First draft. Fixes and edits in the works, though.
8
Space, Thunderbird 3… at a spot where the gravity of Earth and Moon exactly 'balance':
The big, curving hull plate had been attached to its scaffolding, and the construction crew would soon be away, mission accomplished. Glittering in sun- and star-light against a backdrop of purest black, Thunderbird 5 was nearly complete, crawling with tiny construction drones. A beautiful, stirring sight she was, with a hundred thousand welding flares causing her to wink and shimmer like a city seen from high, night-side orbit. Scott Tracy had to smile.
Glancing over at Virgil, who'd just returned from the spacewalk ready-room, he said,
"Nice job with the grapplers, Virge. You may not care for the setting, but you're a damn fine zero-gee construction worker."
Ordinarily the most robust and strapping of men, his younger brother looked a little green. So long as Virgil had something to concentrate on, he did well out here. Take away work or piloting, though, and he wilted like elderly lettuce. At the moment, dropping into the seat beside Scott's, he looked like his stomach was plotting further rebellion. Two bags filled and going strong… Better keep him occupied, the pilot decided.
Scott engaged 3's forward thrusters, backing the crimson rocket away from her unfinished sister.
"So…," he hazarded, one eye and half his mind on the instruments, "looking forward to seeing the ranch, next week?"
Virgil stared directly ahead and concentrated on his breathing. He hated space.
"Yeah," he responded tightly, jaws clenched. "Work's been piling up over there, since the weather closed in."
In point of fact, not just the Tracy spread, but three other ranches and the town itself needed digging out. Snow, in quantities not seen since the Pleistocene, had about shut northern Wyoming down. Montana, too; and most of Canada. In just a few days, Virgil and Gordon would no doubt find themselves busier than a pretty barmaid on 'free-beer-and-kisses-night'. And, speaking of pretty…
"Planning to take time out of that hectic schedule to visit the twins?" Scott probed, still trying to distract his nauseous brother.
Virgil sort of shrugged, forgetting his stomach for a moment.
"Guess so," he grunted, watching Thunderbird 5 shrink away in the view screen.
Reorienting the rocket was a matter of gimbaling her thrusters and orchestrating a series of jerky, programmed burns. There were no smooth curves in space; no swoops or banking turns. Scott far preferred atmospheric flight, the play of air and fuselage and shock waves. Here, all he did was punch buttons and sit back, letting John's program handle all the maneuvering. There, he actually flew.
Because he had nothing better to do than talk (Father was busy with John on another frequency), Scott continued the conversation. Leaning back in his squeaking pilot's chair, he asked,
"You're reconsidering this whole 'multiple long-distance relationship' business, I take it?"
"Naw…" Virgil replied, as pensive as Scott had ever seen him. "It's just… I know they love me and all… and I don't want to hurt their feelings. I mean, they've been through a lot… and, to them, I'm… I dunno… 'safe'."
His brown eyes left the view screen long enough to meet Scott's blue ones, then flicked away again.
"But…I'm kinda... starting to want more than just a hug and kiss on the cheek, I guess."
Scott's jaw dropped. Turning a little in the left seat, he said,
"You mean you've never…?"
His blurted question met with a headshake and a color change (clear to the roots of Virgil's hair) that could best be described as 'neon stop light'.
"…ever?"
"No."
To his credit, Scott Tracy managed to keep a straight face.
"But I thought…"
"Yeah," Virgil cut him off, slouching lower in the copilot's seat. "And so does everyone else. But there's two of them, for one thing, and they trust me, for another. I've known Shari and Teena since I was twelve. What the hell am I supposed to do?"
"Damn."
"Yeah."
…Which pretty much summarized matters. Once freed to talk, though, the younger man kept right on going. Open conversation was a mighty rare thing, in the Tracy household. Not to be wasted.
"I mean," Virgil flung his arms out, stirring restlessly, "I asked John about it once, when I was nineteen, and he told me to, quote, flip a damn coin."
Scott snorted.
"Never," he said, "take romantic advice from John. The deepest relationship he's ever had is with his computer, and I'm not even sure about that one."
This time, Virgil cracked a smile.
"You mean they're on the rocks?" he chuckled, feeling better suddenly. John's hopeless 'AI' project was nearly as big a family joke as Virgil's twin girlfriends. Nearly.
"Yeah, I'm afraid they're pretty much finished. She's seeing Braman on the side."
Not much got resolved that trip (romantically, at least). Something else happened, though, beginning innocently enough with a comm message from base.
Tracy Island-
They'd left the dog behind, for safety and quiet's sake. From the sunroom, the quickest route to Thunderbird 7's lofty berth took them up through the 'public' hangars. Gordon's yellow turbo-prop was there, together with Jeff Tracy's Lear Jet and Thunderbird 6.
Gordon and Alan exchanged glances as they jogged past the modified war plane; all engine, guns and muscle, bathed in liquid-gold spotlights. Painted with tiger's teeth and glaring eyes, the dark green fighter looked ferocious just sitting there.
Alan gave a wild leap and wave, mimicking a scene from one of their favorite movies, 'Empire of the Sun'.
"P-51 Mustang…!" He whooped, slapping palms with his brother, who finished,
"…Cadillac of the skies!"
Fermat and TinTin could only look on, resigned to the Tracy brothers' inherent weirdness. Sometimes, they were very difficult to comprehend. (All those fumes or something…)
The foursome next cut through Thunderbird 3's abandoned hangar, Alan springing like a flea over the descended boarding couch. Titanic launch machinery and swarming drones made the experience rather like a shrunken scramble through a jungle of ant-infested grasses. There were tall metallic 'stalks', filtered light, and a clicking, whirring chorus of busy robots. Some were present to build and repair, others to defend the hangar. The latter alerted immediately, fixing scanners and laser range-finders on the four young interlopers, who found themselves freckled with specular 'sniper dots', criss-crossed with glowing grid lines. They halted, waiting for their ID chips to transmit a 'friend' signal. At last, satisfied, the security 'bots returned to stand-by, and progress resumed.
Heading up and north, taking back stairs and access tunnels, Alan, Gordon, TinTin and Fermat reached Thunderbird 7's mountaintop hangar. Like 1 and 3, she launched directly upward, no runway required. Unlike the other craft, she was just as silent as she was quick.
Gordon's palm print opened the security doors at the very top of a long flight of stairs. Behind these, a short, heavily defended corridor ended in yet another security hatch, this one opening onto a dimly-lit hangar the size of a football stadium.
Thunderbird 7 hung in the exact center, supported by webs of scintillant force. Jet-black and sleek, with a big, white '7' painted upon her seamless belly, the slim space ship resembled the hybrid offspring of stealth fighter and boomerang. She was Dr. Hackenbacker's latest, most advanced creation, never yet field-tested, and the boys couldn't wait to shake some of the newness off her.
TinTin was far less sanguine. She had, not exactly a premonition, but a bad feeling… You try being the lone voice of reason among three wild boys, though. Tough position, especially if you wanted to keep your friends.
So, the girl held her peace, and went along. She followed Gordon and Fermat across a 30-meter walkway, too inured to such wonders to gawk as the thing assembled itself in midair from cobble-sized, floating bits.
Alan had sprinted ahead, causing force beams to wink off, and maintenance drones to scatter like startled pigeons. At 7's reflection-swallowing hull he had to wait, dancing impatiently from foot to foot. Of all the illicit foursome, only Gordon could open the black ship. Alan's antics caused the redhead to pick up his pace a bit. Perhaps he'd rethought the wisdom of baiting Jeff Tracy this way, but bloody-be-damned if he was going to back out now, with TinTin looking on, and Alan and Fermat so keen on rescuing 'Matt'. No way out but forward.
He ran rather awkwardly, with the forward-leaning, top-heavystance of an overdeveloped athlete, but he got there. The other two gasped up a few minutes later, Fermat wheezing asthmatically.
"Inhaler," TinTin prompted, causing one of Brains' omnipresent drones to disgorge medicated mist in the boy's face. Wise to be prepared, no?
When Fermat's breathing returned to normal, he gave his pretty friend a grateful smile. In the midst of an asthma attack, without his inhaler, he was pretty much helpless.
"Thanks, T- TinTin," he told the worried girl. She responded with a brief answering smile, and a gentle pat.
"De rien, Mon Petit. Those with sanity must stay together amidst chaos."
Fermat blushed, stifling a nervouslaugh. He hadn't the confidence of Alan and Gordon, though he certainly strove to attain it. In private, he'd even practiced some of Alan's best pick-up lines… just in case.
They stood at the end of a floating walkway, perhaps 60 meters off the hangar floor. Equally far above them, huge metal doors spanned the stone ceiling. Ahead lay Thunderbird 7, her dark, curving metal entirely innocent of hatch or porthole. Nothing marred the Bird's hull but a palm-print scanner, which Gordon now pressed his hand to. His identity was once again scanned and verified, then read into 7's computer.
Apparently, Brains trusted him, because a spot of glowing white swam up through the hull, and opened out like a vesicle reaching the cell membrane. They crowded into the resultant bubble, watching shimmering circuitry branch and flow through the metal as it sealed shut behind them. It was almost organic; self-assembling nanotechnology that formed a completely responsive, adaptable ship… one with shape-memory, and the capacity to learn.
The new airlock actually moved, flowing to the inner side of the hull, where it thinned and quivered like a soap bubble before opening onto the cockpit. No sooner had they stepped within, than the interior began reorganizing itself to accommodate four occupants.
"Sweet!" Alan blurted aloud, watching two more seats and a new console spring into being.
"It's ace, all right," Gordon admitted, shrugging away his own doubts. "Bit more than th' simulations let on, though."
Fermat simply stood in one spot, turning round and looking everywhere at once with big blue eyes.
"I… w- wow! My D- dad's a… complete and utter… g- genius!"
Alan shot his young friend a swift, exasperated look.
"Well… durrr!" He mocked, slapping at his own forehead. "That's why we, like, hired him!"
Gordon gave the other Tracy a rough shove.
"Manners!" He snapped, stepping away from Alan's wild swing. "Keep on at him so, and like as not this fine-lookin' and likeable ship'll heave you out on y'r arse. In space."
Alan's sky-blue eyes got very big, suddenly, and his mouth very closed. He looked positively bunny-stunned.
"Just kidding!" He whispered, glancing worriedly around at polished chrome and blinking lights. Draping an arm around Fermat, he added heartily,
"Me and Fermat are friends! Good, good friends. Nothing but good times, all day long. Right, Fermat?"
The younger boy feigned severity, saying,
"W- well… let me… th- think, Alan. There was th- that time… you snuck in and… p- poured warm water on m- my mattress. Kept... doing it, t- too. Had m- me convinced for… three w- weeks that I was… w- wetting the b- bed."
Meanwhile, TinTin leaned close to Gordon, half sending, half whispering,
"That was most unkind to your brother!"
The swimmer shrugged and started forward, whispering back (or maybe just thinking),
"He had it comin'. Now, get a uniform, quit carpin' at me, and let's be off. I've close on a thousand laps t' make up, as it is."
A few minutes later, all four were suitably clothed and strapped into seats that fit them each perfectly; Gordon and Alan at the pilot and copilot positions, TinTin and Fermat ranged somewhat behind, manning the comm and rescue equipment consoles.
At Gordon's first touch to the controls (stick and throttle, because he requested it so), a wide view port opened in the forward hull, shielded by nothing more than magnetic force. The set-up worked because air molecules wandering too close to the opening were given enough of a charge to bounce them away. People and objects, too. The field could strengthen in atto-seconds to plasma-containment level, for its power source was truly unique, and mighty. Deep in the heart of Thunderbird 7, shielded from the outside universe by an infinite series of nested dark energy spheres, lay a tiny pearl of quark matter.
While TinTin keyed up the frequency Alan had given her, Gordon triggered 7's launch sequence. At the same time, Fermat used the ship's onboard computer to hack into the island's comm and defense systems. No word of their launch would reach Jeff Tracy or Brains, until 7 was well away, and out of reach.
"Shall we?" Gordon asked his younger brother, all pretended solemnity.
"Oh, do let's," Alan replied, his usual mischief returning in full. Surfing, rescues, mysterious backward messages… it was all one big adventure to him, and anyone who felt like coming was invited along for the ride.
"Hey, T…!" Alan called over, when Gordon had returned his attention to the controls, "Didja, like, pick up the signal, yet?"
The girl flapped an irritated hand, as though driving away a bothersome gnat. Alan had no way of knowing that she was reordering circuitry with her mind, trebling the scanner's sensitivity. It was terribly difficult, even so, to…
There, Dieu merci! Faint, but audible, the wavering hiss of a distant, very alien-feeling transmitter.
"Pardon, Monsieur, for that we have not been introduced, but I am a friend of Alain, with whom you have already spoken. We have a 'lock' upon your signal, Monsieur, and will follow with all speed."
Beneath her seat, communicated through deck, upholstery and console, Thunderbird 7 seemed to quiver. Far overhead, the hangar doors rumbled open, admitting sunshine and a splinter of chilly blue sky. The way lay open before them, straight through the caldera, and out of the atmosphere. Gordon charged her engines, bringing 7 to eager, surging life.
TinTin leaned over her console, concentrating along circuit paths and high-gain omni antennas. Feeble and broken had come the reply,
".em eveileb ,tsissa eht…dalG. ssiM ,melborp…toN"
Then, using diamagnetic levitation, silent and swift as a bat, Thunderbird 7 shot from her volcanic lair.