NV Tsunami Part Two

by judyk

This story was started in the 1980s and is UNFINISHED. It is also a long read, running to 10 chapters in part 1, plus the first two chapters of part 2. If enough people would like to read the rest of it, I will finish it. It is a disaster-at-sea story in which the Tracys are both rescuers and rescued. There is a fair bit of tech in it and a lot of action.

NV TSUNAMI - PART TWO

CHAPTER 11

AFTERMATH

VIRGIL FOUGHT HIS way upwards through black water. Wave after massive wave toppled and broke with the weight of a hundred shattering hillsides above him, forcing him down, but he finally found himself at the surface and threw his head back, gulping in air convulsively. He was in a small walnut-panelled room, and water was up to his waist and rising fast. Outside someone was hammering on the door, then he heard Tin-Tin's voice raised in a high-pitched cry of fear. "It's okay, I'm coming," he shouted, and wrenched at the door just a little too heavily, crashing it into the end of its metal tracking, but a wall of icy water thundered in, sweeping him into the corridor. Tin-Tin screamed again and he turned to see her close beside him, wet black hair fanned seaweed-like across her face. He grabbed her arm, but the hair floated away from her eyes and they were wide open, blank and glassy. He recoiled in horror and she sank away, spiralling lazily down into deep water.

The water was up to his neck and rising faster. He saw a light and swam towards it, but it was a panel of glass in the corridor ceiling with the sun shining through it from a placid blue sky outside. The water was inches from the ceiling and he tried desperately to break the glass, but water was in his mouth and roaring in his ears as it surged up around him; he gave one last lunge towards the light and sat upright, opening his eyes onto the familiar scenery of his own bedroom.

He sat for a moment breathing deeply as the sweat on his body ran down in cold salt-water droplets and dried, then he looked at the time: ten a.m. He had slept for ten or twelve hours, then. Outside, the wind boomed around the house with a sound much like angry water, and above him a light panel in the ceiling glowed on its low-intensity setting. He drew his legs up to his chest in a spasm of misery and dropped his head onto his knees. The dream was receding but the image of Tin-Tin's face refused to fade, still staring sightlessly out of the depths of his memory. His head ached, his ribs ached, his throat, lungs, stomach and every interconnection between them felt raw and sore, and all the events of the last twenty-four hours came crowding back into his mind, hard and real and unwelcome.

The last time he had woken, which was now yesterday, he had felt worse, with a pain like a network of fine hot wires that seemed to be the only thing holding together the back of his head, and a voice that was just a sandpaper whisper. The first thing into his field of vision had been his father's face looking down, and when he had tried to sit up he had been pushed firmly back by someone standing at the other side of the bed. "How're you feeling, Son?" Jeff Tracy had asked, and he had managed to mouth an "Okay."

"You've Gordon to thank for that. He found you and managed to pump the water out of you just in time; a few more minutes and it would've been too late."

"Alan and Tin-Tin, how are they?" he had asked with an effort, and there had been a just-detectable pause before the reply.

"Alan's broken a couple of ribs, he was swept against a boat. But he's going to be okay."

"How about Tin-Tin?"

There had been a definite silence then, and for the first time he had sensed a fourth presence in the room: Kyrano was standing by the door, an unfathomable expression on his face.

"We didn't find her, Son," Jeff had said. 'The ship went down almost as soon as International Rescue reached the scene, and she wasn't in any of the boats. Now I want you to tell us what happened, as far as you remember. Take your time, and don't worry about Kyrano. He's here because he wants to be."

Numbed by the news he had gone over the whole story, coaxing his unwilling voice with frequent stops and gulps from a water glass. He had described each incident just as it came to mind, repeating Kapo's fateful words but leaving out Alan's desperate reaction, just saying he had lost his balance as a wave struck the ship, and could remember nothing more. When he had finished Kyrano had nodded briefly to Jeff, said "Thank you, Mr. Tracy," in a voice without emotion, then they had all trooped out and left him alone, with an order to go to sleep. Still dog-tired, feeling utterly wretched and made drowsy by something that must have been in his drink, he had not found it difficult to comply.

Footsteps passing outside in the corridor brought him suddenly back to the present, and he straightened up with a start. Before he could rise or call to intercept them the moving feet halted, the door slide aside, and the compact, muscular figure of Gordon Tracy stood in the doorway, his hair the shiny orange-gold of a freshly stripped wire in the glow of the corridor lights.

"Just looked in to see if you were awake yet." Gordon came in, blond stubble like a mask of gold paint highlighting chin and jaw of an uncharacteristically sombre face. He flopped into a chair, his movements dull and heavy with an up-all-night tiredness, lacking their habitual exuberance and bounce. He scanned his brother's face quickly as he settled back, his square frame lithe but well-padded: a swimmer's musculature.

"Dad told me what happened. I owe you, Gordon," Virgil said.

"Forget it." Gordon shook his head. "Chances are it was that crack on the head that saved you: in those high waves an unconscious man will often last longer than one who tries to fight. Anyway, it's really John we've all got to thank. He spotted the storm heading across your course and radioed the port authorities, then when he found out they'd lost touch with Tsunami he called us out pretty quick. How're you feeling, anyhow? You're sure looking better than you did last night."

"I'm okay; right back to normal," Virgil lied. "But what's happening out there, Gordon? Has there been any more news?"

Gordon looked down, studying the rug. "Yeah: all bad, I'm afraid. After Dad spoke to you last night he flew Kyrano out to Tonga; that's the nearest land to the wreck site. He called in about an hour ago: seems the air-sea rescue boys started searching at first light, but all they've found are a couple of crewmen who didn't make it. Dad says the present estimate is six dead, eleven missing, but I guess out of over six hundred passengers plus her crew that's something like a miracle, under the circumstances."

"And Tin-Tin?"

Gordon's gaze dropped further. "No sign, Virgil."

"Then that means there could still be a chance!" Virgil tensed himself to rise. "We should be out there looking for her; the air-sea guys don't have any detection gear that could hold a candle to ours. She had a life jacket, she might've-"

"No, Virgil." Gordon raised miserable eyes, and the warning in his look was unmistakable. "We'd be crazy to start fooling ourselves: even if she could've made it through the storm somehow, you know as well as I do about the other dangers in tropical waters. And it's been over nineteen hours now. The way it looks, she didn't even leave the ship."

Weak and suddenly slightly dizzy, Virgil lay back down. "I can't believe it, Gordon," he said, and realised with a shock that something inside was still dazed and uncomprehending, and that he was making a simple statement of fact. "It's like a bad dream, a nightmare, and it's all my fault. If I'd waited while she got right down into that boat or gone back to look for her she might be here now. How can I face Dad and Scott? Worse, what am I going to say to Kyrano?"

"Nothing." Gordon's voice was serious. "No-one's blaming you, and if you were thinking straight right now you'd realise it's pretty tough on Dad and Scott to figure that they would. I love the sea, but it's a pretty implacable enemy, Virgil; when things go wrong out there there isn't much a couple of guys on their own can do about it. If you and Alan had gone back down into that ship we'd have three empty beds here now, not one, and blaming yourself sure won't make things better for any of us."

Virgil stared up at the light panel, unconvinced. "Guess you're right. How's Alan taking it?"

"Okay, I guess." Gordon sounded suddenly uncomfortable. "Seems he knew somehow that she wouldn't be found right from the time we winched him out of that old boat. When Dad broke it to him that she was on the missing list he just kind of accepted it. He's been acting pretty quiet since then."

"Maybe I'd better talk to him."

"You can try." Gordon stood up. "But remember, you both still need to get plenty of rest. Soon as Brains can remember how to work those machines of his in the kitchen I'll bring you something to eat, then Scott and I are going to try to grab some sleep. Dad and Kyrano are staying on in Tonga for some sort of memorial service, and Dad wants us to join them later, but you needn't come if you don't feel up to it."

"Wait, Gordon." Virgil raised himself on one elbow. "Tell me about the rescue."

"Well, there isn't much to tell, really." Gordon sank back. "After she'd dropped me and Thunderbird Four, Thunderbird Two winched the people out of the smaller boats, and Scott flew Thunderbird One around trying to spot anybody in the water. He didn't see you, though. Guess we might never have found you if it hadn't been for Alan: he kept yelling that you'd gone overboard, so I kept on looking."

"I'm glad that you did. The conditions must've been terrible out there for Thunderbird Four."

"They were pretty scary for all of us," Gordon admitted. "Scott was flying so low he nearly went straight into one of those giant waves; guess that would've smashed Thunderbird One to pieces. But the storm started to move off just after that, and the bigger lifeboats were riding it out okay, so we just stood by until the rescue ships arrived from Tonga."

Virgil nodded. "There was a boatload of World Navy guys. Do you know what happened to them?"

"We saw them, but they declined our help. John said he picked up a lot of transmissions between a surface craft and some Navy air transports about an hour later, so I guess they made it okay."

Virgil raised one heavy brow in irony. "I figured that they would. But there's just one more thing." He sat right up, and his brows dropped again and knitted. "I still don't understand how you brought out Thunderbird Two. With Scott flying Thunderbird One…"

"Didn't Dad tell you?" Gordon asked, surprised. "He flew her himself. We couldn't believe it when he said he was coming, but that just made him all the more dead-set on it." His face assumed a surly expression, and his voice dropped a couple of octaves to a growl. "I'm not completely past it, you know. You boys seem to think you're the only ones who ever flew a plane, but I could still show you some tricks that'd send you heroes high-tailing it back home to hide your fool heads behind your grandmother's skirts." Gordon's voice returned to normal and his face relaxed. "You know how he is."

"Yeah." Virgil grinned in spite of himself, recognising and appreciating the attempt at comfort in his brother's forced humour for what it was. "I know how he is." He swung his legs a little stiffly to the floor. "Thanks, Gordon. Guess I'll get dressed and look in on Alan now."

"Okay." Gordon rose and headed for the door, his face serious once more. "But don't overdo it. Yesterday we figured we'd lost all three of you, but now we've got you and Alan back we just want to see you both getting fit again. Double quick."

In Alan's room a window formed most of the wall opposite the door, and beyond it the storm was departing, the clouds now separated into stately sailing formation, a towering armada of slate-black hulls and dazzling sails moving off to deposit its remaining watery cargo in the already soaking wastes of the southern ocean. In the dying wind the palms below the balcony still swayed, tattered and punch-drunk, and inside in the increasing light the figure in the bed was just distinguishable, the covers pulled up to hide its lower face.

"Alan?" Virgil repeated.

From their contemplation of the clouds Alan's eyes finally turned to him, but without interest, and there was a drawn-out silence. Then: "I'm sorry I hit you."

"Forget it."

"I can't forget it. I can't forget any of it, that's the problem." Alan's face turned back to the window, and there was another long pause. "I can't stop thinking about her. I can't stop remembering."

"Why try, Alan?" Virgil came closer and sat down on the edge of the bed, concerned. "I figure she deserves to be thought about and remembered, especially by you. There was nothing to be ashamed of in the way you felt for her when she was around, and the same goes for how you feel now." He waited, but there was no response, so he went on gently: "Why not think about the good times you had together? You know that's what she'd want you to do."

In the quiet the blue outside the window stretched as the clouds' canvas filled with wind, and a patch of sunlight found the room. Alan's eyes turned back.

"You know what happened, don't you? You know why the ship went down."

"Sure. She turned turtle because of the storm, and because she took on too much water."

"But you know what holed her in the first place, and what cracked the hydrojet?" Alan's face was suddenly animated. "That was your shooting star. The Skytech space lab, four hundred tons of white-hot metal that John said burned up on re-entry, but it didn't, Virgil. When I saw that glow and the mist on the water I might've figured it was steam, but by then it was too late." He drew a deep breath. "Because she'd already made her wish. She'd wished on that thing that she could stay there for ever, and now she will. She won't be coming home and she won't see Tavarua and I'll have to do without her for the rest of my life."

"But that's crazy," Virgil said, astonished, but with the mist, the quiet hiss in the water, the cracked carbon-steel and the melted hull all running through his mind with disconcerting speed. "Okay, even if there was a rogue splashdown somewhere that night the chances of a ship getting hit in mid-Pacific are a million to one." He laid a hand on Alan's covered arm. "You mustn't make things worse for yourself this way, Alan. It was the storm, and whatever she wished couldn't have made any difference to the way things turned out."

"Maybe." Alan shifted and withdrew his arm, the brief flash of expressiveness in his face gone. The silence settled in again, and after a moment Virgil stood up.

"Gordon and Brains are fixing up a meal. Shall I come and keep you company while you eat? Or maybe you'd prefer to get some sleep."

Alan turned his body away slowly and painfully, moving within the restriction of his strapped-up ribs. "Will you just take off? Guess I don't feel like any more talking."

"Okay." Virgil nodded and went to the door. "I know how you feel. But it will get easier, Alan, I promise. Eventually, it will." As he crossed the threshold Alan's head turned.

"Virgil?"

"Yes?" Virgil stopped.

"When something like this happens… I figure you can't ever go out by the same door as you came in."

Alan's eyes turned back to the window, and, astonished again, Virgil left the room.

He stood outside for a moment preoccupied and worried, then started in the direction of the lounge. Halfway down the corridor was Tin-Tin's room; someone had left the door open, and in passing he saw a sight that stopped him in his tracks: a dress laid out on the bed, still in its shiny, semi-transparent wrap. Something she had ordered from the mainland, he presumed, that had arrived while she was away, and that she would now never see. Because she would never be coming back.

Never coming back. The full reality finally struck him like a physical blow, and he gripped the door-post, knuckles whitening. He had heard those words before, many years ago, but 'never' had been too big an idea for a six-year-old boy, and although the pain and the misery had been there, there had been no real understanding. Now with the sympathy born of maturity horror and pity knotted his stomach: horror and pity for Tin-Tin, alone and without help when the sea had come in, and now beyond helping; pity for Alan, silent and frozen into his misery. The bitter taste of salt water filled his mouth, and he staggered under a returning wave of nausea. Crossing the corridor he dived into the bathroom.

After three or four minutes, perhaps a few more, the door slid back and a tall shape moved behind him in the mirror. Scott. He dabbed the water off his face and straightened up.

"Is something the matter, Virgil?"

"Just felt kind of dizzy for a moment." Virgil turned to face the figure that in the small room seemed overpowering: broad-shouldered and strong but long-limbed and spare of extra flesh almost to the point of gauntness. A gunfighter's figure from a twentieth-century western, and the close-fitting dark pullover and trousers served only to intensify the impression. Beneath his black hair and brows Scott's eyes were a gun-hard slate blue, and Virgil felt oddly uncomfortable in their sights. He shook his head. "Guess I'm not one hundred percent yet."

"Yeah. Well, maybe you should've stayed in bed." Scott's face with its thundercloud colours was unreadable. "How's Alan?"

"I figure he needs to be on his own for a while."

Scott eyed him appraisingly. "What really happened out there, Virgil? When we picked Alan up he was almost hysterical, screaming something about having killed you. And what happened to Tin-Tin? How in the world did she get left behind?"

"You know what happened." Virgil turned back to dab at his face with the towel, his eyes fixed on Scott in the mirror. "You were there last night when I went through it with Dad."

"I know you didn't give us the whole story." Scott's voice held a rising note of irritation. "Alan seemed so sure she was still on that ship that I can't believe he'd just have jumped overboard and abandoned her, that's not like him. You're holding something back, Virgil; that's not like you. And I don't like it."

"Okay, Scott." Virgil swung round frowning. "You want the whole story, you've got it. Alan did try to go back to find her, but I stopped him. He hit me and I don't remember what happened after that; he didn't know what he was doing. He figured she was still aboard, I didn't believe him; he was right and I was wrong, and now she's gone. End of story." He used the towel to mop a brow that was rapidly getting damp again with sweat.

"And you didn't tell this to Dad because of Alan?"

"Why bother? Maybe if he hadn't hit me we'd both be dead by now, I don't know." Virgil's lowered brows drew down further. "If, if: I'm sick of that word. If I'd listened to Alan, if I'd made sure she got into the boat, if I'd gotten that helijet off the deck, if she hadn't come in the first place. I know every single 'if' from the start to the finish of that voyage, and all of them are going to be with me for the rest of my life. So don't start accusing me of some sort of cover-up. I just don't need it, Scott. Okay?"

Scott frowned in his turn, the deep-etched, determined lines around his mouth starting to tighten warningly. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I just wanted to hear the truth. If things did happen the way you say then okay, neither you nor Alan could have done anything to save the situation."

"If things happened the way I say!" Virgil took a tense step forward, and for once his good-natured face was disfigured with an anger approaching genuine rage. "If things did happen the way I say? Okay, then maybe you still don't believe me. Maybe you'd like to go through it all again. Perhaps if we go through it enough times it'll bring her back, is that what you think? Is it? Is it?" He stood stiff-legged, staring into his brother's face. "Well, it won't. Nothing can, nothing will, ever. And if you'd bring down that ego you're flying long enough to see things the same way as the rest of us maybe you'd realise that."

"Ego?" Scott's frame had stiffened in response but he stood unflinching, and the irritation in his voice had turned to hard anger, lost its iron-firm control and taken on a perilous quality. "So, that's what this is all about. A time like this, with Tin-Tin gone, Alan sick and Kyrano half out of his mind although he doesn't show it, and you're using it as an opportunity to challenge me. Well, it's a fact that a guy who criticises a strong approach to life is a guy who's afraid of it. Do you really figure I like having to make all the mission decisions, because I know it takes you an hour in the mornings just to make up your mind to roll out of bed? If I'm egotistical then you're lazy, undisciplined and over-emotional, Virgil: you're demonstrating that right now. Dad put you in charge of that trip, but he's always had some sort of blind spot about you; he can't see that you're not up to the responsibility. Guess you just hit the mark: Alan was right and you were wrong. You got it wrong out there when I wasn't around to put it right, and that's why Alan's suffering now and why she's lying in that ship at the bottom of the sea."

Virgil took a half-step forward with a wordless roar that was an equal mixture of anger and of pain. He swung back a fist, aborting the blow untested before it reached his brother's lightening defence, then spinning away he flung down the towel, which caught some feminine toiletry balanced on the bath-side, smashing the bottle on hard enamel. A pink oily streak ran on white and the scent of roses filled the room as the contents bled away, ownerless now and pathetically out of place. He stood frozen, staring at the mess for a second, then shouldered roughly past Scott to reach the door. "She's dead, and you can't change it, Scott; don't you understand? Now just lay off me!"

After a moment the door at the far end of the corridor slammed and Scott stirred, then turned and left the bathroom, heading slowly for the lounge. The big room was cool, its windows rain-silvered and spattered, swung open on their pivots in a long glass barrage to release their suffocating tide of twenty-four hours of storm-sealed, recycled air. Gordon stood out at the balcony rail, head down and watching something below, but as Scott entered he stepped back in and inspected the house computer's wall-mounted weather panel. He glanced over. "Pressure's rising."

Scott crossed to his father's desk without answering, pulling the chair back out of habit to accommodate his longer legs. Settling into its almost-familiar contours he sat motionless and in silence for a moment, then drew a deep breath. "You were right, Gordon, Virgil does seem a lot better. We just met up."

"I figured you might've." Gordon nodded unhappily. "What happened? I saw him making for the beach."

"Nothing happened, Gordon." Scott frowned. "Except that it seems as if I can't open my mouth round here any more without someone taking a dive down my throat, that's all!" The sentence finished in an almost involuntary shout, and with a wince and a sudden explosive movement he brought a fist down hard on the blotter, drawing a shriek from the injured wood beneath and sending pens and a silvery shoal of paper clips scattering off the desk. He grabbed up one shiny pin, twisting it in an agonised grip. "Blast it, Gordon, why didn't he bring her back? It was his mission: Alan and Tin-Tin were his responsibility, every bit as much as those containers, but now she's down there lying in the cold under a couple of hundred fathoms of water, and he can't even take the time to talk calmly about it and tell me what went wrong. When he started shouting back there I could've.. dammit, I wanted to-" He broke off, suddenly becoming aware of the mangled clip, then abruptly and disconcertingly he let out a groan, dropping down forwards to bury his head in his hands, his elbows on the emptied desk. "What the blazes am I saying, Gordon? What the heck have I said to Virgil, and what made him go for my throat in the first place that way? That ship sure was well-named: seems like it's crashed through every one of us like some giant wave, and now there's only wreckage left. We should be sticking together at a time like this, not bickering with each other."

"I figure maybe we all need some sleep," Gordon suggested quietly. "But first we'd better eat. I was just going to come looking for you. Brains has managed to put a meal together; he should be about ready to serve it up right now."

In the kitchen, Gordon looked around the table. Virgil ate slowly and silently, head down and eyes almost invisible under his bristling brows. Scott sat stiffly upright and expressionless, toying with the food in front of him without enthusiasm. Gordon, looking at the contents of his own plate, could understand his sentiments. The chair at the head of the table and Alan's customary chair were both empty, and only Brains ate with anything approaching vigour, squinting down through his thick myopic lenses in their outsize frames to shovel the unattractive yellow slop into his mouth.

"What is this stuff?" Scott pushed his plate away.

"Ah, I-I don't quite remember." Brains blinked at him in surprise, at any other time an almost comical picture, his narrow coat-hanger shoulders frozen in mid-movement and his short mousy hair with its pudding bowl cut deranged from his efforts as chef. "I found the cans a-at the back of the store cupboard. It seemed simple to cook and quite wholesome. The ah, colouration-"

"Canned curry?" Scott interrupted, staring at the turmeric-tinted mishmash in the plates in disbelief. "You know Kyrano would never allow anything like that on the Island. Didn't you read the label?" He rose and collected an empty can from the top of the disposal unit. "Irish stew," he read out aloud. "Irish stew. Do you know what this is, Brains?"

Brains swallowed his current mouthful and shook his head.

"It's Grandma's Irish stew. The stuff she insisted on bringing over from the States when she first came out here, and it was two years old then. Kyrano hid it away at the back of the cupboard so that it wouldn't get eaten by mistake." He slammed the can back down. "I don't feel well."

"The can seals were perfectly intact, Scott," Brains reassured him. "But I-I realised it was a rather old batch, so I gave it the ah, Hartfeld-Krantz test in the lab just to be sure. The yellow colour is the reagent. If there'd been any bacteria i-it would've turned bright blue."

"You mean this stuff's full of chemicals?" Virgil looked up, his brows suddenly high over widened eyes.

"For Pete's sake, Brains! Of all the damn-fool, crazy, bone-headed things to do!" Scott turned round on Brains in an explosion of final, last-straw exasperation, but was cut short by a beeping from the distant lounge.

"It's Dad." Gordon got up. "He said he'd call in again soon as he knew more about the arrangements over there. I'll go." He left the room with more than decent haste, and Brains sat on unhappily, a forkful of jaundiced stew suspended over his plate. Scott returned to his chair, sitting down heavily.

"What were you thinking of, Brains?" Virgil queried, reasonably gently. "Okay, we didn't eat much, but suppose we'd given some of that to Alan. It could've been dangerous, in his weakened state."

"Don't be a fool, Virgil!" Brains snapped, and in the quiet kitchen the sharp tone from the unexpected source was like the sudden shattering of a plate. "Do you think I-I-I'd put a-a-anything i-in the food that wasn't completely harmless?" He pulled his glasses off to rub tired eyes. "I-I'm sorry. I know you're all u-under stress, but, well, so am I. Maybe you've forgotten, but for a-a long time Tin-Tin and I worked pretty closely together."

Scott winced and reached out to grip Brains' shoulder, but before he could speak the door slid back and Gordon reappeared, his blond stubble standing startlingly out in an angry orange on a face from which all colour had fled. An apprehensive silence fell.

"It wasn't Dad on the air," Gordon began slowly, "it was John. We've had a call." He looked at each of the three tense faces in turn. "Thirty minutes ago the Tongan coastguard picked up a weak radio signal coming from an emergency buoy that they've established could only have been released manually by someone inside Tsunami's sunken hull. Seems there're five people, no-one's sure who, still alive down on the seabed out there, trapped in some air pockets between her internal watertight doors, and it looks like they can only have a few hours left. International Rescue has been asked to try to get them out."

CHAPTER 12

NUKU'ALOFA

WATER WAS STILL falling from the empty pod in a square inverted fountain as Thunderbird Two lifted it into a sky that was blue and washed free of clouds. Below, pinpoint-small but distinct as a hornet in its yellow livery Thunderbird Four pivoted on a wake of foam, turning north for the speck of Kalau island and Gordon's agreed point of rendezvous with Scott.

Skimming Kalau the shadow of Thunderbird Two wheeled north-west, heading for the larger islands of Tonga: 'Eua, Tongatapu and the other emerald rocks that according to their own people's tales were dredged from the depths of their turquoise sea by the sun-god Tangaloa, having accidentally caught up on his fishhook. Perhaps the southernmost dot, 'Eua, had been enough to convince the angling god not to throw back his catch: a little blue-green tropical paradise, recently become a Tongan national park, and once described as having the cliffs of Normandy, the plains of the Serengeti, the rain-forests of Costa Rica and the hospitality of the South Pacific, all rolled into one tiny island. The shadow of Thunderbird Two, with no time to spare for admiration, slipped along 'Eua's holiday-brochure beach shrinking with increasing height, then set out across the narrow straits for Tongatapu, and Virgil's own rendezvous.

Beyond Tongatapu's rocky southern coast the effects of the storm were visible on its green interior. Circles of splintered trees like bomb craters dotted plantations of coconut, breadfruit and mango, and adjusting the angle of the fuselage cameras Virgil could see small shapes trampling the fields of yam and sweet potato: pigs and horses running wild, their pens and stables blown to matchwood. Tongatapu, sacred Tonga in the islanders' tongue, had had its sanctity rudely violated, and villagers labouring in the destruction raised their heads wearily at the sudden thunder, expecting some new calamity. Seeing the big green plane they bent back to their mopping-up operations and let it pass as none of their concern, but nearer the sandy northern coast town-dwellers with more time to spare stopped and gaped up as Thunderbird Two descended, towards the Tongan national capital and sole commercial port.

Nuku'alofa, its name meaning the abode of love, was for today the abode of grief, and a tearful group of singers on the dockside faltered on 'Oh, hear us when we cry to thee' and closed their hymn books, as the police moved in to rope off a landing site for the rescue craft bringing hope to some of a more immediate salvation. Thunderbird One already stood at the landward end of one long concrete pier, the object of a youthful circle of admiration, and as Virgil manoeuvred the bigger plane in to a ponderous touchdown he saw a blue-uniformed figure disembark from a tethered launch and start down the jetty towards him. He finished his post-flight check and stood up, fingering the prickly growth now evident on his jaw and chin. There had been no time for niceties for anyone after the call had come in, no time for food except a snatched sandwich of something Brains hadn't doctored; no time to think. But maybe that was just as well. Leaving the hydraulics to raise the plane's fuselage clear of the pod and setting the outer door to 'open' for Scott to come in, he took the lift down to the pod floor.

Thunderbird Four's empty launch ramp gleamed like a tilted wet railway track under the lights, and skirting it he walked to its highest end and opened the door to the auxiliary equipment store. A generator, waterproof and pressure-resistant, took up much of the space, but ropes, floats and other paraphernalia of underwater rescue hung from the walls, and on a rack were a row of lightweight Scuba tanks with their associated clear-view masks. He took one tank down, connected it to the flexible hose dangling from the inlet valve of a mask, and twirled the tap on the regulator, watching the inbuilt gauges rise. He held the mask to his face, inhaled, then satisfied with the result placed the assembled unit on the floor and turned for the wall locker. Halfway to the locker he hesitated, then went back and prepared a second set of breathing gear, leaving it beside the first. Inside the locker a row of multicoloured wetsuits hung on a rail; he took out Scott's, longer than the others and a bright conspicuous leader-yellow, trimmed with a blue stripe. Behind it was Alan's suit, sky-blue and white, and beyond that his own, dark green seamed with yellow, still shiny from infrequent use. He reached for it, then heard a sound behind him and turned as Scott came in.

"There you are, Virgil." Scott's tone was blank, non-committal, the set of his shoulders still detectably stiff. "You made good time."

"I got out your suit." Virgil handed the neoprene garment over. "And I've put some breathing gear together. It all checks out."

"Good." Scott glanced at his watch and took the suit, neither meeting nor avoiding Virgil's eyes. "The Tongan authorities have come up with a fast launch to get me to the rendezvous with Gordon, then they'll escort Thunderbird Four over the surface to the rescue site. By the time we get there Dad should be back at Base, so he and Brains can co-ordinate the operation." He sat down to slip off his boots.

Virgil watched his brother as he changed. Scott's chin was as unkempt as his own, his movements as he coaxed on the close-fitting suit slower and less precise than usual, and a tautness about his mouth and slight shading under his eyes spoke of suppressed tension, and of his sleepless night. It was hard to help wondering what the Tongan authorities and the other rescue organisations still in the area were likely to make of the weary, dishevelled cavalry that had arrived. He kept the thought to himself. "What's the plan?" he asked.

"I wish I could say we had one. Information's still coming in; about all we know for sure at present is the location of the wreck, but that's one piece of good luck. She's finished up in comparatively shallow water, about one hundred and fifty feet. A few hundred yards further east and she'd have gone over the shelf into the Tonga sea-trench. That's around thirty-five thousand feet deep, the second-deepest bit of ocean in the world."

"But if she's in such shallow water couldn't conventional rescue equipment be used? Civilian or Navy Scuba divers could work at that depth unsupported. They could be getting those people out now."

"It's not that simple, Virgil." Scott finished fastening the suit and tried out his mask, the full-face transparent visor sealing snugly round forehead, jaw and chin to provide a miniature breathable atmosphere in front of his nose and mouth. He spoke again, and his voice sounded in chorus from the earpieces of the unused masks. "If what you say about the watertight doors in that ship is accurate then the spot where the survivors are trapped is likely to be sealed tighter than a submarine. That means cutting in, through a double hull, and doing it in such a way that the sea doesn't start pouring in. And that's to say nothing of the conditions that'll have to be coped with inside. We're the only people who can be there in time with the right equipment." He took off the mask and looked at the second set of breathing gear. "A good idea, but Gordon and I are going to be heavily loaded. We won't be able to carry spares."

"It isn't a spare, Scott. I want to come along."

"That's out of the question." Scott went to the locker and took out a weighted belt and knife. "You're not fit yet. Besides, think about it. If we do make it through to those survivors it's ten to one someone's going to recognise you. You were aboard that ship for nearly twenty-four hours."

"That's the very reason that you need me. Until the shipping line comes up with some plans you can't afford not to have someone who knows their way around. And at least I've had some sleep. You and Gordon must be pretty tired."

"Maybe. But we weren't pulled out of the Pacific yesterday and aspirated. You have to be below par."

"Okay, I feel like the Mole ran me over then reversed back for another try." Virgil frowned obstinately. "But I'm still going along."

"Alright, Virgil. Alright." Scott acquiesced reluctantly and wearily, reaching into the locker. "But you'd better put this on." He threw across an ancient mask with a tiny visor and a bulky dog-muzzle mouthpiece incorporating an outsize inlet valve. "At least you're less likely to be recognised behind that."

"Thanks, Scott." Virgil caught the mask. He searched Scott's face seriously, finally catching and holding his brother's eyes. "And I'm sorry I flew off the handle back home. Guess we both ended up saying some things that were way out of line, but you caught me on a pretty raw spot. I still feel that if I'd done things differently Tin-Tin might be back at Base looking after Alan now, and I want to help put that right. She's alive down there and waiting for us to rescue her, I know it. I want to be there when we get her out."

Scott lowered his eyes and nodded slowly, and the stiffness in his shoulders started to relax. "Yeah, okay. Maybe we should both be doing some apologising: all I can say is that when the pressure's on every one of us can say and do a lot of things that we don't mean. But there's one big thing we all need to remember about this mission, Virgil: we don't know anything. There're eleven people unaccounted for and that message only mentioned five. We can assume they're all on one of the lower decks, and our job's to get in there and bring them back, before their air gives out or one of those watertight doors caves in under the pressure. Okay, we're all hoping to see one particular face, but if we don't we'd better be able to accept that, and concentrate on protecting other lives. There won't be time to search the whole ship." He took a torch from the locker and tucked it into his belt. "Now you'd better get changed, quick. You won't need a laser cutter because Gordon's got the oxyhydnite gear aboard, and you won't need fins; we're not planning any long swims. But don't forget your gun. Water won't be the only pressure on those people down there, and it's always possible we may have to deal with a panic situation."

A few minutes later as they walked down the pod's lowered ramp into the sun, Virgil caught Scott's arm and pointed. Beyond the police cordon the memorial service had resumed, and the strains of 'Abide with me' drifted across the dock, but from further off singing of a different and frankly optimistic nature came from a grass-skirted group who were swaying to their own vocal music and making aeroplane movements with their arms. "Wonder what they're singing about, Scott. Doesn't seem like the right time for a celebration."

"They're singing about us," Scott said grimly. "They started when I landed, and I asked. They're telling a tale of how the birds that brought us here are going to transform into fish and take us down to the wreck, then how we're going to carry the survivors back to their relatives waiting here. They seem sure that that's what's going to happen. Let's just hope they've got it right." He turned for the jetty and the moored launch. "Come on, we're keeping our transport waiting."

At a hundred and fifty feet down the world was a blue twilight lit by a wasted white dwarf in a remote canopy above. Virgil had felt that world closing in since the south coast of Kalau had vanished thirty minutes ago and Gordon had closed Thunderbird Four's dorsal hatch, shutting out the last scents of land. Over the wreck they had had to navigate through a flotilla of boats of various sizes: coastguard launches, air-sea rescue craft, a fully-equipped hospital ship provided by Fiji to treat any survivors, and the inevitable press and spectator cruisers. Before their arrival someone had thrown a wreath of flowers into the sea, and as they started their descent detached petals in a sun-burnished riot of shades had clung to the yellow submersible's viewscreen, then the Pacific had closed overhead wiping out the bright surface world like a bucketful of water on a freshly-finished painting. After that all colour had run and bled away with each foot of increasing depth, until there was only cold blue left.

"Slow down, Gordon." Scott watched, alert at the port side of the wraparound screen. "We could pass straight by her in this visibility."

"It's okay, Scott." Gordon sat the central navigator's console, his grey wetsuit with its red flashes already on, his movements deft and confident, comfortable in his own element. "The air-sea rescue guys marked her position; all we have to do is follow their buoy-line down." He pointed. "See that darker water over there? That's the edge of the Tonga Trench. It runs down into the Vityaz Depth, over six and a half miles deep. Even today no-one really knows what's down there; the pressure's too intense for exploration. It's a big gap in our knowledge."

Virgil watched from his own station on the starboard curve of the thick toughened glass. Even aside from the whine of her turbines Thunderbird Four was far from silent, a syncopation of little stress-induced creaks, groans, whistles and shrieks that would have had him diving for an emergency landing had they come from Thunderbird Two providing a constant reminder of the great vice tightening on her hull. The deep sea was the popular frontier, the earth-conscious alternative to exploration of the moon, but for its fragile human pioneers it was still an environment as alien as the blackest backwater of space. Worse: at least the vacuum was indifferent. Here current and pressure with infinite patience pushed, pried and squeezed, and even in these relative shallows a diver could have his lungs explode within him in ascending too quickly, or die with his blood frothed like champagne for forgetting to decompress. He shifted uncomfortably, and Gordon caught his eye and grinned.

"If it's the noise that bothers you, relax. We're still in the shallows: Thunderbird's built to take pressures at least thirty times as great as these."

"Gordon, stop!" Scott's voice rang out abruptly and Thunderbird Four swung idly in the water as Gordon cut the engines and her forward motion ceased. "Look, there she is!"

Into the submersible's drifting light beam a vast black hillside rose, what seemed a monstrous excrescence of the seabed stretching unbounded to the right and to the left. Scott and Virgil crowded the port side of the screen, and after a moment Virgil shook his head. Chaos or wreckage he had expected, but not this sudden sea-change from ship to seamount of featureless, riveted plate. White-painted superstructure, familiar shapes of bridge towers, night-clubs and casino had all somehow vanished without trace, leaving the blank slope passing beneath them disorienting and vast but in some way pathetic, like the flank of some great sea-corpse washed up on a beach. Beyond the glass the heralds of further dissolution to come milled and darted, dazzled by the lights: shoals of house-hunting fish and vague jelly shapes that already thickened the water above their new-found territory; a living bouillabaisse. He felt awe, and at the same time a strange sense of pity. "If that's her she's a dead thing now, Scott. I don't recognise anything."

At the limits of their vision a dark projection, like a death-stiffened flipper, came into view, and Scott jabbed a finger at the glass in sudden realisation. "We're drifting up the side of her hull; look, there's a hydrojet! She must be lying at about a fifty degree angle from the vertical, which means it could've been a lot worse. If she'd finished up right on her side or upside down we'd have had to fight our way in over the bulkheads or the ceilings."

"It's going to be pretty tough going as it is." Gordon pivoted Thunderbird Four in a skilful ballet to swing the light. "Where did you say the radio shack was, Virgil? I'd take a bet that they would've released that emergency buoy from somewhere near that."

"I figure it should be about a third of the way from her bow, close to the port side. That hydrojet's intact, so this must be port we're on now."

"Okay." Gordon touched a control and Thunderbird Four shot forward with a lurch. "Hang on, you guys. Let's get our bearings, then we'll go find a good place to put down."

The magnetic clamps took care of the last few inches of the manoeuvre and the yellow craft settled belly-downwards with a clang. Bubbles rose from the vents as the suction pumps started and it squatted on Tsunami's blank expanse of steel, a gaudy little parasite determined not to be washed free from its dead Leviathan's flank. Leaving the pumps to cope automatically with any current variation Gordon got up, as Scott and Virgil, working in silent pre-agreed concert, knelt in the sloping cabin taking up the decking behind him. Scott looked up. "Alright, Gordon? Ready to open the ventral hatch?"

"Okay, open up." Gordon hunkered down beside them. "She's clamped down tighter than a limpet. We won't get wet."

Scott touched a button, and by the hatch they had uncovered in the floor an amber then a red warning light lit. There was a judder, a scrape, then the thick yellow plate designed to separate the submersible's safe interior from the abyss slid aside, leaving a square of Tsunami's hull the size of a coffee table shining wetly under the cabin lights. Gordon reached down into the shallow cavern formed by the outer seal of the hatch. "Great, no sign of any leaks. With the inner lock extended she'll hold until we get back."

"Yeah. Well, she'd better." Scott got up, clambering with difficulty across the tilted deck. "Right, now for the cutting gear. We'll all need our breathing equipment."

With the searing flame of the oxyhydnite torch and the output from its heater the cabin temperature soon reached a reading on the human scale that was well beyond uncomfortable. Wearing the blinkering dog-muzzle mask and half-in, half-out of the hole in the floor Virgil sweated, trying to keep the glowing cut in Tsunami's steel clear of the sensitive, perilous, surrounding rubber seal despite the awkward cant of the deck. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Gordon's boots as he stood checking something on the console, probably the re-breather. The oxyhydnite's heater was designed to disperse the dangerous gas and lessen its production of toxic hydrocarbons, but in the cabin's closed space it also speeded other chemical reactions. If the re-breathing plant couldn't keep up in its air purification the tango of the molecules could become a danse macabre, and their bell-jar atmosphere turn into an explosive hydrogen mixture, or a cocktail of carbon monoxide. He let the flame shrink for a moment and looked up. "How's the temperature, Scott?"

"About three degrees from unbearable." Behind his wide visor Scott's jaw was tight and his face streaming with perspiration. "Don't talk, just keep working; every minute we burn that torch takes five minutes off our oxygen supply. Can't you speed it up a little?"

"I'll try." Virgil turned back to the torch. "But it's tricky, working at this angle."

"It's an angle we'll have to get used to. Once we're in there up, down, right and left are going to take on a whole new meaning. If we can't adapt to that we've failed already."

Almost unexpectedly the creeping slot in Tsunami's outer hull met its start point and a square of metal fell away, booming and rebounding into the echoing depths between her compartmentalised double plates. Virgil killed the flame and clambered clear, making room for Scott to lean over the hatch. "Right, Scott, that's the first one. Ready for the laser test."

As the others watched, Scott stretched his long figure down. In the clear air the small laser-drill's beam was invisible, but at the bottom of the now much deeper hole a tiny dot on Tsunami's inner skin began to blister, then to glow. Gordon shifted tensely, and Virgil saw his blond brother moisten his lips. He knew his thoughts: if there was water on the other side of this surgeon's incision then they'd chosen the wrong spot, and would have to close up and move kit and caboodle to restart in another place. Meanwhile somewhere below them life was running out of time, as surely as in any operating theatre.

"She's through! And there's nothing, not so much as a drip." Scott pulled his shoulders and head triumphantly back up. "Alright, Virgil, let's finish the job. And for Pete's sake this time let's try to make it quick."

When the second square of steel fell minutes later Virgil was ready for it, and killed the torch before the rush of air that was Tsunami's sea-compressed breath. Invisible fingers jabbed at his eardrums, then the pressure equalised and Scott's grip on his legs relaxed as he struggled backwards out of the hole. Kneeling on the boards he reached for the strap of his mask, impatient to take it off and wipe away the sweat, but Gordon caught his arm in a warning grip.

"Hey, take it easy! We don't know what sort of atmosphere's in there yet." He turned to examine his instruments. "Okay, pressure's slightly up because of the water displacement, but it seems breathable. We won't need our masks unless we have to cross any flooded compartments."

Fighting the strap of the ancient mask Virgil saw his two brothers snap off their quick-release visors, then freeze and sniff. His mask came free and he smelled it too: glutinous, smoke-scented fumes that could have been any one of a dozen kinds of poisonous pot-pourri, but somehow managed to be vaguely reminiscent of home. Three pairs of eyes exchanged tense glances, then Gordon's rose suddenly up to the ceiling and came down almost amused. "Sesame oil! I figured there was something familiar about it. We must've cut through into one of her galleys."

Scott leaned over the pit in the floor and shone his torch down. "It looks more like a corridor; I see carpets and some sort of panelling. But if there's been an oil spill that's just one more thing we've got to worry about. If a fire broke out down there none of us and none of those survivors would stand a chance."

"Fire? If there's any possibility there's a fire burning in that hulk you don't go in."

A new voice came from the console, and Scott jumped up as Gordon reached forward quickly to open a visual line. On the small screen in the centre of the instrument panel Jeff Tracy's face looked worn, the fine age lines that normally enhanced its character and strength suddenly carved in deeper to drag his features down in a heavy, scarcely-animated weariness. With the shock of a solicitude experienced for the first time Virgil found himself gauging the growing weight of his father's fifty-seven years, but the voice from the console was as steady and uncompromising as ever, and he rose to stand with Gordon at the rear of the cabin as Scott took the navigator's chair.

"No, Father," Scott answered, "there's no evidence of a fire at the moment, as far as we can tell. Have you and Kyrano just got home?"

"About twenty minutes ago. I've been discussing some incoming messages with John: it seems you're going to have company. The World Navy's on its way."

"The World Navy!"

"Yes, the carriers Vincent and Vindictive are heading your way at maximum speed. They gave us no details and requested our action plan, but John told them we wouldn't be able to formulate anything concrete until we knew the conditions inside that ship, and I don't propose to add anything to that as yet. We'll think about co-operation when they reach the scene."

"You mean they reckon they can help?"

"They didn't say. I can only presume they believe they can assist in some way. And we've some other visitors to think about. The Tongan coastguard have notified us that they're too stretched to cope with all the traffic that's already on the surface at the wreck site, and according to air-sea reports all the press in the world who aren't there by now are making for the location on anything that floats. It's going to be a pretty high-profile operation."

"Well, just as long as they stay up there while we're down here I guess they can't cause us too much trouble." Scott looked out into the blue gloom thoughtfully. "Okay, Father, thanks. We've cut in; we managed to find an air-filled compartment on the first try. She's lying at roughly a fifty degree angle, which means it shouldn't be too difficult to work our way to the radio shack, provided we can find a route with air. Oh, and there's been a change of plan. Virgil's coming with us; he figures he's in good enough shape."

"Mm." Jeff ran a hand through his hair, but his face betrayed nothing except fatigue. "Well, if you hadn't told me that I guess I would've wanted to know what was wrong with him. How's the hatch seal holding?"

"A-okay. Gordon's extending the inner lock now." Scott pointed to the rear of the cabin, where Gordon was guiding a tall yellow cylinder, cabin-height and in diameter just a little wider than the shoulders of a man, out of a recess and along its floor and ceiling tracking. Over the hatch he kicked a pedal on the structure's square base, and its inner layer glided down through the hole in the floor with a gasp of compressed air. The next layer of painted steel vanished after it as the first reached its full extent, then the cabin rocked and the cylinder braced as the seal on its foot-ring widened and drew up, gripping Tsunami's ceiling bulkhead in the darkness below.

"That's it; she'd hold even through another cyclone now." Scott turned back to his father's face on the screen. "Well, I guess all that's left is for us to gather up our equipment and get going. I'll try to keep in touch, but conditions down there are likely to be pretty tough. We may not be able to make regular check-ins."

"You may not be able to make any check-ins at all. Brains tells me that being inside that mass of steel with the added depth of water on top may make communications patchy at best, even using our acoustic-RF gear. That's why all of you have to be extra careful: there won't be room for mistakes. And there won't be any room for heroics." Jeff Tracy paused, and when he resumed something in his tone, perhaps the slightest hairline crack, made Virgil and Gordon move to stand at Scott's shoulders, a semicircle of intent faces lit by the glow from the tiny screen.

"You're going into conditions that may be far worse than anything International Rescue has had to deal with to date," Jeff went on. "We haven't had time to do a lot of preparation, and all of us are tired and, in one way or another, affected by stress. On top of that you've all got a personal reason for being down there, but if you let that cloud your judgement it could jeopardise not only the chances of the survivors but your own lives as well. Alan hasn't been told any details; he believes you're simply out on a regular mission, and that's the way you need to see it too. Your brief is to go straight to the area of that radio shack and come straight back by the shortest possible route, and if you don't discover any, or any particular, survivors at your target point you don't have enough portable air to go exploring, so you'll come back either alone or with whoever you happen to find. Alan doesn't know you'll be in any special danger; he's expecting to see you all back here so we can carry on with putting our lives back together, and so am I. That ship's taken something from all of us already: I don't want it taking any more." He reached forward to terminate the call but hesitated, as if reluctant to wipe the image of the submersible's interior from his own wall-mounted screen. "Alright, now get yourselves into that thing and back out again, as fast as you can." His eyes moved from face to watching face, seeming to linger for a second on each one. "Scott, Virgil, Gordon. Good luck, Sons."

The oxyhydnite gear was heavy and bulky, and Virgil shouldered its carrying straps on while Gordon rotated the yellow cylinder to reveal its oval access door, cut just at duck-through height. Scott pocketed the laser drill, slung two additional oxygen tanks across his back and disappeared through, then it was Virgil's turn and he let his eyes run round the familiar cabin with its wide blue window and ordered, predictable patterns of steady and winking lights. Gordon motioned him down, and he bent through the door and made the awkward turn to grip the thin steel handholds on the cylinder's inner skin. The descent was pitch-black and narrow, like squeezing down a claustrophobic chimney, and the oxyhydnite gear on his back jammed, stuck and jammed again until he was sweating from the effort of the short climb, then his searching foot found emptiness, and trying to lower his increased weight with one hand he was ejected roughly by gravity and fell, to land painfully in a half-kneeling, half-crouching position in a different world.

The smell of Sesame oil was so powerful that his throat tightened at it, and he had to snatch a breath of air from the dog-muzzle mask. In the darkness Scott's figure was the only thing visible, turned away from him a few metres off, silhouetted against the back-radiance of his busy torch. Bruised and still kneeling Virgil touched the floor and found hard metal, then realising that he was on the plate that the oxyhydnite torch had cut, he extended his arm and felt a carpet that was soaked and slick with oily fluid. He stood up, running his fingers along a panelled wall, then Gordon landed beside him, loaded and heavy but still managing to spring back up lightly onto his feet. Scott had returned, and walking carefully on the slippery, tilted floor was wordlessly clamping magnetic lamps on the ceiling bulkhead around their entry point. As their wakening glow hardened from rose into amber Gordon worked with his arms stretched up into the lock, clicking the safety straps over the levers that served to activate the foot-ring's emergency-release explosive bolts. As he finished Scott touched his shoulder and pointed to their right, then the three men shouldered their burdens and set out, turning their backs on the lamps' orange refuge and moving off, down the unknown corridor and into the dark.