Dislcaimer: Thunderbirds is the property of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, as well as Carlton and Universal. No profit is intended to be made from this story; it is for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended, and none should be inferred. All original characters are the property of the author. This story should not be used or copied without the expressed written consent of the author.
A/N: This piece actually begins before the last chapter, "Agents", but the bulk of the story takes place after "Agents". The time frame is given in the story.
A/N 2: Those of you who have read beeinyourbonnet's stories might notice a bit of a similarity between this chapter, and her story "A Lesson In Spontaneity". I honestly did not write this chapter with her story in mind, but I acknowledge that a few similarities are there. I would like to attribute them to the both of us looking at/writing about John doing something stupid. So I'll take this moment to say that beeinyourbonnet's story is a billion times funnier, and I'd never intentionally try to one-up it because I'd never be able to. :)
Minor Alterations
Late June 2018
Morning came early for John Tracy - too early for his liking but not so early that he felt a need to complain about it. The alarm woke him from a dead sleep, sending him flying upwards in his bed in a cold sweat. He had been up on the station for almost four months and he still wasn't used to being awakened by the blaring red alert siren.
I've got to get Dad to send up a normal alarm clock in the next supply batch, he thought as he tried to calm his heart rate down. Every morning since he had first set foot on the station had been an adventure, but the wake up call was by far the most jarring and brutal thing he had encountered.
Yawning loudly – something he had taken to doing for the reason that there was no one else around to hear – John stretched his arms, gave his back a good crick, then pushed himself off the bed. He grabbed a fresh uniform on his way to the washroom, stopping only briefly to make sure that he indeed had grabbed the underwear to go with it. He had forgotten to do so on several occasions, and it had made the trip back to his room a rather uncomfortable one.
After a quick ten-minute shower, John found himself gazing at his own expression in the makeshift mirror that he had set up in the washroom. The washroom wasn't even really a washroom but was instead a smaller storage closet that he had simply converted into a watertight bathing facility. Any water that ran from the shower – which irritatingly lacked a curtain, something that both bothered him and made him amused at the same time – inevitably was collected in the grates that ran along the bottom corners of the room.
The tiling on the floor was not ceramic but instead plastic, and was simply the inside of a very large artificially constructed box. The room contained a plumbing system, a built in water purifier, and a heater that allowed for him to take warm showers instead of the ice cold ones that he had been subjected to during his first weeks about the station.
All in all, it wasn't much worse than what he had access to down on the island. John even found that he was becoming attached to the whole set-up, though he still didn't know what to make of showering naked in the middle of an unlocked washroom.
Shaking himself from his thoughts, he grabbed a nearby razor and prepared to clean himself up for the day. Bringing the blade to his face, he was startled to see something that he was definitely not expecting to see. It couldn't possibly be there on his face, but there it was all the same.
A brown hair.
John bent closer to the mirror and peered long and hard at his complexion. He was definitely paler, which was understandable given how much time he spent in the dark. The station was lit, but artificially so and he had completely expected to turn a pale shade of white during his time on board.
But a brown hair! He had always, as long as he could remember, been a natural blond. And not even a dirty blond, but a pale blond with the classical blue eyes to match.
He poked a finger at the little hair, which protruded just slightly from the front of his hair line, and gave a long and profound sigh. It was bound to happen. He had heard stories about people's hair darkening from long periods without sunlight. Though he had spent a great deal of time inside when he had worked for NASA, he realized that he had still been under some form of harsh light. The lights up on Thunderbird Five were very gentle, and were built that way intentionally so as not to be hard on his eyes.
"I can't be going brown," he muttered, still convinced that the one hair was simply a fluke, and that it would go away and disappear if he let it. "I'm a natural blond. It's not going to happen." He had noticed over a period of years that his hair had been gradually darkening, but it had never been to the point that it had become completely brown. "I'll be going grey before I know it." It didn't matter to him that brown was quite obviously further from grey than blond was. Colour change was colour change.
Making up his mind, John set down his razor, picked up a pair of scissors, and expertly snipped off the offending lock. It was better to be safe than sorry, he thought happily, as the hair fell into the sink. A quick splash of water sent it spiralling into oblivion.
Convinced that he could continue getting ready without any more interruptions, John picked up the razor again and set to work.
Down on the island, Virgil Tracy was having his own difficulties. At his father's request, he and Brains had begun to draft out a basic diagram of the elevator system that was to be installed in the home's main study. Virgil had thought up the idea several months earlier but had not had time to implement it. Now that school was finished, however, he had all the time in the world to start work on the project. His graduation had allowed him to leave school earlier than his brothers, and he had the entire island to work with.
Leaning over a set of schematics, Virgil smiled absently and gazed out at the cavern around him. He still felt the same awe at the sight that he had the first time he had laid eyes on it. It was truly a marvel of engineering and science, and it almost blew his mind that his father and Brains had been able to create most of it on their own.
Now it was time for him to make a contribution to it all. After the initial excitement of joining the team had worn off, he had found himself feeling a bit apprehensive about the entire venture. After all, team already had two good pilots, one brilliant engineer, and a jack-of-all-trades scientist working for them. Where could he fit in with all of that?
But then, little by little, ideas had begun to pop into Virgil's brain, ideas that had nothing to do with engineering – though he was painstakingly working on the elevator system as requested. They were more to do with a field that he was very familiar with and a great deal more comfortable working with.
He looked back down at the schematics and realised with a start that he had been absently doodling on the paper again. None of the drawings actually covered the technical work – something he had done, much to his dismay, several times in at least a week – but they were there all the same.
Whether he admitted it or not, Virgil knew that he was an artist at heart, and no amount of engineering work would bang that out of him. True, engineers with greater imaginations often went further, but when it came down to designing small nitpicky electrical details . . . he had better things to do with his time.
Giving up with the elevator for the moment, Virgil reached into the drawer of the desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of drafting paper. The material was smooth, a bit smoother than he normally liked it, but it would suit his purposes. The pencil, a hard 4H used for schematics, was hardly a sketching pencil, but he had been drawing with it for weeks, hadn't he?
Slowly, so as not to rush the task and make a mistake, he quickly drafted out the outline of a human figure. His father, he remembered, had once complained that the uniforms were very drab, or not really even uniforms at all. He had distinctly remembered the man saying he wished that they could do something with the flight suits so that the team members stood out more on the rescue field.
Virgil snorted and briefly wondered what that would do to Scott. His brother was already chased around enough as it was by women – he had managed to almost snag Lady Penelope after all – even in the grey suit. What would something brighter and more noticeable do?
For a very short moment Virgil was tempted to design up something along the lines of a bright blue jump-suit, if only for the entertainment value of seeing Scott being run down by a riot of women. Shaking his head and deciding that he liked his brother too much to subject him to that, he began to work on some modifications to the already existing suits.
It was happening again. It had been exactly one day since the hair had first appeared, and now it seemed to have returned with company. Completely convinced that he had not fully awakened and was living in some sort of odd dream world, John pinched his arm hard and willed himself to wake up. All he received from the effort was a sharp and shooting pain down to his wrist.
"Ow!" He shook his arm out furiously and glared at the guilty party that reflected back at him in the glass. There, plainly visible on his scalp, were at least twenty brown hairs sticking out noticeably from amidst the – still darkening, he observed with a frown – blond ones. Twenty was too many to pluck out. He didn't have that much stamina to begin with, and he didn't feel like causing himself unnecessary pain. They were also buried too deep in his thick mat of hair for him to have any hope of snipping them out with the scissors.
Turning his head slightly so that he could see the back, John was annoyed to see even more brown hair present on the flat of his head, flecked in with the lighter bits like pepper on scrambled eggs.
"They have to go," John decided calmly. A quick look around the sink around, however, brought to mind a very large problem. He had no way to get rid of them without making a huge mess.
So, for the second time in a week, John Tracy shook his head, tried to convince himself that they would vanish, and continued to go about his morning activities.
The uniforms were coming along very nicely. It had only taken twenty minutes for Virgil to draw up the initial design, and – being pleased with the result – he had quickly moved to refining it so that it would be the most practical. Over the course of a few days since the idea had initially struck he had made several specific plans for the suits, until he had decided on one that really jumped out at him. Now, four days later, it was almost ready.
He took a long look at the paper that lay before him, taking in each and every detail and weighing them in his mind. For the most part the jump suits would remain the same, drab grey exterior and formless fit. To combat the dullness he had sketched a set of thick letters, which spelt out 'Thunderbirds', down the sides of the arms, each one coloured in with a tone that he had yet to pick. He had also added small shoulder decorations that, when turned sideways, were the shape of a T. The logo, which he had been unconsciously tossing about in his mind for a long time, was a simple circle with lines flying from the right side. The letters IR were imbedded in the center of it.
It was the next part that made him think. Inevitably, whether they wanted to or not, the members of International Rescue ended up giving out their first names at an accident scene. It had happened with Scott and Lady Penelope – though Virgil was quite sure that it had been more than work related in their case, based upon what he had heard after the fact – as well as with all the other members of the team. Wouldn't it make much more sense to have their first names printed directly on the uniforms?
For one thing, Virgil realised that willingly giving out a first name would likely deter people from pressing for more information. It would also save the time spent for introductions at the rescue scene.
That settled it. Leaning closer to the desk so that he could see, Virgil quickly sketched in a little nametag on the design of the uniform. As an afterthought he added another one that contained the full name of the operation, International Rescue.
There was still some work to be done, he knew, for there was the issue of the colours. But he would work that out later when had had more time.
This time they had truly gone too far. John could feel his mouth hanging open in shock, and he could see his own eyes – reflected in the mirror – growing wide with horror. Twenty, thirty, forty – there was a lot more than forty hairs on his head that were now a lovely chestnut brown.
A lot more. In fact, he didn't even have to bend in close to the mirror to see the massive disease that had spread across his scalp over a period of four days. Brown. The colour looked all right on Virgil, he thought moodily, but it just didn't suit him. It was so . . . bland, so very not blond that it bothered him even to look at it.
And it was more than his hair simply fading from lack of sunlight – he could see now, when he took the time to look, that the hairs had simply grown out brown and were only blond on the tips. It had obviously been happening for some time, but he had not noticed it until the hair was far enough grown that the brown became noticeable.
A part of John's brain yelled at him and told him that he was being far too picky for his own good. What did it matter what colour his hair was? No one, aside from his father and brothers, saw him at all. People couldn't tell over the radio what it looked like. And maybe it was just a chemical imbalance, something that Brains could clear up with a quick dose of some special medication of his.
"He didn't notice last night when he and Penelope called," John sighed, thinking about the talk that he'd had with his father, "but he'll sure notice this!" He wasn't even sure why he was embarrassed about the colouring. Most young men his age would be distraught if they were balding or turning grey, but for some reason the presence of a few brown hairs was enough to aggravate him. That thought had already crossed his mind, though, and he had discarded it just as quickly.
Irritation building in him, John tossed his razor down and flung open the door to the medicine cabinet. There was plenty of useful stuff on the shelves – creams, Band-Aids, dental floss . . . but nothing that he could use to fix his hair. A groan escaped his lips, and he angrily slammed the door closed. The mirrored door, built on a solid steel frame, collided hard with the rest of the cabinet and promptly flew back open. The action shook the case itself, and sent a clear bottle of liquid tumbling down from the very top shelf. It connected with the top of John's head with a loud smack.
"For the love of," John growled, rubbing his head with one hand and grabbing the bottle from the sink with the other. It was time to calm down and act like an adult, he thought in resignation; when he reached the point where he was physically hurting himself, enough was enough. He glanced briefly at the contents of the bottle, moved to replace it in its spot, then stopped and – very slowly – took a more careful look at the words written on the label.
Hydrogen Peroxide. It was the near-industrial strength cleaner that his father had brought with him on his first trip up to the station so that it could be used to sanitise the equipment. The strength of the solution had worn off the side, but John was sure that it had once read something along the lines of twenty percent.
He tossed the bottle around in his hand a few times, weighing the liquid inside as an idea slowly presented itself in his mind. It was an idea that seemed ridiculous at first thought, but it was an intriguing one none-the-less. It was too tempting for him to ignore, even amidst the warning sirens that were sounding from the more logical portion of his mind.
It couldn't hurt to try it . . . who would know?
He realized that he wasn't quite sure how to go about it, but he wasn't about to call one of his brothers to find out. No, he would manage it in the same way that any reputable scientist would manage one of their experiments.
He'd cross his fingers and hope that the mess didn't explode in his face.
Grinning widely in complete and absolute satisfaction, Virgil felt that nothing could go wrong that day. He had the designs for the uniforms finally finished, and – amidst his unofficial work – he had also managed to complete the schematics for the elevator shafts. Brains would have to check over the work of course, but they could begin work on them a soon as he ran the paper over to the other engineer.
"This'll work," he muttered happily, rolling up the papers carefully and securing them with an elastic band. He'd clean up the mess at the desk, take the schematics to Brains, then run and show the uniform design to his father.
The first thing that John did was head over to the computer terminal and pull up the encyclopaedia that was contained in the system's hard drive. Sitting himself down on his work chair, he put his feet up, pulled the keyboard towards him on the makeshift counter that he had built from extra steel, and began his search.
John wasn't entirely sure whether the database would have any information about what he wanted to do, but any little smidgen of data would be better then none at all. Screen after screen flashed before his eyes, compact rows of text interspersed with the occasional picture. A few times, just to still the boredom, he glanced over at the other screens that contained the rescue data, but found nothing more interesting than what he was finding in his search. Even bringing up hydrogen peroxide as a topic yielded little help, for the article went into detail about the substance's chemical features, but said little more than that it was sometimes used for hair colouring.
Deciding to try for something a little more ambiguous, John started a general search and was immediately rewarded with several articles and even some pictures on the topic. He scanned the articles quickly only to discover that they were mostly entertainment clippings from the earlier part of the century. Most of the pictures were also of that type, and his eyes were quickly drawn to an unidentified image of a rocker, his near-white hair swept back in a very . . . punk-rock gesture.
"Definitely not," John snorted, even more convinced that he was going to have to find some information about the process before he even attempted to dye his hair. There was no way that he was going to end up looking like the man on the screen. There was just no way. Perhaps it would be best if he abandoned the entire escapade . . . After all, the annoyance of the brown hairs had long ago left, to be replaced by a growing embarrassment at the entire incident, a feeling that John was more accustomed to feeling than vanity.
Still though . . . he had always wondered what he would look like with dyed hair. It was a curiosity that had plagued most of the Tracy boys at one point, given the diversity of hair colour within the immediate family itself.
He was still curious, he discovered, the more he thought on the matter. It was one of things that had to be done once in a lifetime. There was no harm in it at least, not like the last trendy thing he had done. That was a time that he could do well with forgetting, but unfortunately couldn't seem to - which was very surprising given that beer had been involved.
"I will be completely sober while I perform my next trick, ladies and gentlemen. Completely sober."
Ten more minutes passed before John was convinced that there was nothing to be found in the way of directions. He pushed the keyboard away from him, folded his hands under his chin, and tried to amass in his mind all that he knew about hair dye.
Peroxide had been a common method of dyeing hair for several years, mostly during the time that he was in his early childhood. The practice had eventually died somewhat, as dyes had become cheaper and better in quality and people had grown tired of having unnaturally coloured hair.
John had no intentions of looking like the man from the moon. A little peroxide, that was all that he needed, and it would fade his hair just enough to bring back its normal blond colour. Then he could officially say he had dyed his hair, could put the bottle away, and forget that he had ever done it.
He sighed and absently ran his hand through his hair, a gesture that he had done since childhood and had been unable to rid himself of even as he grew older.
"Peroxide." It had been the cheapest method available to colour hair, so the people that had used it must have been able to buy it somewhere, from either a store or a beauty salon. There was no way that they would have wasted money on very strong concentrations from the factory. And even if they or the hair salons had – and likely still did – use higher concentrations, it would probably be far too dangerous a risk to take.
No, it had to be off the shelf stuff. Three percent was the common mix used for medicinal purposes, he knew, but twenty percent wasn't that dangerous. It could burn skin, of course, but he had no intentions of leaving it on long enough to have that happen.
Pushing himself from the seat, John trotted off to the washroom in hopes that he would be able to solve his problem before any rescue calls came in for the day.
Having seen his brother, Virgil, dye the tips of his hair several times with a similar solution, John had a somewhat basic understanding of the principles of hair dye. So, somewhat carefully so as not to land the liquid in his eye or some other sensitive spot, he went about wiping the peroxide onto his locks. Quickly realising that that method was far from adequate, he brought in the chair from the command centre, reclined it back over the sink, and lay his head down onto the edge of the metal surface.
Taking the bottle in his hand, John dumped the remainder of the liquid into the stopped up sink, then slowly dipped his head back so that a portion of his hair was submerged. This can't be healthy, he thought momentarily, though it was obviously too late for him to turn back. He carefully reached down beside the chair, grabbed the towel that was placed beside his feet, and dipped its corner gently into the solution. Finally, after he was sure that everything was properly soaked that would be touching his hair, John wrung out the towel's edges – a difficult act when done over one's head – sat up from the sink, and wrapped the cloth about his head. A quick application of a plastic bag had the peroxide nicely sealed away from the rest of his body.
Standing up, John took a quick look in the mirror and had to stifle the laugh that desperately tried to escape his lips. He looked so ridiculous, like he had just come back from the beauty parlour. The snort finally left his mouth, and he turned around in the mirror so that he could see the entire mess that he had created. He didn't even have to see the hair to envision what it looked like.
"I really hope that no one calls." Another thought entered his mind, and he hurried off to the control room as fast as he could, dragging his chair along with him. With a grunt, John pulled open the hatch to the Thunderbird Five communications hub. He looked into the mess of fibre optics, quickly locating the wire that he was looking for. Taking the thin glass cable between his thumb and index finger, he gave a light tug. The cable came from its socket cleanly.
Sighing in relief, John suddenly felt very guilty about the entire episode. But, he reminded himself, International Rescue never really needed video from the satellite in order to function. Audio was enough to get the team through any rescue situation.
He didn't have to remind himself that he also could just cut the video in the first place and not worried about his hair. The organisation came first in his mind . . . and, given that the shock of the brown hairs had worn off, it was his own curiosity that was landing him in the situation to begin with.
"It doesn't matter," he decided, settling himself down at the control centre so that he could begin to do his job. "I can still receive calls. I just don't need to see Dad. He doesn't have to know."
He didn't bother to mention the fact that he was embarrassed about the entire ordeal. He knew his own behaviour well enough to discern that his embarrassment was likely well founded. It only reconfirmed in his mind why he wasn't contacting his father so that someone else could monitor the systems until he was finished.
Deep down, John knew that he was acting very stupid.
But what can happen in the next hour? It won't take that long to finish this up. They'll never have to know.
That was, of course, assuming that the bleach worked as planned.
"These uniforms are excellent," Jeff Tracy said, giving his middle son an appreciative smile. "They're distinctive enough that we'll be recognized, yet not so bright that they'll attract undue attention."
Virgil grinned back in response. "I thought it might work. You kept saying how the other ones were annoying you, so I thought I'd try and figure something out." He pointed at the gloves that were drawn beside the design. "I was thinking that we could have a different coloured uniform for every ship, so that people on the ground would know who was flying what. And the gloves could have a number on them or something like that."
Nodding, Jeff bit his bottom lip in contemplation. "I like that idea too, but what colours were you thinking of?"
"Blue for One," Virgil responded immediately, "green for Two and red for Three. Four could be yellow, obviously . . ."
Jeff saw where his son was going with his idea, for all of the ships had some form of colour co-ordination about them that could be matched with the uniforms. But there was a problem with Thunderbird Five, for it had no distinct colour pattern about it.
"I was thinking of black," Virgil finally offered, seeming none too pleased about the idea. "But it's such a dark colour. I was thinking of brighter ones."
"John's position is so important," Jeff added, drawing a nod from the younger man. "I'd almost like to do something that would make that obvious."
"White?"
"Too much like the uniform itself."
"Maybe not a primary, then," Virgil muttered, his eyes looking into the distance as he thought the problem through. "Gold?"
"Gold." Jeff immediately liked the idea, as gold was a colour normally associated with victory and value. "I think he'd like that. Can you get a gold colour in the material, though?"
Virgil's face fell with Jeff's words. "Probably not, unless it's reflective. It'll probably end up looking brown."
"We could tell him that the intent was to make it gold. I'm sure he'd understand the gesture."
"Probably." Virgil snorted. "Besides, I don't think he really has anything against brown as a colour."
"No." Pleased that Virgil had solved the problem, Jeff gave his son an affectionate slap on the shoulder. "Why don't you and Brains get to work on that immediately?"
The younger man opened his mouth to respond, only to be drowned out by the sudden blaring of the alert siren.
Dropping the paper he was holding onto the desk, Jeff sat himself down in front of his computer console and immediately keyed in the password. The station beeped in confirmation, re-routing computer access to the International Rescue databases and giving him immediate access to the Thunderbird Five mainframe if he needed it.
"What is it?" Virgil had come up behind Jeff to look over his shoulder.
"Forest fire," he replied, quickly bringing up the communications link with Five. "Somewhere in western Canada by the looks of it. Must be the dry season." Suddenly worried, Jeff frowned when the computer displayed the words 'Video Access Denied' on the monitor. "What the hell? What happened to the video plug in?"
"Maybe there's a loose wire at our end," Virgil offered, though he didn't sound completely convinced. "I could get Brains to check."
Jeff held up a hand and shook his head. "Just hold on." The video was out, but that didn't mean that audio was gone as well. "John, are you there?"
The speakers on the desk crackled for a second, then John's voice came through as clearly as any other day. "Sure am, Dad."
"I can't see you," Jeff continued, frowning even further when the computer informed him that it couldn't locate the reason for the malfunction. "Can you see us?"
"Yeah," the calm voice replied, "it must be an error at my end. Give me a second."
In what seemed like an oddly short amount of time, the noise of John sifting through the communications cables came through over the radio. Jeff let out a long breath and waited patiently as the noises continued.
"John?"
"There's a broken wire," John finally replied at length. There was something suspicious about his voice, Jeff thought, almost as if he were trying to fake the worried tone that he spoke in. John had always been a horrible liar even as a child. Jeff could clearly remember with little difficulty almost hundreds of moments when the boy had ratted on himself when he had acted out of line. It just wasn't in his nature to not tell the truth.
"How did it break?" That was another unanswered question that nagged at Jeff's mind. The wires were supposed to be sealed away under the console, where nothing could touch them that would possibly have enough force to break them. "Is there a static build-up in the console box?"
"Uh, I don't know," was the quick reply, "but I think I can fix it." There was a pause. "Uh, yeah Dad, I can fix it. Later. After the rescue sometime. When I have time."
Jeff looked back at Virgil and the two of them traded curious and concerned glances. It was now quite obvious to them both that John was acting strangely, and Jeff was almost certain that his second eldest son was hiding something from him.
"But you guys had better get going." John's voice was suddenly business like. "The fire's moving in pretty fast, and it looks like you're going to need Two to pull some people out."
Business came first, Jeff thought as he and Virgil prepared to call the others, but afterwards he was going to have a long talk with his son and find out what was going on up on the space station.
"Thank-you, John. We're on our way."
Thankfully, the fire was not a demanding one, and John was not held to the computer terminal for the entire time. In between giving orders to his father and brothers he had plenty of moments to trot back to the washroom to check his hair. From what he could see under the towel, the hair did indeed appear to be turning a lighter colour. He had no idea how long to leave it on, but he suspected that it would need at least an hour for it fully work. It had only been half that time, so he still had at least forty-five minutes – to include the time needed to shower the peroxide out – to waste.
He felt more than horrible about lying to his own father about the incident, but he had not been able to bring himself to tell the older Tracy what was going own. The longer that John sat with his head in the towel, the more he began to realize what a bad idea it had been in the first place. The embarrassment grew exponentially every time one of his family called in over the radio asking for details or advice about the weather conditions.
Another beep of the transmitter shook John from his contemplation. Reaching a hand over to flip the switch, he replied, "John here."
The strong voice of his father came through the speakers. "John, we're about finished here, but Scott and Virgil are going to run One and Two back over the fire area and see if they can douse the blaze with the fire retardant."
"Is that safe?"
"It's biodegradable," Jeff assured him, "so it should be all right. We need you to give second by second heat readings to us, though, to make sure that we don't miss any spots. We don't have the manpower to monitor the readings at the same time as flying. I'm busy trying to deal with some injured folk here in the cargo bay, or I'd do it myself."
That was definitely not good, John thought in dismay. "Uh, Dad . . ." he trailed off when he realized that he had no excuse to get out of it. Nothing was more important than securing the rescue area, and insuring the safety of those who were injured. His own personal plans came in second. "Sure thing."
The first three passes over the area went as planned. John kept a close eye on the radiation index and warned Scott whenever Virgil missed a hot spot on the ground. Methodically, patch by patch, they worked their way across the fire-stricken region, slowly pushing the blaze back to a small but flaming ring of trees only a few hectares across.
It was at that moment, as he was busy reading data to Scott, that John suddenly noticed the itch that was creeping its way onto his scalp. It began as nothing more than an annoyance, but as it grew worse and worse John realized what was going on. He tried to shove it to the back of his mind, knowing how important the data was, but it eventually grew so bad that he could ignore it no longer for fear of burning his scalp.
"Chemical burns," he muttered, then shaking his head in dismay when he realized that he had actually said it out loud.
"Huh?" Scott's voice came over the receiver. "No, it was fire burns John. Remember? Dad's treating the people in the Thunderbird Two bay."
The pain was becoming more than an annoyance. He tried to concentrate on the data points, but the computer-generated images began to swim and jump in his vision. "Scott, is there burn cream up here?"
"John, what are you talking about? I need that data point!"
There was cream, he remembered, in the cabinet above the sink. But he had to stay and give the data points – there was no way that he was going to leave his position. He couldn't just abandon his job in the middle of a rescue situation. It would be a serious breach of protocol, an absolute betrayal of his post. Besides, the bleach couldn't be finished yet - it couldn't have worked so fast.
A sudden and searing pain across his skull convinced him otherwise. "Scott!" He yelped, "I'm programming Five to give you the data points automatically!"
"John, where are you-"
"I'll be right back!" The words had barely left his mouth when John, teeth clenched in pain and anger, jumped from his chair, ran as fast as he could to the washroom, tore the towel and bag from his head, and jumped in the shower.
Ignoring the fact that he still wore all of his clothing, John turned the shower onto full blast, grabbed a clean towel from the rack outside the water-contained area, and tried desperately to wash the peroxide from his hair. The basic solution ran down his scalp and onto his face, and even in its diluted form it stung and burned at all the points on his skin where he had nicked himself shaving. He ignored those sensations, instead focusing on eliminating the slowly diminishing throb from the top of his head. Gradually, bit by bit, the burning sensation turned to a sting, then to an itch, and finally to an irritated sensation that he knew would likely not go away for several days at least.
John flipped the water off, threw the towel down at his feet, then looked down at himself and took in all that he had done. He was soaking wet in the only clean uniform that he had left up on the station. His head had likely suffered first degree burns from the diluted base. Worst of all, he was feeling foolish enough to sink down onto the floor in an attempt to follow the water and peroxide down the shower drain.
"I am such an idiot," John moaned, trying to figure out what the heck he was going to do. He had to get back to the console as soon as possible, but he had no intentions of dripping water all over the command centre and the Thunderbird Five mainframe. The clothes had to go.
As quick as he could, John began to strip out of his uniform, first tearing off the jump suit – which was clinging uncomfortably to his skin – and then the sleeveless shirt that he wore under the suit. Finally, standing stark naked save for his boxers, John grabbed a second towel and tied it around his waist. There was no way that he was walking around naked, even if no one could see him and there was no chance of his father ever fixing the video link from the ground.
Remembering his hair – the cause of the entire episode – John grabbed the final towel from the rack and set to drying his hair. It felt suspiciously dry and stiff in his hands, and he wondered how much damage he had done to it. Virgil had always complained about how hair dye destroyed a person's locks, and John didn't doubt that he had done some serious damage to his own mop.
Walking over to the sink, his hair carefully done up in a turban, John opened the cabinet and grabbed a long thin bottle of burn ointment. A smile tugged at his lips, as he remembered the time that Gordon had nearly given himself serious burns on the beach and had subsequently borrowed John's cream to soothe the stinging sensation.
He was thankful that his father had insisted on sending the cream up to the station, in the rare instance that he might burn himself in some electrical explosion or accident.
"Bet he never thought of this," John sighed in resignation. He was past the point of being embarrassed and fully prepared to begin laughing at his own stupidity at any moment. "Why I do these things to myself . . ." Reaching up to pull off the towel, he found that he could not bring himself to actually remove the cloth. A part of him was terrified to see what his scalp looked like – the other part of him was sure that he had gone bald from the experience.
"Strength, tenacity," he muttered, trying to instil in himself some form of courage. "Bravery!" With a flourish, he whipped the towel from his head, flung it in the direction of the shower, and stared at his own face in the mirror.
A sudden and glaring memory slammed back into John's mind; the image of the rock star, his hair nearly white from dye, combed back in a very rock-star like gesture.
The exact same image greeted him from the mirror. Stark platinum locks nearly glowed in the soft lights of the station, sticking up and out at odd angles, driven stiff from the peroxide treatment that had apparently been applied for more than the required duration.
Unable to form words in his mind for the shock, John simply stared at his own shocked expression in the mirror, gazing at the shining mop on his head that was such a completely rock-star like colour.
"I can't believe this," he finally moaned, the image in the mirror blinking its eyes and furrowing its brows in an exact replication of his its real life counterpart. He close one eye, hoping that the colour might appear to be less dramatic that way, only to discover that it was still there in all of its peroxide glory. "Why did I ever want to do this?"
John's mouth opened and closed several more times, but he could not find anything else to say that adequately described the situation. Shock was a severe understatement. Denial was a severe understatement. In fact, everything in the room at the moment was a severe understatement save for the hair itself! It eventually dawned upon him that there was nothing that he could do save, except to apply the cream to his scalp, comb out the hair as best as he could, and go back to his position at the command centre.
Numbly, the once again blond astronomer squeezed the entire tube of cream onto his hand, rubbed it up a bit, and ran his hands along the base of his hair, trying hard to get more of the medication on the skin rather than the hair. The burn didn't seem to be too bad, given that his hair wasn't falling out, and he hoped that he hadn't done any permanent damage to his skin or the follicles. The last thing that he wanted to do was go bald. He was way too young to even dream of going bald.
"Don't even start," John groaned at himself, "that's what got you in trouble the first time." It wasn't as if he needed the reminder, but speaking out loud to himself made him feel as though he weren't directly related to the person responsible for the atrocity. He should have listened to the part of his mind that spoke sense, the part that was now yelling 'I told you so' at the top of its lungs.
The cream was already at work, for John could feel the pain slowly fading away from his head to be replaced by a cold sensation that was a characteristic of Brains' sunburn cream. He was thankful that the engineer had managed to develop something so potent in the first place, and he wondered if Brains had ever envisioned it being used for something as ridiculous as hair dye burns.
John took another look in the mirror, and a snort of amusement finally escaped his lips. The feeling was hard to subdue, and soon he was laughing uncontrollably at the suave and utterly ridiculous looking man in the glass. He couldn't believe that he had done that to himself. It seemed completely and utterly unfathomable, yet there he was, platinum locks and all, sniggering up a riot in front of the washroom sink.
"I'd better go help Scott," he finally sighed to the image in the mirror, raising a weary hand in a rude one fingered salute. He was beyond acting dignified, and considering that with his new hair he looked a great deal like a young punk . . . "I will deal with you later."
No sooner did John get back to the command center, having donned a dirty and unwashed uniform, then he realized how much of a mistake he had really made. The irritated voices of Scott and Virgil chirped over and over from the comm system, demanding to know why he had left the station.
"John, are you all right? What are you doing up there?"
"It's no good, Virgil. He must be out of the room."
Regret immediately panging in his heart, John moved to the station and prepared to re-initiate communications with the ships. His finger stopped half an inch above the transmitter switch, a part of him demanding that he first make full amends with his brothers in the easiest manner possible.
He glanced briefly at the photograph of his mother that he kept on the workstation, wondering what she thought of her son's obvious stupidity. "What d'you think, Mom? Think they'll flip?" The answer was, of course, highly rhetorical. But any reason to delay the coming revelation was a welcome distraction for the astronomer.
"And so he walked forward to his doom." With a long and drawn out sigh, John bent down and looked inside the communications box, whose panel still rested askew on the ground. He poked his head in, along with a spare hand, and fished around for the cable. Somehow or other it had fallen to the very bottom of the compartment, lost amongst a hundred other cords that were exactly the same colour and composition.
Growing more frustrated with every swipe, he muttered, "Come on you sucker, where are you?" and gave one final swat with his hand. The fallacy of his movement was immediately obvious in the sharp and absolutely distinct snap of a fibre optic wire. John's eyes went wide at the noise, and he immediately drew his hand out of the case for fear of breaking something else. The irritation that had been building in his mind, more frustration at himself than at the counsel, immediately vanished and was replaced with an impending feeling of shock.
"Oh," he moaned, spying the plug-in that had had its cord broken. "This is not fair."
He didn't say out loud that he had brought the entire episode on himself. Over the years John had had enough experience with emotional outbreaks to know what results they generally had, and he was quite aware that his own temper and curiosity had run away from him and were now causing him a great deal of grief.
Over the radio, Scott and Virgil continued to call for Thunderbird Five and its space monitor.
All of the emotions in John's mind slowly drained, to be replaced with a growing tiredness that had him wondering why he had bothered to crawl out of bed that morning. Slapping his arms over the edge of the console, he dragged himself to a kneeling position, just high enough that he could stare into the glittering eyes of Lucy Tracy.
It didn't take much imagination to take her expression and fit it to one of the many memories that John had of her. He could see her eyebrows narrowing in amusement, the corner of her lip turning up as she secretly laughed at her children's antics.
"I've never learned, have I?" The picture smiled back at him. "You'd have thought I would've had enough the day that I went to that stupid high school party." John let his head fall onto the desk. A thought suddenly dawned on him, sending another sigh and another wave of guilt through his body.
It wouldn't be long before Thunderbird Three was docking at the station, and his family rushed in to see if he were okay. At that point he'd have a rather long and embarrassing story to tell them, one that had started with a few strands of brown hair.
"Next time," John decided with a touch of resignation in his voice, "I'll just shave my head and save the trouble. End of story."
Jeff Tracy hardly took notice of the lift-off from Tracy Island, leaving the task of monitoring the lift-off to Scott and Virgil, both of which had taken the ship on at least one trip up to Thunderbird Five. The older man's mind was already up in space, walking around the dimly lit corridors of the space station in search of his son. He had been listening to the transmissions when John had left, and had not been able to remove from his mind a feeling of fear for his son. He had suspected that something had been amiss when John had first called down to the island, and he hoped that nothing serious had happened. John had always had a tendency of understating things and was the type of person to try and stop an out of control explosion with his bare hands instead of calling for help.
Only, with the audio also down, there was no way for him to call. That bothered Jeff, for there was no explanation at all for the sudden disappearance of the audio channel. The computer had simply declared 'Audio Access Denied' as it had with the video connection and had ceased to transmit any more data of that type. What was funny was how computer access was not hindered, for Jeff had easily been able to tap into the Thunderbird Five mainframe.
There was nothing wrong with the station according to the computers, save for the sudden and complete cessation of all vital communications. From a distance, though Thunderbird Three was still five minutes away, it appeared to be all in one piece. The sensors showed the hull to be at one hundred percent, and there was no sign of any debris floating around the main ring.
What are you doing up there? Jeff thought as the worry in his chest grew.
"We're approaching Thunderbird Five." Scott's steady words interrupted his father's thoughts. "All systems appear to be green. Docking systems are responding, lock on in two minutes."
"'Bout time," Virgil sighed from the other control console. "I don't care if we have artificial gravity. I'm just not all for this hanging around a hundred miles above the Earth stuff."
"Me neither," Scott admitted, much to Jeff's amusement for he had always thought his son to be the type to embrace any type of thrill ride. "I'd rather be in a plane somewhere on the planet. At least there you can see stuff."
"It's so black up here," Virgil agreed, turning his head upward so that he could see out of the main view port.
Jeff smiled, finding a sole bit of humour in his son's words. For all of their bravery and tenacity, neither of them could truly appreciate what Jeff and John both loved. The stars, though brighter than at any moment on Earth, would be no more than twinkling points of light to the uninitiated eye. Though Jeff was an engineer by trade as well as a trained pilot through the astronaut corps, he too had always had a fascination with the constellations since his earliest years. More than anything, the words were a welcome distraction from the two minutes of wait until the docking began.
"You boys wouldn't understand," he finally put it, much to the dismay of his sons.
"What's there to get? It's black and empty, to put it bluntly." Virgil shook his head. "When I painted John that picture, it had so much colour and life to it. I don't see that when I look out the window right now. I mean, it's there somewhere, but it's not easy to find."
"It's there for some of us," Jeff replied, trying to put into words what he felt. "Sometimes the most amazing things in the world can't be seen, Virgil. You have to be patient, use more than your eyes to discover what's out there. It's more than just laying paint to paper."
Virgil thought for a moment, then nodded slowly, a look of understanding coming to his eyes. "You have to use your imagination or a more indirect method."
"It's hard to reproduce the exact image that an artist sees in his mind." Jeff smiled, knowing Virgil would understand the analogy. "Or maybe a piece of music. To those who don't understand it, it's just a paper with a bunch of black dots on it. But to the pianist, it's something wondrous that he can share with others."
Those words obviously hit home with both Virgil and Scott, for they both nodded and took another glance at the window. "But why are the stars so bright in pictures?" Scott finally asked in exasperation.
Snorting in amusement, Virgil turned to give his brother an incredulous expression. "Have you ever heard of astral photography?"
Scott shook his head, perplexed.
"That's amazing. I thought you knew everything."
Covering up the laugh that was trying to escape his mouth, Jeff gave Virgil a stern look and commented, "Virgil, Scott doesn't know everything." He didn't bother to mention that Scott had a tendency to act like he knew everything, as it wasn't in his place as a parent to make a comment like that. He'd let the other boys heckle Scott for him.
"Of course not," Virgil snorted, his tone teasing but lacking no degree of warmth. "Why would I ever have had that idea?"
Scott had the decency to turn a nice shade of red. "I never took astronomy."
"Don't worry," Virgil finished, "I'm sure if you had that you would have had excellent grades in it too."
"Docking sequence initiation in ten seconds," chimed the computer.
"This is it, boys," Jeff snapped, suddenly all business and wanting none of the idle chit-chat that had permeated the cockpit during the wait. "How are systems?"
"Responding," Virgil said, keeping his eyes on the read-outs. "Automatic docking is taking control." The ship hummed as the engines cued up on their own, and the computer onboard the space station guided the rocket in for a computer controlled lock-on. "Lock-on in five, four, three, two, one."
A large shudder went through Thunderbird Three as the massive grappling arm reached out from its side and took hold of the Thunderbird Five airlock. The lunge shook Jeff in his seat, but years of space experience allowed him a degree of calmness that was rarely found in any man. He sat, staring forward in complete and absolute concentration, listening to the sounds of the docking, checking in his mind that the procedure was happening correctly.
Finally satisfied when the computer added, "Docking complete", Jeff unstrapped himself and rushed to the back of the ship where the spacesuits were kept. Scott and Virgil followed closely behind him, their footsteps echoing on the metal panels of the interior gangway. The older man quickly cued the airlock sequence once they all stood in the room, and the hatch closed with a solid thud. "Computer says there's air," Virgil said, but he took an oxygen mask all the same. "Don't know what to expect."
"Expect the worst," Jeff answered quietly, taking his own mask and passing a third one to Scott. "He could be fine, he could be-" The words caught in Jeff's throat, and he was unable to say them.
The young men understood, however, and Virgil moved to the control panel of the airlock. "Initiating airlock sequence." For a moment there was only silence. Then a hiss reverberated through the room as air pressure equalised between the two ships, and the door linking Thunderbird Three and Five slowly lifted open.
The three men stepped into the entrance corridor to the space station, gazing around at the bland steel walls that were shadowed with dull orange lighting. The corridor was absolutely still, and no noise but the sound of the breathing masks echoed against the walls. The harder that Jeff listened, however, the more subtle noises he could hear.
Alerted to the presence of an atmosphere, the older Tracy slowly slipped off his oxygen mask and let it hang down onto his chest. "I think we're okay, boys." He took one last glance about the hatchway, then slowly began to make his way down the corridor.
Steel girder after steel girder passed overhead, as the trio slowly left the docking platform and entered into the main habitation complex. The corridor blossomed out into a set of left and right passageways, both part of a large ring that encircled the interior living quarters. The outer ring contained both the command centre and most of the scientific equipment. The inner sphere, shielded with strong lead based walls and a type of magnetic field, were meant to not only be a living area, but also a place of sanctuary in the case of a bad solar storm or other spatial disaster.
"What happened here?" Jeff muttered as the three finally entered the command center. He looked about the room, taking in the computer consoles and monitors, until his gaze finally fell on an open side port located directly next to the main windows. The man quickly made his way to the hatch and knelt down beside the hastily removed metal door. "He must have tried to fix it . . ." His fingers found a broken fibre optic cable, his mind immediately making the connection. "Audio cable is out. No wonder he couldn't call."
"What the hell?" Looking over Jeff's shoulder, Virgil's eyes were narrowed in what appeared to be dismay. "That cable's been snapped."
The thought had definitely crossed Jeff's mind, but he had dismissed it initially because it made very little sense. There was no reason for John to have broken the cable himself, unless it had been an accident. "Maybe he snapped it while trying to fix the video output."
Wordlessly, Virgil reached over Jeff's shoulder into the console and withdrew in his fingers another cable. He held it in front of his father's face and turned it over several times as if to make a point. Any of the other Tracy children likely would have made a snappy remark about the entire incident. Virgil, however, simply shrugged and plugged the cable back into the socket where it had once rested.
Jeff shook his head, wondering for the millionth time that day what the hell was going on with his second eldest son. "It was unplugged. He unplugged it."
"It won't take long to fix the other one," said Virgil calmly. "He probably could have done it in his sleep if he actually had the cables up here."
"I'd forgotten about that. Why didn't he remind me?"
Before Virgil could even respond to the comment, Scott came barrelling into the room at full speed, panic written across his face. "Fire!" He gasped, resting a hand on his knee to give himself balance. "There's smoke down in the habitation sphere!"
Full-fledged fear rose in Jeff's chest, and he jumped up from his kneeling position and moved to join Scott where he stood. "Is it bad?"
"I don't know," the young man sighed, shaking his head in dismay. "I just saw it and ran. Is there a fire extinguisher around here?"
He needn't have asked, for Virgil had already located the one kept beside the command console and was now holding it firmly in his hands. "Sure is. Lead the way."
As the three anxiously – and more quickly than Jeff would have preferred – made their way once again down the curving corridors of the space station, a strange and oddly familiar sensation began to tickle Jeff's nose. He turned his head up slightly, gave a long sniff, then turned to Virgil in confusion. "Do you smell something?"
"Other than smoke?" Virgil shrugged, and he too took a long sniff. His nose crinkled up, and he gave his father a confused look. "It smells like toast!" He sniffed again, then shook his head, his eyes suddenly growing wide. "Geeze, I know I've smelled that before. Where was it?"
"John!" Scott shouted from up front, having finally arrived at the doorway to the makeshift kitchen room. Jeff and Virgil hurried up behind him and peered over the young man's broad shoulders into a billowing cloud of smoke. Virgil held the fire extinguisher at the ready, just in case there was a need to stifle any sort of blaze.
There was no need, Jeff saw immediately, for there, standing in front of the grill was John Tracy, a cooking apron wrapped about his waist and a smoking plate of grilled cheese sandwiches in his hands. The young man waved a hand in front of his face to clear the air, then looked over at his family with watering blue eyes. His expression was a mixture of emotions; on one side he was obviously thrilled to see his family in the flesh. But the guilty smile that spread across his lips gave away any charade that he might have been trying to uphold.
"I promised you a while back that I'd have lunch for you sometime," John finally said sheepishly. "Sorry about the smoke, I think I got a little too much oil in the pan."
"You always did at home," Virgil replied in a vaguely shocked tone. "Did we ever eat those things when they weren't as black and hard as dog crud?"
Jeff paid little attention to the entire exchange, for his eyes had been drawn to an oddly bright and glowing substance that seemed to be on top of John's head. He suddenly realised with a start that it was the young man's hair, for it had miraculously become an incredible platinum colour overnight. What was more ridiculous than anything was that John looked amazingly similar to a singer that Jeff had grown up with during his teenage years.
"John, what happened?" Jeff finally spit out, bringing all other conversation to a halt. The mental connection between the hair and the communications blackout was beginning to fall into place, but he wanted to hear John himself speak the words. From the corner of his eye, Jeff could see Virgil and Scott also noticing the white locks, their expressions turning to incredulity and shock.
The young man fidgeted on his feet uncomfortably, and he absently ran his hand through the mop on his head. His fingers grabbed at a few locks near the front, pinching at them as if testing their integrity. Words tried to escape from his mouth, but he ended up shrugging his shoulders in defeat.
"You look like Billy Idol," Virgil finally managed dryly, shaking his head at his brother's antics. "D'you realize that?"
"Who?" The astronomer's voice was laced with obvious bewilderment.
"He's a singer from the late twentieth century," Jeff added in, mildly impressed despite everything else that Virgil knew who the man was. "Punk rock star. Liked to keep his hair a nice peroxide blond. Like that."
"You didn't dye it, did you? On purpose?" Scott asked suddenly.
The words were not even fully out of his mouth before everyone present knew the answer, based upon the slowly growing line of red that was crossing across John's cheeks. "It's only dyeing if you colour it after," he responded in a somewhat unsure tone, "right?"
Virgil snorted. "What'd you use?"
"Peroxide," John confirmed quietly, the red colour spreading past his cheeks so that it took in his ears.
"Too much by the looks of it." Scott grinned wickedly.
That comment seemed to touch a sensitive spot with the astronomer, for John's eyebrows jumped slightly and he gave Scott an irritated look. "If someone could have found his own damn temperature readings, it wouldn't have turned out this bright."
That explained much, Jeff though wryly. Looking between his three children, all of who seemed to be in varying emotional states, the older man decided that it would be a good time to sit down and eat. "John, why don't we discuss this over some lunch?"
John shrugged at first, then finally sighed and nodded. "Let me find the table. I know it's here somewhere."
"I still can't believe that he did that," Scott Tracy laughed as he helped his father to unload the last set of containers from Thunderbird Three. The two men, with the help of Virgil and John, had been busy emptying out the cargo hold since they had finished eating. There were still plenty of supplies left to bring up to the station, containing everything from basic necessities to new equipment, and Scott grinned at the thought that John would have little free time in the coming weeks. "It explains much, especially why he was so irritable with the entire Penelope episode. At least he won't be bored anytime soon with all of this stuff here."
From the other side of a crate, Jeff chuckled back and shook his head. "I can't believe that he did that either. He's never ever struck me as the type of person who'd do something spontaneous like that."
You weren't at John's one and only high school party, Scott snickered quietly to himself. He had grown up with John, in many ways partially raised his younger brother, and he had witnessed most of the times that John had given in to a pet peeve or something else that was bothering him. There was the time that he had fallen for Sandra, but there were also more serious moments such as when he had got up and quit NASA on a whim. Scott knew that it had been more than just a whim, but to the rest of the world it had seemed very quick and abrupt.
"He's probably been curious about it for a while," Scott said loudly so that his father could hear him. Without even checking with one another, the pair dropped the crate, walked back to the cargo hold, and began to heave another one into the docking corridor. "He's like that. He'll think about something and stew over it until it really bothers him, then he'll actually do something about that."
"I suppose that's true." The crate landed on the floor with a thud. "He has done that before, hasn't he?"
"Only by the time that he's stewed it over," Scott continued, "he's not thinking logically anymore. Sometimes it lands him in trouble. He's lucky that it didn't with NASA. But it probably was tempting - the hair, I mean. Think about it. Who hasn't wanted to dye their hair? You can't tell me that John's never wanted to do that before."
"I don't care about that. Hair can grow out," Jeff replied briskly, looking down at the crate at his feet. "I'm just thankful that he didn't burn his scalp."
"That the last of 'em?" Virgil's voice echoed from down the hallway. "You guys done?"
"Looks that way," Scott called back, though in truth he wanted to finish his conversation with his father. "Just give us a few minutes to check that we have everything."
"FAB."
Scott stopped what he was doing and directed a confused look down the hallway in Virgil's direction. He had heard a great deal of call signs while working with the air force, but he had never ever heard that combination of letters before. "Eff eh bee? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It's our new call sign. Gordon came up with it."
Scott looked to his father, only to be rewarded with a second confused look. "Virgil, what does it mean?"
"Nothing, really. But we both thought that Lady Penelope sounded so suave when she said it over the phone."
"She phoned! When?"
Unable to hold a grin off his face, Virgil pretended to ignore his brother's exclamation. "Everything was fabulous, Scott. It was uncanny. So, Gordon and I talked, and we just had to add a little bit of 'fab' to this poor dreary organization. It gives us a degree of sophistication. At least, that was what we thought."
"She'll kill you if she hears you mocking her."
"Sure, Scott. She loves us, thinks we're fabulous!"
Suddenly not even wanting to know when they had been talking to Penelope over the phone – and banishing from his mind the thought of his mischievous brother Gordon speaking to the woman that he liked - Scott simply laughed and shook his head. "So, are you finished up with the comm system?"
"Just about. John's finishing up the patching, and when he's done I think I'm going to bolt that door securely shut."
Scott turned back to Jeff, was about to begin a plea bargain on behalf of John, only to see his father already smiling and shaking his head.
"Scott, I know what you're going to say, and I think I'm thinking the same thing."
"He's learned his lesson?"
"For the next few months he's going to look like a punk rock star wannabe," Jeff smiled with the faintest trace of teeth. "I think that's more than enough to deter him from shirking off his job ever again."
"I think that's more than enough to convince him never to get out of bed again," Scott smirked, agreeing completely with his father on the matter. Taking a deep breath, Scott looked around and nodded in satisfaction. "I think we're done here."
"Let's say our farewells and head back down then," the older man agreed. "Brains said satellites are showing a bit of a rain shower heading our way, and I don't want to have to fly Three back home in a storm."
"Dad, I think we've already weathered most of it." The young man raised an eyebrow in amusement. "Don't you?"
Nodding, Jeff shrugged and replied, "I guess things are FAB."
"Oh come on Dad, not you too!"
It had a very nice ring to it, though. Scott hated to admit it, but Gordon had been right. There was something fun about spitting out three letters of British nonsense. He never planned on letting Penelope hear it, of course, but that was beside the point.
"Besides, we don't have to tell Penelope." The older man's mischievous grin would have looked more in place on Gordon's face. "She would have both of our heads."
Night was falling down on the planet. The sun, moving behind the gently curved line of the horizon, was spreading morning on the far side of the world. The south pacific, however, fell into a deep darkness that spread like a blanket across the rolling waters of the ocean. All features disappeared, lost in the black night. Clouds and rainstorms went unseen from far above.
Smiling contentedly at the sight, John Tracy brought the cup of tea that he was holding to his lips and took a long drink of the soothing liquid. It was funny, when he thought about how his life had changed in the past four months. He had lost a job, gained a dream, lost a parent, gained a life, and seen enough of what lay inside his own soul to decide that he wasn't quite a lost cause after all. The first few weeks had been hard, but he had discovered a strength that he had not been expecting – and yet, some part of him had expected it all along.
John Tracy, he thought humorously, you are a stubborn man. Perhaps not quite a man yet, he decided, but his birthday was in three months, and he considered twenty-one a large enough age to garner the title. Yet another part of him insisted that he had earned the title months ago, when he had spent a long morning alone with his mind, finding inside of himself the courage and the tenacity there that had been buried after nearly ten long years of suffering.
He turned his head slightly, and glanced over at the photograph of his mother, lovingly placed right next to the globe of the Earth that he kept at the command console. The woman's eyes were always smiling. She never seemed to wear a frown, though sometimes John didn't have to try hard to imagine the smile becoming a sigh of amusement.
"Long day, huh?" He smiled himself and leaned back in his chair, turning his eyes once again to the gorgeous panorama of stars that lay just past the window. The Earth was truly beautiful, he thought, even more so above than down on the planet. He truly was enjoying his time aboard the station, more so than he had ever dreamed possible.
His mind turned briefly to his father's parting words before the man had returned back down to the planet. He had offered to send someone up to Thunderbird Five every second month, so that John could be able to spend more time with his family back on the island. John had thought about it for a few seconds at most, then had politely declined the offer. There was too much that he loved about the station for him to even want to leave. Sure, it was nice to get back out in the sun, to see the palm trees and the surf and have a swim in the pool.
But it wasn't . . .
It wasn't home. Home was up in space, on the station, where he was surrounded by the stars and was allowed to do something that he truly loved, day after day, month after month-
Year after year, perhaps, if things went well.
Suddenly remembering something, John set the cup down on the console with a chink, and went off to hunt for a certain package that had been left in the docking room. Virgil had told him to wait a while to open it, and while John was obviously suspicious of his brothers' history of pranks, he was sure that Virgil's tone had been sincere enough to suggest an actual gift.
The package was not hard to find. Wrapped in brown packing paper, the lumpy present was kicked to one of the corners of the square room. John collected it happily in his arms, and ran it back to the command centre so he could open it where there was more light.
The paper came off easily, and from the wrapping he pulled forth a wrinkled grey jump-suit that looked very similar to the one that he was wearing, save for some very noticeable differences. The decorative patterns on the outfit suggested an actual uniform, and when John turned over a sleeve and saw the word 'Thunderbirds' written on the side, he couldn't hold back a grin from his face. A pair of gloves was stuck in the sleeves, bearing the number five on both tops.
It was the nametag that caught John's eye, stitched in a simple font on the upper left breast of the outfit. It looked so official, more than anything he had ever worn before did. He grinned, noting how easy it was to satisfy his ego and grant him a tiny feeling of importance.
Shaking his head and marvelling at the work, the astronomer noticed a small piece of paper on the floor that must have fallen from the package while he was opening it. He reached down, picked it up in his hand, and brought it up into the light of the monitor screens.
Dear John,
As you can see, we now have standard issue uniforms for the group. We'll be sending up more with the next batch of supplies but don't feel obligated to just wear this one for the next month. We had a long chat about nametags, and Dad decided that it would be best if we just used the genuine article - there are too many mix-ups when we call you Bill in public.
Plus, because we've been having problems blocking just the media television stations, we're going to start letting one station go through so that we're not fuzzing up our own transmissions. Dad's not really happy about it, but it's better than compromising our communications. Besides, so many people see us on the ground that the extra pictures won't do much unless they actually get inside the craft. That's where the new uniforms come in - they makes us look more professional. At least Scott and I think so. I don't know if that's a good thing, because he doesn't need anymore women following him around. You'd think he would have learned the first time!
Keep safe, John. We'll be looking out for you.
Your bro,
Virgil
PS I hope you don't mind the colour. It's supposed to be gold trimmed, but Dad and I both agree that it turned a kind of dirt brown when we dyed it. Hope that doesn't bother you too much.
John stared at the note for a long moment before he finally realised that it had obviously been written well in advance of the entire hair dyeing incident. It was so ironic, he thought with a loud chuckle, that they had so much faith in him. How could they have known what kind of grief that that particular colour happened to be giving him?
Well, he decided, as he folded the letter and carefully put it in his pocket, brown was just fine with him. He had learned, after all, when to draw the line, and he was drawing the line with colours, hair dye, and vanity.
"Space is black," he laughed out loud, both at himself and at the day in general. "And that's more than good enough for me."
A/N 3: And so ends my sad attempt at humour. What's even more sad is that this chapter wasn't originally written to be humorous, but it went in that direction because John's ability to get himself in trouble is funny to most of us. It's also the reason that I myself haven't tried to dye my hair yet. ;) A huge round of thanks goes to Ariel D for beta reading this chapter! I don't know what I'd do without your advice. :) (But Vulcans can make their eyebrows dance!)
Reviewers!
Ariel D - No thesaurus needed. ;) And Chapter 25 is for everyone out there who can relate just a bit too much to what John goes through! lol
Barb from Utah - Hey, no problem! It's taking me a while to edit these chapters, so we're even. :) (grins) Well, whatever John did to Scott in the last chapter he got back in this one ten times over. John and Gordon get along? Definitely. Keep an eye out for that in later chapters.
Marblez - Thank you! I did manage to finish the story, finally. (sighs in relief) It's about a young girl who was a bully as a child and now suffers from PTSS because the girl she teased committed suicide. I seem to like writing disturbed characters . . .
Math Girl - She sure does! Lol I'm really really glad to hear that I've captured young men reasonably well. Being a young woman with little experience dealing with young men means that I'm writing solely based upon general human emotions. ;)
Clairie - Weeeelll, not Gordon, no. ;) It's more John's philosophy of 1) "If I ignore a problem it'll go away", 2) "It's not going away! I'll have to fix it!", 3) "I can't believe I did that. Maybe if I forget about what I did it'll go away too.", and 4) "Screw it. I'm going to go back to bed/make my lunch/pretend I'm a rock." that gets him in trouble. ;)
Ms. Imagine - My thoughts exactly. :) Scott is a wonderful, responsible, and take-charge young man who definitely has faults of his own. I wanted to set up why he's showing off for Penny in the movie, and to show how he can get pumped up and over excited about certain things (which explains him accidentally hurting Alan's feelings in the movie dinner scene).
Antilles - Well, in Chapter 22 Penny and Scott were teasing each other because they thought they'd never be able to get involved with each other. But now that Penny has found out who he is, they have to figure out what they actually want. Scott doesn't really find out until the end of this chapter, and Penny can be enough of a flirt sometimes that we'll have to see how serious she is about Scott. ;)
Andrewjameswilliams - Yeah, poor John is now stuck with the 'puke brown' uniform (though I refrained from calling them that in the story) because Virgil and Jeff are too lazy to hunt down some proper gold trim! Lol
Assena - I need to harness some of Penny's wit for myself. ;) I find myself in Scott's position way too often when it comes to dealing with people, and I'm not even talking about romantic situations! Lol
Watch out for next chapter, entitled "Diamonds to Ashes", where a mining disaster in Malaysia changes the lives of four individuals forever. Until then, FAB all!