John Tracy's blue eyes were reflected and distorted in the bronze coloured grille that covered the radio speaker. This radio was permanently tuned to one single frequency; the frequency used only by International Rescue. John looked across at the rest of the bank of radios and speakers and tuned into the wash of voices briefly. Living on the station for a month at a time, John learned to deal with the constant voices. He learned to tune them out, or to single out a single voice amongst the cacophony. So John was well aware that the radio that connected him to International Rescue was silent. The only people who knew his location in orbit were not talking to him.

This happened occasionally, when the world was silent and there were no rescues to be co-ordinated. It was easy enough for John's family to simply forget about him, 36 000 kilometres above the earth. But this was different. These last few days usually followed a very strict protocol. John's stint on Thunderbird 5 was coming to an end. Usually, that meant a flurry of communication between John and International Rescue as they made preparations to launch Thunderbird 3. Launching a vehicle into orbit was a precise procedure. Slight variations in the exact position of Thunderbird 5 would mean huge differences in the process of launching Thunderbird 3; a process which would take a few hours if done perfectly and two days if not.

But for the last few days, only silence from International Rescue. John was a careful soul. He had to be, living alone on a station in orbit 36 000 kilometres above the earth, hours away from any assistance, even from Thunderbird 3, and that was assuming a perfect launch. So whenever he went more than a few daylight hours without contact from Tracy Island, he performed an EVA and checked on the antenna to make sure there was no external damage. Then he ran diagnostic software, designed to root out any flaws in the computer system. Finally, he would manually test the physical electronics. He would open up a panel and use a multimeter on each wire and check the reading against his monstrous reference book. Every time this had happened before, Jeff usually contacted John as he was in the middle of testing the wires manually.

Not this time however. John had run all three diagnostic methods on the radio. The worst part was, they all came up clean. Thunderbird 5 was in perfect working order. The logical next step was what started to concern John. That meant Tracy Island wasn't broadcasting. John cycled through the radios, checking each one in turn by muting all the others. Thankfully, none of the voices needed rescuing. Worryingly though, none of the voices belonged to his brothers or his father. John's concern was growing, and had been since he had realised the radio was silent. Sure, maybe there had been a catastrophic failure with the transmission tower on Tracy Island. But that wouldn't stop Jeff from flying to the mainland and making radio call from there. John had executed the radio sweep several times, after running the diagnostics and each time, the same result.

John turned all the voices back on and walked over to his microphone. He keyed the button to broadcast. He knew that pressing the button would set off the lights behind the eyes of his portrait in the lounge of Tracy Island and a loud tone over all the radios in the villa. Yet no-one responded. John had pressed the button every hour for the last two days. A wave of tiredness crashed over John and he had to fight to keep his eyes open. There was no way to automate the broadcast; John had been awake for the last 48 hours. John made a mental note to tell Brains about the oversight. An uncomfortable though wound its way through John's mind, and his stomach curled slightly.

If I ever see Brains again…

John immediately stamped out the thought. International Rescue would come for him. There were any number of reasons that would delay or restrict a broadcast. There had been an issue with imposters several months ago which had caused Jeff to suspend all International Rescue services and communications – temporarily. A similar situation could have arisen, or atrocious weather could have damaged the transmission tower and simultaneously prevented Jeff from flying to the mainland.

But now that the thought had wormed its way into John's mind, he couldn't remove it. It sat with him uncomfortably as he walked into the living area of the space station. He paced slowly, thinking hard, trying, and by the mere effort failing, to convince himself that his colleagues, his family, would contact him any second. He approached the computer monitor, one of the many strewn around the station. John brought up the timeline and supply manifest for his stay on Thunderbird 5. He was scheduled to be in space for 28 days, not including flight time on Thunderbird 3. He had supplies for 35 days, which would encompass a non-perfect launch of Thunderbird 3 and still have 5 days spare. Today was his 27th day in space.

That meant Thunderbird 3 had to be launched sometime in the next 5 days in order to reach John before his supplies ran out. 5 days of sitting and waiting for International Rescue to communicate. John shook his head to clear it. His family would come. He trudged toward his sleeping quarters. He knew that he was pushing his boundaries staying awake as long as he had. He would sleep for a few hours to clear his head. The computer would wake him if something came up. John sincerely hoped it did.