Family matters, before the big event.
Opal Girl- Thanks, and hope it does justice to a truly wonderful organization.
PS- Some more revisions have been made. (Apologies for the amount of tweaking. Had to get it fixed before I could go on.)
2
"Pull!" Gordon called out, again. Virgil immediately thumbed the switch, sending two clay pigeons at once whizzing out of the bunkers. Gordon didn't think, barely seemed to react. Keeping his mind as neutral as if he was swimming laps, he brought the piece, a heavy, bolt-action Adsett 12-gauge, up and around. There was an instant... his finger squeezed the trigger before his mind seemed to register the moment... when the pigeons crossed in midair. The shotgun roared, kicking up and back against his left shoulder, and the pigeons disintegrated, blasted apart by an expanding cloud of lead shot. Ten more followed at random intervals, each ending up as a puff of brick-red dust. Like a video game, only better; for he was outdoors and doing, enjoying the sulfurous smell, the thud and boom of the weapon, and the hail of little clay shards that mixed with Virgil's rueful cursing.
Gordon shot back the bolt, ejecting a spent cartridge, unloaded the other one, then turned to face his older brother. Virgil came forward, shaking his head, and reaching for his wallet.
"Damn," he said, laughing quietly. "One hundred... in a row. How'd you learn to shoot like that, Tex? And why do I keep falling for these sucker bets?"
Gordon pocketed the fifty that Virgil handed him, smiling triumphantly. There were some things he was very good at. Swimming was one, shooting another.
"Salamanca," he responded. "Quite the lively town, most nights. But y'r bet, I can't answer for. Just generous by nature, I expect."
Virgil sighed, scooping up his own large weapon and ammo box.
"Still can't believe that anyone raised in Europe could shoot better than me." Then, indicating the mansion with a jerk of his head, "Supper's probably on, up at the house... but tomorrow we go for 150, and I'll whup your east-coast ass!"
"You're on, then. Tomorrow it is. At this rate, I'll have pocket money enough f'r the entire season, in less than a fortnight."
As they set off along the sunny trail, the big, dark-haired pilot and his smaller, red-headed brother continued heaping insults and challenges upon one another. After the events in Los Angeles that had cost Gordon so much of his last two years, such moments were fragile, and tentative.
Virgil didn't push him. He just stayed close, and let the boy be; ready to talk, go shooting, or catch sorry-ass substitute trout in the big hole below the waterfall, as the case might be. Virgil had never learned how to be subtle, but he knew how to be there. He'd learned from Grandad and Scott that, sometimes, the best a man could do was just to show up, and then stick around.
"You'll come watch one or two of the swim meets, then? Time an' business allowin', that is?" Gordon asked him, suddenly.
Light dappling through the leaves, golden as a shower of coins, spotted their heads and faces as they walked. His gun broken, the stock resting along his arm, Virgil looked over and gave his younger brother a swift smile.
"Sure. I can heckle the competition and throw rocks at the Romanian judge with the best of 'em."
"And have me disqualified?" Gordon laughed, feigning outrage. Virgil's presence in the stands, at the World Championships or the Pan American Games, would mean as much to Gordon as their planned visit to Wyoming meant to Virgil. (Only trouble was the horses, but he supposed that if he could just keep the fearsome brutes from snapping at him, or treading on his feet, all would be well.)
The foolishness continued, with Virgil speculating as to just how many drinks he'd have to buy to geta little sympathyfrom the implacable Chinese judge, until well after they'd reached the kitchen table. He bet on seven, but Gordon figured at least twelve, until Grandma shut them both up with a smoking mountain of food.
The pool deck, a little earlier:
Alan Tracy was a new man, for two important reasons: he was nearly fifteen now, and feeling every inch the suave sophisticate for having (as far as he was concerned) won the heart of an English princess. On top of all that, he'd grown another inch, and, unless his mirror and questing fingers had lied, there was a bit of blond fuzz on his upper lip. Facial hair, at last!
So, it was with a marked swagger to his step that Alan arrived at the pool deck, looking for Gordon (who had to remain as sleek as a girl, for hydrodynamic reasons). Just to bug his brother, Alan intended to grow a big, handlebar moustache, and curl it at the ends.
...Except that Gordon wasn't at the pool. TinTin was.
Spotting a potential admiring audience, Alan loped on over to her deck chair, struck his best 'muscle-man' pose, and said,
"Hey, there, Beautiful! See anything you like?"
But TinTin didn't react as expected. Instead of melting, she glanced aside, biting her full lower lip. And then, (utter, frozen shock... deep, manhood-shriveling horror) Penelope climbed gracefully out of the pool, sleeked back her wet golden hair, and smiled archly.
"No, dear," was her cool response, "I cannot say that I do, although one has to sympathize with your groping attempts at masculinity. Perhaps with a few more years, and the onset of puberty..."
TinTin had actually begun to choke, she was fighting so hard not to laugh. But Alan had another thought, one that hit him even more sickeningly than Lady Penelope's evident contempt.
"Omigosh! I'm so sorry, Lady P! Please, don't tell him! He'll rip me a new... I mean, he'll tear my head off! for real, I didn't know you were there!"
Penelope lifted a slim eyebrow, then idly flicked the manicured fingers of one hand at him, saying,
"Shoo! Be off with you. There's a good lad!"
For months afterward, she and TinTin had only to give him a certain amused glance to turn poor Alan red as the main course at a seafood banquet. His only comfort was that Gordon never found out about the humiliating incident (worse, even, than when he'd tried to kiss TinTin), and neither, thank heaven, did John.
...who at that moment, after a shower and clothing change, and a figurative girding-up of the loins, was ready to face his father.
It was a very hard thing, reaching for the handle to the office doors, and harder still to open them. Too late, John realized that he'd forgotten to knock.
Jeff Tracy looked up as the doors swung open, scowling darkly. He was at his desk, in the midst of a critical teleconference. The bickering heads of the American, Asian and African branches were on screen, bidding desperately on the location of a future testing ground, and the airwaves crackled with greed and back-stabbing tension.
It did nothing whatever for Jeff's already black mood that it was John who stepped through the open doors (after he'd left express instructions that he not be disturbed...!)cold and stiff as a bas-relief pharaoh.
"What in the..." Jeff growled, a bit more testily than he'd intended, then started over."I'm busy.What do you want?"
Almost, John turned on his heel and left the room. But they'd covered this scenario, he and 5, and the best strategy for this one was bold-faced confidence, something his father actually respected. So... he squared his shoulders a bit, and snapped back,
"A moment of your valuable time, Sir. I'll keep it short. I promise."
Jeff's frown deepened, but he transferred the proceedings to one of his abler vice-presidents, and leaned back in his big leather chair, fingers steepled. He had no idea how badly his tall son (whom he'd once regarded as slinking through life sideways, head down and tail tucked) wanted to bolt from the room. John somehow hid it all; the pounding heart, rapid breathing and cold, knotted stomach.
"I've been selected by NASA to pilot another mission, Sir. They asked, I agreed."
Jeff's expression changed. He and John had only one thing in common, beside blood, but it was a mighty big one thing.
"You have?" His father asked, interested despite himself. They were astronauts, both of them; the one former, the other current. "The moon, again?"
John shook his head, bracing for what he imagined would be a fire storm of angry refusal. Too long, too far away, too risky, etc., etc., ad infinitum, et praeter.
"Mars," he told his father, the word as toneless and flat on his tongue as it wasn't in his heart.
Jeff actually forgot about the desk. Lunging to his feet and starting eagerly forward, he struck the burled wooden edgeand rebounded, falling back into his chair. An instant later, though, the older man was back up, and going around (he'd have shoveled a tunnel, if he'd had to).
"Ares III?" he inquired, smiling broadly, his brown eyes alight with memory, his deep voice singing with pride. "They've made the selections, already? Damn, that was quick! The seeding's only just started to show some... but what am I talking about?" And he reached out, planting both hands, one on each of John's slim shoulders. "You're... going to Mars!"
He had a thousand questions. How big was the crew? Would they be using the new Jupiter-class spaceship, of the old reliable Andromeda? Who was going to be mission commander? At John's quiet answer to the last question he'd posed, Jeff actually laughed aloud.
"Good ol' Pete! I can't think of anyone I'd rather have in charge of a mission like this one, than Pete McCord! Or..." and something sparkled, briefly, in Jeff Tracy's dark eyes. "...anyone else I'd trust as much to pilot it. Son, I can't think when I've been prouder."
He went to his wall safe, and for the third time in less than five months, took out his heirloom bottle of Coleraine single-malt whiskey.
"I wish I was still in the loop, still young enough to qualify, myself, but damn, it makes me happy to know there's going to be a Tracy on the first manned landing mission to Mars. Here we go, again!"
So saying, Jeff poured out two crystal tumbler's worth of alcohol, profligatein his joy and hot pride. Lifting his glass for a toast, he said hoarsely,
"To the Red Planet, and the best man for the job!"
John touched his glass to his father's, then drank the stuff down, not sure whether it was the whiskey, the words, or the 'told you so' pulse at the back of his left wrist that warmed him most.