Part Seventeen
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"Stop kicking me, Scotty!"
Scott counted to ten, timing his breaths and the jerky movements of his knees and elbows to the count. "You're behind me, Gordon. I can't even see you. If you don't want me kicking you, back off!"
He could practically hear Gordon's unspoken objection. There was a long silence, and then the sound of his little brother's movements fell back a metre or so, and Scott's feet stopped meeting with an obstruction on every laborious shuffle.
He couldn't blame Gordon for sticking close. Scott's wheezing breath echoed through the compact metal tunnel. He knew it still sounded strained. It felt strained too, his chest tight and his lungs burning. On the other hand, coming in here had helped. Out of the direct sun, he no longer felt quite so hot or washed out. Out of the brilliant light, his head ached a little less. Close to the ground, his movements limited to crawling on his knees and elbows, his dizziness had abated somewhat. And in the cool, damp air of the tunnel he was breathing just a little more easily.
Even so, he could feel Gordon chafing against his slow progress. Since they'd turned a sharp angle some tens of metres back, the light from the grille was a distant memory. They had to be a hundred metres into the hillside now, almost directly under the ridge line that had been their destination in the first place.
"Are we nearly there yet?"
Scott considered counting again, wondering not for the first time if his little brother was trying to comfort either Scott or himself with the banality of his occasional comments. After the last few days, he wouldn't put anything past Gordon. Sighing, and studiously ignoring the question, Scott raised his gaze from the blackness between his hands to the darkness stretching out in front of him.
And blinked.
"Yes," he murmured, knowing he didn't need to be loud for the noise to echo through the confined space. "Yes, Gordy, we're nearly there."
The rectangular grid of wire mesh cast a brilliant patterned light into the narrow shaft. Scott blinked as he edged closer, shushing Gordon's anxious questions with a sudden intense caution. Truthfully, he'd been expecting to find a way out of the rectangular metal tube far earlier, his movie-trained mind expecting a suite of thronged underground rooms to go with the clandestine radio antenna, each with their own access to the ventilation system. Instead, there was only this single room, buzzing and flashing with active computer monitors. Scott peered into it for long enough to check the half-dozen seats visible through the ground-level grille were all vacant before probing the metalwork with anxious fingers. He felt a surge of claustrophobia, an urgent need to get through the narrow gap in the tunnel wall and into the room beyond. The carpeted floor was just inches beyond his reach, even its short-piled, institutional beige looking inviting and soft in comparison with the steel shaft.
"Is there a way out, Scotty?" Gordon could evidently see some of what he was doing, his elder brother silhouetted against the light. "Are we trapped?"
"We'll get out there," Scott told him with determination, twisting painfully in the compact space until he was lying on his side, studying the wire grille that lay between them and freedom.
He hadn't really thought through this end of the plan. He'd assumed that getting into the tunnel would be the hardest part. He almost wept with relief when his aching fingers brushed over a set of cam locks rather than screws. Presumably each would be turned with a key from the other side. From this side it was just a case of getting enough leverage on each short metal latch, twisting it back towards the centre of the vent cover.
Gordon squirmed forward, shoving Scott back against the wall of the tunnel before he could protest. His back to Scott's chest and his hair in his elder brother's face, he produced their penknife from the pocket of his jeans and used it to lever the last few latches open, giving the wire frame a firm shove. It fell outwards into the room with a clatter that made Scott wince. He tried to grab for his little brother, far too slow to stop Gordon from scrambling out into the harsh artificial light of the thankfully deserted room.
Scott followed with a sigh, squinting and blinking against the lights that seemed to flicker from every surface. Hauling himself out into the room with a hand on each side of the shaft, he sank down into a kneeling heap just inside and closed his eyes, trying to force down suddenly rising nausea. He could hear Gordon moving about, and tried to open his eyes to see him, closing them again when bile rose in his already raw throat.
"Don't touch anything," he managed in a ragged whisper, not sure whether Gordon would either hear or listen to him.
He was startled to feel small hands on his, pressing something into them and lifting it to his lips. Automatically, he closed his mouth, and the first of the ice-cold water trickled around his lips, dribbling down his chin and onto his shirt. Instantly, he lifted his hands higher, out of Gordon's, draining the chilled liquid in two short gulps. There was a patter of feet and then another cup was pressed into his hand. He dropped the first and clutched this new offering, taking another gulp until he felt his stomach roil in protest. He sipped the rest more slowly, savouring the sweet taste as he swilled it around his mouth, moistening parched tissue before letting it trickle down his throat. He was reaching out blindly in search of a third cup when he felt something cold and wet land on the back of his neck. His eyes snapped open as he gasped in shock, and he saw Gordon standing over him, his T-shirt wadded in one hand, water blending with the dirt and dust from the track to make a fine mud that coated it. Scott didn't object, raising his face gratefully and craving the coolness as Gordon mopped his big brother's dripping brow.
"Gordy?"
"Mom always uses cold cloths when someone's ill." Gordon shrugged, looking uncertainly down at the soaked fabric in his hands. Scott reached for it in mute appeal and Gordon handed it over. Scott buried his face in it, breathing in dirt and sweat and the desperately longed-for cool dampness.
"Here, Scotty." Gordon was holding out yet another transparent plastic cup, filled to the brim with water, condensation forming on its ridged sides. Scott threw the damp T-shirt back around his neck, and took the cup gratefully, sipping down half of it before the sheer ludicrousness of the situation struck him. He looked down at the two cups by his side, one lying perfect on the thin carpet, the other crushed from the intensity of Scott's grip. Gordon was back, silently holding out a fourth cup full of water. Scott looked from the proffered cup to his bare-chested, pale-faced, exhausted little brother and closed his eyes in a wince.
"Drink it," he ordered.
"But you're thirsty."
"So are you, Gordy. And there's lots more," he guessed, still confused by the sudden abundance. "Thank you, Gordy. But that one's yours."
Gordon dropped down beside him, draining the cup in one long draught. This time Scott was watching as his little brother scrambled to his feet, running across the room to the recess in one wall marked with two large drops of water falling from a stylised faucet. He pressed his cup back against the dispensing lever. The stream of water came at once, mist curling around it.
Scott didn't make his little brother return to him. He pushed up to his feet with an effort, staggering across to the seemingly-never ending water fountain, fervent thanks both for its presence and for Gordon's sharp eyes ringing through his mind. Imitating his little brother, Scott refilled his cup, pouring half onto the already-damp T-shirt and using it to wipe first his face and then Gordon's. He was still desperately thirsty, but the queasy feeling competing with the burning sensation in his chest warned him that he'd have to go easy.
He eyed his little brother seriously. "Gordon, thank you."
"It looked like the water fountain at school, so I thought why not give it a try, and there were cups so I pulled one out and it worked." Gordon hiccupped, his hand going to his stomach as his complexion picked up a hint of green. Scott confiscated his little brother's cup regretfully, dumping their damp cloth over the back of Gordon's head and neck.
"Breathe deep, Gordy. Just breathe and it will pass."
Gordon's colour normalised slowly, and this time he was the one looking at the cup his brother held in mute appeal. Scott held it to his lips, letting him sip a little, and then risking another few sips from his own before letting Gordon take more.
"We've got to pace ourselves, Gordy," he whispered. "We're not used to having as much as we want any more."
Gordon nodded reluctantly, sighing and looking wistfully at the drinking fountain. Shivering a little, he pulled the wadded-up T-shirt from his neck and unrolled it, shaking it out and pulling it back over his head. The scrap of fabric was torn and filthy, soaked with water and both his own perspiration and Scott's. Under usual circumstances Scott's fastidious little brother would be wary even of poking it with a stick. Today, Gordon shivered with delight at the touch of the cool fabric on his sun-touched, exertion-heated skin. Watching him, Scott shrugged and reached up for one more cupful of water. Without hesitation, he dumped it over his own head, letting it trickle through his hair and over his face before soaking his own T-shirt. It felt like ice cubes down his back, and he gasped, then wheezed as he revelled in the sensation.
"Can I have some more water, Scotty?"
"Not now." Scott frowned, hating himself for refusing his younger brother's tentative appeal. "In a minute, Gordon." Tearing his gaze away from Gordon's pleading eyes, Scott finally raised his head to give the room they were in a proper inspection.
It was familiar.
That was the first thing Scott registered, amidst the literally dizzying array of light and colour. He'd seen this place before.
The room was circular. Its back wall was lined with monitors, the three panels below covered in controls, levers and dials, and each with a standard office-style seat bolted into the floor in front of them. The vent shaft where they had entered was just clockwise of the right-hand panel, the discarded grille and litter of discarded plastic cups drawing attention to the gaping rectangular hole in the wall. Directly above it, just below the ceiling rather than a floor level, a second identical grille suggested that the shaft they'd crawled through was no more than the passive intake to a ventilation system driven by fans above.
In the centre of the room, directly between the water dispenser and the chamber's one and only door, a slightly larger seat stood on a raised platform, display screens to either side, at a convenient height for a seated man. The chair – a control chair, surely? – overlooked another two seats, each looking towards the front of the room and each with a bank of equipment in front of them. Like the panels at the back of the room, these were covered in controls and displays, dials, levers and switches. Unlike the rear-facing positions, these panels didn't have computer monitors fixed directly above them. The huge, curved vid-screen that filled the front wall made it unnecessary.
Scott's eyes had picked out the satellite weather maps being displayed on the small monitors at the back of the room. He'd skimmed over the engineering and environmental displays. He could see the information streaming across the windows stacked around the edge of the main display. They were all familiar.
He'd seen them in schoolbooks, and in a mock-up of this room on the NASA's visitor tour. He remembered sitting on the sofa, Virgil on the other end, and John on Uncle Jim's lap in the middle as he showed the enthusiastic boys a hundred photos of this room, bringing each alive with jokes and stories.
He didn't need the view in the central window of the wall-sized vid-screen to confirm it.
"It's the Weather Station!"
"Scotty?"
"It's the Weather Station, Gordy. The main control room. I… I don't understand."
Gordon was giving him a look midway between confused, incredulous and concerned. Scott knew that his face was still flushed and he was panting in his excitement. "Scotty, the Weather Station's up in space. Near the Moon."
Scott rolled his eyes at his little brother. Gordon, raised on stories of his father's lunar expedition, had yet to be convinced that anything could be in outer space without being near the Moon. Even so, he had a good point.
"It's not real," he agreed thoughtfully. "This is wrong, Gordy. Really wrong. This means…" his voice choked up, and he felt burning tears form in his eyes. "This means that maybe it wasn't an accident, Gordon! This means…" Anger gave him a strength and a determination he didn't realise he had. He'd been sitting on the floor beside the water dispenser, a bewildered Gordon at his side. He pushed to his feet with an effort, one hand against the wall to support himself as the expected wave of dizziness came and went, not bothering to look around when he heard Gordon surreptitiously refilling his plastic cup. "Sip it," he instructed, smiling slightly at Gordon's dismayed murmur. "You'll regret it if you don't, Gordon."
Finding his balance, he walked unsteadily to the command chair, stepping up onto the podium and gripping the back of it to support himself. Gordon followed, eyes widening as the two of them moved into range of the small speakers in the chair arms.
In the video window at the centre of the main screen, Scott and Gordon could see into a room that was a near-identical mirror of this one. Technicians sat at the front two stations, and a third was standing in front of one of the rear panels, his back to the screen. The murmur of sound from the speakers combined the hum of air-conditioning with the gentle rhythm of their reports and comments to one another.
Both boys watched, fascinated, as the technician at the back of the room moved from panel to panel, recording readings on an electronic notepad he held in one hand. The man looked up as the door to the side of that distant, orbiting control room slid open. The older man who walked through looked weary, his shoulders slumped and his eyes shadowed. Despite that, as he moved towards the control chair and glanced up at the main screen, apparently straight at the boys, they knew him.
"Uncle Jim!" Scott couldn't help calling out. He regretted it immediately, feeling the vice around his chest tighten a little further.
"Uncle Jim! Please, Uncle Jim! Scotty needs help!" Gordon was still calling as Scott dissolved into a coughing fit that drove him to his knees.
"Gor… He can't hear us… Gordy," Scott gasped out, relieved when Gordon's frantic calls stopped and still more so when his brother ran up with a cupful of water a few seconds later.
Sipping, Scott managed to steady his breathing. He was still on his knees, one hand on the arm of the control chair beside him. Pulling himself up against it, Gordon holding on anxiously to his other side, he swung himself up into the chair, mirroring his father's old friend on the other side of the screen.
"Why can't he hear us, Scotty? We can hear him. We can see him." Gordon was in tears, the frustration of being so close to the long-promised radio call for help and yet so far getting to the younger boy. Scott sighed, keeping the breath shallow and taking another unsteady sip of his water.
"Give me a minute, Gordon," he promised, "and I'll work it out." He looked at the little boy, staring red-faced at the screen, fists clenching and unclenching. "Gordy, I want you to go listen at the door for me, okay? We need to know if anyone's coming, 'cause we really, really don't want to be caught in here."
Gordon hesitated, and then nodded, not needing his brother to explain the seriousness of his task. He jumped down from the platform, landing two footed and hurried to press his ear to the metal door. Scott watched him go, relieved, and then turned back to the bewildering array of buttons and controls that surrounded him, wondering where he would even start to look for the communications system.
Desperate for inspiration, he looked up at the screen, trying to work out which switches everyone was using, and what for. The two technicians in the front positions were getting on with their work, evidently responsible for the routine weather monitoring and control that the station did more often than not. If there was a com-system, or at least a com-system that would reach from the Earth to the satellite, it probably had a dedicated display, and that wasn't likely in the front two stations. Scott studied the bank of rear panels in the image, bewildered and frustrated by their complexity, and the total lack of clues as to their function. Putting his water cup between his knees and holding onto both arms of the chair, he swivelled it around to face the consoles behind him. Would he have to drag himself over there, and scan the panels one by one with eyes that didn't seem to want to focus any more?
"Scotty?" Gordon was watching him, wide-eyed and trusting.
"Just keep listening," Scott told him firmly, swinging back to the screen. There had to be a better option.
Uncle Jim had remained silent since he entered, merely nodding and waving a hand to acknowledge the greetings and reports of his staff. He seemed to be working at the controls built into the arms of his chairs, looking at the results on the two small screens to either side of him. Scott looked down at the arms of his own chairs, hoping he might be able to read these at least, and that's when he saw it.
He glanced back up at the screen and down again quickly enough to make himself dizzy. The panel of controls in the right arm of his chair was familiar, a match for those on the screen in front of him. The ones on his left were, as far as he could tell, the only controls in the entire room without a perfect twin on the orbiting satellite above.
Tentatively, he picked out a switch labelled '2-Way', squinting to be sure of the universal microphone symbol above it. Taking as deep a breath as he was able to, he flicked it.
"Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
Gordon's eyes moved from his brother to the screen, his body tensing in anticipation. No one on the space station so much as blinked. Scott shook his head, glancing at his little brother.
"Watch the door, Gordy," he cautioned again, waiting 'till Gordon pressed his ear back against the smooth metal. He looked down at the big button in the centre of the extra control panel. "And, really, really don't touch anything."
The button was bright orange, covered by a transparent plastic box that flipped back away from it. The label underneath was suggestive of a lot of things Scott didn't want to think about: 'Activate Override'. Raising the lid up with trembling fingers, Scott pushed the button.
It lit a dull red under his finger, and this time the response from the genuine Weather Station was immediate.
"I have a malfunction of the control system," the first technician's brisk report overlapped with her companion's.
"Monitor programmes are not responding."
In the centre seat, Jim Dale was sitting upright, notepad falling from his fingers. He pressed a yellow button on the right arm of his chair, looking down at it in dismay when nothing happened. Tentatively, truly hoping he was wrong, Scott pushed the same button on his own right-hand panel. Instantly an alarm split the air, carried on the vid-signal from the space station. Three other personnel tumbled into the room, heading for their rear control consoles as the stream of error reports from the two technicians up front turned technical.
"Commander! We have no control whatsoever!"
Uncle Jim was holding the arms of his chair, white-knuckled. "Not again," he whispered, the sound barely audible to Scott where he was sitting.
Closing his eyes, terrified, Scott tried the '2-Way' switch again.
"Hello?" he tried, his voice coming out in a hoarse croak.
There was an immediate cessation of the frantic activity on the screen, every face turning towards the centre of the room in astonishment. Jim Dale leapt to his feet, his fists clenched by his side.
"Who is this?" he demanded sharply. "What do you want?"
Scott could have sobbed with relief. He heard a small cry from Gordon. Swallowing hard, he sipped the last of the water from his cup and tried to make his voice sound as normal as possible.
"Can't you see me? It's me, Uncle Jim! I can see you!"
"Who…?" The commander's voice trailed off, his eyes widening.
"Please, Uncle Jim. We've been trying to get home for so long, and we found this place and a big dish thing and it's all wrong, just wrong, but now I don't know how to call the police or the coastguard or whoever I'm meant to be calling, and I just want to get Gordy back to Mom." Scott had meant to keep his call calm. Exhaustion and fear got the better of him, making the thirteen-year-old babble like his little brother. He stopped himself with an effort, gasping for breath and wheezing when it came.
On the screen, Jim Dale had sunk back into his chair, his expression one of total astonishment.
"Scotty?"
Scott swallowed hard, suddenly no longer alone. At last, someone he trusted knew where he was, even if that someone was hundreds of miles away, straight up. He was a little calmer when he spoke.
"Uncle Jim, you've got to trace this signal!" He watched the screen, feeling an enormous relief when he saw the man Dale glanced at nod, already working hard at his console. "I don't know how anything works here, or I'd tell you where we were, but the alarm button you wanted there worked when I pressed the button here, and I really don't want to press any more buttons."
"Don't press any buttons!" The commander almost yelped the words, still shaking his head in bewilderment, and half his astonished crew seconded that request. "Scott…"
"This place is so wrong, Uncle Jim," Scott gasped, talking through a cough. "It lo… looks just like the room you're in and it's got all the displays and everything and you're up on the big screen in the middle of it. The people here must have made the storm and that means they want to hurt people, and now they want to hurt Gordon and me. They said… they said they had to make sure we never told anyone what we saw."
"Scott," Uncle Jim's voice was urgent and concerned. "Are you and Gordon all right?"
"Scotty's really sick, Uncle Jim." Scott was surprised to find Gordon at his side, leaning towards the microphone. "You've got to send Mom here and she can take us away from the bad men and make Scott all better."
A glare from Scott was enough to send his younger brother scurrying back to the door.
"He's…" Scott paused to catch his breath, trying to hide the strain in his voice. On the screen, Jim Dale was leaning forward in his chair, deep concern written across his face. "He's exaggerating, Uncle Jim."
"You don't sound well, Scott," the station commander pointed out softly. "It's all right, Scotty. I'll get someone to you. Just look after yourself and your little brother. Don't take any risks. Listen, Scott, I want you to find somewhere safe and hide. That's all, just go hide now."
Scott frowned, rubbing his aching head.
"Shouldn't I turn off the override first?"
His dad's old friend gave a bark of laughter, grinning up at the screen.
"Yes, that might be – "
"There's someone coming, Scotty!"
Gordon's squeal cut across the conversation and he dived towards his brother at the centre of the room. Scott swung around in his seat, quickly assessing their options. With one door and little open space, they were distinctly limited. He gave his brother a shove towards the back of the room.
"Grab the cups, Gordy! Get back into the shaft!"
"Hide, Scott!" Jim Dale urged, standing rigid in the centre of his silent control deck.
"They can see you, Uncle Jim!" Scott gasped, flipping the cover over the large button up with one finger. "They can always see you!" He pressed the override button again, not stopping to watch the red glow fade before he threw himself out of the chair and across the room, plastic cup crumpled in one hand and hot on his brother's heels.
Gordon waited, hovering anxiously, until Scott was less than a metre away before slipping head-first into the shaft. Scott gripped the top of the opening with both hands, pulling both feet up with a strength he didn't really have and twisting them into the shaft, sliding along it until only his arms were still in the room. He reached for the metal grille, pulling it up against the wall as the door opened.
On the screen, Uncle Jim was still on his feet, staring tensely into nowhere. The murmur of startled voices around him was barely audible to Scott, and hopefully just as obscure to the thin, pale man who had just walked into the room.
Scott's lungs were burning and his head was spinning. He held the grille in place with aching fingertips as a voice rose clearly above the noise.
"Sir, I have coordinates!"
The commander finally reacted.
"Enough!" he heard clearly. "Continue with your routine diagnostics." Dale stressed the term. He turned to one of the personnel at the back of the room. "Hazel, can I have external coms, a ground-link, through to my office, please? Advise the maintenance crew to get suited-up; we might want to fine-tune something outside. Jonti, come with me."
He was still talking as the newcomer settled into the ground-side control chair, sitting on its edge, body flooded with tension. The man gave the screen a very slightly quizzical look as Commander Dale left the room, one of his personnel in tow. The other four people in the control chamber worked at their consoles with professional calm, only their slightly hunched postures betraying that anything was out of the ordinary.
Gritting his teeth, Scott struggled to keep his desperate, strained breathing quiet as he held the grille against its surround. He kept his grip as Gordon's small hands moved around him, twisting the latches carefully back into place. It wasn't until Gordon began to tug at his hands that Scott let himself roll onto his back, staring up at the roof of the shaft and trying hard not to make a sound as he gasped for each painful breath.
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