Edits still coming.
27: Consequence
Shift times lines and happenstance as you would, certain features were going to persist; personalities, disasters, injuries and ideas. Time might stretch and warp, events alter nearly beyond recognition, but the universe… essentially conservative… simply shrugged its collective shoulders and took a different path to the finish line.
Once, chaos had resulted from the careless opening of a small worm hole. Next, from the release of a powerful computer program, and now… the sudden collapse of Braman.
Infested with alien purpose, Hackenbacker's operating system underlay global communications, data files and computer networks, including NASA's InterplaNet. When Braman went down, so, temporarily, did the world's large scale ability to speak, act and remember.
Besides cutting contact with the Moon and Endurance, the twelve-minute power down resulted in the crash of a high-altitude commuter shuttle (downed on the north face of Everest), several explosion-sparked wildfires, a head-on train collision in the main Chilean railway tunnel and a stampede of loosed animals from Siberia's Pleistocene Park.
Different events, same crucial turning points; all shadows of something enormous happening at a much higher level. Not that any of the analog minds realized this.
All that International Rescue was aware of was the need for swift, decisive action. Once Brains installed LOIS (Legal and Office Internet Systems) Jeff Tracy flipped on the comm and set to work.
"Penny," he snapped, "I haven't got time to talk, or let you rest. You're clear to land and start pitching in. I'm sending you to the Johnson Space Center in thirty minutes. Pack for an extended stay."
The elegant blonde didn't seem surprised.
"Of course, Dear. I…"
Nor did Jeff let her complete the thought. Transmitting to Thunderbird 3, he switched channels and mind-sets with amphibious ease.
"Right. Boys… back, now. You'll be splitting up to cover a number of time-critical situations. Telemetry should be coming up momentarily, and your 'Birds are being prepared. You'll be briefed in-flight. Move."
And then, before Scott could reply, Jeff Tracy switched to the channel that linked him with the executive secretary at his luxurious Manhattan office.
"Britte, I want my lawyers on secure video conference in five minutes, every damn one of them. I don't care if they're in surgery. They're to drop whatever they're doing and call in. Got it?"
On screen, the dark-haired young woman nodded.
"Yes, Mr. Tracy. Five minutes to conference. Will there be anything else, Sir?"
Jeff rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, briefly closing his tired brown eyes. Then, once more alert and focused, he said,
"Absolutely. Get NASA's Chief of Flight Operations on the line, ASAP."
Britte hesitated. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, her grayish eyes held a touch of secret knowledge. She was an operative, of course. No one reached such exalted levels at Tracy Aerospace, otherwise.
"In which capacity, Sir?" she requested smoothly.
Said Jeff,
"Option two: secure channel, urgent."
Once again, Britte Lunsford nodded. It seemed that the boss was about to call in a few favors.
"Understood, Mr. Tracy, and good luck, Sir."
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Thunderbird 3, the cockpit-
"Everybody get below and strap in," Scott ordered. The comm had barely fallen silent, the listed disasters filling six young minds with potential strategy and speculations.
"As soon as we get home, we hit the ground running. Father hasn't made any assignments that I'm aware of, but I'm figuring me and Gordon in 1, on the shuttle site, Virge and Brains in 2, at the tunnel collision, with Alan, TinTin and Fermat dropped off to help round up escaped mastodons, or whatever. We'll tackle the scrub fires together, once the other situations have been handled. Clear?"
Evidently so.
Back in the lounge, Alan settled lower in his padded seat, grumbled about the loss of time, and his dumb assignment. Mastodons? At a park? When was he going to pull a grown-up rescue?
Fermat and TinTin were glad simply to have been included, while Gordon was deeply relieved not to be dealing with large animals. Despite Virgil's hopes to the contrary, he was absolute rubbish with horses and cattle. Wretched overlarge elephants, as well, he expected.
"Hang on," Scott muttered aloud, firing the main engine. "We'll be coming in low and fast. This could get rough."
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Endurance-
Events continued to pile up or swerve past, like cars dodging a turtle on the freeway. On the bright side, people (even nascent ones) were healing.
In the presence of Cho, Linda Bennett had tested her own hormone levels, silently pleading for a rising flood of human chorionic gonadatropin. She hovered in the med lab after punching the last key, waiting with her best friend for the electronic jury to return its life-or-death sentence. The results came back in moments; calm andclinically beautiful. Linda collapsed into Cho's embrace and began to cry, ignoring the tears that broke free to drift peacefully away. The baby was still there and growing stronger, and that was all that mattered for the moment.
John was out of the cast and about his business, under strict orders to go easy on the leg. In the absence of gravity, bone didn't heal as well or as solidly, and was prone to re-breaking. He'd been warned.
Roger was similarly cautioned and rather more coddled, though his troubles were different; as much emotional as physical. For a time he'd felt maimed and useless. Then, circumstances conspired to put him back to work.
A routine scan of the ship's hull, less than three days into their flight, revealed serious problems. Thorpe had been remotely manipulating their robot camera, scanning hull plates, seams, wheel wells and airlocks. Now he called out,
"Come have a look at this, Pete. Scooter's pegged something."
McCord propelled himself through the hatch and over to Roger's console.
"What's he got?" The commander asked, braking his drift with a hand to the back of Thorpe's seat. "Hull damage?"
"Yeah," the Marine admitted, glancing up at McCord, "but not the way we expected. It looks more like… oxidation, or some of that ferrospirillum crap, Skipper."
Hovering stretched out like Superman, Pete stared over Roger's broad shoulder at the view screen. Pictured there, he could see the aft airlock and a bit of surrounding hull; pitted, disintegrating, rusty hull, running with faint electrochemical sparks and luminescence.
"Shit," the commander breathed softly. Pushing a little past Thorpe, he nudged one of the joysticks to bring Scooter closer to the damage. A few quick button presses captured a series of digital pictures. Later, when comm became reliable again, he'd send them in for consult. Now, though, with the others gathering behind him, Pete needed a plan of action.
"Looks like most of 24J and M are eaten through… and part of the thruster bell. Hatch cover appears okay… We're gonna have to get someone out there to assess and replace that mess before rendezvous. It may be spreading."
The mission commander pushed himself up and back a bit. The others waited, trusting his judgment. Ordinarily, the job would have gone to Thorpe, for spacewalks and hull repair were his specialty. Not with the injuries he'd sustained, though. Not anymore.
McCord looked over his gathered crew, gauging the possibilities. At calm, remote Tracy, miserable Thorpe, visibly nauseous Linda, and small, worried Cho.
Conditions were poor for a spacewalk. They were still very near to Mars, with its swarm of meteor ejecta and non-existent magnetic field. A spacewalking astronaut might be struck by asteroid debris, or burnt alive by cosmic radiation. Equipment might fail, sending the astronaut tumbling into Mars' bleak and hungry throat.
Not a death warrant, exactly, but near enough to make picking a repairman damn near impossible. McCord had made up his mind to do the job himself when Tracy spoke up.
"Pete, I'll go. I'll leave my helmet camera on, so you and Roger can coordinate."
The females were simply out of the question as far as John was concerned. One was pregnant, the other physically too small to handle all the required heavy lifting. Even without gravity, hull plates packed a lot of inertia, and were difficult to maneuver. Pete was in good shape for his age… but he was also pushing 60, and strenuous EVAs were a young man's task, like high level mathematics.
Looking like he'd just volunteered a trip to the corner store for a loaf of bread, John next added,
"I've only done this in underwater sim, so…" he glanced across at Roger, "I'm going to need a fair amount of nurse-maiding."
There was a flaw in his reasoning, which one person present spotted almost immediately.
"What about your leg?" Dr. Bennett asked quietly.
John shrugged.
"I'll be wearing a pressure suit, and I'm the youngest uninjured crewman. As long as nobody throws a damn rock drill at me, I've got nothing to worry about. Plus, we can handle this in stages, with interstitial detox time."
Dr. Bennett had a comeback for this, and would have made an argument of it, had Pete not arrived at a sudden decision.
"Tracy," he said, "you and I are both suiting up. Thorpe, you're on the cargo arm and monitors. You and Cho get the replacement plates loaded into position and ready to go. After that, Dr. Kim, I want you running analysis on what we find out there."
Pete paused to think, plucking briefly at his lower lip (for expediency's sake, he'd already swallowed his gum).
"If we've picked something up that's eating its way inward, I need a plan in place to deal with it, using available materials."
Cho nodded seriously.
"I have sequenced the genomes of both Martian organisms, Pete. A way will be found to combat them, or I will change my dishonored name."
Pete gave the Korean-American scientist a quick smile.
"Better get it right, then, woman… because as mission commander, I've got dibs on your new moniker, and I'm partial to 'Elvis'."
Roger got a sudden full body shiver.
"Oh, hell no," he laughed. "No way I'm introducing my family to 'Elvis Kim-Thorpe'!"
Only one person present seemed dissatisfied.
"What about me, Commander McCord?" Bennett inquired, from her hovering spot beside the flight controls. She looked stiff, sounded extremely formal.
"Doctor," Pete told her, "you have the conn. Understand, I will be too busy to monitor the entire situation. For the duration of this EVA, I leave decision-making in your hands. Anything happens, do the best you can with the remainder of the flight plan. Understood?"
Linda had taken to plaiting her unruly brown hair, a partial solution only as it still wanted to coil and drift. She tucked the braid away in the back of her tee shirt, saying,
"Understood, Pete."
After that, McCord re-parked Scooter, and everyone hurried off to dig out the appropriate checklists. John remained behind for a bit, though. He started, rather cautiously, to put a hand forth, but Linda jerked furiously away, nearly sending herself careening into the opposite bulkhead.
"You know that leg isn't up to strenuous exercise!" The doctor hissed, stabbing a finger at his chest.
"Neither is Roger's," he replied coolly, folding his arms.
"That's different!" Linda retorted, angry enough now to breathe poison fumes and spit lightning.
"Yeah. He hasn't got one."
And then, because, of all the things he wanted just then, 'argument' was somewhere beside 'ruptured spleen', John said,
"I can deal with the situation. I'll follow the plan, report any anomalies, and be back within the allotted time."
She looked angry, still. What the hell was wrong with females, anyway? Why couldn't they be reasonable? It wasn't like he had a choice.
A thought came to him then; one of those ragged-edged, untraceable notions. Maybe she was perfectly aware of the limited options, but had wanted him to at least ask, first? Weird. Worth a try, though.
"Look, I'm sorry if I made you angry, Linda. I'm, um… not used to asking for a second opinion. I hope you…"
('Get over it' probably wasn'tthewisest response)
"…don't stay mad for long."
Linda snorted once, and then relented. Pushing off the opposite bulkhead, she came to him, all at once soft, curved and promising. Still pregnant, too, which was a definite bright spot.
The nudging movements and warmth of her body began making it very difficult to concentrate. The kiss merely worsened matters.
He would have pulled her closer still, but they were already drifting, and unless he wanted to end up plastered to the ceiling with a very odd set of bruises ('Damn, Tracy, is that the cargo bay re-press switch?') he'd just have to wait.
So, he held his wife away, then kissed her mouth, forehead and the very tip of her nose, a gesture he couldn't recall using before. She got a strange look on her face, and John hoped that she wasn't about to cry. Feminine tears were awkward and upsetting, no matter who they came from.
(He'd seen Scott tear up, once, when part of an engine block fell on his right foot, but that had been perfectly understandable.)
She didn't cry though, saying instead,
"Be careful, and if I call you inside, for any reason…"
"I'll come back," he promised. "No questions asked."
Further aft, Pete McCord was growing impatient.
"Tracy!" the commander shouted. "Now!"
And then, in a trailing mutter,
"…Plenty of time to play doctor, later."
Right. They parted with a last, hasty kiss, looking pretty much everywhere except at each other. Because Pete was wrong; there was no more time.