Hi! Will edit after we return form Busch Gardens, promise! There, done with, more or less.

4: The Killer App

"John?" the wall-comm voice probed again, growing discernibly more concerned. Could have been Scott… about ten years and a lifetime of worry ago. "You there? Talk to me, Buddy. The sensor's picking up crap, here."

"Uh… yeah," managed John, through a tight and dry throat. "I'm here." (About all he could say at the moment.) "Hit me."

"What? Why?" Said the voice (Scott's?) after a brief, startled pause. "Say again, John?"

Okay. Second attempt; with normalcy hanging on by its teeth and eyebrows, frantically looking below it for something safe to land on when it fell.

"I said everything's fine here. I'm okay. What's, um… what's on your mind?" (…And where, exactly, was Five?)

"The environment readings, for one thing," said his maybe-brother. "The computer link recorded one heck of a temperature drop, a few minutes ago, along with a station-wide brown-out. What's it looking like from your end, Johnny?"

Good question. None of his immediate answers would have won him anything but sedation and a straitjacket, however; so John considerably modified his response.

"Tough to say, at the moment. Let me, um… finish getting dressed, and I'll check, Scott." The name was a gamble, but one that paid off.

"Take your time, Buddy. I'll keep an eye on things remotely while you get yourself together."

"Sure."

A green coverall, soft-soled black boots and a sort of utility belt had been set out nearby, looking rather like the clothing designed by TinTin for IR use. The uniform was cut differently, though, and it bore silvery rank insignia, together with a name tape reading: Tracy J. Lt. Nevertheless, lacking anything better, John struggled hurriedly into someone else's clothing.

A few moments later he left the head, stepping into a passageway that hummed and resounded with busy machinery. It was wider than he remembered, with dimmer overhead lights… wasn't it? Something inside him twisted itself into a cold, sudden knot. John's memories were fading one layer at a time, replaced by whatever matched the current setting. Worried, he examined the bulkheads and pierced-metal decking, but not a message or command prompt appeared, anywhere.

Fine. Not a problem. Thunderbird 5's control center lay in the hub, or had done (he thought). He'd start looking for answers there, because his memory was growing less reliable by the second, and time was short.

"What else?" he said to Scott's altered voice, halfway down the passageway. "You told me one of the reasons you called was weird environment readings. What was the other?"

No special motive for asking, beside the need to maintain contact in this oddly different place.

"To get some help, actually," Scott replied, his voice a little tenser than it had been. "There've been a lot more storms than usual, this year, and several unexplained earthquakes. Hackenbacker suggested that the Earth's core might be at fault. Sounds kind of far-fetched, I know… but if you could rewire the Freedom Station's scanners to check under the hood, we'd sure appreciate it."

Begging the question: who's "we"? At another time, a less shifted John might have said "International Rescue", "NASA" or "WorldGov". Now… he wasn't sure. The station showed signs of other occupants (photos and personal effects lockers) but none very recent. Question was, why? Budget cuts? Suicidal depression? Crew rotation? At this point, there was no way to find out without asking straightforward questions. On the other hand…

"The core? You mean it's slowing here, too? Yeah… I think I might have heard about that, Scott." Sure sounded familiar, anyhow; though the longer he spent here, the harder it became to think outside his new setting.

The station's cramped comm center had a certain battered and lived-in look to it, with handholds and corners well-smoothed by frequent use (whenever the grav generators shorted out) and threadbare cushions (when Earth-normal conditions applied). John instinctively took a seat in a chair that turned out to fit him perfectly. While at the… that other place… nothing had been this broken in, he thought.

The instrument panel before him was a nightscape of blinking lights, most of them flaring in vivid "what just happened?" yellow. A flurry of quick key strokes and his password (suddenly remembered) brought up the particulars: sudden temperature drop… unexplained engine power-down… mission status recorder glitch… and several voice messages from Houston, the latest marked urgent. Nothing unusual about that. Glancing at the cabin view screen, though, something did look distinctly different. Earth seemed much closer than it should have been, the astronaut thought. Hadn't he been elsewhere? Farther out, or something?

"Scott, I've got a couple of messages to answer. Mind if I research the question and get back to you?"

"Nope. Do what you have to, Johnny. We'll keep looking on this end, too. You're a valuable resource, but it'll sure be nice to have you home."

End of the week, John recalled all at once. Pete or Linda… whoever won the toss this month… would be coming up to relieve him by Saturday, if all went well and their launch window didn't slam shut.

"Yeah," he agreed, a bit dazedly. "I'm looking forward to it, myself, Scott."

His brother signed off the illicit comm tap a few seconds later, leaving John to open and answer his messages. Scott and Hackenbacker weren't the only ones who'd noticed the station's environment fluxions, it seemed.

"What'd you do, open a window?" McCord demanded, after John finally called in. "Cabin temperature dropped twenty degrees in less than five seconds! Only thing convinced us you hadn't been hulled was the pressure readings. That, and the constant busy signal. Next time, Tracy, pick up the d—n phone!"

Pete was on station CapCom that night, usually the most boring job in all Houston.

"Sorry, Pete. There were, um… a number of comm and sensory glitches. Tracking the source down, right now."

"Yeah," the older astronaut snorted. "Good luck with that, Tracy. In the meantime, keep in touch, understood? Stunts like that one aren't good for my blood pressure."

"Yes, Sir. Will do." Like that of Scott, McCord's was a welcome and steadying voice. One he didn't mind talking to. "Who's coming up?" John asked him, to change the subject. "You or the doctor?"

The chair squeaked as he leaned over to the console beside him, tapping in a rapid bit of reprogramming with one flying hand.

"Bennett." Pete replied, speaking volumes with the brevity and tone of his answer (but he and the doctor had never really gotten along, not even… back in some other place).

John smiled, miss-keyed a command, and then had to erase several lines of bad code to make up for the error. Turning the station's antiquated weapons-detection equipment into a deep-penetration scanner was difficult, especially with his mind on the coming relief mission and… something else, which he'd be sure to recall in a moment.

McCord, too, signed off eventually, leaving John to program in peace, between other jobs. Since Freedom Station's full time crew had been reduced to one (with double occupancy allowed for two days during crew rotation) John was kept very busy. Over the next few days he checked experiments, repaired equipment and answered numerous middle school emails.

When not engaged in PR, he also scanned the heavens for incoming asteroid chunks, helping ground crews to target and destroy them before they reached Earth or the Moon. They had plenty of motivation. Massive Loki hadn't been spotted until the eleventh hour, and an entire lunar city had been lost as a result. Bits of Loki and the newly resurfaced Moon were still out there, now, circling the Earth like buzzards.

It was the space station's repurposed mission to serve as an understaffed and poorly-financed early warning system. To this end, John scoped and tagged hordes of potential rocky assassins; squeezing time in for Scott's request by shaving minutes off his sleeping and meal periods. There was something else he'd been worried about, someone he'd wanted to contact, but the blond astronaut couldn't decide who or why. All he could think to do now was settle deeper into the harness and get to work.

A few days later, he had company. Dr. Bennett's robotically piloted mission launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Friday night, at 10:51 PM. Clean takeoff and perfect ascent, despite a few high snow clouds. She separated from the launch vehicle ten minutes later, docking with the station at 12:02 AM.

They conversed back and forth the entire time, mixing jargon, small talk and buried tension. John watched his view screen and instruments very closely that morning, finally spotting her capsule's blinking lights and radar image at 11:52.

"Got you, Doctor," he announced, locking onto her signal. "Corridor's been swept and the porch light's on."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," her voice crackled like paper over the comm. "I'm beginning my approach."

Or the robot capsule was. And this was the most dangerous part of her mission, for the capsule's flight path was fixed, with only limited wave-off and return potential, should a chunk of streaking asteroid or lunar rock cut through her path. John had, indeed, swept the corridor, blasting away everything larger than a dime. But accidents happened, usually when you weren't paying attention. He kept one hand on the station's docking mechanism, the other on its main gun; talking through a head-set and hardly daring to blink until her van-sized capsule (dinged and carbon-scored) finally nudged up alongside, and got captured.

A hollow boom and reverberation shook his orbiting home, followed by the staccato rattle of firing locks. Her vehicle was drawn close to the floodlit station by powerful robotic latches. Then the short corridor formed by her capsule's hatch collar and Freedom Station's "porch" pressurized itself, all in a hissing rush.

One… two… three seconds, and…

"Green across the board," he announced, deeply relieved.

"Same here, Freedom. Nice work, Lieutenant." Then, "Houston, Baikonur, we've got a good lock. Repeat, docking completed."

John's heart began to pound, and reflexively, he felt around in his uniform's chest pocket for the gold ring that should have been there, but wasn't. Then, confused and upset, he returned to safe, sane post-maneuver housekeeping.

Besides docking, the robot shuttle had got to be shut down, its systems placed on safe mode (but not so completely that a sudden emergency escape was rendered impossible). That took a good hour and a half, during which he, Linda, Saul out in Houston and Irina at Baikonur communicated constantly. Pete, he knew, would be home in his small apartment, watching the process on WSA's private network; beer in one hand and cell phone in the other. Once upon a time, Roger and Cho would have watched, too… but they'd been honeymooning in Lunar City when the asteroid struck. There hadn't even been any bodies. No one to rescue, nothing to collect.

His family and a few middle school classes made up the rest of the audience, probably, with maybe a bored WNN reporter tuning in occasionally, watching like a hawk for anything newsworthy. Didn't matter. The truly important aspect of all this was here, now… about to come through the short, locked-down umbilical connecting shuttle to station.

In a hurry, John placed the comm center on automatic, with remote control option to Houston, Baikonur and his own quietly monitoring family. Then he raced for the station's docking garage, intending to meet his… to greet Dr. Bennett.

Not that he was likely to miss her emergence. There were two sets of bulky hatches on both sides, plus survival suits to don and take off, for safety's sake. No fun, but necessary (and if you'd ever spent a seeming eternity wrestling your way into and out of a space suit, you'd think twice, too).

Linda Bennett came through almost two hours after docking. Surprisingly, Lieutenant Tracy had descended from the comm center to welcome her aboard. Not in WSA tee-shirt and shorts under his space suit, but full mission coveralls. Strange, unless the Apollo Middle School kids were watching, again. Just in case, she tailored her language and behavior, avoiding the normal "was it good for you, too?" silliness during their lengthy de-suiting procedure.

There was something else different, though. Tracy had always been a stand-out young man; bright and genetically blessed, with a father who'd been a WSA test pilot, back in the day. Now, tall and blond as a CGI film god (Chip Trace, say) he was also being extremely attentive. John actually handed her aboard the station, maintaining the contact far longer than strictly necessary.

"Welcome back," he said, squeezing her hand, and then releasing it. Looking around for the cameras, Linda winked at him.

"No problem, Lieutenant. It's always a pleasure to, er… that is…"

(Somehow, "relieve you" didn't seem like the right thing to say.)

He smiled at the deck, all at once kind of endearingly shy. Then he reached over to brush some of the wavy, helmet-pressed brown hair off her forehead, saying,

"All I get his promises."

His touch left a burning warmth that shot straight from her reddening face to the pit of Linda's stomach. Clearing her throat, she returned with an effort to business.

"Affirm I've been properly welcomed, Lieutenant. Now, how about we move to item 43 on the checklist? Status update. I heard that you had a little excitement, earlier."

He nodded, and then turned to walk her through the station, providing explanations and system updates as they went. Another long, boring procedure; confused and enlivened by frequent hand brushes and shoulder pats. At least he didn't try to grab her butt (as, on one memorable occasion, Pavlychenko had).

The situation reached critical mass just outside Freedom Station's comm center, where John, turning to pass sideways with her through an open hatch, suddenly kissed the (slightly) superior and (very) surprised officer.

Linda turned bright red, flung him aside, and then reamed the lieutenant out. Beginning with his canine ancestry, she then proceeded to loathsome personal habits, wrapping up with a scathing list of his probable physical inadequacies and suggested post-life itinerary. Took five minutes in all, delivered at top voice and intense emotion.

And then she ruined it all by seizing hold and kissing him back. His arms went around her, faster and harder than maybe she'd counted on, and Linda was all at once pressed tightly against him; pinned between an urgently interested young man and the bulkhead. She managed to break off the kiss, though, causing John to let go and step back.

"Is there something in the water, up here?" Linda grumped jokingly, thinking of Pavlychenko. John cocked his blond head to one side, saying thoughtfully,

"No. I can't say I've ever responded that way to Pete or Kyril."

Linda chuckled.

"Well… thank God. Not sure how Kyril would take it, Mister, but McCord would most likely keel-haul you… which is a pretty serious matter, on an orbiting space station."

"Serious, anywhere," John winced, thinking of barnacles and salt water on bare flesh. Then, "Um… sorry about that. I'm just… really glad that you're here, Doctor."

"Evidently," she agreed with a slight, rueful headshake. "But the "love boat" this isn't, so how about moving on to item 49.5.A?"

John frowned slightly, being just then very blond and puzzled.

"Fluid waste disposal?"

"Yeah. I need to visit the head, before I burst. Okay with you?"

He nodded seriously, standing both too close, and not close enough.

"It's all yours, Doctor. I even left the seat down."

Uh-huh. It was, Linda figured, going to be a very interesting two days.