Okay, this is me, making with the, like, edits. Couldn't really squeeze the rest in without bursting chips, or something...
18
Otherverse, Orbital Weather Station, American Module-
Gordon Tracy had swung his pry-bar like a batsman at Lord's Cricket Ground. Had he actually been there, England might have had something to discuss besides frightfully cold weather. Instead, he was out in space, and the steel bar struck what should have been metal and hard plastic without the anticipated resounding crash.
He'd attacked walls and bulkheads before, in the course of various rescues; knew that wood will splinter, glass and plastic shatter, metal buckle. This, though, was unexpected. Instead of breaking, the wall tore. His oddly sparking pry-bar caught the bulkhead and ripped into its substance like a blade meeting flesh.
Gordon stumbled, a bit overbalanced by the wall's lack of resistance. Something like a long, vertical gash developed, its edges sagging away from each other, trailing cables and spurts of data like ragged connective tissue. Someone stepped out through the opening. Matt Tracy, pale but composed.
He caught at Gordon, interrupting the muscular red-head's tumble. The pry-bar dropped to the station's slatted deck, instantly forgotten as Gordon used mass, torque and momentum to swing his (just about) brother away from the weirdly mobile wall. Not that he cared to say so aloud, but he was developing a thorough dislike for oddly-behaved spacecraft.
"Are you quite all right?" Gordon demanded, shoving Matthew Tracy farther away from the bulkhead.
Matt (no longer space-suited) gave him a brief nod.
"Everything's still attached, and functional," the taller man reported, more heavily than he had the time before. Moments later, Alan came loping around a bend in the passage. Armed with a heavy steel spanner, the youngest Tracy had flung TinTin back into Thunderbird 7 and returned at a dead run. He skidded to a stop before them, panting hard. Once again, Matt fielded a wind-milling Tracy.
"Careful," he muttered. "Landscape's a little unstable, these days."
(So was time, for that matter.)
Then,
"We need to get you two back to your ship before anything else goes wrong."
Alan looked over at Gordon, his sky-blue eyes filled with unaccustomed anxiety. Turning back to Matt, he blurted,
"Okay... but you're coming, too? Right?"
As Matt's expression closed up, Gordon began considering his options. He'd dealt with balky victims before, and the metal pry-bar wasn't too far away to be retrieved. Given enough time and a few pints, most reasonable fellows would forgive a well-intentioned tap on the head. Royce had.
But Matt stepped away from them, saying,
" 'Fraid not, guys. I've got a last couple of jobs to do, starting with getting you home. Your ship and I have come to… an agreement."
Alan wasn't having any. While the three of them edged suspiciously along the flexing accessway, he kept shooting looks at Gordon that said, plain as anything,
'What's the plan? When do we make our move?'
Gordon gave him a quelling head-shake. Then, to Captain Tracy,
"Sir, I'm quite certain th' station could be programmed t' press any buttons you've agreed to, given a bit of time. I've not much skill with th' fiddly bits, but Fermat can…"
"No. I'm to see you aboard, then send another distress signal, like the last time. Got through to your world once before, so there's a pretty good chance I can repeat the job, and tear another hole. …One that'll take you home."
Gordon scowled, unconsciously shifting his balance. Back on the island, he'd sparred once with John, who'd won through sheer, snake-like deception. (Trickery wouldn't work twice, though.)
"So, record y'r message, or send it from 7," he snapped, moving into strike range. One solid shot, he reasoned. John was most sensitive at the sides of his jaw, and Matt would likely be the same.
But Captain Tracy, realizing what he was about, moved slightly aside. He certainly seemed to be recovering, and quickly.
"You're not listening," he told them, in a voice as tense and low as a trip wire. "I can't go back with you, because I already exist there, in some kind of reversed-molecule version. We'd interfere or cancel out, as I understand the situation."
"You can't come because of John?" Alan asked, with a sudden stab at comprehension. "But, he's on Mars! Can't you guys, like… switch out, or something? Y'know…? Not be in the same room at the same time, or some junk? Fermat'll know how to…"
Matt sighed. With all his careful maneuvering, and occasional handy distractions from the winking, buzzing instrument panels, he'd gotten the two boys quite close to Thunderbird 7. All he had to do now was pack them aboard.
"Alan, I appreciate what you're trying to do, and that you answered my call in the first place. But there's something I've got to finish. I…"
He hesitated, a measure of deep, baffled pain sifting through that slightly cracked composure. Then,
"Either of you two guys have a girl, back home?"
Alan blushed and shook his blond head. Gordon nodded, though.
"Anika," he admitted, altogether failing to say the girl's name casually. "She's a pretty thing, and quite th' talented gymnast. We met last summer at th' Portland Olympics."
Matt gave him a thin, quiet smile.
"Then maybe you'll understand. I've got one, too. And a baby… and I'd like to think that they're waiting for me. There are a couple of things I've agreed to do with the help of your ship's computer… and then I'm going home."
Oddly enough, Gordon did understand. His stance shifted again, tensed muscles relaxing slightly. Putting forth a hand, he shook Matt's, and nodded acceptance of the man's decision.
"Right, then. We'll just be…"
"No!" Alan protested, stepping forward to shove the other two apart. "We're taking Matt with us, is what we're doing! I mean… you can't just go belly-up and quit on us, Matt! There are girls all over the…"
"Shut up, Alan!"
Gordon grabbed for his agitated younger brother, meaning to get him back to the ship and quiet before he said anything worse. But Alan dodged him, managing to seize hold of Captain Tracy's right sleeve.
"Listen, man, I'm serious! I came here to help save you, not to turn tail and run when things get a little rough! Okay, you got something to do, so we'll come with you. We'll find some way to solve things on Earth, and pick up the rest of your family. Fermat can figure out a scrambling system, or something, so you're not like John anymore, and… and…"
The boy faltered, reading a lost battle in those calm blue eyes.
"It's not fair," he whispered, all at once very much a child. Shoulders drooping, he added, "You'd have made a really cool brother."
Matt did a surprising thing, then. Quick and rather awkwardly, he pulled Alan into a rough embrace, then released him.
"Yeah," he agreed. "It would have been fun. But you need to go back, because, according to the ship, your real brothers are about to need help, and things are pretty much over, here. It, uh… mattered, though, your showing up like this. Talking to someone, getting patched up, and being allowed to take action was… is… a big help. You did make a difference, Alan."
The boy couldn't quite find a reply. Instead of speaking, he managed a blind nod, then turned and crossed the airlock to Thunderbird 7.
Left behind for an instant, Gordon once more shook Matt's hand.
"If you'd consider allowin' me t' stay on f'r a bit, or havin' me take your place at th' transmitter, I'd be more than…"
Another faint smile had brushed Captain Tracy's pale face. Head slightly cocked, as though hearing something extremely faint and far off, he mused,
"I can sort of… remember that you're stubborn. Very brave, but not exactly given to thinking things through. You kid around a lot, especially with Alan… and you were lost once. They… I… missed you. Kind of makes me wonder… I mean, if Dad had lived…"
He shook it off a moment later, this almost-memory. There simply wasn't time.
"Good luck, Gordon."
"And t' you, Matt."
A swift shoulder clasp, and then he was through the airlock, himself, and back in Thunderbird 7. The hatch sealed shut behind him, separating the two vessels, though something of 7's technology had clearly been added to the weather station. Enough, perhaps, to allow for the miraculous?
Gordon started forward, meeting Fermat about a third of the way up the passage, which had begun to whip and buck like an airport windsock.
"TinTin?" He enquired, as the bespectacled youngster fell into step beside him.
"Oh… sh- she's going to… b- be fine, I think, Gordon. She j- just… had a strange kind of… f- fainting spell."
"Right… and what's wrong with this bloody ship, then?"
For, the deck's shuddering had grown noticeably more violent. Forward progress was now a matter of leaping from one deck-crest to the next.
"W- we're under attack… I th- think," the young genius told him, as they negotiated a sudden, wild s-bend. "7's holding up… so far, b- but… I think our p- presence limits her… r- responses. There's some s- stuff I need to... t-t o tell you, though. Captain Tracy is…?"
"Remain' behind," Gordon stated, as they entered the rippling, windowless cockpit. TinTin was there, already half out of her seat. He squeezed her outstretched hand, got touched by more than a cold little palm and fingers. To the question in her troubled thoughts he responded,
"It's goin' t' be all right, Angel. Right as it can be, at any rate. He knows what he's doin'."
Another squeeze, a second quick brush (akin to taking shelter in a warm hug) and then he proceeded up front. Strapped into the copilot's seat, Alan refused to look at him. But, as he'd mismanaged the whole sorry business rather badly, Gordon supposed that the younger boy could hardly be blamed for hating him. Stick religiously to fire and sea rescues after this, he would.
A great, warping shudder racked Thunderbird 7. Something seemed to be doing its cold, level best to reduce her to sparking atoms. Then, after a sharp, staticky crackle, a familiar voice.
"Ready?" Matt asked them, back at his own control center.
Alan said nothing at all, staring directly ahead through a haze of sorrow and anger.
"Fire away," Gordon responded, hardly loud enough to be heard over all the noise.
Once again, the universe split wide open, everting itself like the belly of a giant starfish.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Mars, the south tunnel-
The blast wasn't so large as it might have been, on this side. Partially caught by a newly sprung transport cylinder, much of it was directed back and away. Jetting sideways from a wall-mounted receiving station, several thousand tons of splintered rock and gritty dust thundered into an ancient chamber, crushing the brittle remains of a machine older than terrestrial life. And there, in that universe, something ice-cold and terrible came to an end, its purpose strangled forever.
On the other side, trapped between a tidal wave of roaring stone and a flickering transport cylinder, John Tracy discovered two things; that his instinct for self-preservation stopped just short of blind teleportation, and that it was possible to lift just the middle finger of a hard-suit glove.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Regular Universe, Thunderbird 3, at a (probably) safe distance-
"Here it comes," Scott muttered aloud, trying to hope for the best. "Brace yourself, Virge."
As if cloven by a vast sword, a section of space between Thunderbird 3 and the blue planet below gaped wide, spitting weirdly colored jets of exotic matter. Then a brilliant flash of light, and… four small figures.
"What the…? Virgil!" Scott shouted, wrenching 3 into sudden, violent acceleration.
"I'm on it," his brother grunted, calling up the specs on a life support/ force bubble projection. "We gotta get closer, Scott. The tractors haven't got that kind of range."
"God…!"
There was no more speed to be wrung from the rockets, not without overshooting the four drifting kids, and crash landing on Earth. Ten seconds of life, at most, unless…
"Virge, are they suited up?"
"Uh…" his younger brother's wide brown eyes met his, reflecting equal parts worry and Earthshine. "I'm picking up some kind of weird… like a membrane, or something. It's reflective as hell, Scott. I can't scan through the stuff."
Scott Tracy nodded tightly, thumping a clenched left fist against his armrest.
"Then maybe it's protecting them. What's the ETA on that life support bubble?"
"Close enough to project in 5.372 seconds from… mark."
Hell of a time to get mad at Virgil for being so precise, but just then even the need to breathe was annoying. If he'd been able, Scott would have hurled himself into space beside the kids. Not because he could have done much good there, but because he couldn't stand to just sit and watch when someone else was in danger. Especially someone he cared for. At least he could have grabbed someone.
"Virgil…?"
"Got 'em! Bring us up alongside, Scott; slow and careful…"
Wound tight as a watch spring, the black-haired Tracy nodded.
"Right. Easy does it."
Once, on a scrubby hill in the wilds of Kazakhstan, he'd waited for salvation in the form of a low-flying plane, and sky-hook retrieval. This was worse.
"Are they…?"
"Can't tell yet, Scott. Whatever's got them wrapped up is completely impenetrable to scanning. Brains 'll go nuts."
Impenetrable to visuals, too. Virgil Tracy reeled in the force bubble and keyed open 3's forward hold, squinting hard at the four humanoid shapes that drifted toward them like fish in a dynamited pond. No cues, one way or another. Nothing to see but pulsing dark fluid and sparking circuitry.
Virgil was unstrapped before the outer doors finished closing. Quite unnecessarily, Scott told him,
"We're headed home. Go see to the kids, while I call Dad."
"Yeah."
Once out of the cramped cockpit, Virgil sprinted along a short passage to one of several bulkhead-mounted ladders. For a big man, he was fast and graceful. If nothing else, football had done him that much good.
Sliding rather than climbing down, he reached the hold's service and control room, punched numbers on the hatch side keypad almost hard enough to break the thing. There was a first aid kit on the port bulkhead, which he tore loose without conscious thought, silently willing… begging... the hold to flood and the hatch to open. He squeezed through before the spiraling airlock revealed more than a bare sliver of cargo chamber, ready for anything.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Mars, collapsed tunnel-
A few last rumbles, then the heart-broken sob of settling rock, and a brief shower of rattling pebbles. His helmet comm hissed once, then fell as silent and dark as the tunnel. He tried to squirm forward, only to find that red-edged pain and heavy stone prevented it.
"Well… shit," he said (or its Cambodian equivalent).
Scraping around, he discovered that the tunnel floor had buckled upward beneath his prone body, and that a strange confluence of rocks had fallen atop and around, pinning but not crushing him. No obvious way out, though, which officially made this a bad day.
Right. So, he seemed to be stuck. Question was, what now? Couldn't reach his wrist comm through the hard suit… couldn't get the heads-up display or helmet comm started again… didn't seem much left to do but wait, which he'd never really enjoyed.
He might have hummed, but even to keep himself company, his voice was no prize. Kind of a shame that so many people'd had nothing else to hang onto but that flat, timbre-less monotone while all around them the lights went out…
Heaven had already made up Its mind concerning him, he felt sure, so prayer seemed pointless and hypocritical. Back to waiting, then.
In the gathering silence and chill, time passed with odd, fitful jerks, but it seemed to him (just as he'd begun to grow drowsy) that a few faint words appeared. Not on the rock, or his heads-up display. In his blurring thoughts, there somehow palely glittered:
-g /etc/ whois; fsck
Well, that he certainly understood.
"John Tracy," he responded, mildly surprised by his own weak, rusted-sounding speech. He coughed a little, and then added, "Who are you?"
The marsh-light lettering flickered off, then reappeared a splintered instant later.
-g /etc/ shadow; whoami; hostname-s
-rwx----- unknown
Different, but it was good having something else to concentrate on, so…
"You don't know who you are?"
It tried again.
$ find/ -name self- display
-rwx----- file not found
… followed by the time and date, all in his head. Literally. A bit drunkenly, he whispered,
"You've come to the wrong place, then. I'm no good with names."
Thinking around, about IR, Endurance, Linda and his space station, he had a sudden brain wave.
"How about 'Five'? 'S a good number, if you're into that kind of thing."
Once more, the letters returned.
-g: rename /Five/
And then,
Get- /JohnTracy/
Something else happened, seeming much further in his head than before. It was as though a sort of door appeared, something like a waterfall of dark wind and glittering data covering the bleak rocks. A somewhat humanoid figure leaned out, extending a warped and sparking arm. John almost smiled.
Hell of a search engine, that.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Thunderbird 3-
Running full-tilt across the deck, Virgil crashed into the first membraned figure. He grabbed hold, or tried to. The stuff sparked and clung to his hands, shifting color and pattern to match his uniform. It felt and looked like some kind of dense blue ferrofluid, shot through with circuit paths and tiny lights. Wouldn't peel or scrape off, either.
Before Virgil could formulate plan B, the oozy substance simply… shriveled, flaking away like cheap paint. He found himself gripping TinTin by her reed-thin arms. Unresponsive at first, she at last opened her eyes and gave a great, half-suffocated gasp, staring wildly around at the hold, the brothers and Fermat.
"You okay, Hon?" (The first aid kit's quick-scan attachment showed nothing but thirst and stress, much to Virgil Tracy's relief.)
"I… Oui, Je pense," the girl whispered.
Dropping a quick kiss to her forehead, Virgil set TinTin aside. Wobbling off, she lowered herself to the deck. One down, three to go. Alan was his next 'house call'. The boy looked about as bleak as Virgil had ever seen him, but he scanned okay, as did Fermat.
"Still with us, guys?" Virgil asked them, receiving a mumbled duet by way of reply. Like TinTin, they seemed pretty disoriented, but basically sound.
On to Gordon, then; the one mom had made his responsibility. His red-haired younger brother stood a little apart, shaking his head as though trying to chase away nightmares.
Crossing the distance between them in two rapid strides, Virgil seized the dazed teenager's shoulders.
"Two questions, Kiddo… First, tell me you had anything like a plan in that thick head of yours!"
A rough, concerned shake followed the brusque inquiry, sort of, 'How could you be so ruddy stupid?' blent with 'Thank God you're all right!'
Confused by the sudden transfer, shadowed with loss, Gordon simply nodded. There'd been something of the sort, he recalled, though the details were a bit vague…
Virgil went on, still frowning.
"Good to know, Kiddo, not that it changes anything. Second question: what did you do with an entire spaceship in 24.36 minutes? Eat it?"
Not sure what to say, Gordon glanced past his older brother at the watching others; TinTin, Alan, Fermat, and… via bulkhead screen… Scott, Father, Grandmother, Alan's mum and Brains.
It was an extremely quiet cargo hold, and Gordon was very glad when Alan came over to stand beside him, followed by TinTin and Fermat. Just like before, at his father's office.He hadn't really expected that.
"Um," the younger boy began, "there's kind of a lot to tell…"