53: Mail

Mt. Everest, the North Face, beneath a soap-bubble dome of shimmering force, and a rapidly gathering storm-

Speed was critical, because the force shield, at so wide a setting, drew enormous torrents of power, straining even Thunderbird 1's capacity. Yet, Scott dared not shut the thing off; not with confirmed hostiles in the vicinity.

All he could do was work faster, and make sure that Gordon did the same. His brother returned to the crashed commuter jet, providing whatever he could in the way of rapid, on-site medical care. A dozen trauma patches would be applied, their advanced medicines and nano-surgical capabilities saving many people who would otherwise have perished.

Gordon treated victims presenting with fractured limbs, pulmonary edema, head trauma, internal bleedingand shock. It was Scott's task to keep those victims safe from further attack, and to arrange a way to get them aboard Thunderbird 1. Unfortunately, steep, shifting slopes, freezing weather and high winds made a poor combination with desperately injured people.

There were the grav-carts, of course, but each required two men for safe handling. Worse, they were apt to malfunction over extremely rough, discontinuous terrain. ...And he still had aflight data recorder to somehow retrieve.

Back at the cockpit, Scott called in to Island Base, letting his father know that there'd been trouble, but deliberately playing it down. No sense worrying the folks back home.

"…Nothing we can't handle, Dad. That's what Brains outfitted these craft with shields for."

Over the comm screen, Jeff Tracy nodded distractedly. Muttering something about Hackenbacker and a bomb, he shifted his gaze to another screen feed.

"FAB, Son… just got word back from Lhasa that the attempted rescue flight to base camp was a bust. They lost a heli-jet on approach, and the other had to rescue its crew with a basket and winch, then return to the launch pad. The Chinese are still en route, though, and… Damn!" He snarled suddenly, leaning halfway out of sight to aggressively flip switches.

"We've lost Fermat's comm signal! What the hell's going on out there? Scott, I'll have to get back to you. Conclude rescue operations, and get to Siberia, ASAP. Tracy, out."

"Yes…"

The comm channel shut off, its screen switching abruptly to a field of snowy static.

"…Sir," Scott replied to a humming and clicking cockpit. Battery power was close to red-lining, he noticed;not a good sign.

Okay, focus… Back to the problem at hand: how to get those wounded people down 213 yards of foul-tempered mountainside, without killing allthem in the process.

Cindy called before he'd come up with anything bright and original. If he'd been in any doubt before, Scott concluded then that she cared, for the usually flinty reporter seemed genuinely, deeply concerned.

"Hey, Hollywood," she said to him, wiping away her heavy studio makeup in the back of a network van.

"Don't guess I need to remind you that this is one of those 'slam-bam, thank-you, Ma'am', kind of… in-and-out… things? The weather reports don't look so good, Fella. Get your people and go, would be my suggestion."

"Working on it, Hon. Transport's the issue, right now."

Just 200 damn yards… but in deep-freeze conditions, on a nearly vertical grade.

"Heard anything from the other locations? Siberia, for instance?"

(Dad's continuing silence couldn't be a good thing.)

His fiancée shook her head.

"Afraid not, besides a short blurb on the AP science report, that is. Mammoths make good headlines on slower news days than this one, Fella. But I've got something else for you: guess he doesn't realize it, but Gordon's broadcasting live. Someone up there's got a cell phone, webcasting away to the Bengalese affiliate. It's being picked up all over the damn place, as breaking news."

"Shit." Scott reached for his wrist comm, adding, "Thanks, Hon. I'll let him know, and then block all out-bound frequencies. We'll be out of touch for awhile, but it's just a security measure."

Cindy nodded slowly. Oddly enough, even with no makeup and mussed dark hair, eyes a little red-rimmed, she still looked good to Scott. Must be serious.

"Yeah. I'll be around, whenever you get a chance to catch me up. Love you."

"Same here, Hon. Talk to you later."

And then he signed off, discovering anewthat having a woman waiting on you, worrying whether you'd make it safely home or not, complicated matters immensely. He hurt for her, more than worried about himself… and still had a job to do.

"Gordon!" Scott snapped over the comm, more angrily than he'd meant to, "wake up and keep a damn eye on your surroundings, Mister! You've got a live camera in there!"

The response was hurried, the view that of someone's lacerated torso, rather than Gordon's air-masked face.

"Right… terribly sorry, Scott. Bit of a mess here, just now."

No doubt. Feeling bad about having yelled (when the reason satellite relay had been enabled in the first place was so he could keep talking to Cindy), Scott blocked the out-bound frequencies. Then he said,

"No problem. You're clear. Let me know when you've got those people ready for transport, and I'll send you stage two of the game plan. Out."

Gordon was too busy to reply, or else too embarrassed. Trying to think, Scott tapped a nervous, hyperactive rhythm against the instrument panel, then threw himself into his seat. He locked his hands behind his head, staring at the overhead as though good ideas were printed there fresh, and updated daily.

All of a sudden, he thought: John. And then, 'Why the hell not?'

Couldn't hurt to try…

Resetting the long-range comm to access NASA's InterPlanet (on a channel his brother had installed and encrypted in earlier, better times), Scott typed out,

'Hey, little brother. Got a minute?'

Before the fighter pilot could brace himself for failure, something very large arrived. A huge chunk of emailed data; what looked like several weeks' worth of responses, compacted so tightly as to all but choke his Bird's computers.

"What the hell…?"

Scott spent the next few minutes unzipping the massive file, which looked like the damn Library of Congress rolled into a marble. The instant it came available, he opened the first entry.

'Find myself with a little free time, yeah. What seems to be the major malfunction?'

There were over 137 more entries. Bemused, Scott started to open the next, but hesitated, checked by a sudden thought. What if…? Suppose these were answers? Replies to transmissions Scott hadn't even made yet, somehow accelerated through time? He was ready to swear he'd heard Dad mention some kind of 'temporal anomaly', a sort of lag between Endurance and Earth.

So… if he opened one without having first sent his own message, what would happen to John's responses? Lost? Rewritten? 'Paradoxed' out of existence? Better not to risk it, maybe.

Scott wrote,

'Need consult on getting 15 injured plane crash survivors off Mt. Everest and onto 1, in shit-poor weather. Time-critical scenario: force shield up, avalanche conditions, under threat of continued attack. View satellite photo throughrepaired 'eyes'. And how're you doing, out there?'

Now, he opened the next message, which was labeled simply, Re: S.A. (Scott Aaron, John's usual, unimaginative method for coding his older brother's identity.)

'If too hurt to walk, consider reconfig of F.S. to create a covered ramp from crash site to 1. Input following algorithms to generatorthen reset system parameters.'

There followed a chunk of equations that Scott began typing in at once. Below that, written up as though it hardly mattered, was the reply to his second question.

'Been better, actually. Radiation issues, but shut up about it. This is need-to-know, and no-one else needs to know. We'll talk more at end of watch.'

Scott halted as though punched, having to reenter those last two figures. Radiation? But…

'When did that happen?' He pounded out.

Four days ago, during the official 'family call' from Mars, his brother had seemed just fine. (Or, as fine as he ever got.) Scott opened the next message, gathering that his own were trickling in about as speedily as warm asphalt poured.

'2 weeks, huh? Time lag's a bitch, this month. Spacewalk went bad on us, basically. Lots of stuff, Scott. No-one else having much success with the comm, so give Houston the following updates, please.'

A block of data filled the screen, pertaining, Scott guessed, to Endurance. He'd pass it on as quickly as possible, but his first concern was for John's condition. Didn't radiation lead to cancer? If his brother was somehow experiencing more 'time under the bridge' than his family back on Earth… would he get home soon enough to receive treatment?

'How are you holding up?' He replied, after hitting the shield generator's reset key. Although he didn't understand most of the equations he'd just entered, Scott trusted his brother. Missed him, too, though he didn't know how to go about saying anything so personal.

So he added, before sending this last bit,

'How are the little woman and John, Jr.? You warming up to fatherhood?'

The shield flashed, seen through his view screen, and then seemed to peel apart, like two curved sections of an onion. Responding to its new settings, the generator produced what looked like a sloping, curved tube inside the now weakened dome.

This newer construct extended over deep snow and splintered shale, from Thunderbird 1's storage compartment to about two feet below the crashed plane. It sparked in the cloudy half-light, running with sinuous color and scintillant power, softly illuminating the rock beneath. Air might get through those curving, mathematically woven barriers, but not wind. Bingo.

Scott sighed. Shaking with relieved tension, he switched to wrist comm again and called out,

"Gordon, courtesy of a mutual friend, we've got ourselves an on-ramp. Soon as they're in shape to travel, give me a heads-up, then harness and lower them through the force tube, one at a time. Clear?"

"FAB, Scott." Gordon sounded rather quiet, still. The pilot recognized that tone of voice; it was his younger brother's "I'm about to lose one" sound.

"Be just a bit longer, though."

"Okay. Do what you can, and keep me posted. The storage compartment's ready to go, so you can ride back with your patients, if necessary. Good luck."

"Right." The swimmer didn't sound very positive. Then again… seventeen years old and already facing an adult's life-or-death responsibilities… maybe he had a hard time keeping perspective on things. Have to sit down and talk with him, sometime soon, Scott decided... tell him what a good job he was doing.

Now, though, after scanning the perimeter, Scott simply opened the next email.

'Sorry to take so long replying. Usually check for a message every few weeks, but the supply transfer from Kuiper threw my schedule off. Thanks for getting in touch with JSC for us. Couldn't have coordinated the pass off without your information. Weird message from Lady P this morning, something happening underground that she doesn't like, but couldn't talk about. Suggest you follow up.'

And then,

'Wasn't aware you knew about Junior. Were planning surgery before, but couldn't risk another medical complication at this time. Too many down, already. Otherwise proceeding as expected on all fronts and due pretty soon. I'm good. The woman isn't little (any more). Dr. Bennett is too big for her old clothing, so we've reverse-engineered a maternity uniform and are now working out the specs on a prototype diaper. More real-world space program dividends. Talk to you again in a few weeks.'

Scott could think of several dozen questions, each more confused than the last. The baby was expected so soon? How great a time anomaly were they experiencing, and why? More importantly, how old would everyone be when Endurance finally returned to Earth? 'Too many down already'? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Who, exactly, was 'down'?

But Gordon interrupted before Scott could begin asking, calling in with the news that his crash survivors were ready for transfer. Scott forced himself back to the present with an irritated head shake. He'd just have to read the other messages later; on the way to Siberia, maybe.

Rising from the pilot's seat, Scott headed aft to receive incoming victims, still musing on what he'd learned. Just possibly, with a generous helping of cleverness and luck, they'd see this thing through; survive yet another storm with flags flying and cargo intact. If all went well, in a few weeks time they'd gather to celebrate the safe return of a long-absent brother and the welcome arrival of a brand new Tracy. Just maybe…