2

Scott strode into test lab B, scowling. He had a great deal on his mind that day, not least of which was Cindy's decision to return to her job on the mainland. Admittedly, most of the danger was past, with the Hood presumed dead, and Interpol's noose slowly tightening around the General, but there were other predators stalking the jungle, and it worried him to think of Cindy, alone and defenseless, in San Francisco. Thunderbird 5 needed to be up and running, with John at his listening post, and soon.

Passing a long and rigorous ID scan, Scott entered the most sensitive part of the lab, where Brains designed and tested his newest technologies. It was a noisy place; thudding, hissing and clanking like an enormously amplified laundromat, with a searingly metallic, oily smell. Giant machines rose about him like sharp-edged boulders, rumbling away at nameless tasks while tiny robots zipped around, monitoring their progress.

Scott had expected to find the master of all this controlled chaos by the 3D printers, overseeing production of space station components. No such luck, though. He had to poke around for quite awhile before locating the missing engineer at the very back of the lab, on a tall, rolling step ladder.

Scott paused a moment, squinting, to watch Brains' activity. He was a courageous man, Scott Tracy, but not a stupid one, and Brains was standing beneath a glowing vortex of some sort, that began about ten feet off the ground and extended through the ceiling into seeming infinity. The phenomenon was soundless, but incredibly bright; a spiral of twisting, coruscating light from which the occasional mote detached itself to zip off through the rising funnel, and out of sight. It cast the harsh, leaping shadows of an arc-welder, without heat or noise, and something about the eerie thing raised all the hairs on the back of Scott's neck. Never a fanciful man, Scott couldn't name the reason for his unease, but couldn't rid himself of the feeling that the spiral was deeply, insanely dangerous.

As he looked on, mystified, Brains took an apple out of his lab coat pocket, scribbled on it with a permanent marker, then pitched the fruit up and sideways through the tornado of light. About five minutes later the apple reappeared from a new angle, striking Brains on the head with enough force to knock him off his ladder.

Scott dashed forward without thinking, seized hold of his stunned comrade, and hauled him away from the vortex. About a hundred yards later, with several massive printers between them and the glowing helix, Scott lowered Brains to the concrete floor.

"You okay?" he asked.

Brains nodded sheepishly, rubbing at a knot on the side of his head. They were a study in contrasts, the former fighter pilot and the engineer. Scott was tall, and well-muscled, with a strikingly handsome face, blue-violet eyes, and straight black hair. Brains was skinny, angular and twitchy, his clothing and glasses nearly always askew, his brown hair forever mussed, as lank and unkempt as a patch of weeds. He, too, had blue eyes, but they peered nervously at the world from behind a pair of spectacles much the worse for being sat on, lost and dropped. In fact, it often seemed that the lab's 3D printers churned out more replacement glasses than they did anything else.

Scott sat down on the floor beside Brains, his back against the monotonously droning printer. Jerking a thumb at the vortex, he asked,

"What the hell is that?"

"W- well, if, ah... if it functions... it's a t-time machine, Scott."

"A time machine? As in... change the past, visit the future? Or control how time... I dunno... flows?"

"T-time doesn't 'flow' , S- Scott," The engineer corrected fussily, stuffing an errant shirt tail back into his pants. "It j-just is. All points in time exist, ah... exist simultaneously, all across the m-multiverse. Wh-what I've done is t- to, ah... to use a powerful EM field to w-warp the path of a light beam into a s- spiral; a vortex. A-as it curves around, it affects the surrounding s- space and, ah... and time in a predictable manner. Or sh- should. On the other h- hand, going through may j- just land you in an, ah... an alternate universe, or kill you. I n- need to examine the, ah... the apple f- for cellular d- damage or amino acid r- reversals."

Scott shot another bleak glance at the "machine", watching as it snaked its glowing spiral path up and out, bridging eternity. A little hoarsely, he asked, "How far back will it go?"

Brains smiled a little sadly, and shook his head.

"N -not that far, Scott. A genuine t- time machine will only take you b-back as far as it h- has, ah... has itself existed. In this case, less than a month."

Scott heaved a sigh.

"It was worth asking," he said softly, once more seeing his mother, the baby in her arms, falling through the cable car window, out into a tidal wave of rushing snow and jagged rock.

"It was w- worth asking," Brains agreed, giving Scott's broad shoulder a gentle pat. Then, rising, "You, ah... you've come to ch- check the station's progress, I t- take it?"

Scott nodded silently, accepting a hand up.

"G- good timing! I'm about to, ah... to b- begin work on another c- component. This way."

Brains threaded a path amid pulsing machinery to a printer crouched like an iron sphinx, halfway across the vast manufactory.

"N -now, this time we need a section of, ah... of ring hull plating, t- twenty meters long by ten w- wide. This is the only m- machine big enough to handle the, ah... the job."

As Scott watched, Brains went to the printer's control panel, from which he accessed John's station plans. Highlighting a specific component on the menu screen, he ordered the printer to make the part, using a specially reinforced alloy of titanium steel.

The machine set to work at once, forming a mold of plasticky ceramic, then injecting the newly shaped cavity with millions of tiny metal pellets. To Scott, it sounded like a massive coin-sorting machine.

"Once the c- cavity fills," Brains shouted over the crashing, jangling din, "The printer will heat the pellets t- to melt and temper them, then allow the part to cool. A- after that, circuitry will, ah... will be g-grown in place, like n-nerve cells. And there y-you have it! T-two days later, a new hull plate!"

Scott nodded again, turning his head to watch a set of robotic cranes lift part of a newly printed fuel tank out of its mold. The ceramic gradually shifted back to neutral mode, readying itself for the next print. In this way, new parts were constructed for all of the Birds (and many household appliances), without having to risk a potentially dangerous outside contract.

"How much longer till our sentinel is back on post?" Scott yelled back, over the sudden, steamy hiss of the warming printer.

Brains gave him a proud smile.

"U- up and online in l- less than five months, I'd, ah... I'd reckon. It's..."

He never got to complete his shouted explanation. A sudden keening noise, shrill and wild as a madwoman, cut the engineer off in mid-sentence. An alert. The men glanced up at the flashing amber alarm light, then back at each other, and shot for the door at a dead run. Time to go to work.