Chapter Eleven: Sun Probe: Part Four
Tracy Island
The waiting hadn't been overly hard during Three's outward journey, and Virgil had plenty of practice when it came to being patient. Scott's frequent calls, the pilot clearly bored on Three as it hurtled towards the Sun, proved that the quality of patience had missed the first born Tracy. He had never really thought about exactly how vast the distances between planets and the Sun were. Two could reach anywhere on Earth within a few hours. Three took several days to get to Sun Probe, which had been travelling for a week. Then it would boil down to a few hours and several hundred miles, in two days' time. Unless Virgil could get through to Sun Probe and prevent a couple of cases of heatstroke.
For hours they had no luck, trying everything he and Brains could think of to boost their beam. Still Sun Probe raced towards the Sun, and Virgil had to admit that Two's equipment simply wasn't up to the task.
During the last few hours, when they were still desperately trying to get through the Sun Probe as Three pushed its hull, and crew, to the limits, they had no contact with their astronauts. Virgil didn't have much time to dwell on their fate, between the biting cold and Brains' complicated instructions on how to recalibrate the beam, he had been kept occupied.
Then Three's retros had failed and Brains began to panic. Virgil knew the feeling, as his brain seized up it throttled any thought or action in blind panic. But he had talked Brains through it, even though the set back with Braman had them both momentarily unsure of what to do.
Scott, Alan and Tin-Tin were boiling up there, exposed to obscene temperatures and the silent, unnoticed deadly rays of the Sun. And Virgil had brought the wrong damn box. He thought of little else the whole way back to base, once his initial relief at Three's retros firing had passed. All three of them had passed out from heat stroke, Alan regaining consciousness as the retros fired and in time to answer Jeff's second, incredibly concerned, call. Whilst Virgil was bringing Two back from Mount Arken, barely speaking to Brains, wrapped as he was in his own cloud of worry and self-blame, Alan had roused Tin-Tin and begun to try and bring Scott's temperature down. Virgil had yet to call them, Jeff having ordered him home before he could get side-tracked and Two wound up sitting on a mountainside for hours unnecessarily.
"Thunderbird Two to Base. Requesting clearance to land."
"Clearance granted, Thunderbird Two. Good work, you two." Virgil landed and ran through post-flight in record time.
"You, uh go on ahead, Virgil," Brains told him. "I'll take Braman, uh, back to the lab." He didn't need to be told twice, sprinting through the hallway and only slowing down and he skidded into the lounge where Jeff and Kyrano were sitting at the desk, looking exhausted and in full parental-concern mode. Gordon and their Grandmother were sitting on the sofa which could take them down to Three's empty silo, tired and on edge.
"How are they?" Virgil asked, out of breath slightly from his sprint.
"Alan's thrown up a few times," John answered from the wall. "Tin-Tin sounds awful but she's keeping water down. Scott's still out of it." Virgil went round to stand behind his Dad, looking at the information John had provided on Three's internal temperature and radiation levels.
"Here, son." Jeff got out of his chair, guiding Virgil into his pace gently. "You know what you're doing."
"John, I'll need ongoing readings from Three's internal sensors," he said. The moment Jeff had decided that they needed equipment for space rescues, they had begun preparing for the worst. As team medic, most of that preparation had fallen to Virgil.
"Tin-Tin's on it, but it's going to be irregular. Right now I'm having trouble getting through to them at all, there's too much interference from the solar flares."
"Doesn't matter, as long as we have a complete log by the time they get back."
Tin-Tin had wanted to be part of their team, trained as hard as the rest of them for it, and Virgil couldn't think of anyone more right to join them. And yet, he hated that they had put Tin-Tin in danger. She had always been the one person he didn't need to worry about, left behind at Denver whilst his brothers went to war, safely not American when the draft was called. He felt he had failed her, first on Fireflash by not getting the plane down safely on the first attempt, now by not firing Three's retros immediately and allowing the Sun's rays to cause untold damage.
"I'm gonna call Auckland," Virgil said. "I can't deal with radiation sickness here."
"Okay, son. Hopefully in a few hours we'll have reliable contact with Thunderbird Three and we can monitor how they're doing."
"Virgil?" Kyrano asked quietly. "Will she be alright?"
You're alright. I've got you. Those had been his first words to Tin-Tin. Sodden and covered in mud she had clung on to him as he pulled her from the wreckage of the mining village. He didn't speak a word of Malay and she had been too terrified to remember her English, but as he repeated the same few phrases over and over, she had calmed down and together they had waited, muddy and exhausted, by the rescue control centre, hoping that their fathers would come out of the rapidly collapsing mine.
"I don't know." Virgil hated the uncertainty. He was their medic. He should know
"Auckland on the line, Virgil," Jeff told him. "It's secure."
On the computer screen in front of him a familiar face appeared. In a locked and sound-proof office in a small but well-equipped private hospital just outside of Auckland, his cousin sat at the screen, looking less than impressed.
"I thought that whole Sun ship thing went off a little too smoothly," Rachel muttered. "What are we looking at? They didn't break any bones hitting Mercury or something, so I'm gonna guess they got a little zapped by the Sun?"
"Take a look at these. Tell me what you think." Virgil sent over the radiation graph John had acquired from Three's computer. For a while Rachel simply frowned at the side of her screen, the same creased brow Scott often wore.
"You're really trying to fry that poor girl, aren't ya?" She shot him a slightly reproachful look. "Okay. When can I get my hands on them?"
"Fifty-eight hours." It was far too long, Virgil wanted his brothers and Tin-Tin on a plane to Auckland and treatment immediately. But space was too damn big.
"Shit, Virgie. That's a long time. That's all the gas they can get outta that thing?" Rachel began to flick through slides on her screen, on camera it looked as though she was trying to repeatedly hit Virgil in the face.
"Fifty-eight hours," he repeated. "Plus another hour to get them to you." They couldn't fit three passengers in One, and their astronauts would probably have to be transported in Two's med bay anyway.
"You know, if they'd worn their space-suits they would be in this mess."
"They also wouldn't have been able to operate Thunderbird Three's controls, Rachel," said Jeff sternly from behind Virgil. "If you've finished making clever comments, maybe you could give us some advice for how Scott, Alan and Tin-Tin can look after themselves for the next two days."
"Don't drink the water. It's contaminated."
"It's all they've got," Virgil said glumly. "Their food, clothing, the whole of Three is compromised."
"I'm all out of ideas then." Rachel shrugged. "They can deal with the heat stroke easily enough. I'll be waiting here the moment you get them back on Earth. Can you get blood tests from them whilst you're on your way over, Virgie? It'll be one less thing to do when they get here."
"Will do." Virgil had pulled up the radiation protocols on Jeff's computer, flicking through the double check his ever-growing list of preparations.
"And Virgie?" He glanced up at his cousin, who gave him a small, well-meaning smile. "They're not dead yet, so there's plenty of hope for them."
"Thank you, Rachel," Jeff replied dryly and she signed off. "I feel bad for our three astronauts, braving the Sun only to be greeted with Rachel's famous bedside manner." Kyrano looked less than impressed as well.
"She knows what she's doing, Dad." Virgil felt he had to defend his cousin, even if her sense of humour was a little beyond him. "They'll be in safe hands."
"Alright, you know what to do, Virgil?" His stay in the boss' chair was over and Virgil got up quickly.
"Yes, sir. Gordon, come and help me set up decontamination units." His little brother leapt into action, visibly relieved at being able to do something for the first time since the rescue had begun. They left the lounge and went through a door hidden by one of Virgil's more abstract paintings, that led to the network of silos and corridors beneath the villa which housed International Rescue's machines.
"You okay, Nemo?" Virgil asked.
"I thought we'd lost them, when John said their retros hadn't fired." Gordon was now brimming with a nervous energy and bounced alongside Virgil. "How bad's it gonna be?"
"I wish I knew. We won't know until Rachel runs their blood cell counts."
"Sure, but you've got a pretty good idea, right?" He wished Gordon would be a little stiller as they got in a small elevator down to the exit area of Three's silo.
"I know that their blood cell counts might have dropped, and that Alan vomiting might be a sign of fatal exposure. They might get better without needing any treatment, they might need bone marrow transplants, they might get Leukaemia or some other sort of cancer now, or in the future, and I also know that there's not one damn thing I can do about it." He had delivered his entire speech in an angry monotone, scarcely pausing to draw breath. Gordon stood very still at his side.
"Virgil." He leant his head against the cool panelling of the elevator. "Virgil, Rachel's gonna sort it."
"This isn't a broken bone, Gordon," he answered, a little too harshly. "You don't just bandage up radiation syndrome and there isn't some magic pill. The best you can do is limit exposure, and it's already too late for that." He shrugged off Gordon's hand, which had been attempting to give him reassuring pats on his shoulder.
"Come and help me get this set up."
The decontamination units took less than two hours to set up. Then the waiting began. Unlike during the outward leg of Three's journey, Virgil found his patience was gone.
They were still having difficulty reaching Three. John managed to call and relay information, but Virgil was anxious to see his brothers' faces. John might say that they were seeming better, that Alan had stopped being sick and Scott was looking alive, but Virgil needed to see for himself.
"Go and get a few hours' sleep, son," Jeff told him. Thirty-two hours until re-entry. "There's nothing else you can do until they get here." Virgil had been pacing around the lounge, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He shook his head. He had already tried. He had counted sheep, gone through four hours of classical nocturnes, had exhausted his tolerance for yeshiva boys' choirs and done a hundred sit-ups.
"Virgil." He sat down at the piano, playing a handful of chords before he got up again and went to the computer screen. Rachel had put everything in place, they were ready for the moment Three touched down. There was nothing else to do, except wait.
"Virgil!" Jeff looked up from the desk, exhausted and unshaven. "Sit. Down." Obligingly Virgil perched on the edge of Three's sofa. "Stop tapping." His foot froze.
"Sorry, Dad." He concentrated on being still, bundling up his nervous energy until he felt as though he was going to burst.
"Virgil." His foot had begun to tap again. "Go to bed. I'll wake you when we begin to get clear contact with Three."
"You go, Dad. You look awful." Jeff laughed softly.
"A bit blunt, Virgil. But you're probably right. Get Gordon in from the pool before it gets too dark, will you?" Jeff stretched out and got up from the desk. "Come get me as soon as you've got a good link to Scott, okay?" Yawning, he left. Virgil sat down on the edge of his Dad's desk, scrolling through the open pages on the computer absently. Radiation protocols, symptom checkers, an article on Sun Probe, a weather report for Sri Lanka, Virgil flicked through the tabs Jeff had left open without really reading them. He sighed.
The island felt empty, even though at that time of night it was usually quiet. His Grandmother had gone to sleep a few hours earlier, worn out by worry, as had Kyrano. He guessed Brains was still in the lab trying to get some clearer signals from Three. Through the open window the breeze brought only the night-time noises of the jungle into the lounge, chirping and soft squawking, sounds to which they had long become accustomed. Virgil heard each one, a solid wall of sound, as if played from a single speaker. If Gordon had made a splash down in the pool, he wouldn't have been able to differentiate it from the other noises.
"If a tree falls in the middle of the wood," Tin-Tin had murmured, quiet so as not to give Denny and Mack in the next tent any ammunition for taunting. "And there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Outside the wind blew through the trees, whispering through the Roosevelt National Forest. The thin tents quivered, their guy ropes taunt and they lay so very close together in the chilly spring night.
"I don't think so," he had replied, half asleep. "Or maybe it makes a sound, but not a noise. Or the other way round." Semantics. Someone's phone rang in one of the other tents. They could hear Denny snoring.
"Maybe the trees hear it." She had been very close and smelled of coconuts, he remembered.
"Maybe it doesn't fall until someone sees it fallen. Like Schrödinger's cat," he whispered. "I'd never want to open the box. So there's always the possibility of it still being alive." Tin-Tin had laughed, softly, and they had fallen asleep to the sounds of rustling wind and far-off owls.
"Virgil?" Gordon had appeared in the shadows of the darkened lounge, the stench of chlorine and coffee coming in with him. He had a large mug which he put down beside his brother. "You're half asleep."
"Mmm." He took a large sip of the coffee. "Thanks."
"Dad gone to bed?" Gordon asked him. He nodded. "You know, we'll get a call just as the guys come in."
"Don't tempt fate, Gordon," he said stiffly. John picked that moment to call and they both straightened up in anticipation.
"Hey, guys. You should be able to get through to Three now. They're all awake, I just spoke to them half an hour ago."
"Thanks, John." Virgil shifted into Jeff's chair so he could better see the screen, Gordon perching on the arm rest beside him.
"Hey, is everything quiet, Johnny?" Gordon asked. "We don't want to get called away just when they need us." John looked at the dozen or so screens which covered Five's wall.
"Hints at some earth tremors in Italy, but nothing the local authorities can't deal with. But then every time I saw it's quiet, well." All hell broke loose. "I'm turning in for a few hours. Call if you need anything."
"Good night, John," Virgil said.
"Try and get some sleep, Virgil," John added. "You're dead on your feet." He nodded absently and turned John's screen off, calling Three in the same movement.
"Base calling Thunderbird Three." Gordon pulled up a chair and sat down, a little lower than Jeff's large desk chair and just off camera. He began to shake the remaining water out of his hair.
"Hello, Virgil." Tin-Tin was ghostly pale, except for the large bags under her eyes. Her hair was plastered to her forehead by sweat and cold water and she looked on the verge of throwing up.
"How're you feeling, sweetie?" Virgil asked her. Behind her he could see the top of Alan's head leaning against the wall, fast asleep. He could see Scott as well, but that was a painful sight. Gordon looked down at his lap, refusing to look at their big brother. Scott was heaving over a plastic bowl, grimacing in pain as nothing came up. His face looked shrunken, life-less, almost grey under Three's harsh lights.
"Not too great. We're all still nauseous." As if to punctuate Tin-Tin's comments, Scott retched again. "Although Alan's stopped being sick." Sleeping somewhat peacefully, their youngest brother had some colour in his cheeks. Virgil noted how Scott sat up straighter, trying to pull himself together. The empty bowl shook in his sweaty hands.
"Okay. When you get back here we've got showers ready." Not that they would do much good after so long on Three. "You'll have to tell John his shirts are doomed," Virgil added in what he tried to make a light tone. "None of that is worth the effort of decontamination." The hideous brown and purple clothes only made their wearers look even worse by contrast. Purple had never been Tin-Tin's colour.
"Is it possible for you to give us some more accurate data on radiation levels throughout the rescue?" he asked her. Slowly, painfully slowly, she pulled herself up from the heap of Tracys on the floor and began to press buttons.
"I can send the log over to you." It seemed a great effort for her to talk.
"That's great, thanks. Have you guys eaten anything?" They had to get their glucose levels up if they were to avoid fainting, but both Tin-Tin and Scott gave him short humourless laughs.
"Virg," Scott rasped. "We can barely keep water down right now, and none of us feel up to finding food anyway." The effort of speech drained Scott considerably and Virgil wanted to reach through the screen and hug his brother close.
"Right." Scott's throat spasmed and he gagged into the bowl. "Please keep drinking?" Scott, he noted, wasn't covered in a sheen of fresh sweat, a sign of severe dehydration.
"But, Virgil." Tin-Tin sighed. "Won't the water be contaminated?"
"Yeah." Everything they touched was unsafe. "But it's that or dehydrate to dangerous levels. With a shaky hand, Scott raised a water bottle and took half a sip.
"Re-entry in thirty-one hours," Tin-Tin read out weakly. They still had a lot of waiting to do. "How's Sun Probe doing?"
Virgil smiled and showed her a soundless clip of the three smiling solarnauts, released by NASA a few hours earlier.
"About a day behind you, all pretty much recovered from the heat. They're very thankful to you guys." Tin-Tin managed a weak smile, Scott looked ready to pass out.
"I'm going to get him some more water," Tin-Tin said after a moment. Scott half-roused himself as if to say something, but his eyes fluttered shut.
"It'll be okay." Neither Tin-Tin, nor a shaken Gordon looked as if they believed him. Virgil didn't even really believe himself, but he had nothing else he could say. A few seconds of Scott's laboured breathing was all Gordon could take. He shut off the feed and they were plunged again into semi-darkness.
Like cats in a box, they wouldn't know if Tin-Tin, Scott and Alan were safe or not until they got them to Auckland and Rachel opened the box. Virgil fell asleep on the lounge sofa, waking to find someone had draped a blanket over him against the cool sea breeze.
A/N:
I want to apologise for any dodgy science, in this chapter and others. I am not a physicist.
Yeshiva- institution for religious study, many have boys' choirs.