Deep apologies for the slowness, life's been particularly 'random' lately. I've got a lot of reading and reviewing to do...! On the bright side, I seem to have solved the "three dots and a comma" problem. Ask me about the Standard Model, and I'll paint a picture, but bring up punctuation, or double consonents, and I have to reach for a manual, or a wiser friend. Anyway, thanks to everyone for the commentary and encouragement. I'm glad if John sounds correct, for someone extremely intelligent... I've been terribly concerned that I'd get him wrong.
48
The 'call home' might have gone better, he later decided. They were, of course, tremendously relieved to hear from him. Though comm had been lost for less than three hours, the blackout had been just about all-inclusive, silencing not just Endurance, but Mars Global Surveyor, the probes, the polar observatory, COBE, Hubble, and even Earth's gravitational space antenna, LISA.
All of a sudden, the 'squawk boxes' went ominously quiet, leaving five widely separated families in doubt and darkness. What had happened?
With Kuiper already on the launch pad, her seven-man crew strapped in and eager to go, the answer to that question became doubly important.
Then, Pete McCord patched himself through, speaking first to the tense, frantically busy knot of engineers and scientists in Houston, and then to Riley, and his fellow mission commander, Captain Poriskova. The message wasn't long,
"All personnel secure at present, situation uncertain, please stand by..."
...but it snapped most of the tension. All over Kennedy, Johnson, Glenn and Baikonur, people heaved shuddering sighs, slumped in their seats, and rubbed at their throbbing temples.
As Gene Porter had put it, all those months before, the Ares III crew were far beyond hope of rescue; had something gone disastrously wrong, NASA could have done nothing more than launch a post-mortem. Even Kuiper, armed with photon engines powered by lasers so hideously strong they could only be fired 350,000 miles from Earth, would have arrived too late to help. (Due to relativistic time distortions.)
So, pretty near everyone was glad of the mission commander's message, laconic, or not.
Later, when a bit more information had been exchanged, and the press soothed, the crew took time to gather around the main comm screen and call their worried families. John Tracy wasn't first; the calling order rotated, and this time, he was third in the line-up.
Dr. Kim reached her parents in Manhattan on the first try. They'd been sitting together on a beige sofa; a frail-seeming, middle-aged Korean couple with greying hair and anxious eyes. Cho was their jewel, their only child, and they were both terribly proud of her, and deeply concerned. In their view, too much success was a dangerous thing. Better to keep your head down, work hard, and tuck the rewards away in a safety deposit box.
When their daughter's image appeared on the comm screen, Mrs. Kim put her face in her hands for just an instant, rocking back and forth. Her husband, a shipping magnate, put a steadying hand on his wife's shoulder, and gave Kim Cho a brief, calm smile.
Their actual conversation wasn't long (the comm was frustratingly slow, and full of flickery hissing), but Dr. Kim nevertheless reported that she was well, and doing her job, and that she had wonderful news that would wait for a more private, auspicious moment. They closed with 'I love you' s after the usual 20 minute delay, and then it was Pete's turn.
Dark-haired Lydia McCord (tall for a woman, and still strikingly beautiful) had been stoic right up to the point that her short, sandy-haired husband's smiling face appeared on the screen. Then, biting her full lower lip, still trying to be the perfect astronaut's wife, she began softly crying.
Their impish daughter, Stephanie, had to do most of the 'talking', signing so fast that she was difficult to understand. Pete spoke and signed simultaneously, calling the girl 'little mischief', and asking about her studies at Gallaudet, and her up-coming 'big decision'.
(Out of respect for Deaf Culture, there were three times in a hearing-impaired child's life when they were asked if they'd like an operation to restore hearing; at 7 years of age, at 12, and one last time, at 21. Twice now, Steph McCord had refused surgery. After all, she had parents who loved her, a campus full of similarly talented friends, and two 'hot' astronaut buddies she could giggle about with the other girls. Life didn't get any better.)
"Bratty," Pete said, and signed, "You take good care of yourself, and your mother." There was so little time, and so much to say... "I'm bringing back a present."
She shook her head, the signs slowing as they fluttered emphatically around her body in the manner and location that indicated exasperated command.
"Present no, Daddy. You home. At Student Bistro, girls want meet you. Why? I promised you come with John, and Roger."
John, who couldn't help 'overhearing' this last bit, looked away to cover his sudden confusion. Stephanie was a childhood playmate who'd grown into a lovely young woman, but he hated public events, especially those with himself as one of the main attractions. Maybe she'd settle for something quieter?
Pete kept his feelings to himself.
Toward the end of the conversation, Lydia finally pulled herself together enough to give her husband a watery smile and to say/sign,
"We love you, Sailor, and we're staying the course. Come home safe, sound and soon... all of you."
And then she placed a kiss upon the slim fingers of her right hand, which was pressed upon the comm screen for Pete to retrieve by touching the glass on his end. He did so, bringing the kiss to his own lips. His voice husky, his signing unusually sloppy, Pete McCord closed with,
"Love you, too. Back before you know it, Ladies. Count on it."
And then, it was John's turn. He wished, suddenly, that he could have begged off. In the face of such obvious devotion, he felt somehow tepid and pale. The Tracys certainly loved each other, on some stony, rarely-spoken-of level... but the McCords' open affection was utterly alien, and a bit depressing. Stephanie had sometimes behaved that way at him, diving at John and embracing him as though he were the most cherished thing imaginable, though never for long, as she couldn't really hug him and speak.
But, now the family was up; his father and Scott closest to the screen, bracing Grandma between them. Gordon looked soberly on from another wall comm, with Virgil, Alan, Gennine, Ike and TinTin ranged all about, craning for a glimpse of their exhausted astronaut. Glancing over the assemblage, John couldn't help noticing who wasn't there. And, deep inside, something that had limped painfully along for two cold, empty years, was finally put to sleep. Maybe, it had never really existed in the first place...
"It's good to see you, Son," Jeff was saying, a broad smile touching his craggy features. "How are you?"
John hesitated, realizing that there was more to that question, and his eventual reply, than was evident to the other astronauts. Pete might know that John, himself, was a member of International Rescue, but its true status as a 'family operation' was probably still secret, and the pilot wanted to keep it so. But, how to warn the family off, without giving anything away?
With a slight nod of his blond head, John replied,
"Thank you, Sir. I'm fine. We've had some... randomness, but all that's settled, now. No cause for alarm."
Grandma wasn't impressed. Peering at John through her magnifying spectacles, the silver-haired old lady snapped,
"Boy, what did you do to your face?"
Genuinely startled, John put a hand to the bandaged cuts. Thanks to Linda's pain and swelling medications, all he felt was a bit of stiffness. He'd forgotten all about the less-than-purple-heart injuries, and the practically shrink-wrapped, black suit liner he was wearing.
"Um... I fell," he told her, not very convincingly. "Outside. Didn't see all the... rocks."
Shit. With prevarication skills like those, he might as well have entered the priesthood. Twenty minutes later,
"John Matthew!" His grandmother retorted, her big brown eyes narrowing suspiciously, "I ain't so close to the grave, yet, that you can look me in the face and pass off a whopper like that one! Now, what the hell's..."
"Mother!" Jeff hissed, hauling the stoutly resisting old Tartar aside.
"Don't you 'mother' me, Jeffery Connal! I wasn't born in a hayrick! Something's happening, and by God, I'll...!"
Scott took up the slack, as Jeff retreated beneath Victoria's furious onslaught. Looking hard into his younger brother's violet-blue eyes, the fighter pilot asked quietly,
"Everything okay, out there?"
John knew the code, just as Scott, Gordon and the others did. If he needed help, and couldn't admit it in so many words...
But, 'all quiet on the western front' wasn't what he said. Gazing back at his older brother, John recalled the many times Scott had hauled him out of trouble, risked Jeff's anger, outright lied to cover for him, even. Not this time. Some of that debt had been repaid in Macedonia. The rest was past due, and John wasn't going to let his brother... his family... risk themselves needlessly, for him.
"Thanks for all the concern, but don't get your shorts in a bunch, Scott. We're fine."
It was a long twenty minutes. At last the screen flickered again, updating the static image. For some reason, John noticed the background, first. Genuinely hurt, Virgil stood there with his mouth open, while Alan's golden eyebrows had shot halfway up his forehead. Jeff and Grandma had stopped arguing to stare at the screen with matching scowls. TinTin, Brains and Gennine looked puzzled and concerned... and no more convinced than Scott did. Only Gordon held steady, but, like John himself, the young aquanaut appeared to have something else on his mind.
On the other end, Linda, Kim and Roger were perfectly silent, while Pete, who was pretending to work on tomorrow's checklists, listened intently. Said Scott, sounding rather subdued (but not giving up; not really),
"Okay, little brother. It's your call." Almost as if he meant it.
John braced himself for round two, which probably wouldn't be long in coming.
The allotted comm time was nearly past, Roger and Linda still waiting to make calls of their own, but there was something he had to do. Looking past Scott, John said to his former, never-wanted, step-mother (in some sense, mom),
"Um... hi."
Gennine blinked. John Tracy hadn't addressed more than three or four perfunctory comments to her since San Marco, having evidently filed her away and tidied the loose emotions to his own satisfaction. Weakly, she responded,
"Hello, John. How... er, how is Mars, this time of year?"
He pondered this for a moment.
"Cold," the pilot replied, at last. "Sort of dry... needs development. A few hotel chains and some souvenir stands, maybe."
Jeff seemed interested, but Gennine was truly horrified.
"You're joking!"
"Yes." He managed a bit of a smile, even.
She laughed then, and it was exactly the same throaty, joyous explosion. Pete, he suddenly noticed, had stopped writing. Didn't look up, though.
Now... when she finished laughing, there was a fond, slightly confused sparkle in her blue eyes. John had to force himself not to look away. She said, smiling in almost the same way,
(God, it hurt like hell... and somehow helped)
"I... we're so proud of you, John. I can't wait to hear all about it, first hand."
Time was up, so he restricted himself to a business-like nod.
"Sure. Got to go. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"Cool, Mom!" Alan cut in, laughing his butt off. "That means you can drive too fast, get drunk, hack all the banks and school systems, and have loads of one-nighters! Well... not the last part. You're too old for that..."
Thinking,
'Next time, definitely: email.'
John retreated, to let a rather grim Linda Bennett have her go at the comm. The doctor had a short, pithy conversation with her sort-of 'boyfriend', Spencer Burke, the head of neurosurgery at Walter Reed Army Hospital. They were very polite, very formal and distant. Not surprising, as he was nearly twenty years older, and had a demanding, round-the-clock career.
Then, Roger chatted and laughed with his own large and rollicking clan (siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, parents, even neighbors had crowded in to see their boy). They were a loud bunch, boisterous and happy, but John paid scant attention. Excusing himself, he headed out to the nearly barren galley to watch the clock tick over in Zulu-time, and listen to the aluminum counter tops vibrate along with the air pumps. Noisy damn ship.
He'd deliberately pissed-off half his family, grievously injured his computer, was strung out on pain medication, with a head full of alien figures... and it was his night to cook. Yeah. He felt great.
Question was, what could he accomplish with a handful of rice, a small box of whole-wheat noodles, reconstituted beef chunks, and ketchup?