6
Outside Madrid, overgrown hiking trail-
Gordon waited at the lee side of a great boulder, huddled against chilly wind and slashing rain. It was 6 AM, and dawn should have been painting the heavens, but all he saw was sky-spanning lightning and streaming, ragged clouds. 'Thunderstorm' was a very small word to describe a tempest of such howling, ferocious proportions.
Battered and drenched, he dared not pull his phone out to check the internet weather service. Hadn't done since scraping his way through the bare-knuckled rugby scrum that was downtown Madrid. As always, frightened people in large numbers were difficult to predict, and Gordon'd had a hell of a time leaving the city with a whole skin. Thankfully, Anika was still safe at the women's dorm, with her coach and teammates. One less thing. As for the rest…
Last he'd heard, the storm was at once intensifying, and getting larger. Out at sea, low-lying islands were awash, drowned beneath hundred-foot waves. His final call, before the weather set its fangs, had been home. Grandmother picked up, informing him that Scott had been injured, but was up again, and that she was leading Brains, Kyrano and Alan's mum to higher ground. At that point, he'd lost the connection. Just an antenna down somewhere, probably. Hopefully.
Gordon pushed himself closer to the rock's gritty solidity, shifting position every time the wind did. He was out here waiting until he got picked up, or washed away. And an open question it seemed to him, which would come first.
A torrent of cold, muddy water and loose pebbles sluiced past at ankle level, undercutting the very ground beneath his feet. Gordon had to keep madly shifting his stance, just to stay upright.
Over all, like heavy marker on ink wash, came blue-white flashes, bomb-burst detonations and moaning wind. Half deafened, wet and miserable, Gordon found himself longing for his dive gear. He was as good as underwater, anyway; at least in warm neoprene and a mask, he'd be comfortable.
The wind swirled, wavered a bit, then chose a new direction, attacking from the west, this time. Gordon was able to move, wading through a red clay waterfall to reach the boulder's east face, but an old tree clinging to its split summit, a twisted pine of some sort, wasn't as fortunate.
A particularly vicious gust wrenched the old tree from its long perch. It hurtled to the ground, and only a wild, sloshing dodge saved Gordon a nasty crack on the head. Things were looking up a bit, though; his burns hurt hardly at all, anymore. Or maybe he simply hadn't time to pay attention.
He scanned the skies as well and often as he was able, but all the rain and flying branches made it difficult to see. Anyhow, with the constant, guttural storm-rumble, Thunderbird 2 might have hovered fifty feet above him without being…
Rocket engines, Gordon discovered, made a distinct and welcome sound. The clouds above him glowed infernally red at four separate points, blasted clean through by Thunderbird 2's steering rockets. A great, flat belly descended, spotlights illuminating the big, white '2' painted upon her wet green hull. It was a sight to inspire a joyous whoop, and a bit of awed cursing, as well.
Thunderbird 2 blocked most of the rain, her basso profundo pressure wave and impeller field brushing aside wind and weather. Stepping cautiously away from the boulder, Gordon hit his wrist comm, watching as a hatch yawned opennear the bow. From the ruby darkness within came the clank and rattle of a winch. An insulated rescue basket lowered, electric-white in the constant lightning strobes. When it came within a meter or so, Gordon leapt like a salmon, caught hold and hauled himself over the side, fastening his safety straps while the world around him swung and spun.
Another touch to the wrist comm, and the basket began to rise, ratcheting upward through a fierce and homicidal dawn. Around the edges of Thunderbird 2's impeller field, the storm mumbled and clawed, but the sopping wet teenager was safe. A bit embarrassed, too, over just how much he was enjoying the ride (anything that didn't kill him, after all, would make a helluva story, later).
Hauled up into relative safety, Gordon waited for the hatch to close and the winch arm to pivot. Then, he climbed out, taking a moment or two to accustom himself to the cargo hold's dim red night-lighting. No sense going through all that drama, just to trip and break his neck afterward, like an utter prat.
Just as he started moving again, something happened. At first, Gordon thought that one of the engines had misfired, or that something had struck Thunderbird 2. Except that the 'explosion' was totally soundless; a ripple that seemed to slightly flex everything it touched. Gordon felt it, but he didn't understand it.
A bulkhead screen cut on, transmitting Virgil's up-sized image. Meant for communicating with massed refugees, the comm was necessarily big, and loud.
"You okay, down there?" His brother boomed.
"Right as rain," Gordon replied cheerfully, rubbing some of the wretched stuff out of his eyes. "Bit damp, is all."
On the huge screen, Virgil relaxed somewhat.
"Yeah. Guess I'm just edgy. For a second there, I coulda sworn… never mind. See you topside in five."
So, Gordon left the clamorous hold, stopping off briefly to check on Thunderbird 4. No need for concern, as it happened; locked into her clamps on the revolving launch pad, the stubby yellow Waterbird looked as fit and fast as ever. All status lights green. The ripple, whatever it was, hadn't harmed her.
Gordon ran a loving hand over her smoothly polished hull.
"Hello, Lass," he greeted the sub, allowing voice ID and retinal scanners to take his measure, "ready f'r another splash down?"
Once he was recognized, the pre-launch sequence started up. When the time came, Thunderbird 4 would be ready.
The young aquanaut next squished his way over to his uniform locker, back in the rear crew cabin. It was easily recognized by all the PADI, surf and 'spitfire' stickers covering the battered metal door.
Outside the big aircraft, thunder growled and wind shoved; inside, Gordon peeled off his dripping clothes, toweled himself dry, then changed into a pair of trunks and a full dive suit. Made of black and yellow neoprene, and fitted out with Brains' special 'no lights' sensory fittings, the suit zipped shut from left knee to chin. There were boots and gloves, as well, and these Gordon quickly drew on, glad of their snug warmth. Closed up like that, his burns began smarting again, though. Oh, well; aspirin, manly attitude, and all that.
A swift glance at the locker-door mirror proved that all was as it should be… assuming one was content to be short, red-haired and plain as ditch water. Well, there had to be something there. Nika certainly liked what she'd seen.
Right. Gordon shrugged, gave the matter up as a bad job, and clanged the locker door shut. Less than a minute later, he'd entered the smoky cockpit, greeting his older brother with a cough and a brusque, friendly clap to the shoulder. Tumbling into the co-pilot's seat, he began strapping in.
Virgil acknowledged him with a distracted grunt, eyes on the instrument panel, mind on the mission ahead. Once Gordon was settled, the pilot transferred fine rocket and weapon control to the right seat. Main engines, navigation and rudder, he kept for himself.
They were now about 600 miles from Curacao, according to the Nav screen. ETA, 24 minutes and counting.
Gordon peered at Virgil through a cloud of wreathing smoke. His brother's face was illuminated, dimly, by diodes and lightning spears. From the look of things, he was having to fight to keep the big girl on course. Anything smaller and less powerful than Thunderbird 2 would have been smashed from the sky like an injured wren. But, the cargolifter was enormous, and luck very much on their side. Had Virgil been the superstitious sort, he'd have worried that 'Murphy' was saving it all up for one giant disaster.
Flapping a hand to clear the air, Gordon said,
"What's happened at home, then? Is Scott all right? I spoke with grandmother, and she said somethin' about an explosion and some injuries. And, what was all that about John?"
Bruised-purple cloud stuff slipped past the windows. Try as he might, Virgil couldn't seem to get above it. Not at this latitude, anyway.
"Damn storm must reach low orbit," he muttered. Well past Thunderbird 2's safe operating limits, anyway. Still fighting with the yoke, Virgil responded,
"Hard to say… things got kind of…urf!... hairy. One of Brains' ideas backfired… again. Scott walked into the blast… a little before this storm came on."
Gordon shielded his eyes from a particularly brilliant flare. Up here, lightning seemed to fill and illuminate the entire cloud. The cockpit, too.
"He'll recover, though? Grandmother said he was up, again."
"Yeah…" (brief pause, as Virgil struggled with a sudden, violent down draft) "…pretty safe bet, Kiddo… It'd take a tactical nuclear strike to put Scott out of the picture."
The air currents whipped around on them, and all at once Thunderbird 2 was battling a savage, screaming head wind. Virgil hauled back on the steering yoke, trying to get above this sudden jet stream.
"And John…?" Gordon ventured, when they'd at last crested the worst of it, shooting like a comet over a 'landscape' of high-piled, dusky clouds. Above the storm, the sunlight seemed piercing bright. Gordon adjusted the window's filters, adding, "He'll do, as well?"
Virgil hesitated, then keyed up WNN Live news coverage. Snowy and silent, images flickered across the right view screen.
More violent weather… circling heli-jets… broken skyscrapers glowing with sullen, radioactive light… and, through one of the buildings, somehow… a blackened spaceship.
Only his seat straps blocked Gordon's sudden lunge for the controls.
"Virgil, we've got t' get over there," he said, his voice rapid and strained. "There's no bloody way the American fire crews c'n handle that, and John may be…"
Virgil cut off the video feed. Broad shoulders hunched, handsome face bleak, the pilot shook his head.
"No. We're needed at the Sea Base, Gordon. I don't know what's happened to… with the… in New York, but if we don't get to Curacao, right the hell now, hundreds of people are gonna drown. We got ships and planes going down everywhere, stuff showing up in the water that no one can ID... We're the best hope these people have got, and we can't walk away from them, not even for one of our own."
Against a backdrop of engine rumble and whirring instruments, Virgil's deep voice reasoned on, almost whispering,
"John and the other astronauts'll be fine. They have to be."
His brown eyes met Gordon's hazel ones, revealing firmness of purpose… and painful uncertainty. It was just about killing him, to turn his back on the situation in Times Square.
"We've got a job to do, and civilians come first. John would say so, himself. You know that."
Like hell, he did. No communications with the island, Scott injured, John in desperate trouble, but everybody else came first, no matter what, right? Maybe Virgil was making sense, but that didn't mean his younger brother had to like it. Gordon choked off an angry reply and thudded back against his seat, arms folded tightly. He didn't speak again until they reached storm-ravaged Curacao, and the endangered city beneath the sea.
Saginaw, Michigan… elsewhen-
Tossed through space and time, a very confused older man (fifty-ish, not tall, sandy haired and with a rather good humored , if ordinary, face) appeared suddenly. Between one blink and another, he was added to a busy street scene, standing in front of a shuttered movie house at the corner of Ivy and Main. The Crowne Theatre.
He'd spent a lot of time there, in his childhood, alone in the dark withMilk Dudsand monster films. For a long several minutes, Pete McCord was too disoriented to do anything but blink. Then, he began shaking.
Most people, passing this way and that on the downtown sidewalk, pretended not to notice. The confused, balding man wore faded sweatpants and a U.S. Navy tee shirt. He was barefooted, after all, looked drunk, and might be dangerous.
Mothers shepherded their children well past him, crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the sudden apparition, whom they didn't recall arriving, but didn't quite trust. Then, a kindly older woman in a dark blue uniform approached him. She was a Salvation Army officer, whose job it was to guide street people to the local mission. Captain Mabry was thickset, with bright-dyed hair and a warm, genuine smile.
"Honey," she said, gently taking Pete's hand, "are you lost?"
Johnson Space Center, Houston Texas-
Gene Porter had waited in his office, head in hands, for the autopsy results. He needed answers, before he faced Linda, Roger and Cho. What NASA knew at this point was pretty close to nothing. They had an impossibly transported ship, three inexplicably safe astronauts, two no-shows, a body… and too many damn questions. Gene was near to pulling his own hair out in tufts.
The Director himself had phoned the families, and contact personnel (former astronauts all) were already on their way. Gene sat in his office, rain pelting the windows at his back, elbows on desk, and waited for the phone. Finally, it rang. The receiver was off its cradle and jammed to his ear before the first chime died away.
"Gene Porter. Go ahead."
"Mr. Porter?" Came a voice, hissy with static, at the other end of a very long distance. "This is…"
Gene cut him off.
"I know who it is, Dr. Levitz. I've got caller ID, like everyone else. What's the story?"
The medical examiner cleared his throat. Despite everything, he, too, hated bad news.
"The remains were in poor shape, Mr. Porter. Pretty close to carbonized, in fact. We had to resort to dental records, finally, in order to…"
"Doctor, get to the point, please. Which one is it?"
After a brief, reproachful pause, the doctor replied.
"The pilot, Mr. Porter. Examining dental records, and what little DNA was available to collect and assay, we've assigned the remains to John Tracy." Then, more quietly, "I'm sorry."
Gene's hand tightened on the receiver. Like he was watching a movie, he could see Pete McCord arguing for the young man's inclusion, could see Jeff Tracy's proud smile, at the post-launch press conference. And Pete had yet to turn up, the rest of the downed ship to be explored… Who else were they going to find?
God damn, but it hurt. There was no defense against the loss of a friend and comrade, no matter how well you thought you'd prepared yourself. His office was blurred, then, by something that stung his eyes and spotted his desk calendar.
"Mr. Porter? Sir…?" the New York State medical examiner prodded gently. "I assume you'll want transport, with full…"
"Thank you, Doctor. We'll… be in touch about the arrangements. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some calls to make."
And then, very, very gently, Gene set the phone back on its cradle.
Thunderbird 2, over Sea Base Alpha-
Gordon unstrapped and got to his feet, bracing himself against the pitching deck with one hand to his seat back. The cargolifter's engines were at full burn, roaring like a quartet of dragons, just to maintain position. They'd contacted Alpha's commander, conferencing hurriedly as Sky Divers, Tiger Sharks and escape craft shot away from the flooding city.
"Show time," Virgil murmured, without adding the usual 'kiddo'. The silence between them had stretched cold and brittle as a pane of glass, all the way from Europe. He couldn't leave it that way. Not in the midst of all this.
Clearing his throat a bit, Gordon said,
"Right, then. Good luck with th' afternoon showers, Virgil."
His older brother gave him a quick, searching look, then managed a smile.
"Yeah. You, too. Have fun splashing in the puddles, kid. Stay safe."
Something passed between them. A plan of action. Though neither spoke the thought aloud, the very first thing they intended to do, once Alpha was seen to, was race directly over to New York City, and Endurance.
A few minutes later, bone-weary but clear-headed, Gordon was back in his own Bird and ready to go. Virgil brought Thunderbird 2 as close as he dared to the ocean's roiled surface. His trouble was the waves, some of which were 70 to 100 feet high. The concerned pilot could keep Thunderbird 2 above them, but risked dropping his brother into a canyon-deep trough; a potentially deadly fall. Nor was that all.
There were garbled stories of weird creatures in the water; fish-shaped things with the snaggled jaws of giant crocodiles and enormous, lambent eyes. The Sea Base dolphins had no word for them besides 'shark', and were reportedly terrified. Needless to say, Virgil had a lot on his mind. Just then, it was unfiltered cigarettes, and the theme from 'The X-Files'.
One surging wave after another crashed by beneath them, emerald-black mountains capped and laced in phosphorescent white.
"Ready?" He called down, timing an on-rushing crest.
"Fire away," Gordon's voice shot back. The tractor rays were engaged, the forward hatch open, the ramp extended.
"Gotcha. 5…4…3…2…and…drop!"
The clamps retracted with a harsh, metallic snap, and Thunderbird 4 began to move, rocketing down the slipway. Guided by tractor beams, she arced forth, striking a wave head-on, about midway down its rumbling face. The tremendous concussion shook the little sub and her teenaged pilot to their core, like a sledgehammer smashing a metal dust bin. Thunderbird 4 flipped completely over, and Gordon found himself hanging upside-down in his seat straps, assaulted by ruby warning lights and blaring alarms. Outside, bubbles rushed past in dense sheets, quivering silver, moving the wrong way. Uh-oh, to say the least.
Stripping his gloves with hands that shook, Gordon seized the controls again, felt the troubled water close in around 'his' hull, swirling close against him as he plunged downward. Quick adjustment, natural as a flip-turn at the end of a pool lane, and he was upright again, buffeted by juddering turbulence. It was dark, down here, and no friendlier than the skies had been. There wasn't time to worry, though, or to consider all the proper checklists and guidelines, either. He had someplace to be.
Oriented once more, Gordon could just make out the faltering lights of Alpha's towered domes. Built atop a fluted sea-mount, the city winked and glimmered like pirates' treasure. Target acquired.
Gordon called in, letting Virgil know that he'd landed safely, and freeing his brother to begin airlifting victims from Curacao to the mainland. Then, barely aware that he was manipulating controls, he surged forward. The murky water was full of churned-up sand, broken coral and confusing… 'smells' was the wrong word. Chemical traces, maybe? The sand clouds felt gritty, scraping by, like that.
He descended rapidly, cutting on the Seabird's flood lights. All at once, something shot past him. Many somethings, sleek and swift. A pod of Sea Base dolphins, swinging around to shelter in Thunderbird 4's wake. He could feel them, riding along so close beside him that they brushed his hull, their shrill clicks penetrating metal, air and aquanaut.
"Sea Base, from Thunderbird 4," Gordon called, aware that the comm had been pressed, but not feeling himself do it. Thanks to Hackenbacker's incessant tinkering, he received more input from the sub than he did from his own body.
"I'm comin' in from the north, about a kilometer out, with a few of your watch dogs. Thunderbird 2 will proceed t' Curacao, stoppin' by periodically t' help with surface pickups."
The response was a series of pulses which seemed to sink directly into his mind and convert there to a tense, weary voice; Commander Carlin's.
"Glad you guys could make it. Thanks again for answering the call. We need you first at Coral Sea's main docking tower, Thunderbird 4. The pad's obstructed by wreckage, and we've got about fifty people trapped by rising water. No way to get to them, as the situation stands. Come on in, follow frequency beacon 135.27-niner, and watch your back. Something out there's been ripping dolphins and fighter subs to ragged chunks."
"Understood, Sir, and thanks f'r th' heads up."
'Mental note,'
…as yet another frightened, half-drowned cetacean streaked from hiding to shelter beneath the yellow sub (it seemed they were calling their mates),
…'lights off, eyes open, and rig for as silent-bloody-running as damn well possible'.