HYPERION

PART THREE

A shadow stepped out of the darkness and shuffled its way slowly towards them.

'What,' Gordon breathed in Scott's ear, 'the hell?'

The shadow paused, cocked its head at the words, and Scott saw dark hair glinting beneath the auxiliary lighting.

'Commander?' Scott called into the mottled darkness. 'Commander Holman?'

The figure moved, shuffled in their direction, brought with it a waft of foulness that made Scott choke back on bile. 'Commander Holman?' he called again, because who else could it be? 'Do you need assistance?'

Gordon moved in close behind him, and Scott could feel his brother's body wound tighter than a spring and ready at any moment to snap. 'Scott…' Gordon whispered, and Scott felt Gordon's arm moving, reaching for the pistol at his belt.

'Wait,' Scott said, but Gordon's arm still moved, and Scott knew the gloved hand had slid into the holster and that his brother's finger had curled around the trigger.

The face loomed closer, the eyes wide and staring, the lips moving silently. The shambling figure came up close and stared hard into Scott's face, and Scott had no doubt that this was Holman, miraculous and whole, and how the hell was that even possible? He shook himself, an involuntary shudder that ratcheted along his spine, because against all the odds, the man was somehow still alive!

In the thin space in front of him Holman's mouth moved, the tongue glistening wet behind the teeth, and Scott realised at once where the stink was coming from.

'Commander Holman.' Scott stood firm, didn't reel back from the overpowering odour that slammed him right between the eyes. 'Do you need medical assistance?' Because God, the man must have been rotting from the inside out.

The astronaut's lips parted, stiff and unwilling, and a deep sigh issued from his throat.

'We're from International Rescue.' Scott stared into the grey face. The eyes also grey. And pale. So pale. 'We're here…' he stopped, checked his sentence, changed his tack, because this mission had just turned one-eighty on its head and the entire game had been changed. 'We received your mayday and are here to rescue you.'

Holman's head shook, whether from misunderstanding or palsy, Scott didn't know. Light flared in the grey eyes, and the face loomed suddenly closer.

'Scott.' Gordon's hand clasped around Scott's arm and jerked him back a step. It looked like Holman had been about to fall on him, and something, something different looked out of the pale grey eyes. Scott blinked, backed up uncertainly against his brother.

The astronaut wavered on his feet. The light in the eyes was gone, and Scott shook his head. He cursed himself for his unprofessional behaviour, but remained close against Gordon, with his brother's hand still curled hard around his arm. 'Commander, we've come to return you to Earth.'

Earth. Holman's mouth worked as though trying to shape the word, as if he were only just learning to talk. His eyes moved from Scott's face to Gordon's, and rested there, unnervingly.

'Sir,' Scott said, and this time the question was blunt. 'Is Commander Gunnar alive?'

The grey eyes moved back to his, and Scott felt sweat prick along his spine. This was too weird. It was like talking to a zombie – but then that's probably what happened when you spent too much time away from people, isolated and alone and surrounded by nothing but the endless empty spaces between the stars.

'Commander,' he continued, 'if you'll show us to the flight deck, we can provide a course correction that will bring Hyperion into Earth orbit. Then you can transfer to our vehicle – '

Gordon's knee nudged into Scott from behind. Hard.

'If you'll just show us to the flight deck,' Scott ignored Gordon breathing heavy down his neck, 'we'll initiate the course correction.'

Still Holman stood there, staring.

'Sir?' Scott's eyes shifted past Holman, towards the end of the passageway. 'The flight deck?'

Something moved in Holman's face, a twitching of the lip, as though thought was coming hard to him. The eyes moved from Scott's face and down his body, rested momentarily at his feet, and then Holman turned, slowly, and shuffled away.

Scott's eyes followed the shambling figure, seeing now the emaciated body, the flight suit hanging loose on the bones. Sympathy welled inside him, sadness at what the man must have lived through, and yet somehow, despite the odds, he had made it this far. If his father had wanted history, he was sure going to get it.

'C'mon.' Scott made to move away, but Gordon still held him by the arm.

'Scott. We can't bring him on board.'

Scott said nothing, his eyes on the miserable figure that moved ahead.

'Look at him,' Gordon whispered. 'He's not right. In the head or something.'

Scott pulled against Gordon's grip. 'He hasn't seen another human being for eight years.'

'And he stinks.' Gordon didn't let go. 'He's rotten or something.'

'Maybe it's what he's been eating.'

'For that matter,' Gordon voice took on an edge of urgency, his fingers curling tighter into Scott's arm, 'what do you think happened to Gunnar?'

'For Chrissakes, Gordon, let go.' Scott turned slightly, saw the pistol still gripped in Gordon's free hand. 'And put the gun away.'

Gordon slid the weapon back into its holster. 'Don't you think this whole thing is – '

'Suspicious?'

'I was going to say odd.' Gordon's eyebrows came together. 'This whole fucking thing is odd.'

'Gordon – '

Gordon's hand fell from his brother's arm at the same speed as the sinking of his heart. 'Don't say it.'

Scott said it, and he said it with all the authority of his position. 'We're not leaving him here.' He turned, not waiting for Gordon's response, not wanting to hear it, and followed Holman's path along narrow passageway. Gordon watched his brother's receding back, knowing it was pointless to argue after the field commander badge had been pulled.

Ahead of them, Holman had reached the flight deck. He placed a hand against the access panel, waited as the door slid grudgingly open, then turned and looked back at Scott and Gordon. His expression seemed to beckon them, and the grey eyes glinted as though catching an unseen light. And then Holman was gone, slipping through the door and disappearing into darkness.

Scott reached the threshold moments behind him, stopped in the same place that Holman had stopped, and groped with his gloved hand for the access panel. There was a snap of relays and the overhead lights flared into sudden brilliance.

'I don't believe it,' Scott said as his brother crowded into the doorway beside him.

'How is this even possible?' Gordon's breath was hot in his ear. 'Sensors said there were no signs of life.'

'The sensors must have been malfunctioning.' Scott shook his head. 'Or maybe I read them wrong…'

'You didn't read them wrong.'

In front of them Holman stood blinking, blinded by the light. Seated at the console, Gunnar sat squinting up at them and raised a hand to shield his pale, grey eyes from the unexpected glare.

'I'll stay here and initiate the uplink to Three.' Scott's voice was low, but his tone spoke volumes. He cast his brother a meaningful glance, was gratified when Gordon slipped back out of the flight deck.

'Hyperion to Thunderbird Three. Alan, are you reading me?'

'Loud and clear, Scott.' Alan hunched forward at his console, eyes glued to Thunderbird Three's external feeds. Truth was, he'd never cut the comms. Had heard every word Scott and Gordon had said. Had wracked his brain in equal measure at the revelation that Holman and Gunnar were still alive, after all these years.

'I'm initiating the uplink. Advise if you are ready to receive.'

Alan checked Three's navigation relays one last time and dropped the firewall. 'On my mark, Scott.'

Silence rattled over the comms as Alan made his final adjustments. 'Mark,' he said.

'Transmitting.'

Alan watched the as green uplink bar crept its way to a hundred percent. So far so good. 'Uplink complete.' And now to see if Hyperion would accept the data from Three. 'Downloading revised navigation.'

'FAB.'

Alan stared at the blinking screen. 'I don't think Hyperion is happy about the interface. It might take a while.'

'Understood.'

Alan waited until the monitor stopped blinking and rows of navigation data began to scroll jerkily up the screen, knew that Scott was probably staring at the same haphazard transfer over on Hyperion.

'Al?'

'Scott?'

'You heard?'

'I heard,' Alan said.

Three's screen blinked once, was overrun by a stream of trajectory data.

'Can you advise Base?'

'FAB.'

Alan turned to the comms panel and initiated a packet to Thunderbird Five.

Arrived Hyperion. Gunnar and Holman alive. Evacuating to Three. And then he added, as the uplink to Hyperion terminated and Three's console chimed at the completion of its task: Mission successful.

Gordon paused at a junction and ran through the schematics of Hyperion in his head. The crew quarters were located in the centre of the ship, which meant he should turn… left. Gordon turned left, one hand trailing distractedly along the wall, fingers catching in the seams between the pressed-metal panels. Above his head the air vents rattled dully, and in one place streamers had been tied to the grille, fluttering sporadically in the flow of rancid air. Hyperion's smell was still overpowering, but he'd moved past it, dispassionately switched it off. It was no worse than any other rescue he'd been to, when people's insides had spilled out and stained the air with the hot smell of blood and the deep, rank smell of their bowels.

The engines kicked in and set the superstructure shuddering, then just as quickly faded to nothing. Gordon paused beneath one of the auxiliary lights and cocked his head, listening. It was too early for Scott to have initiated full power to the engines. Maybe this was how Hyperion had been limping along all this time, moving on inertia built up out of random bursts from the engines.

The crew quarters loomed ahead of him, the pressure doors hanging open, the rooms dark beyond. Gordon paused at the first door and groped for the lighting panel, stood blinking as he waited for his vision to adjust to the new sensation of illumination. Power wasn't an issue, at least, so it must be Gunnar and Holman's eyesight that accounted for the ever-present darkness.

The room in front of him was of a decent size, given the circumstances. Nowhere near as tiny as the sleeping quarters on Three, and far better appointed. A sleeping pallet took up the right quarter, and to the left of the door a small desk was moulded out of the same material as the wall. A flight suit lay stretched out against the rear of the cubicle, and papers were scattered randomly across the plasticised floor. Gordon had seen messier domiciles, including his own, and given the state of mind of Hyperion's crew, and the lethargy that seemed to infect them, it didn't surprise that housekeeping was not top of their agenda.

Above Gordon's head the vent rattled tinnily, incessantly, as his fingers trailed across the desk, across the mementos of somebody's life. He picked up a photograph, had no way of telling if the dark-haired woman belonged to Gunnar or Holman, if the children belonged to one of them, or to nobody at all. His gaze lingered on an image of an elderly couple and he lifted the photograph into the light, studied it closely. Gunnar's parents, he guessed. Which meant the dark-haired woman was probably Gunnar's, as well.

Gordon replaced the photograph carefully back on the desk. There was nothing here, nothing but memories of home, and he was wasting time. He wanted to make his way along the internal skin and see what the meteor damage looked like from the inside.

He surveyed the room one last time, his eyes catching on the flight suit that lay stretched out against the rear wall.

Gordon walked across to it, and poked it with a toe.

'Scott.'

Scott glanced at Gunnar and Holman as Gordon's voice crackled into his earpiece. Their backs were towards him as they attended to the new data in their console, though it was difficult to see what constructive use they were putting to the task. Their movements still struck him as robotic and slow, though he was still willing to pass that off as the end result of too many years cooped up inside Hyperion, and too many years without human contact.

'You need to get out of there.' Gordon's voice pierced urgently into his brain. 'Fast.'

Scott raised a hand and pressed one finger against his earpiece, cocked his head as though he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

'I've found Gunnar and Holman.'

Scott stiffened, resisted the urge to shout out 'what?' He pressed his finger harder against the earpiece, as if doing so would somehow make Gordon's words make more sense.

Gordon's voice crackled again into his ear, repeated his message very loud, and very clear. 'I've found Gunnar and Holman. And they're dead.'

Scott stared at the backs of the astronauts, trying to reconcile what his eyes said was in front of him, and what the voice in his ear said was not. What did Gordon mean he'd found Gunnar and Holman, when Gunnar and Holman were sitting right there…?

Gordon's voice went on speaking, a rapid staccato to the backdrop of the deep booming of Scott's heart.

'Get out of there. Make whatever excuse you have to, but get the hell out. Meet me at the airlock and I'll make sure Al is standing by.'

Scott's finger dropped from his ear. He tensed his legs and took a step backwards, the boot of his spacesuit catching on the pressed metal and scuffing loudly across the floor.

Holman turned in his seat and looked at Scott with his pale, grey eyes.

Scott's face betrayed nothing of the fear that coursed through his veins. For the first time he realised what it was about the two men that had unsettled him from the first.

It was the eyes. The pale, pale eyes. It was as though they were dead inside. Null. And void. And it was the void that looked out at Scott now. Peered carefully at him through those two, cold windows in that dead, cold face.

'Well,' Scott said out loud. Too loud. 'If you fellas are okay, I'll just go check what my buddy is up to.' He paused, swallowed, felt a bead of sweat slide down his temple.

'Hurry.' Gordon's voice was like a mosquito, buzzing in Scott's ear. A relentless, stress-inducing drone, urging him on through Hyperion's rabbit-warren of corridors and hatches.

Scott entered the airlock, jolting forward as Gordon smacked the side of his fist against the access panel and the inner door slammed down hard. Gordon had already sealed his helmet, but Scott could see his brother's face, pale behind the smoked glass of the visor, and his breath flaring moist and hot against the inner surface of the faceplate.

Gordon's voice said, 'do you think they suspected anything?,' but his eyes said much, much more. Scott saw horror there. And fear. And then Gordon slid his sunshield down and Scott saw nothing more.

'I don't think so.' Scott slipped his helmet over his head and engaged the seals. There was a moment of claustrophobic airlessness before the oxygen pump kicked in and sent a flow of air softly across his face. It wasn't enough. Scott dialled up the coolant system, licked his lips and tasted salt. He was inexplicably hot, as though Gordon's panic had somehow infected him and sent his heart rate through the roof. Scott had never seen fear in Gordon before. Of all of them Gordon was the coolest under pressure, the most unflappable. Nothing fazed him. Nothing.

Gordon was still turned towards him, but Scott could see only himself in the reflective visor. He slid his own sunshield into place and dropped his arms to his sides, felt sweat forming warm on the palms of his hands. 'What the hell is – '

'Ready?' Gordon's voice buzzed through his earpiece. Scott nodded uncertainly as Gordon reached out and moved his hands across Scott's suit, checking the connections with rapid movements.

'Good. Now listen.' Gordon's words rattled into Scott's ear with manic intensity. 'The minute I pop the seal on this boat we get out, we get across to Three, and we get the hell away from here. And we don't ever come back. We don't ever the hell come back.'

Gordon, Scott wanted to say, what the fuck is going on? But his lips were stuck fast shut, his tongue dry in his mouth. He couldn't have spoken a word if he had tried. And then Gordon's hand moved to the airlock control and Scott could see the airlock hadn't finished cycling and if Gordon popped the seal right now they were going to –

The outer hatch slid abruptly open. For a split second Scott stared at the black chasm of space that opened up before them, and then his eyes slammed shut as he was sucked out of the airlock in a rush of exploding air. For a moment he floated, with his eyes closed tight and the sound of his own breathing in his ears, and then his eyelids popped open and he glimpsed the windmilling of the stars and realised he was spinning. His stomach twisted, heaved, and he swallowed against the rise of vomit in his throat, flung his arms out uselessly to stop himself from cartwheeling into the void. The orange bulk of Thunderbird Three slid into his field of view, followed by the dark field of stars, the battered carcass of the Hyperion and then back to the stars again.

'Gordon,' Scott gasped into the comms, 'where are you?'

'Here,' the voice in his ear said, and suddenly they collided, crashed violently together. Scott's fingers grasped at Gordon's suit, and he felt his brother's arms curl vise-like around him.

'I'm going to stabilise us with the thruster pack,' Gordon's voice crackled through the connection, 'so don't move.'

'Not even to throw up?' It wasn't a joke.

'Not even,' Gordon replied, the rock-steady calmness returned to his voice. He clamped Scott to his chest with one arm, moved the other to the thruster controls.

Scott dug his fingers into Gordon's belt and closed his eyes. He didn't need to see the universe spinning out of control around him. 'Tell me when you're done,' he said, trying to keep the nausea from his voice.

'Nearly there…' Gordon said. His grip on Scott tightened. 'Just don't move.'

There was a moment of silence in which Scott could feel nothing, and then finally Gordon's grip on him relaxed, but didn't let him go.

Scott opened his eyes, was gratified to see that the universe had stopped spinning. He and Gordon floated some distance from Thunderbird Three, their explosive exit from the Hyperion having carried them out of the airlock on an oblique trajectory. Gordon's thruster pack reignited and Scott tightened his grip on Gordon's belt as Thunderbird Three lurched suddenly towards them. Devoid of all landmarks of movement, it seemed as though Three was rushing headlong at them, and Scott couldn't help but tense himself as the orange skin of the rocket filled his entire field of view.

Three's outer hatch slid open at their approach and Gordon guided them neatly in. The hatch slid shut again as soon as they entered, and then the internal gravity kicked in and spilled them to the floor, slumped them into a heap as oxygen cycled into the chamber.

'What,' said Scott, his chest heaving, 'the fuck,' he breathed in hard, 'was that about?'

In support of Scott's bewilderment, Alan's voice blasted loudly through the internal comms.

'What the hell, guys?'