7
Alan reveals a secret...
They scrambled over blades of jagged lava, squirming their way past thorny, oozing plants. The ground underfoot was a tangled obstacle course of rotting leaves, up-thrust roots and murky puddles, whileover allhung the sweetish scent of decay and blossoms, mixed with salt from the distant sea.
Water drops, leaves and insects rained down upon them from the jungle canopy, arching overhead like a rustling, seething roof. The air, greenish-dim and dank, throbbed with the rusty creaking of tiny frogs. And there were trees; great, bearded giants a hundred years old, with secondary trunks grown down from their huge, spreading limbs. Whole, separate mini-forests had sprung up on some of the larger branches, complete with creeping predators, and watery hollows teeming with larvae.
Fortunately, Alan knew where he was going, and he talked the entire way, distracting Gordon with colorful anecdotes about the scenery, and his long-suffering brothers. Especially Scott.
"So, anyways," he was saying, as they stepped through the vine-draped entrance to a hiddenlava tunnel, "Scott figured out who put the Ex-Lax in his coffee, and he chased me halfway around the house, till the laxative kicked in and he had to stagger to the bathroom, clutching his guts. I kept running, though, 'cause I'm not... like... suicidal, or anything, and I hid out in this tunnel for two days. Dude, it was great! Naw... for real! Rain water, vienna sausages and the cherished memory of Scooter's face! What's not to love? Here.."
Hereached into adeep crevice just within the tunnel entrance; withdrew two cans of cherry soda and a plastic bag of beef jerky. Dividing the supplies, he added, triumphantly,
"Dinner... is served."
Gordon accepted the food and drink, looking around at slanted walls of dark, clammy rock.
"This is what you wanted t' show me, is it?"
"Uh-uh," Alan grinned, his round face alight with mischief. "This is just the beginning, Man. Come on, choke it down, and let's go. The real action's down here."
The ancient tunnel drove more or less directly into the side of the mountain, tending gradually downward. Alan lit their way with a pocket flashlight, saying,
"...So, I did some exploring while I was down here, looking for new hideouts, just in case... (watch yourself, it gets real narrow after that next bend, there)... and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but... THAT!"
They'd ducked and wriggled their way around a gritty hairpin bend in the passage. Alan was correct; the tunnel did constrict painfully. Gordon, who was quite broad about the chest and shoulders, left a fair bit of skin behind, grunting and straining his way through the rocky sieve.
"Dammit, Alan...!" he'd been saying, dragging himself out of the crevice, only to stumble on some sort of raised concrete floor. "There 'd better be another way out, or I'll not..."
Gordon never completed his statement. They'd reached the end of the tunnel, a manmade ventilation culvert terminating in a large, round, welded-steel grate. Decidedly, an odd thing to find so far beneath a volcanic mountain.
Through the grating, Gordon spied the blunt nose of a titanic green aircraft. Stunned, he edged closer to the barred opening, brother temporarily forgotten.
She was bathed in the glow of a hundred floodlights, attended by a small army of maintenance robots, in a hangar so big, it would easily have housed seven swim complexes as large as the one in Madrid. Gordon blinked. His fingers curved around the grating bars, as he craned his neck for a better view.
Beside him, Alan danced anxiously from foot to foot, impatient for some kind of reaction. Gordon barely noticed. It was Thunderbird 2. It had to be. Even without photos, with only artists' renderings in the Post and the Sun to compare her with, he knew.
Giant, flat-bottomed and broad, with a semi-circular string of windows in her bow, and the number 2 painted in stark white upon her muscular flank, she was all slumbering power and tightly leashed force.
International Rescue... Here?
Gordon turned away from the grating to regard his younger brother.
"Can we get closer?" He asked, pale, serious, and very quiet.
Alan smiled again, gesturing at a palm-print scanner beside the grate.
"Depends, Man. You willing to take a chance?"
Gordon glanced back at the dark green leviathan crouched in its lair like Smaug on his heaped treasures.
"Hell, yes. Tell me what t' do."
