Thanks, Tikatu, Opal Girl, Elven Queen and Darkhelmet for the reviews, and for toleratinga 'Delay'. Herein contained: a short interlude, and the arrival.
40
Tracy Island, the Sun Room-
Before leaving for Europe, Gordon had made a very important decision, one that seemed certain to infuriate Jeff Tracy. No choice, though, really; and not something he could accomplish alone.
Searching the mansion in the early afternoon, with Scout bounding and dashing beside him, Gordon finally located the object of his search. Alan's mum.
Gennine was sitting cross-legged on a big, flowered chaise longue, writing in her latest green notebook. Golden sunlight from the big, open windows poured itself past her like honey, flecked with pollen and dancing motes.
Marking his approach, she looked up, then closed the notebook, and smiled.
"Hello, Sweetie."
He must have looked as serious as he felt, because she added,
"Are you all right?"
Gordon crossed the tiled floor, and took a seat on a cushioned wicker chair.
"Yes, Ma'am. Right as rain. Just... there's somethin' I'd like t' take care of, and I was hopin' you might help."
There. He'd got things started. First step, and all that... Only, bloody-wretched-hell, Jeff was going to kill him! Then, burn his remains... stamp on the ashes...
She put notebook and pencil away, pushed the blonde hair from her eyes with a swift, distracted gesture, and said,
"What do you need me to do, Gordon?"
Gennine's fondness for the boy showed clearly in the way she leaned forward, setting everything else aside to listen.
"Well...," he shifted about, nerving himself for an explanation, and possible refusal. "There's been a great deal happenin', lately. I'm headed back t' Madrid soon... stayin' on call, though."
This last a bit rushed, lest she think he intended to desert his brothers. But,
"I know, Sweetie," Gennine replied. "The second they need help, you'll be back."
"Right. It's just..."
Okay. The hard part. Best come straight out with it.
"There's too much t' do. Somethin' has t' go. Not th' swim team. It may sound a bit disloyal, Ma'am, but they're my brothers, too, in a manner of speakin'. Especially Royce. We go back a fair bit."
She nodded, silently bidding him continue.
"Obviously, not th' rescues, either."
Gennine watched the red-haired boy struggle to pull out the words, and began to grow apprehensive right along with him. Whatever he intended was extremely serious, and he knew it, and was very afraid she'd say no.
"So... If not swimming, or International Rescue," she prodded gently, "what is it, then, Sweetie?"
"I'd... like t' drop school. Test out over th' computer, and get a general diploma. I need an adult proctor, though, an' I know better than t' ask J... Father. Scott's old enough, but I'm in no state f'r a three-hour lecture on duty an' perseverance. I haven't enough of either t' go round, I'm afraid. That's it, then. What I wanted t' ask."
Very grave and concerned, she said to him,
"Baby... are you sure?"
He nodded, hazel eyes at once troubled, and relieved.
"Yes, Ma'am. I am, that."
"Well... Jeff isn't going to be happy, Gordon. I really wish you'd discuss this with him...?"
The boy shook his head, the 'Nuh-uh' look in his eyes speaking volumes about the elder Tracy's probable stance on the matter.
"No, Ma'am. I can't. He'll not only say no, but try t' make me quit th' swim team, and that, I'll not be doin'."
In the end, with deep misgivings, she agreed. After lunch, they repaired to the dim, leathery-smelling library, where a swift computer received and sent the family's public correspondence.
Gordon signed onto the WorldGov educational site, and stated his intention. After his quick palm and retinal scan, Gennine supplied her own 'bona fides' and indicated that she would supervise the high school equivalency exam, guaranteeing that it was, indeed, Gordon David Tracy at the keyboard, and that he wouldn't cheat.
She sat down in a leather wing chair within site of the web-cam, waited, and watched. Every time the teenager paused, lingering long seconds over an arithmetic or history question, she agonized, fists clenching tight in her lap. Every time he breezed past the vocabulary or reading comprehension items, she bit her lip, fearing that he'd gone too fast.
The test was timed, and Gennine kept half an eye on the clock, trying to gauge the inexorable passage of minutes against Gordon's spasmodic progress. She couldn't see his face, reading instead the tensed muscles of back and shoulders; the agitated way he tapped his left hand upon the desktop when caught out by a particularly thorny problem.
At last... or, maybe too soon... time was up. The test was over. His score, however, would not be officially available for another hour. Gordon didn't look as though he'd last that long.
Rising, Gennine went to the slumped and expressionless boy.
"Well, Sweetie? How do you think you did?"
He shrugged, trying to look as if it hardly mattered, really. She knew (second only to TinTin, perhaps) how difficult such things had become for him. From a high-average student, he'd plummeted to 'struggling', and that had to hurt.
Reaching out, Gennine drew his head against her side, and stroked his coppery hair.
"Why don't you go for a swim, Gordon? I'll stay here to wait for the results, and call on your wrist comm, just as soon as I know. Okay?"
He looked at her, then rose, squared his broad shoulders and gave a brief, wordless nod. At the door he paused, one hand on the threshold, and looked back.
"Just, straight out with it, when you call me, all right? Whatever happens, no muckin' about with excuses, an' such."
"I promise. Right to the point, Sweetie."
Another nod, a flickering attempt at a smile, and he was gone. Gennine went to the computer station, pulled out the rolling chair, and sat down to wait.
As for Gordon, he medicated himself the usual way, hitting the water and exercising to the point of collapse. Not wishing to see or talk to anyone... not even TinTin... he went to the shore rather than either of the pools, and swam repeated racing laps from drop-off to sea wall.Almost at once, his world contracted to a manageable bubble of warm green water, startled fish, vivid coral, and quick, sharplung-fulls of gasped air.
...Until his wrist comm beeped, that is. Gordon was sloppy and off-beat the rest of the way to the sea wall. The ocean gently lifted and dropped him as, one hand braced upon hardened lava, he took a deep breath, and hit the comm.
There were clouds piling up in the west, building themselves to such towering, gilt-edged heights that they made the heavens seem unreachably distant. There was a smell, too, of on-coming rain. Fleeting impressions; like the gritty-dark wall, the sun's jackhammer heat, and dozens of wheeling, chattering seabirds. They disappeared the very instant that his comm screen cleared.
She was smiling. That was the first thing. Almost laughing, actually.
He heard, "passed", and then eventually "92 percent" got through, along with,
"...can even apply for a two-year Associate of Arts degree, with a profile like that!"
Done. It was over, and successfully so. No more school, ever. Bits of the world came back, shyly, like colored wrasses poking up from their stony burrows.
(...and if 4.0 had received assistance, if every time he'd delayed response at an item, the correct answer had been subtly highlighted, neither he, nor any other analog life form, ever discovered the matter.)
As the sun prickled at his back and neck, overheating his red hair and splintering off the wave crests, Gordon smiled at Alan's mother.
"Thank you, Ma'am," he said, overjoyed despite the fact that he'd taken 'the easy way out' and would certainly pay for it, later. Then, as a sudden, quiet thought occurred,
"I wonder what my mum would think?"
Over the wrist comm, Gennine's smile softened, slightly.
"Sweetie," she replied, "something tells me that she'd be very, very proud."
Days later, over Mars-
Across the pinkish-orange sky, from one rocky, rusted horizon to the next, streaked a long, rumbling plume of smoke and flame. The air was thin, and frigid cold, but the noise carried like a thunder-clap, anyway. Something was dropping, like a lightning bolt, like a meteor; blinding-bright and deadly fast.
Too fast. Though she'd fired reverse thrusters and maintained the proper angle of attack, Endurance's landing module was smashing like a hammer through the tenuous atmosphere of Mars.
In the cockpit, unable to see a thing, or receive communication through the sun-flare halo of ionized gas enveloping the ship, John held to the course and fought to brake their plunge. Through the windows, all they could see was fire. All they heard or felt was a monstrous, end-of-the-world roar.
The control surfaces (ailerons, rudder and flaps) were out as far as they would go, glowing red-hot with the heat of entry. All reverse thrusters on full burn, and still they hurtled downward.
Pete called out speed and altitude, shouting to be heard over shuddering thunder. The stick shook so violently in John's hands that it was all but impossible to control.
Taking a long chance, he increased their angle of attack, presenting more of Endurance's shielded belly to the blazing air. Somewhere between 'stall' and 'crash-dive' and 'flat spin' was the sweet spot...
He got a stall warning, corrected, then felt Endurance bump slightly, like a skipping stone. Their blazing cocoon began to fade, tatters of flame peeling back to reveal the rocky, tortured wasteland below. Hull temperatures dropped, but not heart rates.
Their landing site lay some 532 nautical miles ahead, between the Argyre basin, and the enormous outflow channel of Valles Marineris, a canyon system vast enough to cross the continental United States. From orbit, it had looked as though rude, alien teenagers had taken something large and sharp, and 'keyed' Mars. Olympus Mons had flashed by, head above the clouds and nearly into space, three times taller than mighty Everest. A queen among mountains..., though not their target.
Endurance's air speed dropped to the proper level, so Pete first called out, then fired off, the drogue chute. It shot from the rear of the craft in a blossom of rockets, streaming behind like the red-and-white tail of a huge kite, then caught the wind, snapped open, and dragged out the giant main parachute. This one, too, opened; full and silver-white as the back-beating wings on a landing swan.
There was a sudden, double jolt. Their speed fell again, from 'neck-whipping ferocious' to, 'what the hell was that?' At a certain point, (sooner than he'd have done it on Earth) Pete released the chutes to flutter away, so that John could switch to powered, horizontal flight. On his signal, the pilot fired all four landing rockets, guiding Endurance into a slantwise, juddering descent.
Still high in the air, kept aloft more by rocketry than aerodynamics, they closed in on their landing site. Through the view screens, all was pinkish yellow sky and high-swirling dust, with a cold little sun peeping through.
Roger had by this time keyed on the landing beacon, giving John a relatively easy target. All he had to do was keep her lined up, and try to ignore the stunning view...
They shot in from the east, with the scowling mass of the Tharsis highlands before them, and an endless, boulder-strewn desert below. Then came the first signs of human activity; the probes. Twin tractor-bots glittered in the loose, rusty sand, their cameras panning around to track Endurance's flight.
Next came a house-sized white cylinder painted with a big American flag. The first supply depot, dropped slightly askew and off-target by Ares I.
From this vantage, the damage was obvious. Shattered tubes and crates had dribbled out of one end, like groceries from a ripped sack. Pete took pictures as they swept past, hoping that most of the gear and foodstuffs had escaped being fouled. Another cylinder flashed by, this one intact, followed by two pallets, a solar power array, and the perimeter beacons. An instant later, they were over the target.
John cut their forward momentum, then throttled back the landing thrusters. They began dropping toward a circle cleared years earlier by the two probes, Marvin and Alf.
"One hundred meters. Landing gear deployed...," Pete was saying, echoing his instruments, "90..., 80...,"
Crisp and dry as clockwork.
"...20..., 10..., Cut thrusters."
John flipped a switch, and all went quiet. Then came a sudden drop, three swift, gut-wrenching feet, ending in a bouncing jolt. After that came a tense silence, broken only by keening wind and the faint rattle of flying sand. They waited, gloved hands at seat straps and fire-control buttons, breath pent, and hearts racing...
Five seconds, ten; then Pete looked around, nodded once and said,
"Welcome to Mars, folks."
Afterward, there was chaos, of the back-slapping, head-lock, knuckled hair and laughter variety. It would be several minutes before Houston, the press, and their assembled family members got anything more out of them.