HYPERION

PART TWO

Tall and tan and young and lovely…

Gordon stirred in his sleep, sank his head further down into what passed for a pillow on Thunderbird Three.

…the girl from Ipanema goes walking…

Consciousness flickered at the edges of Gordon's brain, percolated slowly through his grey-matter from the outside in.

…and when she passes…

One eye slid blearily open.

…each one she passes…

Gordon extracted a hand from his sleeping pouch and rubbed angrily at his face.

…goes…

'Alan!' he bellowed, slapping the flat of his hand against the bulkhead.

There was no response, just the continuing strains of the century-old song that his brother had dredged up from an obscure website, assisted, no doubt, by a dedicated relay from Thunderbird Five. Alan had found it hilarious to pipe the music into Three's sleeping quarters whenever he wanted Gordon to drag himself out of bed. Where, Gordon ceded ruefully, he seemed to be spending way too much time.

He struggled awkwardly out of the pouch and landed with his socked feet on the metal floor, looked around the small sleeping chamber and realised he was alone. Gordon blinked at his watch. Nine-twenty.

Oh well.

That's what happens when there's no night or day, no sun or moon or sky, no tide going in or going out to tell him what time of the day it was. Or even to tell him which way was up.

Gordon scratched at an armpit.

And Jesus Christ, was he ever bored.

'I guess we won't be needing Mr Sinatra any longer.' Alan leaned back in the command chair and disconnected the internal comms. 'Looks like he's done his job.'

Scott couldn't help but feel disappointed when Alan cut the music. He had been enjoying 'Girl from Ipanema.' It reminded him of his childhood – his grandmother had regularly sashayed around the living room to 'Old Blue Eyes,' and during this morning's distraction Scott had been having a hard time keeping his toes from tapping against Thunderbird Three's flight deck.

Gordon shuffled into the control room, fell heavily into the spare seat, and sat for a moment scratching at himself and adjusting his clothing as Scott and Alan looked on.

'I can't stand it,' Gordon said at last. 'I itch all over.' He continued scratching. 'And I smell musty,' he said, when he received no reply. 'Do I smell musty?' He sniffed the air, like a piglet searching for truffles. 'Oh,' he said, looking at Alan. 'It's you who smells musty.'

'Fer Chrissakes.' Scott's toes tapped at last against the deck, a sharp report that stopped Gordon dead in his verbal tracks. 'We all smell musty!'

Alan sighed. 'Why do I bother getting you out of bed?'

'I don't know.' Gordon ceased his scratching. 'Why do you bother getting me out of bed?'

John despatched the subspace packet, sat back and tapped a thumb absently against the console. Thunderbird Three was the furthest into space that she'd ever been, and getting further away every minute. She was now completely out of verbal comms range – there was no chance of a two-way conversation, even with an acceptable time-lag. Hadn't been for days. All communication had to be done in packet dumps that took, at today's distances, twelve hours to get there. And twelve hours to get back. And tomorrow it would be sixteen hours. And the day after…

The day after, John turned and looked through the viewport at the dark expanse of space, Thunderbird Three would be at Hyperion.

Scott sat at the main console as Thunderbird Five's most recent packet dump downloaded onto the hard drive and the system commenced the decoding process. It was taking longer than usual, and Scott stared at the screen impatiently as the packet size ticked over into gigabytes. The file was larger than normal, no doubt containing the information from NASA that they'd requested. Finally.

Scott inhaled a lungful of recirculated air. Gordon was right. The place did smell musty. He looked across at his brother, hunched beside Alan at the auxiliary control. He couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor bastard. In the past two weeks he'd gone from itchy and irritable to dull and morose. Which, Scott had to admit, was a whole lot easier to deal with.

The console in front of him chimed briefly, indicating the decoding was complete. Scott read the stream of words that blinked across the screen, extracted the Hyperion's codes and schematics and dumped a copy to the auxiliary console.

'Fellas,' he said.

'Morning, John.' Jeff looked up from his desk as John's communication portrait flared to life.

'Morning, Father. I've received a comms dump from Thunderbird Three.'

'And?'

'Data received,' John read from his monitor. 'Instructions understood. Timeframe to Hyperion: fifteen hours.'

'Fifteen hours.' Jeff leaned back in his chair. 'Which means they're already there.'

'At this distance the packets are taking sixteen hours, one-way. They may have completed the mission by now and be on their way back.'

Jeff nodded. 'Did they say anything else?'

'Uh… Just one thing.' John looked apologetically at his father. 'We smell.'

Gordon leant over Scott at the external monitor, watching as Thunderbird Three drifted towards Hyperion. The exploration vessel showed dully on the monitor, touched faintly by the distant yellow sun. It seemed to Gordon as though Hyperion stood still, motionless in space, instead of hurtling through it at eighty thousand miles an hour.

'Meteor damage.' Scott's stylus tapped against the screen.

Gordon leaned down closer to look. 'Maybe that's what took out the pilots.'

'I don't think so.' Scott attention moved to the sensors. 'The hull hasn't been breached, and the engines are still running. She even has atmosphere, if this thing is to be trusted.'

'How can she still be running after all these years?'

Scott shrugged. 'I guess NASA built this thing to last.'

Gordon fell silent, concentrated on studying the data that Thunderbird Three continued to gather. 'Life signs?' he asked at last, was unsurprised when Scott shook his head.

'Nothing.'

Alan diverted his attention from manoeuvring Thunderbird Three alongside Hyperion and glanced at the sensor display. 'The meteor must've taken out the communications. That might explain NASA's loss of signal.'

'I don't know.' Scott brought up another screen. 'According to this, Hyperion is completely viable.' He sat back in his seat and looked at Alan. 'None of which explains how she got this far out, in the wrong direction, and then somehow turned around and came back.'

'Autopilot?' Alan turned his attention back to the flight controls.

'Maybe.' It was a slim hope, but nothing else Scott could come up with explained it. He moved in closer to the monitor as Hyperion's battered hulk filled the screen. 'Maybe we'll find out when we get on board.'

Driven by an internal cue, as though somewhere, somehow, a factory whistle had sounded and signalled the end of another day, Jeff Tracy straightened at his desk, stretched his shoulders, cracked his neck, and looked out at the world that lay darkening beyond the window. It was only at that moment, when he allowed his senses to extend beyond the pile of contracts on his desk, that he realised another clear-sky day had passed, and that he had wasted it on paperwork.

The sound of the piano filled the open expanse of lounge – the piece was well-progressed, and Virgil must have been at it for some time without him even noticing. Jeff leaned back in his chair and watched as Virgil hunched over the keyboard, lost in the music, unaware of his expression pinched in concentration, of the sweat that sheened his face. Unaware, even, of the hair that fell into his eyes. Jeff studied him critically. His son was overdue for a haircut, and there was always the possibility that he would fall again from grace. Jeff's lips pursed imperceptibly at the thought of Virgil reverting to his long-hair days – another fear he had to constantly contend with.

Jeff rose from his chair, passed unnoticed across the lounge and poured himself a drink from the bar. A full one. Forget that two-finger shit. He had an itch in his throat that needed scratching, and butterflies in his stomach that needed drowning. He clamped his fingers around the glass, stared down into the deep pool of bourbon and wondered why he was so on edge. Was he wrong to send them? Was it guilt that he'd allowed his ties with NASA to influence his decision and put his sons in danger? And for what – to salvage a piece of metal long consigned to history as bad luck.

He chinked ice into his poison, tilted the glass and closed his eyes as the alcohol passed burning across his tongue. Oh yeah, the itch was scratched, but despite the sweet hot bourbon that settled into his stomach, those butterflies kept on fluttering, beating against his insides to remind him of his sons on Three, alone in the farthest wastes of space – further even than he himself had been, and so far away he couldn't see them, couldn't hear them. Could barely feel them. Behind his closed eyes he remembered how dark space was. How it felt. How it smelled. How it was so cold it could freeze the surface of your eyeballs off and leave you blind and lost and without hope. He'd seen that once, and it haunted him, still, in the quiet, dark spaces of the night.

Jeff opened his eyes, realised the music had stopped. He raised the glass to his lips and drained the dregs in one smooth draught.

Scott completed his check of the seals on Gordon's helmet, made sure the thruster pack was secured to his brother's harness, spun him back around and brought them face-to-face.

'Gordon.' Scott placed his hands on Gordon's shoulders and looked him solemnly in the eyes. 'This is your last chance to scratch.'

Gordon laughed, puffed a thin film of vapour onto the inside of his visor.

Scott let his hands fall from his brother's shoulders. He turned to Alan, who leaned, waiting and watchful,against the airlock door. 'Okay. NASA's request is that we board Hyperion, engage the overrides and course correct to bring her into Earth orbit. Alan, once we access the flight deck, we'll uplink the flight control directly to Three's navigation, and you can input the codes into Hyperion's autopilot.'

'FAB.' Alan pushed himself away from the door.

Scott adjusted the equipment on his belt and turned around so that Gordon could check his seals. 'We all saw the transmission, so you know we've been requested to treat this as a crime scene. NASA wants to undertake its own investigation when Hyperion returns, so Gordon, if we find Gunnar and Holman, we leave them where they are.'

The ident images downloaded from NASA flashed through Gordon's mind as his hands ran expertly across Scott's seals. Steven Gunnar, blond-haired and blue-eyed, smiling hopefully at the press photographers, and Andrew Holman, Gunnar's diametric opposite – stocky, swarthy, the faintest of scowls touching his thick-fleshed lips. Polar opposites, if ever there were any, and Gordon wondered what marvels of psychometric testing had resulted in those two living – and dying – together.

Gordon's fingers quested towards Scott's thruster pack and paused there. He wondered what had happened – if the two men had died together in one unexpected, cataclysmic accident. Or how long one had outlived the other, only to die in silence. And alone.

Gordon shuddered, an involuntary tremor that shivered up his spine and transferred itself to the hand that rested at Scott's back. Scott felt the tremor, and angled his head around to look at him. Gordon ignored the querying gaze and slapped his brother hard on the back. 'All set,' he said.

'Alan.' Scott turned back around. 'Wait for my signal and keep Thunderbird Three steady where she is.' He nodded towards the airlock door. 'Okay. Open her up.'

Alan keyed the airlock open, watched as his brothers entered the chamber and the door slid closed again. There was a pneumatic hiss as the lock sealed and the atmosphere drained out of the tiny space. Alan waited as the airlock completed its cycle, peered at his brothers through the tiny viewport and adjusted his headset. 'Comms check. Are you reading me?'

'FAB.' Scott turned to face the outer door, one hand hard against the wall as he braced against the loss of gravity.

Gordon swivelled his head and gave Alan a thumbs-up through the viewport. 'FAB.'

Alan keyed the panel again and watched as the external hatch opened onto darkness. There was a brief pause, and then Scott and Gordon kicked off into the void, like swimmers pushing off into a fathomless tide.

'Good luck, fellas,' Alan said. Listened as the sounds of his brothers' breathing filtered reassuringly into his ears.

Alan returned to the flight deck, slid into his chair and activated the external camera array in one fluid movement. A few adjustments and he was rewarded with a clear image of Scott and Gordon as they jetted the short distance between Three and Hyperion. He could still hear their breathing in his ears, the regular rhythm interrupted only when Scott advised he had reached the airlock hatch.

'Right behind you,' Gordon responded, his voice coloured by the high thin quality that enriched oxygen lends to the lungs.

'In position.' Scott turned towards Three, gave a brief wave at the camera, and then returned his attention to the Hyperion's airlock and the access panel positioned flush against the seal.

'Standing by,' Alan said, watching as the hatch slid open and Scott and Gordon disappeared into the dark space beyond. He glanced at the ship's chronometer, noted the time, and turned back to the monitor. But by then his brothers were gone, lost from view.

Scott followed Gordon out of the airlock and into Hyperion's interior, keying the hatch back into place behind them. The door thudded dully into its coupling and sealed with a prolonged pneumatic hiss, closing them in.

The passageway they found themselves in was narrow and dim, lit at regular intervals by auxiliary lighting. The pale glow of the illumination reflected dully from the walls and floor and cast the path ahead of them into patches of shadow and light. Thunderbird Three's sensors hadn't lied – Hyperion was still functioning, and Scott waited as Gordon popped the seals on his helmet, slid it over his head and tentatively sniffed the air.

Gordon's expression transformed before Scott's eyes, his face twisting in disgust. 'Jesus,' he choked out. He looked both ways along the tiny corridor. 'God, the stink on Thunderbird Three's got nothing on this!'

'Can you breathe?'

Gordon coughed weakly, his face crumpling as he gulped another mouthful of rancid air and nodded in not-so-reassuring encouragement. 'I can breathe.'

Scott popped his own seals and slid his helmet off. The odour hit him the instant his face was exposed to the air, a rank wave that rushed thick into his nostrils. He clamped his mouth shut and resisted the urge to gag.

'What do you think it is?' Gordon looked both ways along the corridor as though looking for the source of the stench. Or at least the direction it was coming from.

'Don't know,' Scott said, trying not to breathe. 'Maybe something is fouling the oxygen scrubber. Who knows what eight years of build-up in the filters could do?'

'Or maybe it's coming from Gunnar and Holman.' Gordon turned in the direction of the flight deck. 'They must be in there,' he nodded in the direction he was looking, 'somewhere.'

Scott followed Gordon's gaze and stood for a moment, contemplating the gloomy interior. Around them the ship rattled and hummed, the tired air recyclers pumping their tainted oxygen dutifully and endlessly through the ducting of the dark, dead corridors. The vent above his head shuddered once, loudly, and jolted Scott out of his contemplation. 'C'mon,' he said.

Gordon waited for Scott to move ahead, and then fell into step behind him.'What if we find them?'

There was a moment of silence, and then, 'it's not like you haven't seen dead men before.'

'This is different.'

Scott turned to look at him. 'How?'

Gordon shrugged. He didn't know how. It just was.

Scott turned back to the darkened passageway. 'If we do find them, remember not to touch them. Our job is to correct the coordinates and reset the engines. After that, Hyperion is on her – '

What the hell?

Something moved in the shadows ahead.

Scott reached a hand back, caught Gordon mid-step and stopped him in his tracks.