Phew! Sorry so late. Lots of difficulties uploading... but edits continue. Want to thank Emma for "Ellen", she'e assisted me with name ideas, before.

16: Invader

Thunderbird 7-

As Captain Tracy pushed past, trailing Alan, Gordon looked over at TinTin. The girl seemed almost to shine, picked out in the spitting, arc-light glare of the caged probe. She was utterly exquisite and deeply concerned, her almond eyes dark as bruises in that porcelain-perfect face.

Said Gordon, jerking his tousled red head in the direction of the hatch,

"Is he…?"

Wringing her hands, TinTin whispered,

"There is no harm in Matthew Tracy. To us, at least. But he is most distressed in heart and mind."

Understandably so. Muttering,

"Don't know what I'm t' say that won't sound ruddy stupid," Gordon started after the vanished pair.

He'd meant for TinTin to remain behind with Fermat, but the girl came along anyway, quick as a cat. Her small, cold hand slipped into his as though seeking refuge there. Relenting, Gordon gave it a warm squeeze, and they hurried through pulsing airlocks to the space station. At a time like this, with no real certainty of home, perhaps it was best to stick together.

Meanwhile, Captain Tracy had pushed past conduits and broken equipment to the station's control center. All along the way he'd been faced with blocked windows and darkened view screens.The air scrubbers coughed and whispered, the gravity generator thumped and strained, but the burnt-up comm system seemed not to be working at all. He might have been at the bottom of the sea for all he knew about his nation, his family and friends.

That caged, shape-shifting monster... were there others? Had it reached the States…?

No signal, no reply, and Matt was rapidly growing frustrated enough to try something desperate. A cold, scrabbling panic was beginning to tear at his chest, making it difficult to breathe, or think.

Then, the blond boy (Alan) came panting up.

'One chance,' Captain Tracy decided, '…and if they blow it, I move.'

Aloud, he said,

"Alan, I need you to tell me the truth about this situation, right now. I don't need to be comforted, or stalled. I want to know what's happening down there."

The youngster seemed taken aback. Tugging at a longish strand of gelled hair, he replied,

"Okay… but I'm not the best one to ask, right? I mean, Fermat's the science geek. He could do a better… anyways, I got your signal this morning, and it sounded like my brother, John, talking backward. He does weird coded stuff like that all the time, so I figured maybe it was him needing help, y'know?"

Matt nodded impatiently, so Alan took ashaky breath, and plunged on.

"Okay, I got the others together, and we sorta took off in Thunderbird 7, without asking anybody, first. My bad. Gordon was too ticked-off to think straight, and Fermat just wants to fit in. And… I guess I counted on that, sort of."

Evidently, the little oriental girl didn't rate a mention. Captain Tracy chose not to press the matter. He had other, fiercer concerns.

"So… like I said, it's all on me. I, um, didn't think it would turn out like this. Actually… I didn't think, period. We didn't have much time to check things out on the way over, but Earth looked kinda… upside down and backward, to me. Like, I noticed that Africa was pointing up. And, dude, you not only sound like John, you look like him, except older, and your eyes are a funny color. Um… okay, so you mentioned Scott and Virgil, and that's the same, 'cause I got them for brothers, too. You said your… what's your dad's name?"

"Jeff Tracy," Matt responded quietly, gazing at the deck. "But he passed away some time ago. An experimental aircraft he was piloting broke up at high altitude. His chute didn't open.

"Scott's in the Air Force. He and Cindy are separated, but the last time we talked, he said they might be working things out. Virgil owns his own construction company. He married a girl he met on the reservation, Tina. They have five kids and another on the way. Mom spends part of the year with them, and part helping my grandparents on the farm."

On the comm panel, taped over the deep-space radar screen, was a certain photograph. Matt reached over and very gently pulled it free. Staring at the picture for a long moment, he felt the hard, cold bite of genuine, sickening fear.

Because he couldn't find anything much to say, he handed the snapshot to Alan, who brought it in for a closer look.

"Hey! That's you and… Oh, man! You guys had a baby?"

For there, represented in empty miniature, was his wife, hugging him around the waist as he lifted a squealing blonde toddler to the camera. Trying to push past all that choking ice, Matt nodded.

"Yeah… that's Kara Jane-Ellen, but we usually call her 'Junior'. Pete's nickname sort of stuck. He, um… he and Roger drew the long straws, so they evacuated to the Moon Base, for… for safety reasons. I was left behind to manage the station until this crisis runs its course. Someone must've thought… that it might become a target. I dunno…"

He took back the picture, touched a careful forefinger to the smiling faces of woman and child, then put it carefully away in the left upper pocket of his coveralls.

"Your John… is he married?"

Shaking his head, Alan bit back the urge to roll his eyes and go, 'Yeah, right!'

Matt gave him a faint, half-way kind of smile.

"Figures. When you see him again, tell him to drop the super-model and look up Linda Bennett. She comes across as an ice queen at first, but once you get past the defenses, she's… something special. He'll never regret it, trust me."

Alan nodded seriously. He'd made up his mind, though. No matter what, his other world shadow-family was going to be rescued, even if he had to bundle them all onto 7, then come back for everyone else, one at a dang time.

It was just then that Gordon and TinTin found them, entering the control center from a charred and creaking passageway. The girl's face had that scrunched look it sometimes got, like she was trying really hard to remember a phone number. Gordon seemed pretty upset, but he'd been kind of snappish since dad's hissy-fit. Nerves, probably.

"Hey, guys," Alan greeted the new arrivals. "Matt was just asking if we could, like, fill him in. Y'know…? About how they're doing on Earth, and stuff?"

Gordon's gaze dropped. He and TinTin had talked, some, on the way over. His bad decision… his job to explain matters. So, rubbing at one side of his jaw, the swimmer began to speak, fumbling awkwardly for words.

XXXXXXXXXX

The containment chamber-

Data. Information across more universes than Fermat could possibly grasp. Repeatedly parsed and filtered down, what he learned was this: they faced a multi-dimensional life form of surpassing technology. One they'd somehow squared off with before, back when John had been armed with some sort of sentient computer. It seemed that Fermat had once nearly destroyed John's creation, for reasons he couldn't now fathom (Daniel and Sam had also been involved, but how, Fermat had no idea). At any rate, she'd survived; going on to pull Matt Tracy into their universe, where he'd contracted a vicious, latent infection, and brought it home.

Encountered on Mars, the progenitor of this invading life form had attempted to reach their Earth, as well. International Rescue had stopped it… almost. In the shake-up of timelines that followed, the fading intelligence had lashed out. It chose a moment when John's computer somehow made herself vulnerable, then pushed her aside, just about eliminating the quantum entity from their universe, except as the butt of constant jokes. And her unwitting creator was now being monitored, with intent to kill.

There was more, and deeper. It seemed that the alien had implanted bits of itself in the original computer's place, heavily influencing his father's designs for Braman, and Thunderbird 7.

Now, one Earth was all but destroyed, another one poised to fall. Fermat and his friends were caught in another universe, in a ship that owed its brilliant technology to the very monster that threatened to devour them all.

Looking past the caged probe at warping bulkheads and fire-swift circuitry, Fermat whispered,

"Whose s-side are… you on?"