THE OTHER DAY:
"Everyone's on board," John Tracy announced. "Prepare to head for home!" Down in Thunderbird Three's sickbay, Tintin could feel the floor tilting slightly as the great spaceship turned gracefully away from the evacuated space station and towards the Earth. She paid no attention, however; the injured people pulled from the meteor-stricken space station were far more important.
Suddenly, the Thunderbird shuddered violently as something struck her near the stern--a remnant from the freak meteor shower that had punched holes in the space station and spilled its precious atmosphere into space. Tintin stumbled as the floor heaved under her feet, while the terrified astronauts in the stretchers moaned in dismay. The sound and feel of a meteor strike was still painfully fresh in their minds, apparently.
"Tintin!" Alan's voice blared over the intercom. "Are you all right? We were hit by one of the leftover meteors!"
"I know!" the Malaysian girl told him. "There's no visible damage, though...wait, there's something wrong." An acrid smell had wafted into her nostrils. Tintin's heart jumped as she recognized it: smoke. They were on fire!
"Alan, there's a fire down here!" she said, keeping her voice low. "It looks like it's somewhere outside the sickbay." The smoke was visible now, floating up from under the door like sooty cobwebs that had been freed from their silken moorings. An alarm bell went off in Tintin's mind. Why hadn't the fire suppression system put it out by now?
"I know, we're picking it up on damage control up here," Alan replied. "It looks like the stray meteor hit the engine room. My guess is that it tore a hole to the outside and knocked some electrical wiring loose. That would explain why the fire suppression system is offline: the oxygen leak would keep the CO2 nozzles from firing."
"Are...are we going to be okay?" Tintin asked. "Can we make it back to Earth, or at least to Thunderbird Five?"
"Speedwise, yes, we can reach Earth," Alan's tone was grim, "but there's still more bad news. The wires that were knocked loose by the meteor was the ones powering the retros, and the blow knocked us off course. Unless the retros are repaired, the only way we're getting back to Earth is sideways and at several hundred thousand miles per hour."
"Say no more, Alan," Tintin said resolutely, and closed the connection. Without waiting to see whether or not Alan would try to call back, she went to the nearby supply closet, grabbed a tool kit, and walked out into the smoky hallway to the engine room.
***
The door to the engine room was red-hot, but Tintin hardly noticed. The spacesuit she had donned was constructed from the best heat-resistant materials Brains could come up with. Clutching a fire extinguisher tightly in the crook of one arm, the Malaysian woman lugged the huge door open and went into the engine room.
Bright orange flames danced as high as the ceiling before her. The heat pouring forth brought beads of sweat from Tintin's forehead even from inside the suit, and the smoke was chokingly thick. Without hesitating, she blasted the flames directly in her path with the fire extinguisher's full force. It was hard going, even with the combined curse and blessing of the atmosphere blowing out of the tiny hole to her right, but the oxygen-starved flames soon gave way beneath Tintin's assault.
With the flames subdued, Tintin made her way over to the hole in the side of the ship and assessed the situation. The wires had been severed all right, and some sparks still danced at the ends of the live ones. The culprit was lodged tightly in a shallow dent of its own making in the floor just behind her, but Tintin was certain that the meteorite couldn't do any more damage from there. She dug a welding torch out of the tool kit and turned it on.
"Alan, how long until re-entry?" she asked into the intercom. The Malaysian could see the blue curve of the Earth starting to eclipse the hole in front of her.
"About fifteen, twenty minutes," Alan reported back grimly. "And at the wrong angle." Tintin looked at the wires again. This was going to take at least thirty minutes to fix....
[Then again, no one said I had to do a *perfect* job,] she thought. [Just an adequate one.]
The actual repair job turned out to be trickier than Tintin anticipated. The frayed ends of the wires shimmied violently in the wind of the escaping atmosphere, and she received quite a few shocks for her troubles as she tried to get a good grip to secure them. Once secured, however, welding them back together was relatively easy.
"Ten minutes!" Alan's panicked voice burst from the communicator inside Tintin's helmet.
"Try the retros now," she replied. The Earth now completely filled the hole in front of her. Time was running out.
"No go!" came the reply. "Retros still aren't functioning!" Tintin started to feel a little edgy herself; the repair wasn't even halfway finished. She started working faster now, uttering a sharp curse in her native Malay as she miscalculated the temperature of the welder and burned a restored cable right through again by mistake.
"Five minutes!" Alan reported from the cockpit. Tintin went as fast as she dared. The results of her labors became increasingly sloppy, but the connections were being made. The blue of the Earth started to take on an orange tinge as Thunderbird Three fell into its atmosphere.
One more to go....
"That's it Alan!" Tintin cried into the communicator. "Fire retros!"
There was a deafening roar all around her as the rocketship's engines sprang to life. The hastily-rejoined cables hissed and spasmed with fresh power. An orange flame shot up from the right of the hull breach as the retros started up, and the Earth began to tilt. It had worked! Tintin giggled with a warm sensation of relief. Then she realized that the warmth wasn't just in her mind.
Turning away from the breach, the Malaysian was horrified to see that the fire had crept up around her again. Apparently, there was still enough air left in the sealed engine room to keep them alive, and now they had regained strength somehow, possibly from ruptured oxygen tanks somewhere in the room. Tintin immediately grabbed her extinguisher and fired, but only a small spatter of retardant came out. Empty. Her mind raced frantically.
[I need to get the fire suppressors working!] she thought. [But how? The manual override is outside and blocked off by the fire! Wait. The fire suppressant system isn't working because...because of the atmosphere leak...so if I seal the leak....] Tintin glanced back at the hole in Thunderbird's side. There was no way she could patch it up in time. At least, not by any conventional means.
Desperate now, Tintin turned back to the breach in the hull and placed both hands over it, blocking it as best she could. It was only the size of a golf ball, and her palms covered it completely, but still she worried. After all, there was no way she could make a complete seal this way, and it might not be enough....
But it was.
The CO2 nozzles came on with a hiss, suffocating the remainder of the fire. Soon, all that remained was a layer of soot and minor charring.
"Tintin to John and Alan," the Malaysian girl spoke into her communicator. "Situation is resolved down here. Am returning to sickbay."
"Are you all right?" John asked. "The monitors say that the fire's out and obviously the retros are working again."
"I'm fine, John" Tintin replied. She was standing outside the sealed door of the engine room, removing her space suit. "Now I need to get back to sickbay. I still have work left to do there."
She put the toolbox back where she found it, and headed back to the infirmary.
"Everyone's on board," John Tracy announced. "Prepare to head for home!" Down in Thunderbird Three's sickbay, Tintin could feel the floor tilting slightly as the great spaceship turned gracefully away from the evacuated space station and towards the Earth. She paid no attention, however; the injured people pulled from the meteor-stricken space station were far more important.
Suddenly, the Thunderbird shuddered violently as something struck her near the stern--a remnant from the freak meteor shower that had punched holes in the space station and spilled its precious atmosphere into space. Tintin stumbled as the floor heaved under her feet, while the terrified astronauts in the stretchers moaned in dismay. The sound and feel of a meteor strike was still painfully fresh in their minds, apparently.
"Tintin!" Alan's voice blared over the intercom. "Are you all right? We were hit by one of the leftover meteors!"
"I know!" the Malaysian girl told him. "There's no visible damage, though...wait, there's something wrong." An acrid smell had wafted into her nostrils. Tintin's heart jumped as she recognized it: smoke. They were on fire!
"Alan, there's a fire down here!" she said, keeping her voice low. "It looks like it's somewhere outside the sickbay." The smoke was visible now, floating up from under the door like sooty cobwebs that had been freed from their silken moorings. An alarm bell went off in Tintin's mind. Why hadn't the fire suppression system put it out by now?
"I know, we're picking it up on damage control up here," Alan replied. "It looks like the stray meteor hit the engine room. My guess is that it tore a hole to the outside and knocked some electrical wiring loose. That would explain why the fire suppression system is offline: the oxygen leak would keep the CO2 nozzles from firing."
"Are...are we going to be okay?" Tintin asked. "Can we make it back to Earth, or at least to Thunderbird Five?"
"Speedwise, yes, we can reach Earth," Alan's tone was grim, "but there's still more bad news. The wires that were knocked loose by the meteor was the ones powering the retros, and the blow knocked us off course. Unless the retros are repaired, the only way we're getting back to Earth is sideways and at several hundred thousand miles per hour."
"Say no more, Alan," Tintin said resolutely, and closed the connection. Without waiting to see whether or not Alan would try to call back, she went to the nearby supply closet, grabbed a tool kit, and walked out into the smoky hallway to the engine room.
***
The door to the engine room was red-hot, but Tintin hardly noticed. The spacesuit she had donned was constructed from the best heat-resistant materials Brains could come up with. Clutching a fire extinguisher tightly in the crook of one arm, the Malaysian woman lugged the huge door open and went into the engine room.
Bright orange flames danced as high as the ceiling before her. The heat pouring forth brought beads of sweat from Tintin's forehead even from inside the suit, and the smoke was chokingly thick. Without hesitating, she blasted the flames directly in her path with the fire extinguisher's full force. It was hard going, even with the combined curse and blessing of the atmosphere blowing out of the tiny hole to her right, but the oxygen-starved flames soon gave way beneath Tintin's assault.
With the flames subdued, Tintin made her way over to the hole in the side of the ship and assessed the situation. The wires had been severed all right, and some sparks still danced at the ends of the live ones. The culprit was lodged tightly in a shallow dent of its own making in the floor just behind her, but Tintin was certain that the meteorite couldn't do any more damage from there. She dug a welding torch out of the tool kit and turned it on.
"Alan, how long until re-entry?" she asked into the intercom. The Malaysian could see the blue curve of the Earth starting to eclipse the hole in front of her.
"About fifteen, twenty minutes," Alan reported back grimly. "And at the wrong angle." Tintin looked at the wires again. This was going to take at least thirty minutes to fix....
[Then again, no one said I had to do a *perfect* job,] she thought. [Just an adequate one.]
The actual repair job turned out to be trickier than Tintin anticipated. The frayed ends of the wires shimmied violently in the wind of the escaping atmosphere, and she received quite a few shocks for her troubles as she tried to get a good grip to secure them. Once secured, however, welding them back together was relatively easy.
"Ten minutes!" Alan's panicked voice burst from the communicator inside Tintin's helmet.
"Try the retros now," she replied. The Earth now completely filled the hole in front of her. Time was running out.
"No go!" came the reply. "Retros still aren't functioning!" Tintin started to feel a little edgy herself; the repair wasn't even halfway finished. She started working faster now, uttering a sharp curse in her native Malay as she miscalculated the temperature of the welder and burned a restored cable right through again by mistake.
"Five minutes!" Alan reported from the cockpit. Tintin went as fast as she dared. The results of her labors became increasingly sloppy, but the connections were being made. The blue of the Earth started to take on an orange tinge as Thunderbird Three fell into its atmosphere.
One more to go....
"That's it Alan!" Tintin cried into the communicator. "Fire retros!"
There was a deafening roar all around her as the rocketship's engines sprang to life. The hastily-rejoined cables hissed and spasmed with fresh power. An orange flame shot up from the right of the hull breach as the retros started up, and the Earth began to tilt. It had worked! Tintin giggled with a warm sensation of relief. Then she realized that the warmth wasn't just in her mind.
Turning away from the breach, the Malaysian was horrified to see that the fire had crept up around her again. Apparently, there was still enough air left in the sealed engine room to keep them alive, and now they had regained strength somehow, possibly from ruptured oxygen tanks somewhere in the room. Tintin immediately grabbed her extinguisher and fired, but only a small spatter of retardant came out. Empty. Her mind raced frantically.
[I need to get the fire suppressors working!] she thought. [But how? The manual override is outside and blocked off by the fire! Wait. The fire suppressant system isn't working because...because of the atmosphere leak...so if I seal the leak....] Tintin glanced back at the hole in Thunderbird's side. There was no way she could patch it up in time. At least, not by any conventional means.
Desperate now, Tintin turned back to the breach in the hull and placed both hands over it, blocking it as best she could. It was only the size of a golf ball, and her palms covered it completely, but still she worried. After all, there was no way she could make a complete seal this way, and it might not be enough....
But it was.
The CO2 nozzles came on with a hiss, suffocating the remainder of the fire. Soon, all that remained was a layer of soot and minor charring.
"Tintin to John and Alan," the Malaysian girl spoke into her communicator. "Situation is resolved down here. Am returning to sickbay."
"Are you all right?" John asked. "The monitors say that the fire's out and obviously the retros are working again."
"I'm fine, John" Tintin replied. She was standing outside the sealed door of the engine room, removing her space suit. "Now I need to get back to sickbay. I still have work left to do there."
She put the toolbox back where she found it, and headed back to the infirmary.