Somewhat edited...
22
Endurance, the med lab-
… Not that things got much better, after waking. They'd hung in harness, twisted and battered like roadside warning signs in a hurricane, now dripping-still in the dead-calm eye. John chose to ignore all personal technical difficulties, placing his body under strict command to shut the hell up and function.
Raising his helmet faceplate, he heard noises: the cabin fans and instruments, Roger's labored breathing, Pete from the flight deck calling CAPCOM. Bennett and Kim shot into the med lab like a couple of meteors, braking themselves on well-worn handholds. Worried, yes…
(Tears oozed from Cho's dark eyes like tiny, floating pearls. She caught them out of the air with a tissue. Doctor Bennett had the dry heaves, pausing every few minutes to retch into an empty sickness bag.) Worried, but professional.
John decided that his broken limb must have begun to swell, because the right leg armor had grown agonizingly tight. If the treatment harness hadn't hindered him, he would have torn the suit off then and there. Couldn't do it alone, bound up this way, though, and Roger Thorpe stood in greater need.
So he waited, half listening to the doctor's terse commands and comments, and Cho's quiet murmuring. She'd taken off the Marine's helmet to briefly float beside him and cradle his head against her shoulder. Love and anguish and support flooded forth in a sing-song mixture of Korean and English. But Dr. Bennett got her back on the checklist, ending their moment.
Concerned for his friend, John tuned in occasionally, listening as blood vessels were delicately cauterized or re-directed, and shreds of pressure bandage removed. The wounds were clean, (no burns or crush damage) so bio-printed flesh from Thorpe's cell line was quickly grafted on. Encouraged to grow with hormones and electrical impulses, the new tissue would seal and protect the stumps until End of Mission.
A messy business, surgery in zero-g, requiring a localized containment field for floating blood and bits of excised tissue, and rapid, focused speed. Linda was utterly calm, undistractable. John (the lesser emergency) might have gone into convulsions not six feet away, and she wouldn't have noticed. Like the RSO, she was simply doing her job. He wouldn't have expected any different. Did wish for more aspirin, though…
(Range Safety Officer- responsible for blowing up any space craft that went dangerously out of control on launch.)
Distraction came in two welcome forms: a pale throb at the back of his left wrist, and Pete McCord. The CDR hauled himself into the lab with a clipboard clenched between his teeth.
"You okay?" Pete asked, once he'd fastened the databoard to a Velcro bulkhead strap. His first answer ('Better than Thorpe') John rejected as rather obvious. Instead, he replied,
"Put a splint on, and I'll manage. What's the word?"
Pete grunted approval, running a hand across the floating, sandy strands of his own sparse hair. They refused to stay flat, making him look like a startled bantam rooster.
"Guthrie's on CAPCOM. Stall artist and a half. Sonuvabitch must practice in front of a damn mirror… I finally went over his head and talked to Gene, found out MCC's putting together a new flight plan. Looks like we'll rendezvous with Kuiper, resupply, then head for quarantine on the moon."
John nodded a little, once Pete had helped him off with his helmet, and supplied a drink tube. The water was flat, and tasted of iodine tablets, but better than a dry mouth. (He'd used up the hard suit's liquid store while being rescued from the south tunnel.)
"Okay. Back to the moon. Then what?"
The mission commander grinned mirthlessly.
"Then back to JSC, and the debriefing from hell. Better get you two healed up, first."
"Yeah. That'd be good."
John accepted the analgesic dose that McCord next twisted open and squeezed into his mouth. Some kind of nightmare atomic-cherry flavor, but it took a little of the edge off. More water followed, and then Linda was there, trailed by Dr. Kim. Pete shook his head.
"I've got this, Cho. Stay with Thorpe."
John had never seen anyone attempt to bow in weightless midair. Interesting. The exobiologist whispered apologetically, touched his shoulder, then reoriented and launched herself back toward Roger.
Meanwhile, Linda kissed the side of John's face, scoring close to his left ear. She caressed the hair away from his forehead, something half-veiled and struggling behind that brown-eyed gaze. Then, back to business.
"Brace yourself, Sunshine. The suit's going to have to come off before I can do anything about your leg. I'll do my best not to hurt you, but…"
John managed a shrug, which set him to shifting and bobbing a bit in the responsive harness. Weird, how its motion sensors and accelerometers adjusted for every twitch and gesture, quelling unnecessary movement.
"I'll be fine. Damn thing's cutting off my circulation, anyhow."
"Okay. Pete?"
The commander nodded, planting his feet against a set of deck Velcro-pads. Dr. Bennett did likewise, but her anchors were on the starboard bulkhead, by a small data screen. Sequentially removing and replacing one harness strap at a time, the process was begun.
Actually, it wasn't the hard suit's dented armor that was worst to remove. It was the form-fitting, insulative liner. Unlike Roger's, his was still whole, and salvageable. They wouldn't cut it, except as a last resort.
Down to the waist, all was well enough. Lower, into the broken area, he had to shut his eyes and clench his teeth hard enough to crack enamel and draw blood. (Worst damn honeymoon in history, and he was very much ready to file for divorce.)
She kept repeating something which at the time he didn't process any better than he had TinTin's "I'm sorry" back in the cave on San Marco, or on… in the… ship? When had TinTin treated him aboard 7?
He'd broken his arm here, in a 'minor' decompression incident. (Nowhere near as badly, though.)
His bio-med screen was going crazy, blaring a chorus of heart-rate, respiration, cortisol and blood pressure alarms that Pete cut off with a growled curse. Kim shot back over, visually interposing herself and beginning a long, twining story about a childhood vacation to Seoul. Quite unfairly, John made up his mind never to go there.
The liner came off at last and the sudden freedom from twisting and tugging felt like relative Heaven. He drifted in his web, chilled and clammy and shivering, entirely devoid of printable comments.
"Watch your damn language, Tracy," Pete told him, smiling crookedly. "There are Marines and ladies present."
John shifted to Swahili, but botched the syntax.
Linda risked the commander's displeasure by injecting her young husband with a much stronger painkiller. McCord pretended not to notice. Then a buzzer went off from the vicinity of the flight deck. Houston.
"Shit!" Pete snarled. "Ladies, can you handle the rest alone?"
Exhausted and cramping, Linda nodded.
"Go ahead, commander. We'll call if anything comes up."
McCord unfastened himself from the Velcro pads and retrieved his clipboard. Glancing from one injured man to the next, he said,
"Thorpe, Tracy, hang in there. I'll be back with the flight plan in a few minutes."
The Marine had succumbed to unconsciousness, but John was able to respond, muttering,
"Sure, Pete... Be right here… if you need me."
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Tracy Island-
Plan firmly in mind, walking as casually as possible, Brains left the office. He shut the big wooden doors behind him, turned right, then proceeded east along a wide and airy hall, carpeted in hand-woven rugs.
Reaching a set of maintenance stairs (he didn't quite trust the elevator) Dr. Hackenbacker took them two steps at a time, at last reaching the underground laboratories, and a second, much narrower, hallway. (No windows, cheap carpet, weak lighting.)
Eerily, cameras turned to track him and wall panels lit up as he strode toward his goal; the immense chamber which housed his 3-D printers and time machine. Just in case his purpose and progress were being assessed, Brains slowed his pace and removed his PDA from a lab coat pocket, pretending to study the day's to-do list. His hammering pulse would have been a neon give-away, had Braman been able to analyze it.
An interdimensional parasite? In his operating system? Surely impossible… but Brains had enough faith in Fermat to take the warning seriously, however far-fetched it might seem. The boy was enthusiastic, poetic and high-spirited, but hardly ever wrong.
Still walking, he sent a few innocuous emails, then ordered a new round of upgrades for Thunderbird 2. The other Birds would be next… hopefully. The cameras tracked every step, wall panels spotlighting his least move, darkness before and behind. A few spider-like cleaning bots emerged from their niches, quietly watchful.
Hackenbacker put away the PDA and walked determinedly onward. Something skittered along the ceiling, above and just behind him. Not looking back, Brains picked up his pace, silently rehearsing the precise coding and key-strokes of /omega/ null.
The doors were just ten feet away.
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Thunderbird 3-
Back in the hold, Jeff Tracy's magnified image frowned thoughtfully around at them all.
"Scott, Virgil… see to the kids, then turn and burn; back to the Island, top speed. Whatever's happening, I want everyone home, the wagons circled… and a contingency in place for getting to Mars, without 7. Move."
(Once before they'd been forced to retreat thus, when an attempt had been made to divide and destroy the family.)
Both young men assented, Scott with a crisp nod and,
"Yes Sir!"
…Virgil with a distracted grunt and a worried soul.
That business about parasites and John… Martian contingencies… and 'Matt'?
What the hell was going on?
As Virgil put away the first aid scanner attachment, the 'kids' gathered to plan. With livesand spaceships imperiled, an unfinished mission, and time blasting like a fire-hose in the other universe, they very much needed to talk.
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Tracy Island, the office-
Brains had left the room, as had Grandmother (muttering something about starting dinner). The view screen shifted, splitting to a live image of the Mission Control Center in Houston. Jeff focused on the flight director's console, and CAPCOM. Saul Guthrie had the hot seat today, Jeff noted absently. The lanky Iowan seemed perfectly relaxed… but then he'd been known to fall asleep on the launch pad, while waiting for countdown. Not much fun at parties, either; boring even when drunk.
Absently, Jeff reached up and seized Gennine's hand; the one with the ring. Once upon a former marriage, she'd have tried to counsel him, jolly him out of this bleak mood with all that 'personhood and positive thinking' crap. Now she simply stroked his grey hair by way of encouragement, and kept her concerns to herself. She'd make a damn fine astronaut's wife. Or an International Rescuer's.