defied their eldest.

"Gordon is our aquanaut. I want him with me." Scott glared at Virgil, daring him to continue on.

"If you don't want to do it, I can pilot Thunderbird 4 just as well as Gordon." Virgil took a step closer to Scott puffing his chest up and straightening up to his full height which still brought him a couple inches shorter than his brother.

"I thought you hated Thunderbird 4, too small and cramped if I remember right." Gordon didn't generally get in the middle of arguments, but he could tell this was not going to end well, so he could at least attempt to throw something in the pot.

"Better than space!" Virgil was livid. He snapped his mouth closed and glared at Scott. "You know what it's like for me up—"

"Scott!" John suddenly reappeared in front of them all with what looked like blood running down the side of his face. "Please tell me Thunderbird 3 is launching, things are starting to escalate rather quickly up here."

"They're on their way." Scott glanced at John and then turned to his brother and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry Virgil. Drug yourself up if you need to, but I need you to go with Alan. Gordon, meet you in Thunderbird 2."

"F.A.B." Gordon frowned as he edged around the fuming Virgil.

"Come on, Virgil. John needs a ride." Alan looked up at his brother. "It's just a quick pick-up. We'll be back before you know it."

Virgil watched as Scott disappeared behind the portrait of the rocket before he stomped over to the couch and flopped down, his arms crossed.

"Umm... just promise you'll clean up after yourself okay?"

"Any more jokes, and I promise you'll regret them."

"O-okay." Alan gulped. Virgil was usually one of the calmest brothers, but when his top blew they all knew to watch out. Virgil and Alan rode quietly though the docking tubes and were quickly lifted into the cockpit of Thunderbird 3. Once the seats were locked in place Alan began the pre-flight checks.

"Where is your med kit?" Virgil undid his restraints and growled a little as he spoke.

"Back wall to the right." Alan gestured over his shoulder to the orange kit on the wall below them.

Virgil leapt from his seat and landed neatly on the hatch that lead to the rear of the ship. He kneeled down and pulled the med kit off of the wall, unzipped it, and dug for what he needed.

"Who packed this thing, nothing is where it should be." Virgil started pulling everything out of the small package.

"Umm... I dunno."

Virgil insisted on packing all of their first-aid kits so that they would all be properly done, but Alan wasn't about to remind him of that right then. Alan could hear him dig some more before hearing the zip of the kit and the grunt as Virgil climbed back up to his chair.

Once fully strapped back in, Virgil took out the injector and pressed it to his neck under the curve of his jawbone. "Damn, that hurts." He pocketed the injector and glanced over at Alan. "Some for now, and some for later. Let's get this over with."

"F.A.B." Alan finished his checklist and started the countdown to launch.