Yay! FFN's back up! I can read and review and post, again! Anyhow, thanks Mitzy, ED, Sam and Tikatu for your earlier reviews. Now that I can, I shall certainly respond. Edits to this chapter will follow soon, once I've finished with Ash-Wednesday events.

9: Parallels

Tracy Island, at his desk in the luxuriously appointed home office-

The news and grim footage came at him like a flurry of punches; each blow jarring aside the pain and shock of the one before, leaving him utterly stunned. Jeff Tracy stared at his wall-sized television screen, at scenes of a collapsing Golden State Amphitheatre wreathed in dense smoke. People were trapped in there, including his sons and the other two kids, TinTin and Fermat. According to the news reports, local police and rescue crews were doing all that they could, but traffic had ground to a halt in all directions, blocking access.

Jeff was already making plans when the broadcast was interrupted by the snowy, skipping image of a hard-faced young woman with cold amber eyes. Well armed, but dressed in coveralls like a maintenance worker, she spoke to the disaster's horrified audience; to Jeff Tracy and everyone else out there watching her handiwork.

"People of Los Angeles, of California and the Earth… you have seen the smoke and heard the explosions. You have lost your broadcast and are wondering what has happened."

Pausing, she smiled into the camera, and her expression nearly froze Jeff's blood.

"Know that terror strikes first at those on the fringe of the herd; the poor, the sick and the vulnerable. If you have no mansion to huddle in, no private army or hoarded supplies… beware the darkness, for it is no longer empty."

There was more, a second message riding along with the first, but Jeff Tracy's television couldn't decode it. All that he saw was static and evil; his mind racing, fists clenched and heart pounding like he'd run a long, painful marathon.

Gordon and Alan were out there, somewhere, at the mercy of crazed madmen and stalled rescue efforts. Question was, what did he intend to do about it?

An alert from Johnson Space Center arrived about the same time that Virgil came barreling through the office doors, running like a fullback with ten yards to the goal. Jeff didn't have time to scan the new message, because Virgil was nearly frantic.

"Dad!" he gasped, "have you seen the news from…?"

Jeff's television screen answered the big, brown-haired pilot before his question was fully asked. Gathering himself, Virgil switched thoughts and slowed his pace to a rapid stride.

"The kids are over there, dad; all four of them. We've got to do something! I was thinking on the way up here that I could take one of our planes and stop at the nearest TA warehouse for a backhoe, then…"

"No," Jeff decided, cutting Virgil off with a shake of his head. Projecting as much control as possible, the tall former CEO went on to say, "Thanks for the offer son, but I've got a better idea."

Brains entered the room, then, out of breath and wheezing asthmatically. He started to speak, but Jeff halted the lanky engineer, too, with a sharply upraised hand.

"Come in, Dr. Hackenbacker, and listen. I know that you both want to help. So do I, but we can do far better than rushing off to Los Angeles with a load of blankets and construction equipment. I'm going to make a few calls. In the meantime, Virgil, Brains, I want you to take that prototype cargolifter and fly her to the 'Project-X' testing site. Load up all of the special gear that's proven effective in field tests. Then go to L.A."

Grasping his intent, Virgil Tracy and Dr. Hackenbacker nodded. The Project-X gear… Jeff's little obsession… was a cache of high-tech rescue equipment; concept craft so advanced and expensive that only Hiram Hackenbacker could have conceived and produced them, with Jeff Tracy's underground financing. As for pilots… well, he had Virgil. Scott, too, if his oldest son was willing to get back in the cockpit.

At that point, anything was still possible; a thousand future world-lines stretched away from the moment, some of them even good. But Jeff said,

"Keep your contact with local authorities to a minimum, boys. I'll do the talking. Your job is to get over there with the right equipment to save lives and rescue the kids. Those explosions were deliberately set, which means that further attack is a definite possibility. You'll have to stay low and keep your eyes open."

Jeff chose to be secretive, which would place International Rescue on a collision course with the World Government, the press and Red Path. Perhaps he feared lawsuits, or wasn't sure that his decision would be condoned by TA's board of directors, but no one could say for sure. Only the spoon knows what's stirring the pot. At any rate, Jeff Tracy acted. For better or worse, he did what he did.

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Los Angeles, California, in a smallish, dark viewing room-

Outside of their temporary haven, voices threatened and sleek gun muzzles tracked any movement or gesture from the panicked hostages. Inside, TinTin Kyrano did her best to remain calm. But Gordon twitched restlessly beneath her warm touch and whispered comfort.

In his own mind, the young man was not sprawled below ground in an audience viewing room, but pinned by the smoldering wreckage of a crashed aeroplane. In his memories, others were dying all around him, and he could do nothing at all to help them. Perhaps she shouldn't have, but TinTin interfered, blunting and smearing Gordon's memory of his teammates' cries and the slowly slackening handclasp of Royce, his best mate.

Only the bone-jarring impact she left, with chaotic crunching noises, curtaining darkness and then rescue. Everything else, TinTin blurred out of focus. Most certainly she did wrong, but Gordon Tracy was a beloved friend, the dearest she had. She could not let him suffer this way; helplessly trapped, surrounded by death on a frozen mountainside. Not when a few small changes might free him from nightmare. The matter was soon done with, his awful memories clumsily rubbed from existence.

Then, while Fermat wriggled his way into Omni Entertainment's intranet, and Alan worked on disconnecting the fire door alarm, TinTin gathered the courage to do more. If she could misdirect a pair of sharp-eyed gunmen, if she could erase Gordon's personal hell… could she not also reach into the mind of the men's leader and cause her to leave this place, peacefully? TinTin shivered, for she'd never before tried such a thing. Nudging Alan repeatedly into the restroom was nothing at all by comparison, for he was a friend and unguarded. Whispering,

"Give me bon chance, Mon Coeur," she gently kissed Gordon's cheek. Then she straightened up in her seat, which adjusted itself as the girl moved, creaking rustily. Through the broken viewing window, TinTin could see the black-haired, lion-eyed terrorist making her declaration to the world.

Now, while she was distracted with gloating threats, TinTin focused upon the woman; began questing like Fermat for some way past the firewall and into her mind.

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Mars, somewhat earlier-

Piloting a flitter over the rusted dunes and boulder fields of the Red Planet was among the most wildly joyous experiences of Rachel Neer's life. The elegant little craft, with its cramped cockpit and extra long wingspan, darted and soared like a sparrow-hawk, instantly responsive.

Each slight touch to the stick sent her nuclear-powered flitter banking higher through the darkening skies, in search of methane seeps and surface water. Above her, the pinkish-orange sky was beginning to fade into tawny brown twilight. To her left lay an unending wall of high cliffs, notched here and there with the beds of long-silent waterfalls and emptied streams. To the right rolled a vast, rock-strewn, red desert.

Mars was a barren world, but the dark-haired pilot loved gliding its wide-open skies. Her passenger, on the other hand, didn't look so good. Daniel Lasher was a white-knuckled flier, the sort who would have done his surveying on foot, had the option been available.

He wore glasses and good-luck charms, and his taut, worried expression had frozen into place just after takeoff. Always a little impish, Rachel couldn't resist teasing him. After all, who'd ever heard of a space-scientist who hated to fly?

There was a canyon up ahead, one seeded weeks earlier with dense showers of terraforming cyano-bacteria. And, though night was nearly upon them, a quick joyride between the towering walls of Apache Cut was just what Lasher needed, Rachel felt sure. Throttling up, the pilot banked sharply eastward, saying,

"Start recording, Dan. This is where we hit biomass paydirt!"

The scientist nodded miserably. Rapid aerobatics in low gravity were right up there with tax audits, root canals and colonoscopies, in Dan's estimation (and nearly as inevitable).

"Right. Camera's on, Ray; filming from infrared to visible."

He looked like a sad, brown-eyed puppy, with wire-frame glasses and an orange survival suit. Rachel couldn't help grinning at his expression and the free-rushing landscape.

Apache Cut was just ahead of them, now; a broad, V-shaped cleft in the glittering cliff face. Rachel flew closer while her plane's inky shadow flickered and swooped over sand, rock and ice, racing her eastward. The tiny sun was low and exhausted in their wake. Still bright enough to see by, though, and Rachel Neer had made this flight many times, checking on Dr. Kim's bacterial handiwork.

The cockpit's red lighting, its trills, beeps and hisses, did not interfere with her concentration anymore than Lasher did. They merely added punctuation. A tall, swaying dust-devil sprang up a few hundred meters to the left, whipped into life by the evening wind. It danced across the red plain, leaving a long track like a finger drawn through the frost on a window pane. Storing all this away in her heart, Rachel smiled. Then she shot through the hundred-foot cleft and into Apache Cut.

Striving to keep his lunch down, Dan swallowed hard and kept on swallowing; mind and eye tight to the bio-sensors. The air was denser here, winds a bit less predictable. The flitter juddered and bounced, though Rachel adjusted its wing span and angle to compensate. Their TA rep, John, had shown her some tricks; stuff programmed into the plane's flight capabilities, but never advertised. Rachel employed these tactics now, taking further control away from the flitter's nav-computer.

A red light on her instrument panel flashed awake, indicating full manual control; just the way she liked it. Of course, base would likely be peeved… except that they seemed too distracted to notice her little out-of-bounds side trip.

Shrugging, the pilot guided her tiny craft past walls of grey-banded stone that towered like the north flank of Olympus Mons. Gliding pale and swift as a white gull in some vast fjord, Rachel flew; sun at her back, wind in her little plane's face. Beside her, Lasher looked sick, but Rachel scarcely noticed. She was too busy tracing the path of a fossil river bed. Too busy doing what she loved.

When Dan blurted,

"Oxygen! Not much, Ray, but definitely present!"

…Rachel jumped. Then she took a hand off the stick for a "high five", as Ilon had taught her to do (Ilon, with his bright eyes and confident grin).

"Where?" she demanded, wanting pictures and an air sample to bring back for Cho.

Excitedly, Dan replied with tumbling words,

"North by northwest, twenty clicks. My map puts the source just beyond Standing Rock. The signal reads like… like a colony of photosynthetic endoliths, maybe… but I can't be sure till we get a closer look."

Rachel nodded, aware of the danger and time limit, but willing to take a small risk.

"Then a closer look is exactly what you'll get, Dan. Hang on tight."

So the plane swooped deeper into Apache Cut, past Standing Rock, toward the twin, glittering pillars of Cochise and Naiche. And there, splashing the base of those proud giants was spread out a carpet of bluish-green life, surrounded by faint mists of oxygen and pale ice crystals.

The jaws of pilot and scientist dropped in unison, and both whooped aloud. They'd have called in their find, but Endurance Base was still not receiving. No matter. Picture after picture they took, from every angle that Rachel could contrive. Daniel's sensors scanned gases, minerals, bacterial mat and water vapor, and still the presence of flourishing life was hard to believe… and wonderful enough that they quite forgot about nightfall and very high, very dangerous canyon winds.

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