DISASTER IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC by CATHRL RATED FRT

International Rescue are called to help a group of people who they'd never have thought would need it. Crossover with Battle of the Planets.

Author's Notes: I've been threatening people with this one for months, and here it is - my Battle of the Planets AU / Thunderbirds TV-verse crossover. My hope is that it will be readable by people from both fandoms who know very little about the other one - otherwise I think I have a target audience of three. You know who you are :) If I've failed, put in too little (or too much) background information, do please let me know.

This is set in what I've seen called a "fusion" universe: where both canons are considered to belong in the same universe. They're surprisingly close here - my Battle AU has Earth considerably less technologically advanced in terms of spaceflight than Battle canon does, and it's not so very far from the Thunderbirds universe. Of course, in Thunderbirds we're not at war with Spectra - then again, much of the action in Battle takes place on other planets. I'm postulating that International Rescue stay out of the war situations, and concentrate their efforts on the sort of civilian rescues which governments worrying about the war maybe don't have so much time for.

Set shortly after the episode in which the Phoenix is completely destroyed. Thunderbirds-wise, it's some time after the episode where the Fireflash crashes in the sea.

As always, all comments are very welcome.

Chapter 1

"Penny for your thoughts?"

The tall, dark-haired man jumped, then relaxed again as he realised who it was. "Just thinking how lucky we are."

"To live here?"

"To be alive."

"We did everything we could." The second man looked down over the rail, to where someone younger and red-headed was ploughing tirelessly up and down the pool. "We got most of them out. Gordon did his best."

"Gordon could have been killed today. He has to be more careful."

"If he'd been more careful, that last group would all be dead. The chaplain, the ship's captain - he has two small children, by the way - the doctor who helped keep the children calm until Gordon got them out --"

"Okay, already." Scott managed a smile. "He did the right thing, with hindsight. But he can't keep rolling the dice like that. He's our one and only aquanaut, Virgil. I've tried not to give him too many directions, because he's the expert underwater. But he needs to run his decisions past someone, and he isn't doing that."

"What are you going to do?"

Scott considered the swimmer, only now starting to slow down after several minutes of flat-out laps. "I'm going to wait for him to realise it for himself. And hope it happens before we're called out again."

High above the Earth, John Tracy was performing a perfectly routine calibration of Thunderbird 5's sensors. Point everything at the South Pacific, where there was nothing to pick up, and make sure he had perfectly even coverage. He did this daily, when possible, and only occasionally needed to make any changes beyond the trivial...

Today was different. That was one big blip on the high-altitude radar. More than just a slight miscalibration. That had to be a loose connection somewhere. John was mentally steeling himself for a tedious hour or so under the console, when an unpleasant thought struck him, and he cycled the screen to the next function. He'd not have noticed it on this one - Brains' experimental atmospheric sonar, still too full of noise to be much use - but now he knew what he was looking for, it was most definitely there. Out in the middle of nowhere, circling casually at close to a hundred thousand feet. No registered flightpath, too big to be civilian, and definitely not military. Not their military, at any rate. Damn.

John considered briefly, then fired up a connection which absolutely should not have existed into ISO's main early warning system computer, and inserted the data, red-flagged for urgent attention at the highest level. He could be wrong about this - but if he wasn't, the last thing he wanted was some Spectran mecha circling around anywhere near Tracy Island.

"Control, where are we headed?"

"Climb to thirty thousand, then head for the South Pacific," Anderson's voice answered as his image appeared on the upper viewscreen.

"That's a big area," Tiny commented from the pilot's seat, already carrying out the order.

"A huge area. What's up, Chief?" Mark stood up, giving himself a better eyeline to the screen.

Even on the small screen, Anderson's concern was evident. "First reports suggest we have a similar craft to the one in Mission 37. I'm sending you all details through now."

"Remind me."

"I think you should read up on this one yourself, Commander," Anderson said, and the screen fizzed to grey, as Jason swore and applied himself to his screen.

Mark sat back down with a groan. "Okay, you remind me, G-2."

"We went to Riga unauthorised, and they shot us out of the sky. Some sort of penetrating beam, and a photonic shield you have to hit pretty much perpendicular to penetrate." What he didn't say, but they were all thinking the moment they were reminded which mission it had been, was that the beam had had a particularly unpleasant effect on Mark. Three days with a confidence-less, indecisive commander had been grim to say the least.

Mark set his jaw. He remembered it painfully well, now he'd been reminded. A giant Spectran warship, far bigger than their Phoenix. As usual, designed around a natural theme of dubious practicality. A bat, this time, armed with a photon ray and a defensive shield which had defeated them completely and humiliatingly. "Then let's not get hit this time. Princess, I want an explosive device we can drop onto them."

"You got it. Keyop, watch the radio for me." She was gone to their workshop behind the flight deck.

Their pilot half-turned. "Uh - Commander, I do need something a little more specific than 'the South Pacific.'"

"I appreciate that. Jason, do we have the early warning data?"

His second-in-command glared at his computer screen. "Sort of. It's incomplete. No origin code. I do hope it's not a software glitch. I'll kill Rick if we're out here on a wild goose chase."

"Best guess?"

The scowl deepened. "It's real."

"Extrapolate, and give the coordinates to Tiny." Mark sighed, and stretched back in his chair. "It would almost be quicker to go to Riga."

"Quicker, but tougher. Estimate four hours to target." The pilot started laying in a course.

"That long?"

"Unless you want to go orbital."

Mark eyed the data on his own screen. "It's not attacking anything right now. Let's give the Phoenix a good long atmospheric flight to shake out any problems."

"Sure thing, Commander."

"How about a few b...b...barrel rolls?" Keyop suggested. "Loop-the-loop? A proper t...t...test."

Jason snorted. "I vote no."

"In case you've forgotten, G-4, G-3's currently putting an explosive device together. Maybe after this is over. Maybe. For now, let's go splat this mecha." Mark yawned. "Tiny, you're going to catch some sleep. I'll take her for a while. I want you fresh for combat. You too, Jason and Keyop. We'll swap over in two hours."

"Mark? Ten minutes to coordinates."

He dragged his eyes open. "Any further contacts?"

Tiny shrugged. "Maybe. I figure the initial contact was them testing their shield. They're not so easy to spot now."

"I think I have them," Keyop announced calmly.

"No? Really?" Both pilots turned to face him.

Their youngest team member was wearing an ear-to-ear grin. "I have an an...an...anomaly about the right size, which is moving."

"Good work." Mark raised his voice. "Princess? Time to wake up."

"Action?" Jason asked.

"Check Keyop's findings. Princess, start sending some nice loud radio messages. I want them to know exactly where we are."

"Yes, Commander," - but there was clearly a question in it.

"They think we don't know where they are. Let's have them attack on that assumption."

"And then?" Jason queried. "Blow them to bits?"

"We know our missiles are a waste of time with their shield. They'll attack from behind. As they come in, I want a single loop, vertical dive down, drop Princess's explosive device and get the hell out of there."

"Loop..." muttered Jason unenthusiastically.

His pilot grinned. "I can handle a loop."

"Good. We've done this before. Let's keep it sharp and we can be home for breakfast."

"Damn! Phoenix, respond!" Anderson snapped at the screen.

There was no response. There had been nothing since Princess's cut off 'no!' and an obscenity from Jason in a language Anderson had no idea the gunner had even heard of. Silence - and telemetry. A falling ship, in a high speed dive, headed vertically down towards the ocean with nobody conscious at her controls.

"Two hundred feet," Jones intoned from in front of him. "One-fifty."

There was nothing he could do but sit and watch.

"Fifty...Zero."

To his infinite relief, the screens continued to show data.

"Engines are failing."

Well, they would do, since there was nobody to switch over to underwater mode and close the vents. The whole system would be flooded within seconds.

"Pressure doors have sealed." That was Bradshaw. "Life support is holding."

"They're still diving."

And they would continue to do so, until they hit the bottom. He only hoped there was enough water between them and it to slow their downward plunge to a safe speed, because he knew darn well that with its engines flooded, the Phoenix was so far from buoyant it might as well have been the brick most pilots considered it to be.

"What's the depth there?"

Bradshaw typed frantically. "Eleven hundred feet. Rocky floor, fairly level --"

"Chief," Jones interrupted, an almost unprofessional edge of panic in his voice. "I'm getting failures in structural integrity. The Phoenix won't stand up to the pressure, not right after a photonic beam hit."

Anderson reached for his phone, ready to call in the rescue crews. "How long do we have?"

Jones swallowed. "I'm sorry, sir. Fifty minutes, maximum, at eleven hundred feet."

Anderson stared at him, knowing that he had nobody who could get there in that time. Who could even get close. His team, the five young people who he'd trained from raw teenagers into the finest fighting machine the world had ever seen, were going to die in the next hour, because there was nobody close enough to pull them out of a sunken plane.

Or was there?

Chapter 2

"Father, you're not going to believe this."

Jeff Tracy blinked sleepily at the vidscreen, currently showing an image of his third son. "Believe what?"

"We have an emergency call. From ISO headquarters. The top man himself - your old friend Anderson. They have a problem, one hundred fifty miles northwest of Tracy Island."

"What sort of problem?"

Despite his utterly professional attitude, and an obvious concern, John actually smiled. "They need us to rescue G-Force."

"What?"

"They're eleven hundred feet down and unconscious, and we have forty-five minutes before the Phoenix disintegrates under the pressure."

Jeff hit the alarm. "Boys, we're needed. Get in here fast."

Everyone was there within a couple of minutes, though Jeff wouldn't have put money on more than half of them actually being awake.

"We have a crash into deep water, pressurised flight deck which won't stay that way, five unconscious crew. Virgil, take Scott and Gordon, and Pod Four. It's close. John will give you more details once you're airborne."

"Thunderbird Two to Thunderbird Five, where are we going?" Virgil asked once the immediate frenetic activity of the launch was over.

"Co-ordinates are on your screen," John answered.

"Any more details?"

"Well - are you sitting down?"

At the controls, Virgil snorted. "No, I'm tap-dancing on the ceiling."

"The International Science Organisation has asked us to rescue the Phoenix. They've been shot down in deep water, the crew's unconscious, and their structural stability is compromised. Best estimate is forty minutes to total collapse."

Gordon spluttered. "ISO needing someone's help? Alan's going to be so pissed he's not here."

"Why do you think Father didn't say who it was before you launched?"

"Good point. Do we have details of their airlock? Can we match up to transfer the crew? Because I've seen pictures of their ship - it's a monster. No way am I going to be able to float it fast enough."

"I'll find out about the airlock," John said, and the screen went blank.

"Can't we do what we did with the Fireflash?" Virgil asked. "I know Brains upped the cutting speed of your laser."

Scott shook his head. "Military craft. They're designed to be shot at. It'll be a whole lot tougher than a civilian aircraft, and we don't have time to try. Gordon's right - he needs to get them out of there fast. Maybe I should come down in Four."

"No room. It's going to be darn tight with six in there. She won't take seven. I'll go get prepped." Gordon left the flight deck, heading for his little rescue submarine.

Scott sat and thought for a moment, before heading for the radio. "Thunderbird Five? Can you give me a direct link with ISO?"

"I can." John hesitated. "It's David Anderson."

Scott set his jaw. Anderson. The man who'd headhunted him and offered him the universe, if he would leave the Air Force and come over to ISO. Four short months later, the man who'd told him he wasn't compatible with their program, and left him to crawl humiliatingly back to his old commanders and ask for his job back. He never had - not the parts of it that mattered to him. Not an active duty squadron. Not anything that would allow him the chance to fly the cutting-edge planes. No posting as a test pilot, and no shot at becoming a NASA astronaut. Anderson might be a very old friend of his father's, but he was about as far from being Scott's favourite person as it was possible to get.

Still - this was a rescue. This was professional. Logic said he should speak directly with the man who knew what was going on first-hand. "Put him through."

"Hello?" said a long-forgotten voice.

Scott forced his feelings way down. "ISO, this is International Rescue Mobile Control. Tell me what state your people are in."

"Not responding."

"So they could be conscious?"

"Unlikely."

"What happened to them?"

"That's classified."

Scott kept his temper with difficulty. "Chief Anderson, just so you know where we stand. I'm not sending my team down there to be shot at by a Spectran mecha which got the better of the Phoenix."

The man's tone was almost patronising. "Captain Tracy, I can assure you that the mecha is no longer in the area."

Scott's gasp was, fortunately, heard only by himself and Virgil. His brother had muted their radio transmission.

"What the hell? He knows who you are? What about the rest of us?"

"Time for a long discussion with Father when we get home, I suspect." Scott opened the channel again. "We'll need access codes to the airlock - and is there any chance they'll have rigged it somehow? Anything we'll need to disengage?"

"One moment." Anderson's transmission went silent, and Scott could hear Virgil muttering to himself in a way he did only when he was very, very annoyed. "We're transmitting the codes you'll need now. It's safe for you to enter, provided you get them right."

"I have them," Virgil said. "Five minutes to coordinates."

"We'll keep you informed, Chief. Out." Fuming, Scott instantly realised he hadn't asked everything he needed to know. "Damn! John, please tell me the airlock details they gave you included where it is on the ship and how to get from it to the flight deck."

Thankfully his brother realised this wasn't the time to joke about just calling Anderson back. "Yes. The airlock is halfway back on the starboard side, and once inside you turn right and go to the end of the passage."

"They only have one?"

"Only one that's compatible with Four. You want my opinion?"

"Go right ahead."

"What a condescending bastard. Thank your lucky stars you didn't end up working for him."

"Took the words right out of my mouth," Virgil added.

Scott almost managed a smile. "I guess so. Gordon, do you have all the information you need?"

"Everything. I'm ready to go."

"You just be careful," Scott told him. "Virgil?"

"Ninety seconds to drop."

Chapter 3

Ninety seconds. Time to sit back, strap in tight, and relax. The relaxing part was crucial. Pod Four might contain every dampening system known to man, and then some, but it was still one hell of a jolt when it hit the water. Gordon had learnt not to leave anything loose inside Thunderbird Four - not so much as a pencil.

The timer hit zero and, regular as clockwork, the clamps released and the bottom fell out of the world. He'd never told anyone just how much he hated the drop. Not the landing, but the stomach-in-mouth rollercoaster sensation that preceded it. He really would have made a lousy pilot - but if the others suspected just why he'd do anything to avoid flying in One or Three, or, indeed, with Scott in a plane of any sort, they never said anything. Two, now, that was stable enough. He could handle Two. But the water was his playground. They could keep their planes. Four was his baby.

The pod shuddered to a stop and Gordon breathed again. Nothing broken.

"You have thirty minutes," Scott said.

"I'm hurrying, okay?"

Not that the launch could be hurried. It was all automated, programmed in and unalterable - probably so that he couldn't rush it and tip Four off her rails. It would be three minutes fifteen seconds until he was in the water, regardless of what he did. Which gave him just over twenty-five minutes to descend eleven hundred feet, find the wreck of the Phoenix, lock onto her one usable airlock, get inside, and retrieve five unconscious crew members. Gordon started to figure out whether it could be done, then stopped. It had to be done.

The moment Four hit the water, he had her nose down, descending as fast as her engines could push her, round in a tight spiral over the coordinates he'd been given. His initial scan of the sea bed wasn't encouraging - cliffs, gullies, outcrops. Far too uneven to pick out a shape amongst the natural features, and not a whole lot like the chart of the area. Gordon sighed, crossed his fingers that there wasn't too much iron ore in the geology down here, and switched to the metal detectors.

Initially, there was nothing. He was just considering asking Scott to check whether the Phoenix did in fact contain enough metal for him to detect when there was a sudden huge spike on the detector, which promptly vanished again. With this sort of terrain, he knew what the most likely cause of that was. Groaning inwardly, he pulled Four round into an even tighter curve, still descending fast, and made another pass over the point where he'd picked up the signal.

It was there. Gordon turned Four's nose vertically down and headed for the signal in the centre of the sensor screen, eyeing the superposed contours of the sea bed with some suspicion. That must be one deep, narrow gully they were in for the signal to be doing that, and he was more than a little concerned that he couldn't see anything remotely Phoenix-shaped on the sonar.

He was within a few tens of feet of the sea bed before he could see anything at all. This deep, there was effectively no sunlight at all, and even the super-powerful spotlights on the front of Four could only illuminate a very small area at a time. He was already below the level of the cliff to his right before he ever saw it, and a series of vicious rock spires was emerging out of the gloom ahead of him.

"Control, can you confirm what depth they're at?"

"They say eleven fifty-three," Scott responded.

Gordon frowned at his screen. Ten twenty-one. They must be directly below him somewhere, or the signal wouldn't be this strong. Somewhere down among the base of those rocks. When he got home, WASP would be getting an acerbic comment to the effect that their mapping round here was entirely inadequate. This was dangerous terrain, and the charts he had indicated nothing more than a few giant boulders on a flat rocky floor.

"Eighteen minutes," Scott said, just an edge of worry in his voice.

"I know, I know." Regardless, Gordon throttled back. He wasn't going to be able to help anyone if he rammed a rock wall. They could only be a hundred feet away - and abruptly his screen went blank. Behind the next spire, then.

Circling round, it rapidly became apparent why he'd not been able to pick out the shape on the sonar. From the damage to the spire, it appeared that the Phoenix had hit the tip of it almost directly - and that 'almost' must have been all that had saved them from splitting open on contact. They'd been deflected down the side, ending up nose and port wing down, dislodging an avalanche of rocks in the process which had all but buried the port side of the ship. This was not good. His only possible connection point was over there somewhere. Gordon edged in closer, and focused the lights more tightly.

One good look told him all he needed to know about the airlock. Even if he'd had time to clear the debris away, there wasn't room between the rock wall and the side of the Phoenix to get Four in position. The transfer tube was out. He was going to have to do this manually. Eleven thirty-two feet down. Oh boy.

"Scott, I need to know where the other airlocks are."

"They're not compatible --"

"They're all I've got. Now, Scott, please?"

He ignored his brother's requests for clarification - Scott might be asking questions, but Gordon was quite sure he was simultaneously finding the information he'd been asked for - and told Four to pressurise to eleven hundred, as fast as the pumps could handle it. Which was an whole lot faster than was comfortable for humans.

Equalising this fast was going to be hell, even for him. Gordon hoped his party trick from WASP still worked, and then some. He'd been renowned for the speed he could descend at. Had been reprimanded for unsafe diving technique, until he'd demonstrated that he was in fact correctly equalised, not just coping for long enough to get the applause of his colleagues. At that point, and having suggested to his superiors that it might one day be useful in an emergency, he'd been cautiously cleared to continue - provided that he made darn sure that nobody thought it was a clever idea to copy him. Almost nobody had the physical characteristics to do so - genetics had given him short, wide Eustacian tubes, and if he swallowed and blew in just the right way, equalising happened continuously and almost effortlessly for as long as he could hold a breath. Take another one, and do it again. Nobody else he'd ever encountered could master the trick - and after trying to keep up -or should that be down? - with him, in the base's ten metre deep training pool, nobody else had ever felt inclined to try the seven-fifty foot emergency descent he had practised on a semi-regular basis in a chamber.

Now all he needed was fifty percent extra. That shouldn't be a problem, right?

He was at about eight hundred, pressure-wise, dropping as fast as Four could manage and all the while trying not to notice how much his sinuses were starting to hurt - when Scott came back on the radio. Gordon simply ignored him. Scott could hang on for the extra few minutes it would take for the pressure to get to the correct level.

By then, of course, it had gone from 'here's your information' through 'so how are you planning to connect with this airlock' to 'Gordon, what the hell are you doing down there?'

"Equalising," he said shortly, very glad they didn't use video technology between the 'Birds. Scott would not have been impressed to see him bent over, both hands rubbing ineffectually from bridge of nose to cheekbones and back. He'd never been prone to sinus problems when diving, but right now he was feeling a lot of sympathy for all those he'd seen struggling with them.

"Equalising? Gordon, you are not to go out there, do you understand? You haven't been that deep in forever. We'll find a way to get you a match-up. Don't go out of that airlock!"

"Sorry, Scott." Running out of time, Gordon cast a rapid eye over the new information. The most accessible airlock was the glass dome on the top - but inside there was an elevator to get to the flight deck, and he didn't have time to find out whether ISO knew if it still had power. His best chance was the hatch under the port wingtip.

He was about due some luck. The area below was flat and clear of rubble, and just the right size for a little yellow submarine to park safely while its owner went for a swim.

Scott had, apparently, abandoned trying to persuade him to give up by the time he had his gear on and checked, with a whole eleven minutes to go to the estimated collapse of the Phoenix's pressurised-to-sea-level flight deck. Gordon hadn't had much time to think about what he was about to do next, and he hadn't wanted to, either. Equalising going down was easy, in the sense that if you got it wrong it just hurt like hell. Coming back up - depressurising - was entirely different. Decompression sickness - the bends - wasn't the issue. That was going to happen, period. Making a mistake, though, would be instantly and agonisingly fatal, as expanding air in his lungs ripped them apart to the point where they could no longer absorb oxygen. He'd seen pictures, and that had been enough to persuade him, and every other WASP trainee, to never, ever try what they'd had explained to them theoretically. What he was about to do.

The instant it was filled with water, Gordon opened the hatch of Four's airlock and reached out. His torch illuminated a convex blue surface, barely two feet above his head, with a barely visible seam along the low point. Working his way along brought him to a plate, which responded just as it was supposed to, to push-and-slide. The control pad inside was a different matter - he was already starting to shake with cold, and his fingers didn't want to obey him. Diving at more than a thousand feet in a standard wetsuit was just one more thing Scott was going to ream him out for, but there simply hadn't been time for the superior, far more complex heated version in Four's equipment locker. He was down to nine minutes, and the truly scary part was still to come.

He got the code correct at the second attempt, and the pod floor split apart along the seam, leaving an entrance plenty big enough for him. Only a little larger, and he could have got Four in there. Now that would have made life a lot simpler. Gordon swam up into the pod, reached for the control to close it, and looked around curiously as the doors slid shut. Some kind of bizarre orange vehicle which he couldn't have begun to describe. On the wall in front of him, the airlock pressure controls, and the circular hatch which would lead him to the flight deck. A miniature screen above the controls flashed at him. 'Warning - high pressure differential. Do not open this door. Recommended depressurisation time: two hours.'

Two hours was ridiculous. He'd have estimated nearer a day - then again, this was G-Force. Rumour had it they weren't exactly human. But he didn't have even two hours, only eight minutes. Gordon took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down. Relax. He'd be fine, provided the pressurised air could escape fast enough. Even fractionally wrong and he'd lose his eardrums, or his sinuses, or both. He'd seen a blown sinus first-hand, when a friend had gone deep with the first stages of the flu and been unable to equalise it coming back up. Man, that had been messy. Gordon firmly told himself that he didn't have a cold, or any other nasal problems, that his sinuses were hurting, not swollen, and that if anyone could relax the back of his throat sufficient to keep the airspaces in his ears open it was him. He could do this.

One last deep breath, and he reached for the emergency hatch release. Start breathing out now. Close your eyes. Let everything go. All the way out. Lungs as close to empty as he could get them without tension.

He swung his legs up so that the expulsion of the water would carry him through the hatch, and pulled the handle.

It was indescribable. White rushing through every passage in his respiratory system, vicious pain in his ears and nose, and the sensation of being a bug sucked down a plughole. Hanging on while remaining totally relaxed was a contradiction in terms, but he had to do it.

Awareness returned gradually. Gordon found himself lying in a puddle, everything hurting. The first deep breath he drew had him coughing helplessly, hands in front of his mouth. He was almost afraid to look at them afterwards. A couple of spots of blood, but not the mess of red-tinged froth that would indicate disaster. No, the blood was coming from his nose, the heavy, metallic taste in the back of his throat telling him it was flowing freely in both directions.

I don't have time to bleed. Gordon pinched his nose closed and checked his watch. Six minutes, to get five unconscious people into the airlock. He was going to have to bleed on them - no time to get it stopped. Going back to high pressure should do the job in any case. Every airspace in this ship would be there in minutes whether or not he managed to rescue the crew. He needed to move.

Down the short corridor and turn left. Gordon typed in the emergency code he'd been given and the door slid aside. He stepped through into the flight deck and gaped.

Every wall was covered in controls. Dials, gauges, indicator lights. Most of them were red, or swung completely to one end or other of their range. The entire starboard wall was the biggest radar screen he'd ever seen, by a good order of magnitude, a giant crack running from top to bottom and water starting to seep in as he watched. The puddle at the low side of the floor, over to port, must have been at least two feet deep - far more than the airlock could have held. The seals were failing already. In front of the radar screen, two occupied seats, figures slumped over their consoles. The front wall contained nothing but screens - one enormous one, and a number of smaller ones above it. All were dark, and a number of trickles of water ran down onto the controls below. Two seats here as well, the right hand one occupied by a white-clad figure who had to be the famous Eagle, commander of G-Force. The occupant of the left-hand seat was just starting to move.

Gordon barely had time to think 'good, one less to carry,' followed by 'that's four, where's the fifth?' when something hard dug into his ribcage and an iron grip locked round his throat.

"You've got ten seconds to explain why you're here," a voice hissed into his ear.

"International Rescue," Gordon choked out. "ISO sent me to get you out. Their subs aren't close enough."

"Close enough for what?"

"You're at eleven hundred feet and your structural stability is failing. Look around - you've got less than six minutes to full collapse. I'm here to help you!"

The pressure eased. "Transfer tube?"

"Couldn't get close enough. We'll have to swim for it. Can you wake the others?"

"Doubt it."

He was released so abruptly he nearly fell.

"Take the Swallow. G-5? You with us?"

There was a groan from the dark-clad figure at the front, who did appear to be every bit as large as he looked in the pictures. "Just about."

"Good. We need to set the autodestruct."

There was a gasp. "We can't! It'll be weeks until the new backup's ready!"

"And what sort of security clearance do you think he's got?"

Gordon turned to face his attacker. As he'd figured by process of elimination, it was the Condor. Brown and navy winged uniform, grey raptor visor showing next to nothing of the face behind. Not ten feet tall and breathing fire, though, despite his reputation - and the unimpressive light tenor voice had been a surprise. And he'd listened to reason, rather than laid the intruder out cold on the floor. So, maybe a bit more reason was worth a try.

"Nobody'll find you down here. I had enough problems even with exact coordinates. You're well buried."

"You heard him - it's collapsing. We can't leave it for Spectra to find."

"We have to try to recover her. Even badly damaged she'll be ready faster than a completely new Phoenix."

Gordon sighed. "Let's get out of here - please! You can discuss it once we're in my sub. ISO said you have masks and tanks. You need them now."

As if to illustrate his point, there was an ominous crack from the ceiling, and a fresh stream of water began to pour onto the empty chair at the centre console. Both men jumped, and the Condor holstered the gun he'd stuck into Gordon's ribs, strode hastily over to a locker and began pulling out equipment, throwing two sets casually at his team-mate.

"Catch," the Condor said, and Gordon found himself the owner of a mask and air tank of entirely unfamiliar design. Still, it wasn't like there could be any confusion. Eyes and noses were a reasonably standard shape and layout, after all.

He'd fitted it with some difficulty onto the red and yellow-clad Swallow, who didn't look to be more than about twelve years old, when he was unceremoniously pushed aside and the other checked his handiwork before adjusting the valves on the tank.

"What are you breathing?" Gordon asked, not sure if he wanted to know. If the answer was "air" there wasn't a lot he could do.

"You don't need to worry about that."

At the front of the flight deck, the Owl stood up, his commander in his arms, white wings trailing to the floor. "How deep are we?"

"Eleven hundred."

"Feet or metres?"

Gordon gulped. Eleven hundred metres was suicide depth. "Feet."

"And no time to pressurise slowly. Or depressurise, to get in here."

"No."

He could barely see the other's eyes behind the visor, but knew he was being looked over. "You're bent as hell, aren't you?"

"Yes." No point lying about it. He'd not had the bends before, but every diver knew what the symptoms were. His were in the joints: deep, burning pain which made him want to curl up on the floor and howl. About the only thing stopping him from doing just that was the hope that getting back to the high pressure of the deep would help.

"What pressure's your sub at?"

"Eleven hundred."

"Well, that's something. G-2, we need to get out."

Haven't I just been telling you that? Gordon forced himself to pick up the Swallow - it hadn't escaped his attention that he'd been allocated the smallest member of the team to carry - and hobbled towards the door, regretting every step. Whoever had said that old injuries were more prone to problems had been right. His reconstructed right knee felt as if someone was sticking red hot needles into it every time he moved, and the hip and ankle weren't much better.

"Which airlock?"

"Starboard wing."

"No good at this angle. Was the bubble clear?"

Bubble? Oh, the dome on the top of the ship. "Yes."

A hand grabbed him and unceremoniously pulled him back into the centre of the flight deck. "Hang on." And a circular section of the floor rose up, carrying the six of them up towards a retracting part of the ceiling and a dark, transparent domed area beyond.

"Do you know how to equalise fast?" he asked. "It'll be --"

"We know what we're doing." The Condor didn't even look at him.

"Best tell us where your sub is and how to get in," the Owl said in a slightly more friendly tone. "In case you pass out."

Well, how do you like that? But he knew the man was right. In less than half an hour he'd gone from sea level to eleven hundred feet, back to sea level again in the Phoenix, and now was going to go back down to eleven hundred again in a hurry. Passing out was far from unlikely.

"She's under your starboard wingtip, and I left the airlock open." Gordon couldn't resist the grin. "You can't miss her - she's bright yellow, and I left the lights on."

"Damn," the Condor said, with some feeling.

"Problem?"

"Pumps have failed."

"Oh, good." The Owl joined him at the side of the bubble. "Emergency override?"

"No alternative." He turned round, holding out the end of a line to Gordon. "Clip yourself in. Ever gone down to eleven hundred in five seconds?"

Gordon returned his gaze. "No. Seven-fifty in twenty, though. You?"

"That's impressive," the Owl said. "No. We haven't."

"What about them?" Gordon indicated the three still deeply unconscious bodies at their feet. The unusual masks were a good design, he had to admit. Not too bulky, everything in one place, no chance of breathing fogging up the glass. Maybe he should discuss it with Brains. Or maybe he should concentrate on the desperate situation he was in now.

"They don't have a choice." The Condor had finished linking all six of them to a series of recessed metal loops on the floor of the bubble, and had his hand on a very similar lever to the one which had released the other airlock. "Ready?"

Gordon tried to relax past the pain in his joints. "Ready."

If depressurising had been like a plughole, this was like being crushed in a vice. The wall of water slammed down through the opening crack in the bubble, far harder than he'd believed possible. He felt himself start to crumple as every muscle screamed under the torture, and fought to stay relaxed enough for equalization to happen. Five seconds, the Condor had said. That seemed like a reasonable estimate. Surely he could hold out for five seconds.

He couldn't. His jaw hurt beyond belief, he couldn't move, his regulator was about to come out, and he was going to throw up. This was it. Scott had been right. This was going to be the time his luck ran out. Gordon doubled over, stars in front of his eyes as his abused stomach emptied itself, and high pressure Pacific Ocean forced its way in instead.

A ruthlessly strong hand pushed the regulator back in and held it there. Gordon coughed and choked, fighting for air, and gradually his vision cleared somewhat. They were still in the bubble, which was now two-thirds retracted and full of water. Obviously. It was the Condor's gloved hand holding his regulator in place while he coughed ice-cold seawater out through it, and to his side the Owl was signing 'ok?' at him.

Well, no, he blatantly wasn't OK. There was still water in his lungs, and he badly wanted to vomit again. But he was conscious, and the high pressure was having the desired effect. His joints still felt like he was eighty, but he did think he could move. Swim, even. Especially given the particularly unattractive alternative of staying here. He returned the 'ok' signal.

The other two were signing to one another in a system he didn't know, and Gordon belatedly realised the Condor was using only one hand for it, while the Owl was using two. He put his own hand up to the regulator, pushing the Condor's deliberately aside. I can do this for myself now. Waiting wasn't helping him any. He moved to put himself firmly into their conversation.

'That way.'

'Ok?' the Owl signed at him again.

'Ok.' There wasn't a sign for 'I won't stop coughing until I get out of this mask.'

'You lead, I'll follow.' Another brief burst of their two-handed signing, and the Condor did the same.

Both detached the links of their burdens from the floor and attached them to their own belts, and Gordon did the same for the Swallow, before pulling the young man against himself and setting off towards the starboard wingtip and the safety of Four. He wished he had his fins - but they had seemed entirely unnecessary to swim six feet from one craft to the other. Now they faced fifty or more - normally a pathetically small distance, but with his legs protesting every kick, a dead weight held against himself, water only fractionally above freezing, and blood once again streaming into his mask, it was an unpleasant prospect.

To his deep embarrassment, he had to stop a little over half way, fighting for breath and his head starting to swim alarmingly. Moving was not at all good. Getting cold, though, would only make it worse.

'Ok?' again from the Owl.

'Slow down,' Gordon responded, gritted his teeth, and kept going in the direction of the end of the wing. He could see the light now. Just a few more feet, and he could have warmth and a comfortable chair. And the chewing out of his life from Scott, but he'd settle happily for that if it meant he could get back into a breathable atmosphere. Ten feet. Five. There!

No amount of squeezing was ever going to get six people into Four's airlock - and Gordon was the one who knew the controls. His visitors would have to wait. Gordon pulled his aching body into the space, carefully guided the Swallow in behind him, shut the outer hatch, and hit the button to pump the water out.

If the young man hadn't made it through their escape, he was dead, Gordon thought almost detachedly as he lugged the unresponsive body out of the airlock and closed the inner hatch behind him. It was far too long for him to have gone without oxygen. He punched the button to refill the airlock with water and open the outer hatch again, then stripped the mask off his rescuee and checked for pulse and breathing just the same. Both slow, but steady. He'd be fine on his own. Gordon, on the other hand, still had what felt like a couple of litres of water in his lungs. His own mask came off, abandoned on the floor, and he coughed until he could barely see, doubled over to help the water come out, the salt stinging his raw throat and nose, water running red onto the floor. Even when he stopped, wheezing uncomfortably, it was still taking some effort not to cough again.

Now what he needed was space. Four was a one man sub, designed to take a couple of passengers in an emergency. He was about to need room for six, three of them in no state to stand, or even sit. Thank goodness he'd dissuaded Scott from coming.

The front of the equipment locker dropped down to make a horizontal surface suitable for assembling equipment on. It wouldn't have held an adult, but the Swallow was far from adult-sized. Gordon still groaned with the effort required to lift him in air, and dropped him on the shelf far from gently. Physically he was done. He had no choice - he had to sit down, now. And deal with his miserable nose, still pouring blood, and hurting worse than the time he'd broken it. The Swallow would have to take his chances with not being in the recovery position. If he wanted to choke, he'd certainly had enough opportunity already.

He'd found a box of tissues and had a wad clamped over his nose, trying to apply pressure somewhere it would do some good, when the airlock door opened again and the Owl staggered out, supporting someone a good deal taller than the Swallow.

"Going to be cosy in here," he commented, laying the Eagle gently down on the floor and removing his mask. Gordon turned to watch in case he was required, but the other seemed to know what he was doing. And the turn had been a very bad thing. Stars danced in front of his eyes again, and only muscle memory found him a sickbag before his stomach rejected the last remnants of Pacific, and decided that regardless of how empty it was already, it wasn't done.

The next thing he was aware of was someone holding his head, steadying him and encouraging him to breathe - and the sounds of someone else being miserably ill behind him. Not very superhuman, that.

"You still with us?" the Owl's voice asked.

Gordon realised just in time that nodding would probably be disastrous. "Yeah."

"You need to lie down."

He opened his eyes a crack, then when nothing dreadful happened, fully. He'd never had this many people in Four before - and only near the surface had he ever taken more than two passengers. All the floor area was taken up with unconscious people. The Owl was perched against his console, feet either side of the Swan's head, and the Condor was still in the airlock with the inner door open - and, presumably, the one being ill. "No room."

"True." The Owl peered into his face again. "Are you fit to fly this thing?"

"Give me a minute."

"You take your time. Can I use your radio?"

"Sure." Gordon sagged into the seat and closed his eyes again, desperate for the spinning to stop.

Chapter 4

"How long?" Scott asked again.

"Twelve minutes," Virgil said tonelessly. "They might have underestimated --" He cut off as John's light flashed on the board. "You've heard something?"

"Not good, I'm afraid. ISO report their telemetry says the Phoenix is now flooded."

Scott groaned. "I can't believe he did it. Even if he made it into their airlock, to get into their flight deck he'd have had to depressurise to sea level. He never had a chance."

"They say it didn't collapse," John added, a faint hope in his voice. "Somebody opened the hatch and flooded it."

"Oh, Lord. When?"

"Three minutes ago."

"That has to have been him," Virgil argued, mostly with himself. "Has to."

"Probably." Scott turned a miserable look on his brother. "But was he going in or coming out?"

Virgil frowned. "Coming out, surely? He couldn't have taken nine minutes to get in. And if he had been that slow, he'd have abandoned."

Scott had heard enough horror stories about deep dives, back when he'd been posted just up the road from Gordon and regularly spent time with him and his WASP friends, to know that you couldn't assume anything at eleven hundred feet. Not where it concerned decision-making. People just - stopped. For no apparent reason. One minute they were coping normally; the next, slowing down; the next, doing nothing. They stayed where they were, and they died. Unless you were within a few feet, there was nothing you could do. He was a little under a quarter of a mile away, vertically. He might as well have been on Thunderbird Five.

He was trying to formulate how on earth to explain this to Virgil, when the communication light flashed.

"Mobile Control," he heard himself say.

"International Rescue?" an unfamiliar voice said.

"Yes." Scott sat forward, hardly daring to hope. "Can I speak to Gordon?"

"That your man's name? He's not feeling so good right now."

"How bad?" Scott demanded, hearing his voice go up in pitch.

"He'll be okay. How do I tell how much air there is in this thing?"

Scott shut his eyes, partly in relief, but mostly to try to picture Four's controls. "There's a gauge at ten o'clock, about eighteen inches off the centreline."

"Green and, oh, ninety percent to the top."

"You've got a couple of person days-worth there, then. Who am I talking to?"

There was an amused chuckle. "This is G-5."

"And - how many of you are in there?"

The tone turned more serious. "Six. Are you in contact with ISO?"

"I can be."

"Tell Anderson we all made it. G-5 out."

"He's not going to get any better until we go up," Jason stated from his cramped position half inside the airlock. "Surely we can reduce the pressure a bit safely?"

"Well, maybe." Tiny squinted desperately at the array of dials. "Problem is, I don't know how long he's been deep. I don't know where the deco stops would be from down here. I don't even know what we're breathing right now!"

Jason frowned. "Air?"

"If it was air, he'd be dead, and we'd be in bad trouble. I'm guessing trimix, but he's got some sort of custom setup here. I don't know the proportions he's using now, let alone where he changes to something else."

Jason raised his eyebrows. "And now you're talking Greek. My point stands. He needs to go up. So do we."

"I don't know..."

"Do it! Take us up to nine hundred, now, G-5!"

Tiny groaned, reached across the controls, and adjusted one of them. "Going up..."

Chapter 5

"Gordon, I need you to wake up now."

It was like crawling out of a tar pit. Deep, sticky blackness holding him down, keeping him away from the light.

"Come on, Gordon."

He tried to open his eyes, but he was just so tired. He needed to sleep just a little longer, before he woke up again. And whose was this voice anyway? Not anyone he knew, so it didn't matter.

"Gordon, Scott says he's going to paint Thunderbird Four pink unless you wake up now and talk to him."

Pink? Gordon's eyes opened despite himself, there was a brief moment of confusion, and then memory and pain hit him simultaneously. He'd gone outside how deep?

"You with us?"

He recognised the voice now. One of the people he'd rescued. Not just people. G-Force. This one, the one who seemed to know at least something about diving, was the Owl. G-5, the pilot of the Phoenix. Built like a linebacker, unspecific American accent. That was all he knew. No name. Although they appeared to know who he was. Gordon groaned "yes" and shifted miserably in the chair. His joints didn't feel a whole lot better, although at least the spinning and nausea seemed to have gone. Right now he'd have killed for a hot bath and a soft bed. That wasn't going to happen, though, until they were back at sea level, which he knew would take a very long time.

His brain was working properly now, though. They weren't at eleven hundred any more, that was for sure. Cold fear wiped the last shreds of confusion away. If they hadn't decompressed adequately, he was going to die. Gordon sat forward, hissing with pain as his shoulders objected to the movement, and asked Four's computer what was going on.

"We're pressurised to twenty metres now," the Owl told him. "The bottom of the profile isn't what it should have been - you were out of it, I was confused, and I couldn't remember the times and depths. And didn't think to ask over the radio, until we were up past six hundred. Scott wanted us to wait here until you came round. How bad are you feeling?"

"Better than I was. How's everyone else?"

"I think they're fine. Hard to tell, until they wake up."

"So why are they unconscious?"

The other's face set. "I can't talk about it."

"To hell with that," another voice said from behind him. The Condor worked his way forward to find a spot leaning against the junction of wall and console. "He put his life on the line for us. In my book, that gets him an explanation." He bent forwards, removing the helmet and shaking shoulder-length brown hair loose. "It also gets him my name. Jason Alouita. Thank you for saving my life."

Gordon reached out gingerly and took the hand he was offered. "Gordon Tracy. And thank you for saving mine. Both of you."

"Aw, hell." The Owl followed suit. "Tiny Harper. You do realise how mad Anderson will be about this, don't you, Jase?"

"Anderson can go whistle. I'm not spending the next three days, or however long this takes, in birdstyle and using codenames. Do you want to do the honours, or shall I?"

The Owl - Tiny - looked horrified. "Don't you think they should do that themselves, when they wake up?"

"Nah. Easier to talk if he knows who everyone is. The little one who you brought in is Keyop. Be glad he's unconscious, in a space this small. You should be able to guess which one is Princess. And our commander down there is Mark."

"Gordon...Tracy," Tiny murmured. "The Gordon Tracy? The swimmer?"

"That's me."

"So that's why you didn't defend your title. I heard you had an accident."

"I did." Gordon smiled ruefully. "It makes a good excuse. I wouldn't have time to train properly now anyway."

"Title?" Jason asked.

"He's only an Olympic champion. At, what, sixteen?"

"Seventeen. Old history." Gordon leant forwards again, somewhat embarrassed. "Thunderbird Four to Mobile Control."

"Mobile Control here. Gordon?"

"That's me."

Scott's 'too worried to be angry - yet' tone was unmistakeable. "Brains wants a full rundown of your symptoms so he can calculate a safe depressurisation profile for you. And we have to pick you up at some point. Are you up to docking?"

Gordon tried to stretch, and managed to swallow his gasp of pain. "Yes - if the weather's good up there. I don't want to stress Four, though. She's designed for lower pressure inside than out."

"Brains says she'll be fine out of the water at your current interior pressure. How about you?"

Gordon looked around. "This is a bit public."

"I need to know."

"Fine." I'll just point out my medical history to two complete strangers, then. Thanks, Scott. "I'm not throwing up any more, vertigo's gone, nose isn't bleeding. Joints all still ache, though, and my right leg's bad."

"How bad?"

Gordon sighed. "Think of a badness and double it. I'm not getting out of this chair any time soon."

"There are some heavy duty painkillers in that medical kit of yours."

"Not until we've docked."

"I'll talk to Brains. We can give you something to take the edge off --"

Gordon stiffened, wincing. "No, you can't. You know full well my drug response is shot. Anything strong enough to help will destroy my coordination. And don't tell me you can find a balance, because there isn't one. Out."

He half turned to find two pairs of eyes on him. "Don't you dare say he's right."

"Not going to." Jason gave him a long, calculating look. "Are you up to whatever you need to do? If not, you can talk one of us through it."

"I'm up to it." Gordon hoped it was true. More than hoped - he believed he could make it true. Getting back into the pod was a precision job, but not particularly difficult for him, and not physically demanding. Once that was over it wouldn't matter if he was rolling round the floor in agony, but the jarring involved in the recovery process was still something he wasn't looking forward to one bit.

"Thunderbird Two to Thunderbird Four, how long until you need recovery?" That was Virgil's voice, much to Gordon's relief.

He cast a swift eye over his instruments. Ten minutes to the pod, seven to dock.

"I'll be ready in twenty."

"I'll be there. Weather's good. Not enough wind to be a problem."

Gordon shifted in his seat, trying and failing to find a comfortable position, while heading for the surface. Normally he loved being down in the depths, exploring by headlight, illuminating things which had been dark forever. Today all he wanted was to see blue sky again, feel the wind on his face. The first he'd get in just a few minutes. The second was going to take a little longer.

"What difference does the wind make?" Tiny asked, crouched awkwardly on the floor checking his commander.

"Not much, to Two, unless it's a hurricane. Blows the clamp lines around something chronic, though."

Tiny's eyes went wide. "Clamp lines? I thought you were just going to dock."

Gordon smiled. "I dock Four in the pod. Virgil drops the clamp lines, they lock on, he winches the pod back into place and we all go home."

"Oh... You mean Two's a plane?"

"Two's a plane. A very big plane."

Jason laughed. "Tiny finally gets to find out what it's like for the rest of us!"

There was a groan from the floor at the base of the chair, and Jason was instantly down at the head of his team-mate. "Princess? How're you doing there?"

There was a gasp, another groan, and she struggled to sitting. "Jason? Ow...my ears...oh, god..."

"Let's get that helmet off."

His hands were already at the bottom rim, disconnecting it and lifting up and forwards. As it came off, she whimpered in pain and clamped her hands over both ears. "God, this hurts..."

"Ask the implant for some help. Come on, G-3, you can do this in your sleep. Endorphins and full relaxation."

There were a couple of ragged breaths, head still down, then she sighed and sat up fully. "Better. Thanks, Jase - what the hell? Where are we? Who's he? Is he cleared to know who we are?"

"He did a suicide decompression to get us out of the Phoenix," Jason told her. "Princess, meet Gordon Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird Four."

"You'll have to excuse me not getting up," Gordon drawled. "I don't bounce back the way you guys seem to."

"Probably not. So, you're International Rescue? I never thought we'd need you."

"Most people say that." Gordon concentrated on his controls, more than a little lost. This was the Swan he was talking to. Slim, athletic, a body to die for, brilliant, the only female on G-Force. Someone half the red-blooded young males on the planet dreamed about - and he'd not been immune. And here she was, in the flesh, helmet off and even more beautiful now he could see her huge green eyes and long black hair. She owed her life to him - and she looked about fifteen. Far too young, even for Alan. Another fantasy gone.

He surfaced within a hundred yards or so of the pod, and looked around while it opened and extended the launching rails. A few ripples, but practically millpond-still. Beautiful blue sky without a cloud to be seen. Instant death if he went out there. Gordon didn't feel up to even trying to do the math on how long it would be until he could come back to sea level, but he knew it was going to be days rather than hours. For all he knew, G-Force could walk out there now with no ill-effects.

Chapter 6

Jason shifted position so that his weight was on the other foot. All he wanted was enough room to lie down and sleep for a week. He'd probably sleep if he even sat down. No such luck - all the floor space was taken up by his commander, still deeply unconscious and showing no signs whatsoever of coming out of it. Given what Mark's mental state had been like after the last time they'd been hit with the Spectran photon beam weapon, he was prepared to forego sleep for a while.

The total exhaustion told him just how close they'd pushed it, though. The implant had put everything into getting him through the past hour, and he still ached all over. He had no idea how the man in the driver's - pilot's?- seat was functioning, given that he had no implanted help at all. He swallowed hard, and tried to find a point on the horizon to focus on. The gentle rocking motion of a perfect day far out at sea was starting to have its usual, deeply embarrassing effect on his inner ear.

"How long's this going to take?"

"Seven minutes."

Jason sighed and leant back against the wall. He could keep his stomach under control for that long. He hoped.

What Gordon hadn't mentioned was that after the seven minutes came a period of several more minutes, now a few feet out of the water so accentuating the rocking motion, the pod door shut to hide the horizon. Jason lasted precisely three of them before stars began to dance before his eyes.

He didn't see Tiny look up at his increasingly green face and make a quick comment to Gordon. Didn't see the other's startled glance, or his quick dig in a compartment under the console. He did feel the bag pushed into his hand, and just barely had enough coordination left to make use of it.

The world became clear again to the sounds of Tiny telling Gordon that no, they didn't need to repressurise, that this wasn't DCS or anything associated. No such luck.

"Nausea's common as a delayed symptom. It's not worth the risk."

"Not DCS," he grumbled, crumpling the bag in his hand - his stomach had been as close to empty as made no difference.

"You can't be sure of that," Gordon told him.

"Jason?" Tiny asked.

"I'm sure."

"Then what...?" Gordon frowned.

"Leave it," Tiny suggested. "Jase, sit down. You feeling better now?"

"Yup." He allowed his legs to fold, sliding down the wall. Better was, after all, a relative as well as an absolute term.

Scott sat forward anxiously as they approached the rescue site, eyes straining to see the dark green speck against the expanse of slightly different green water. Even through polarising lenses he was having to squint against the glare.

"We shouldn't have left them," he said for the fourteenth time.

"Scott, they're fine." Virgil said patiently. "Four can be pressurised, but it's not structurally up to a high pressure inside when it's out of the water. It would have been touch and go whether Two had enough fuel to stay circling while they depressurised. It was a much better idea for us to go and land for a few hours and let them take their time. Brains agreed. ISO agreed. The two guys who were conscious down there agreed. And you know darn well that Gordon would have agreed too."

"I'd have liked to be sure he was up to docking, before he tried it alone."

"And what were you going to do if he wasn't?" Exasperation was starting to creep through. "If he can't dock, Four'll be sitting down there next to the pod, I'll pick it up with the grapples and take it back home like that, and we'll come back for the pod later. It wouldn't make a blind bit of difference whether we were circling over them. Except that it might have put him off."

"I suppose so. Is that it there?"

Virgil checked on the 'scope. "Probably. Do you see Four?"

Scott squinted harder. "No. And the pod door's shut, so either they're docked or they haven't surfaced yet."

"Either way we won't distract him if we call. Thunderbird Two to Thunderbird Four?"

"Four here."

"What's your status, Gordon?"

"Docked. Ready for pickup whenever you are."

Virgil checked his instruments. "We'll be with you in two minutes."

"How are you going to retrieve the pod?" Scott asked.

"Oh, lines. It's so much easier in light winds."

"We magnetise the correct locations on the pod," Gordon said in answer to Princess's question. "The clamps on the end of the lines have limited antigravity functions. Enough to get them close enough to lock on magnetically. Then we activate the mechanical locks, and Virgil reels us in. And I shouldn't be telling you any of this."

"I shouldn't even have my helmet off," Princess told him. "We certainly shouldn't have told you our names. You want to know how many people know what Jason's real job is? Outside ISO black section, none."

"Real job? He has another one?"

The man in question raised a still green face from his folded arms. "Some of us don't get to say 'billionaire's playboy son' in answer to why we don't appear to have a job."

Gordon glared at him. "Some of us have never said that, even if it would --" The pod jolted, and his comment ended in a gasp.

Princess threw a glance at the team's designated medic - at the back of the cabin, dealing with a groggy, just coming round Keyop - and their paramedic-in-training - on the floor, trying not to throw up again - and put a gentle hand on Gordon's shoulder. "You're hurting. Where are the painkillers?"

"Don't you start." He drew a couple of shuddering breaths.

"Try to relax." Princess put an arm round him and helped him to lean back into the support of the chair. "Tiny, he's bad. Can't you give him something?"

"Oh - you weren't awake for that little conversation, were you?" Tiny eyed up the lack of available floor between them, and sighed. "This is like playing Twister. Can you come over here and look after Keyop?"

"You stay there." Jason pushed himself to his feet, a determined look of concentration in his eyes. "I can handle painkillers. Gordon, where's the medical kit? You're done with needing to function."

"I've got it." Tiny stretched over, handing an orange-labelled syringe across. "Custom job. IM."

"Where do you want it?" Jason asked Gordon.

"Don't need it --"

"Like hell you don't. That was those clamps you mentioned locking, right? Your work's done. You choose where, or I will."

Gordon groaned again, twisting uncomfortably in the chair. "Left thigh. Six inches below the hip. Not too fast."

Princess tightened her arm around him, as Jason prepared to inject straight through his suit. "Jason's good at this. Trust him."

She caught sight of a non-injection related movement of the Condor's fingers. 'Distraction.'

"Jason's cover job? He's a racing driver, and a darn good one."

"Stock car or single-seater?"

"Stock car."

"My brother Alan used to drive single seaters. He was darn good at it, too. He won the Parola Sands Grand Prix last year - ah!" The gasp was associated with the needle going in, and Princess could feel his desperate attempts not to lock every muscle. So much for distraction.

"Alan Tracy? Him I've heard of." Jason eased the plunger on the syringe in slowly, and Princess sensed rather than felt Gordon lose the battle to keep still. She brought implant-related strength to bear, and simply held him in position for the five seconds it took Jason to empty the syringe into his leg, remove the needle, and start to massage gently around the injection site.

When she looked again at Gordon's face, it was scarlet with embarrassment. "I guess I'm not much of a rescuer right now."

"I'm impressed you're even conscious," Jason told him, in the offhand manner he used to indicate how little a problem meant to him. Coming from Jason, that tone was a compliment. She only hoped Gordon realised it. "And I've just remembered why I know the name. Did I show you that article last month, Princess?"

"Article?" She frowned, digging deep into her memory. "Oh! The one about the five people most likely to be us? He was in that?"

"Yup. 'Celebrity Today' decided that Alan Tracy is the Condor. I looked him up. Not a bad guess, compared to their others. He's a trained astronaut too, if I remember right."

Princess snorted, remembering the article in question. The Swan had been associated with some action movie actress, notorious for not turning up on set with the flimsiest excuses. The Swallow, much to Keyop's fury, had been a female gymnast with a long history of improbable injuries. Tiny was still teasing him about that one. Mark had been given a teen heartthrob boy-band singer who was a keen pilot in his spare time, and Tiny a highly-touted college football player who'd given up suddenly to join a church with 'cult' written all over it. The fact that these people lived in entirely different corners of the globe had, apparently, not occurred to the writer of the article as a problem.

Gordon managed a grin. "I spent a happy couple of days winding Alan up that Father was going to make them retract it. He rather liked the idea that people thought he was the Condor." He glanced at the rightful owner of the title, face falling. "Of course, if you object..."

"Nah. I thought it was funny. Even funnier, now I know who he really is." Jason frowned in realisation. "Alan's your brother, and he's part of International Rescue, right? What about the other two, on the end of the radio?"

"I have four brothers. You might say it's a family affair."

"Saves recruiting problems, I guess." He swayed, imperceptibly to anyone else, but Princess could tell he was still suffering. "You should ask your designer to fit some windows."

"Normally I don't travel in here," Gordon told him. "Virgil, how long till we get home?"

"Twelve minutes."

"Gordon, I need your honest opinion," Scott's voice cut in. "Brains has worked out the decompression profile you're going to need in the chamber. He says he'll come in there with you, but - are you up to looking it over?"

Gordon shut his eyes, freckles dark against his pale face. "Read it out to me."

It meant nothing to her. So many minutes, so many feet, breathing such-and-such a gas. Gordon's jaw was set hard, though, and the sharp intake of breath from the back of the cockpit told her what Tiny thought of it.

"Brains can forget it," Gordon said wearily when the recital finished. "He's never been that deep, and it's dangerous."

"And you're in no shape to take any change from the optimal profile if he can't cope." Tiny raised his voice, projecting towards the radio. "I'll go in with him. I'm a paramedic, and I've got the diving experience. Plus," and he swallowed, "Brains is your doctor, right? I need him outside to look over my commander."

"Tiny?" Princess queried, dropping to her knees at Mark's side. "What's wrong with him?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be asking for a second opinion." There was misery in the big man's tone, and if she'd had the floor space to go over and give him a hug, she'd have done so. "I don't like that he's still unconscious. I'm worried that the pressure's done something...bad."

"Keyop's still out," Jason commented.

"Keyop was more or less awake ten minutes ago. He's burst both eardrums. Implant's kicked in, and he's back asleep and healing. That's normal. Mark isn't."

"Mark reacted badly to that weapon last time," Princess said reluctantly. "He was unconscious longer than any of us then, and when he woke up -"

"He was a mess," Jason said bluntly. "Far and away best if he stays out cold until we're not in this sardine tin." He shut his eyes and leaned back against the wall, face set in a way that would have been typical Condor if it hadn't been for the green tinge.

Poor old Jase. Him she was close enough to hug. Even if he hadn't thrown up from shock, he'd have expressed his extreme displeasure at having his weakness pointed out in public. Princess limited herself to telling him to sit down. Predictably, he ignored her.

"What precisely do you mean, reacted badly?" That was Scott's voice, sounding extremely unimpressed.

Jason looked to be on the verge of throwing up again. Keyop was unconscious, and Tiny was looking at her. Princess gulped, and tried to sound authoritative. "It made him unwell. That's all."

"Brains is going to need to know more than that, to help him."

"Oh, to hell with it." Tiny spoke up. "It gave him major panic attacks."

"Tiny!"

"They need to know. If he comes round without someone he knows there, he's going to completely freak."

"We appreciate the information," Scott said, "but I'm sure we can cope."

Tiny snorted. "I'm sure you can't."

"Enough!" Jason growled without opening his eyes. "Scott, he's the Eagle. He wakes up confused and decides you're a Spectran agent, you're dead."

"We'll discuss this when you've landed," a new voice said. "G-5, we'll take you up on your offer. Brains will see to your commander." And there was the distinctive 'click' of communication being cut from the far end.

Princess considered asking Gordon who this was, and how long it would be until they landed, and decided against either. He looked like death warmed over, and asking him to concentrate on controls would be downright cruel. Still, she'd have liked to know how long it would take - if only because Jason wasn't going to ask, and whether it would be two minutes or five looked like it might make a big difference to him.

It was three. A sudden change in engine note, the nose coming up - but no jarring. Princess couldn't even identify the moment when they landed, though Tiny's low whistle confirmed her suspicions that it had indeed happened. Then, another change in engine note, a forward rolling motion, the 'clunk' of disconnecting clamps, and the radio clicked again.

Gordon started to move to answer it, gasped, and sagged back into his seat, and Princess put a sympathetic hand back on his shoulder. "Relax. I'll handle it." Radio controls were about as universal as you could get. These were no problem.

"G-3 here, what happens next?"

It was the unidentified voice again. "We'll take Gordon and G-5 out first, at this pressure, then bring the rest of you down to sea level. ISO tell us that half an hour will be fine for that. The top hatch is opening now. Gordon, are you hearing this?"

"Yes," he managed. "We're ready."

There was the sound of seals releasing - though almost no hiss, they'd got the pressure almost exactly equal - and then the sound of the hatch swinging up and folding back to fully open. The sight of outside was a huge relief, even if it was only a steel-coloured tube.

Tiny stood up and stretched, the extra height finally giving him room to do so properly. "Okay then, let's go. Gordon, you coming?"

His scarlet flush said it all, really, Too sore to move, and horribly embarrassed by it. Princess caught Jason's eye, and together they helped him up and, with some difficulty due to the crowded cockpit, passed him up to Tiny.

"Take care," she said to both of them, not knowing who needed it most. Gordon was a mess physically, but he did know what he was doing. She knew Tiny had some diving experience, but not how deep he'd been, or if his experience stretched as far as diving medicine.

The hatch closed behind them, and Jason sat down in the pilot's seat with a groan. "Rather them than me."

"Tiny'll be alright - won't he?"

Jason shrugged. "I know nothing about coming up from deep except that it's damned dangerous. And that we get to do it a lot faster because of the implants. If Gordon can take whatever they're going to do to him, Tiny should be fine."

"How are you feeling now?" she ventured.

"I'm fine."

But he didn't get out of the chair, so Princess dropped to her knees again and checked her commander's vitals. He was breathing fine, heartrate normal - he just wouldn't wake up. Keyop was obviously naturally - or at least naturally-given-implants - fast asleep. Mark was different. Nothing she could put her finger on, it was just somehow wrong. It was a very long half-hour, their lead medic gone, the only other paramedic on the team obviously hurting beyond being able to help, their commander unconscious. Even though nothing happened at all, she was near tears by the time the radio crackled again.

"You're at standard pressure. We're opening the airlock - stand clear."

Jason reached out to answer, wincing. "Roger that."

The outer door swinging wide was one of the best sights of her life. No expanse of concrete had ever looked so inviting. And the air smelt - well, the way air was supposed to smell. Princess was suddenly aware that the air in here was very far from fresh. Maybe that was why Mark was still unconscious. Maybe fresh air was all he needed? But deep down she was sure that wasn't the case.

The two men who peered in had to be Gordon's brothers, though she'd never have guessed from looking at them. Both were dark-haired, both appeared older than him. The one on the left wrinkled his nose at the smell, and Princess felt herself flush scarlet.

"You must be G-3," the other one said. "Do you need help?"

"I can manage," Princess told them and, indeed, herself, and stumbled to the door. She wasn't sure she'd ever felt this exhausted, the implants screaming for recharge. I can manage. It worked as far as the door, and for three steps afterwards. She was only vaguely aware of crumpling, and of someone catching her before she hit the concrete.

Chapter 7

"Uh-oh," Jason heard from outside, followed by, "Why do they all fall for you, Scott?"

"Princess?" he queried.

There was no answer, and he got about six inches from the seat of the chair before his muscles simply refused to work and he fell back into it, just avoiding the groan. "Dammit, what are you doing to her?"

"She's exhausted." The man who'd come into the cabin was tall, at least as tall as his six foot one, dark-haired, dressed in a uniform which differed from Gordon's only in the yellow sash. "From the looks of it, so are you. There's a gurney outside - need a hand?"

"The Eagle and the Swallow need it more than I do."

"Two for them as well. We can get them out easier if you're out of the way."

"Okay." Jason picked his helmet up, leant hard on the implant, and stood up. He was going to walk out of here - okay, shuffle, the ceiling wasn't high enough for him to stand up fully - under his own steam, if it was the last thing he did. Which, for today, it probably would be. He was done. Still, no IR pilot was going to carry him out. Keyop needing help was acceptable - he was, when all was said and done, still only a kid. Mark was going to be horrified.

He made it to vertical, and the two steps to the door, ignoring the proffered hand of the IR man. The gurney was just beyond, and Jason almost forgot his exhaustion at the sight of the young lady standing at its head. To say she was stunning was putting it mildly.

Almost forgot it. He felt himself sway just in time to catch himself with a hand on the gurney - and almost let go again when he saw the one a bespectacled man was feeding into the hatch he'd just come out through. He was used to such devices having wheels.

"You have antigrav technology?"

"Yes." The gurney-pusher turned towards him, eyes lighting up. "A small atomic d...d...device is --"

"You can tell him later, Brains." That voice he did recognise, even from crackly deep-sea communications. Scott, who'd introduced himself as International Rescue's field commander. Mark's equivalent - or, since Mark was taking his sweet time about waking up, his own.

"Scott? I'm G-2, the Condor. But since your brother knows my name, you may as well. Jason."

"Jason it is, then."

This time he swayed in earnest, and only Scott's hand under his elbow saved him from the floor.

"Will you sit down before you fall down?"

He did so, gratefully, and trying not to think about the lack of any visible support. He was familiar with gravity generators, of course - they had one on the Phoenix. Antigrav, though, in a piece of equipment this size? Impressive.

"I will take you to our medical unit now," the young woman said. It was most definitely not a native English speaking accent, although he couldn't place it.

"Not until my team-mates are safe."

"I understand," Scott told him. "Tin-Tin, he's right."

"Very well."

Reassured that he wouldn't be removed against his will, Jason sagged back against the support. "I'll need to talk to ISO."

"We've been in contact. They know what's happening."

Jason bit back an angry retort, and replaced it with what he thought Mark would have said. "There's technical information I have to relay."

"About that. Did you destroy the Spectran ship?"

He knew his jaw dropped, and failed to prevent it anyway. "How the hell do you know about that?"

"Who do you think told ISO it was flying around down here?"

Scott didn't seem to expect an answer, reaching into the hatch to give a hand out with the gurney. They'd brought Mark out first, flat on his back, still unconscious. Pale-faced, head to one side, a mess of damp dark curls everywhere. Even fast asleep, he'd never have tolerated his hair in his eyes like that.

Scott seemed to be thinking the same thing Jason was, because as the second end of the gurney emerged, guided by the yellow-sashed IR operative, he gently pushed the hair aside. Stopped. Looked again.

"Well, I'll be damned. Mark Jarrald, the Eagle! He kept that one quiet."

"You know him?" his colleague asked, and Jason was becoming more certain that this was in fact Virgil.

"Met him, at a couple of air shows. He's an ISO test pilot. Or I thought he was. The military test pilots talk to him about as much as they talk to me, so we ended up talking to each other."

Virgil raised his eyebrows - Jason suspected there was a lot more going on here than he was privy to - and retreated back inside the submarine, towing another gurney. This one emerged again much more quickly. Keyop looked to be in better shape than his commander, curled on his side, apparently asleep.

"Let's go," Scott said, towing Mark's gurney after him, and Jason found his own following on behind, pushed apparently effortlessly by the girl. This was serious technology. Scarily serious. There weren't too many places this could have come from, and the obvious candidate had to be Spectra. Even so, he was having difficulty understanding why a Spectran-sponsored organisation wouldn't have simply waited another hour or so. They'd all have been dead well before then. Not only that, but if Gordon was a Spectran operative, he'd never trust anyone again. Jason was generally the last to warm to anyone, the first to see any hint of incongruity or deception. He'd seen none of it in the aquanaut. He wanted very badly to be right about him.

First, though, he wanted sleep. Needed it desperately. He knew he should stay awake until he'd seen Mark conscious and himself. He'd not been exaggerating when he'd told Scott the Eagle would take any of them down. The problem was that in his current state that almost certainly included him. He had to rest - but he had to be alert, too.

He knew the question had been answered for him when he became aware that the gurney had stopped without him even realising when. He was out of options - sleep was coming, hard and now, and there was not a lot he could do to fight it, not for long enough to matter. He caught Scott's arm as he passed.

"I need to crash. If Mark stirs, wake me."

He was asleep before he could hear the reply.

"Do you think we should get them out of these...these..." Virgil indicated the winged uniforms of G-Force with wide-eyed disbelief.

Scott surveyed the medical area, fuller than it had ever been with four people flat out in it, and shrugged. "Maybe? Even if we should, how?"

"Good question." Virgil lifted the winged cape on the nearest, who happened to be Jason. "No zips. How do they get into them?"

"I'm not sure I want to know. I hope Brains doesn't need to give them any shots."

"No shots." The young man currently exercising the medical variant of his multiple doctorates turned from where he was checking over the Eagle. "ISO were very specific on that. No d...d...drugs at all."

"So what's wrong with Mark?" Scott asked him.

"I'm n...n...not s...sure, Scott. He is stable, though. I think, and the ISO d...d...doctors agree, that he should be left to c...come out of it naturally."

"How long's that going to take?"

"Several hours, we think."

Scott yawned and stretched. "In that case I need a break and some food. Is Alan around? It's about time he did something useful."

"Hey, I heard that." His youngest brother picked his way across to them, between the gurneys. "Nursemaid to G-Force. Now there's something I didn't think I'd be doing when I woke up this morning. Tin-Tin said you actually know one of them, Scott - you never noticed anything unusual?"

"He doesn't exactly have a bumper sticker saying 'my other plane's the G-1', let's put it that way."

"What about the race driver, then?" Virgil asked, a smile on his face. "You never noticed anything funny about anyone you raced against, Alan?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"I don't know - 'Jason Alouita' ring any bells with you?"

Alan's face cleared. "I've not raced against him, but I have heard of him - up-and-coming kid racing stock cars on the east coast. But he's eighteen, nineteen at most. He's the Condor? No way. He's too young."

"Mark's no older than nineteen," Scott said slowly.

Alan grinned broadly. "Perhaps it's time you stopped calling me 'kid'."

Chapter 8

Deep, swimming confusion. Everything black and grey, formless shapes looming in the void. No sense of up or down, no anchor point, nothing recognisable. And then, far-off, the memory of voices.

Five seconds to dive.

Pull out good and close. You sure you can handle this, Jason?

I have pulled g before, Commander.

Diving...now!

Hey, what's that? That's n...n...new.

Mark, he's right! New weapon, rear-facing. It's a trap!

Jason, fire now! Tiny, get us out of here!

Direct hit! They're going down.

Too late. Mark, I can't avoid...

And all around him, the coloured flare of the Spectran ship's photonic weapon was the last thing he remembered.

His hand closed around something that shouldn't have been there. The floor of the Phoenix wasn't soft. He was lying on a mattress of some sort, face down with his head turned to one side. He opened his eyes a tiny slit, and hastily shut them again against bright daylight. His helmet was gone, but he was fairly sure he was still in birdstyle. They'd not figured out the bracelets, then. Mark flexed his right arm experimentally, followed by his left leg. His captors had made a big mistake. They hadn't tied him down.

"Scott? I think he's waking up," a voice called from just behind his head, and then a hand landed on his left shoulder. "Commander? Are you -"

Mark exploded from the bed, one hand pinning both of his opponent's behind him, the other locked across his throat. "Scream and I'll break your neck," he hissed in the other's ear.

He twisted silently, surely struggling for air, and a second attacker hit Mark squarely from behind, an arm going down in a competent attempt to break his stranglehold. Competent, but nowhere near good enough. Mark freed his other hand for long enough to throw this one forwards to land in a mighty crash of furniture and dragged his hostage away from any possibility of help. "You've got ten seconds to live unless you show me the way out of here."

And his grip was expertly broken. Mark twisted round to take on this new attacker, still trying to make his eyes work in the unaccustomed brightness. His vision was just starting to clear enough to see targets - two on the floor, one in front of him.

"Mark, stand down! Stand down! It's Jason, you bloody fool!"

No Spectran would get Jason's name out of him. Even if they got it out of someone else, they'd never, ever duplicate the accent. The Condor's accent - like all of theirs, in birdstyle - was bland middle-American. Jason's was broad Australian.

He stopped fighting. Suddenly shaky, he put a hand behind him, found a bed and collapsed onto it. Lay there, aching far more than the past three minutes' activity could account for, while his eyes refused to accustom themselves to the light. And, without warning, was overwhelmed by a wave of terror so powerful he could do nothing but whimper, curl on his side, and try to ride it.

"Mark?" That was Jason again. "Mark, they hit us with the photonic beam. Just breathe. It'll pass."

That might be. For now, breathing was almost impossibly difficult. Opening his eyes again, out of the question. Mark buried his face into the pillow and tried to find his way back into unconsciousness. This place wasn't somewhere he could handle. He had no idea how Jason was coping.

"Breathe slower. Come on."

He flinched a mile at the hands on his, but the grip was tight and uncompromising, and familiar. Mark locked onto that grip, held on while the waves of icy fear washed over and through him, tried to remember to breathe. And very gradually, it eased off and he was able to open his eyes again to discover a normal amount of daylight and his second sitting alongside him.

"Better?"

Mark struggled to sit upright, and failed. "Report, G-2."

"You're having a rough time with the aftereffects of the photonic beam, Commander. The rest's complicated, but everyone's safe."

"For some definitions of safe," an unfamiliar voice grumbled.

Jason turned his head slightly. "I warned your commander that would happen. You were bloody lucky."

"Alan, I told you to tell me if he stirred," another voice said, this one more familiar.

"And I did!"

"Only at the same time as talking to him."

Mark finally placed the second voice, at the same time as its owner came into his line of sight. "Scott Tracy? What are you doing here?"

Scott laughed. "I live here. I never expected to see you in that uniform, though."

Mark looked down. No, he hadn't imagined it. Here he was, in birdstyle, no helmet, in the company of someone who knew him in civilian life and not only didn't have black level clearance, but had no connection to ISO at all. Could their cover be any more blown?

"S'okay, Mark," Jason said. "As okay as it gets, anyway. Scott is the field commander of International Rescue."

"That makes it okay?" Mark rubbed his temples, desperately trying to clear his head.

"We know who they are, they know who we are. Good enough."

"Good enough?" he repeated. His head swam, and the light was starting to hurt again. He shut his eyes and sagged against the pillows.

"Mark, you need rest. Leave it to me for a few hours, okay?"

He thought he'd opened his mouth to reply, but the darkness swam up to claim him before he could speak.A/N Just had one of those nasty moments when you realise you haven't done something you meant to...

Chapter 9

Princess woke, yawned, stretched - and collided with a bed rail she didn't own. Even then, it didn't seem that strange. They did quite frequently end up in hotel rooms, other people's military bases, even hospital beds, after blasting yet another mecha out of somebody else's sky.

This felt different, though. Not a standard bed - and as memory began to seep back, she sat up, suddenly fully alert. IR's base? She remembered pulling herself out through the submarine's hatch, a wave of salt-scented air, and then everything spinning. That was all.

"How are you feeling?" a voice asked softly. She remembered that one from the radio. The one in charge - Scott. Much to her embarrassment, there was something in her memory after the spinning. She rather thought he'd been the one to catch her as she fell.

"Better."

"Up to a little walk?"

Princess frowned, but looking around made it entirely clear what he meant. It wasn't a large room, and everyone else in here was still asleep. Or worse. She needed to ask questions about Mark.

The world decided not to spin as she stood up, which was a distinct improvement over last time. Princess decided to ignore the hand she was offered - Scott might be stunningly handsome, but he must be almost twice her age - and headed for the door.

Once outside, she paused, unsure which way he intended her to go. To her left, a long corridor with several doors off. To the right, more doors, with a double glass exit at the end. Scott took neither, opening the door in front and leading the way down still another corridor. As houses went, this one was huge.

Before they got anywhere, however, he stopped. "Uh - I'm not sure how to phrase this, but - did you want to change?"

"Change?" Princess looked down. Ah. Still in birdstyle. "Yes. Can I use your bathroom?"

Scott indicated the door to her left, frowning slightly, and it was only as Princess shut it behind her that she realised why he was confused. Most people needed to take clothes to change into, in this sort of situation. She, on the other hand, needed only a word and a gesture. Very simple. And information for which Spectra would kill without a second thought.

Ten seconds electronic search told her there was no camera in here. She was less certain about audio recording devices - they could be much less high-tech, invisible to the relatively unsophisticated detector which was all her bracelet contained. And while Scott might have just happened to think to suggest that she changed right next to a bathroom, it was a bit of a coincidence. No, this time she'd go for plan B, the silent version. Princess sat down on the toilet seat - the last thing she needed now was to collapse again under the strain of transmutation - folded the fingers of her right hand around the hidden clasp of the bracelet on her left wrist, took a deep breath, and unfastened it.

A brilliant flash of coloured light, fading to reveal her dressed normally - and only then did Princess have a sudden moment of panic as to what she'd actually been wearing when they were called out. Thank goodness, she'd been up late, chatting with a group of communications technicians, when her bracelet had vibrated discreetly in her pocket and she'd made her excuses. Jeans, T-shirt and trainers. Entirely boring. Quite what her team-mates had been wearing, she wasn't sure - but Mark had looked barely awake when they'd rendezvoused on the Phoenix. She only hoped he would be fit to worry about detransmuting into pyjamas.

Scott was waiting patiently as she went out, and she could almost sense the effort not to ask questions when she emerged with no trace of her former uniform. She certainly wasn't going to volunteer any answers, and had a few questions of her own.

"Is your doctor around?"

"He is. ISO are asking to speak to someone, though - do that first? Brains has been keeping them up to date on the situation, rest assured."

"I'll do that." Princess considered asking him for details of how secure their system was, then decided against it. If whoever was manning their comms centre didn't volunteer the information, she'd presume it wasn't secure.

"This way." Scott ushered her into a large, airy room, and addressed a greying, middle-aged man sitting at a desk in the corner. "Father, this is G-3. Her name is Princess."

"Delighted to meet you, my dear." He got out of his seat, all deferential good manners, and shook her hand solemnly. "Jeff Tracy."

It was only then that she finally put the pieces together as to who these people were. Jason's comment about billionaires, the surname, the picture of the rocket on the wall. This was the Jeff Tracy. One of the first men on the moon. Reading about him and his colleagues had been the major influence on her childhood, on her decision to come to ISO. She'd wanted to go out there and explore, just as they had. It hadn't happened that way, the war had intervened - but she was still overawed to finally be in his presence.

"Princess?" Scott's voice held concern.

She shook herself mentally. "I'm fine. Just - sir, you were one of my inspirations when I was little. I never thought I'd meet you."

"I certainly wish the circumstances were better." Jeff indicated his desk. "I believe my old friend David Anderson would appreciate a call."

David? Well, he had to have a first name, she supposed. She'd just never considered it before.

There were no apparent controls on the desk at all, and she was wondering what she was missing when Jeff leant across and flipped up a speaker. "John? Would you get ISO on the line, please?"

"FAB, Father," came from the speaker, there was a single crackle, and then silence. She was just starting to wonder how long it would take when Anderson's voice came from the speaker.

He could have said anything. All she heard was the normality of their security chief's voice. After the past few hours, the relief was so intense she had to blink back tears.

"Chief?"

"Report, G-3."

Princess looked around her. Scott had wandered to the other side of the room and picked up a book. Jeff was barely ten feet away. "I'm not alone."

"You can trust your hosts, and this line, as if you were on the Phoenix."

She gulped. "Yes, sir. Mecha destroyed, sir. But it had a rear-firing photonic weapon, which the original didn't have. We didn't see it until we were committed to the attack run."

"Understood. Status of the Phoenix?"

"I don't know. I was unconscious. Sorry, Chief."

"We need that ship back, G-3."

"I understand."

"In the meantime, stay where you are. We don't want to increase traffic in your area, and your rescuers have offered hospitality. Out." Anderson didn't sound altogether happy, but then he was effectively admitting that G-Force was out of action for the moment.

Jeff turned back, and Princess could see the charisma that made him such a good businessman. With anyone else, that reaction would have screamed that he'd been listening. He just appeared alert and concerned for her.

"Would you like to talk to Brains now? He should be able to set your mind at rest."

She resisted the urge to ask what kind of a name 'Brains' was. "Yes, sir. I'd like that."

"Scott?"

He put his book down. "Come, Princess. He's just through here."

"Your c...c...c...commander appears to be suffering the same effects as the last time you were shot down with that weapon," the bespectacled man told her. "I'm liasing with your doctor at ISO. Rest seems to be the recommended treatment. He wouldn't tell me what they tried last time, though."

"Not much." Princess drew her knees up to her chin, perched on the chair. "They didn't really figure out what was wrong until afterwards. I don't know if it has a medical name, but when I was little my dad called it 'getting back on the horse'."

Scott frowned. "I don't recognise that phrase."

"It's when you have an accident doing something, and they make you get right up and do it again so you don't lose your nerve." Princess swallowed, reliving the awful moment on the viewing platform when Mark's jet had gone out of control. "He wasn't ready. He nearly died."

"Falling off a horse?"

"Flying the G-1 into a cliff."

Scott snorted. "I can see why they didn't recommend trying that again."

"He's still sleeping now," Brains said.

"But he hasn't woken up since --"

"No, he woke up." There was amusement in Scott's tone. "Alan wishes he hadn't. Mark was more than a little confused."

Princess sat forward, her eyes wide, close to panic. "But was he..."

"Oh, he was Mark."

"No offence, but how would you know?"

Scott smiled at her, and she wanted to melt under that warm gaze. If only he were ten years younger...

"I'm Tracy Aerospace's lead test pilot. We fly the same airshows. I don't know whether to be glad the Eagle never realised I'm International Rescue, or embarrassed I never realised Mark Jarrald is the Eagle. I've certainly talked to him enough in the past to know he was all there. Very confused, very tired, and definitely with those panic attacks Jason mentioned, but he was him. You don't have to worry about that."

She nodded, and gasped in sudden remembrance. "Tiny - and Gordon?"

"They're doing fine," Brains told her. "I estimate that they will be out in approximately seven hours from now. Are you fully recovered?"

"Close enough," she hedged.

"I can find you a bedroom, if you'd like to go and sleep somewhere private," Scott offered.

"No..." Princess frowned. "I just need to sit somewhere quietly for a while, if that's possible."

"I think we can manage that."

She followed him almost in a daze, out onto a high terrace overlooking the sea, then down a winding flight of steps to a second paved area containing a swimming pool and an assortment of chairs and sun-loungers. Scott gestured towards them.

"Take your pick. I have some things to do, but I heard Tin-Tin say she'd be out shortly. Just shout if you need anything."

"I will." Princess glanced around as he walked away, settling on a lounger in the shade. She might have said she didn't need sleep, but now that she was alone, it was looking much more attractive. And she couldn't have picked a nicer place. This really was a tropical paradise; palm trees, sparkling blue sea, perfect clear skies and over to her right a white sandy beach to die for. If only the circumstances were better.

They were much better than they might have been, she told herself firmly as she leant back and closed her eyes. The mecha was floating wreckage. Nobody was dead. Nobody was badly hurt. Just a couple of hours, and the rest of G-Force would start to wake up, and then they could start working on how to get the Phoenix back.

As usual, the implant recharge confounded her. Sleep didn't happen. Princess was sitting up, considering the pool, when a young woman a little older than her came out of the house and over to the deck, a glass in each hand.

"You must be Princess? I am Tin-Tin. Would you like some water?"

"I'd love some. It's a little warm out here."

"It would be, dressed like that." When Princess didn't reply, she continued, a little uncertainly. "Scott said - you can change out of your G-Force uniform by technology, into ordinary clothes that you don't have? You are dressed for the northern hemisphere, I would say. I would recommend something a little cooler."

Scott said? Princess smiled - she might as well, since Tin-Tin already knew who she was. "It's not that sophisticated. I changed back into what I was wearing when we were called out. That's all I can do."

"Oh." She seemed to be considering. "I could lend you something? We are a similar build, I think? Perhaps you would like to go in the pool?"

This time Princess broke into a broad grin. "You know what? I'd absolutely love it."

Chapter 10

When Jason woke the next time, he was alone in the room. It was still broad daylight, so he couldn't have slept that long. He didn't think so, at any rate - it couldn't be the next day, surely? No, he still ached too badly for that. An extra twenty-four hours asleep with the implant doing its thing, and the symptoms from the high pressure would have gone, he was fairly sure of that.

He sat up just as the door opened and the blond kid from his nightmare awakening of earlier came in, Mark's fingermarks visibly purpling round his neck. "How are you feeling?" the kid asked him.

"Fine," he said shortly.

"Virgil said you're a race driver?"

"Yeah."

"Well, aren't you just communicative this evening?"

Jason favoured him with a paint-stripping glare. "Yeah, I just love making chit-chat when our ship's at the bottom of the ocean in a million pieces and you've taken my commander God-knows-where."

"Last I saw, your commander was sitting by the pool drinking orange juice," Alan retorted, unfazed, "and your ship's still in one piece, as much as it was after you crashed it, anyway. Just full of water."

Jason stared. "You're kidding."

"Not kidding. How about we start this conversation again? Hi, I'm Alan."

"I'm Jason. I'm the one you're supposed to be. I guess they got the height about right...and the build...but oh dear, the hair colour..."

Alan flushed a quite remarkable shade of scarlet. "About that. I would have denied it, but..."

"Come off it. I wouldn't have, either."

Alan managed a sick grin. "Maybe I can start a rumour that you work for International Rescue."

"If I ever need a false trail, I might take you up on that." Jason got to his feet with a groan. "I feel like someone beat me with a stick."

Alan rubbed his neck ruefully. "Me too. Possibly because your commander tried to."

"Like I said. There's one person on this planet who has any chance against Mark one-on-one, and that would be me. If he freaks again - and he might well - you get the hell out of his way. I'm guessing your commander has actually impressed that on the rest of you now."

"He has. And you needn't worry. I don't make the same mistake twice."

"Good. Now, the Phoenix isn't in pieces? I thought it would be crushed."

"Apparently the structural integrity was damaged enough in the crash that the water came in through the damage instead of crushing the hull." Alan raised his hands. "That's what I heard, anyway. Gordon's the one who would understand, but he won't be out of the chamber for another two hours."

"So she's not destroyed? You can get her out?"

"Whoa, there. I didn't say that. We rescue people. We don't do property."

"The Phoenix isn't property." Jason resisted the urge to snap. This called for diplomacy and tact. Not his strong point, but Mark was never around when you needed him. "The Phoenix is lives. Civilian lives, that the next Spectran mecha will destroy if we're not there to stop it."

"I don't believe you don't have a backup ship."

"That was the backup ship." Jason sighed. "Security are going to have my head for this, but, hell, we need your help. We lost the primary Phoenix ten days ago. That ship down there is it for the next month or so. There will be another Spectran attack in that time. There just will. There isn't anyone else who can stop them."

Alan swallowed. "Father isn't going to like it. IR just doesn't do equipment recovery."

"You're going to have to make an exception for G-Force."

"I don't know..." Alan gulped again as Jason turned the glare back on. "I'll talk to Scott. Actually, I'll talk to Virgil, get him to talk to Scott. I do take your point. But without Gordon, I don't even know if we can do it. Can't your people recover it themselves? It's not that deep."

"If ISO start moving heavy equipment down here and Spectra notice, they'll figure out in no time what's down there. Free shot anywhere they like without G-Force to get in the way. It's got to be best for you to do it. If you can, of course."

Alan grinned cheerfully at him. "Reverse psychology? I'm not quite that naive. I'll see what I can do, but not because we need to prove anything. Now, do you want to get out of the suit? Everyone else is out by the pool. We can discuss it there."

"Father, can I talk to you in private?" Scott asked softly.

"Sure, son." Jeff put his book down by the side of his chair, frowning slightly, and stood up. "Come inside."

He said nothing else until they were in the office with the door shut, and then he motioned to Scott to sit down. "What's worrying you?"

"Anderson."

"What about him?"

"He knows who we are."

"Scott, I've known David Anderson since we were at college together. You don't need to worry about his discretion."

"I wasn't worried about Colonel Casey's discretion either, and you've known him just as long." Scott sat forward. "I'd like to know why you told Anderson about us, and who else knows apart from the numbered IR agents."

"I didn't have much of a choice." Jeff's face took on a look of sympathy. "I approached Anderson years ago, when I first had the idea but not the money to put it into practice, asking if he thought ISO might be interested in being a partner in something like International Rescue. He said no, that they were putting all their efforts into interstellar exploration. I'd almost forgotten what I'd told him, it was so long ago. Then, when we started up, right after the first Fireflash rescue, I got a call. He said that he was fairly sure it was me behind it, but that given the level of threat they were handling he'd really like details of the stealth technology we were using so he could make sure we weren't misidentified as a Spectran mecha. Well, they've got better things to do than chase us, we've got better things to do than hide from them. I gave him the information, and that was the last I heard. I never discussed it with you because, well, I didn't want to reopen old wounds."

"He did that pretty darn good himself." Scott sighed. "I understand. Just - is he the only one?"

"He's the only one. As I understand it, our stealth signatures are hidden in their database of friendlies. If we get seen, we get ignored automatically, nobody else needs to know. And I never told him about you. He must have recognised your voice. I'm sorry, son. If you want to get away while they're here, I understand."

Scott shook his head. "I'll be fine. I deal with ISO pilots on a regular basis. One in particular. I need to be able to handle it."

"Virgil told me the Eagle is someone you know."

"Yeah - I suppose I should have guessed. It just never occurred to me that Anderson's nineteen-year-old protégé was old enough for that sort of responsibility. Heck, most people don't think he's old enough for a fast jet licence. Nice kid. Never struck me as the leader type, though. He must be one hell of a good actor."

"Right now I wouldn't put him in charge of a single seater Cessna."

"He's not himself right now." Scott leant back, feeling much better for the explanation. "Don't judge him by what you're seeing now, Father. He's a darn good pilot and a cool head. Remember that airshow where there was an attack right at the start and our T-17 prototype was destroyed on the tarmac?"

"I do indeed. And ISO's new prototype was cut down out of the air?"

Scott nodded. "That was Mark. Insane thing to do, going after the bogey in an unarmed plane. At the time I thought he was just so damn green it hadn't occurred to him that he ought to get the hell out of there. Now I'm wondering if he was drawing their fire, giving the rest of his team time to get the Phoenix in the air. There were a lot of civilians on the ground. It could have been carnage."

His father smiled. "Maybe you should ask him?"

"Maybe I will." Or maybe right now I'm feeling rather a fool for having given the Eagle a lecture on basic air combat tactics.

Chapter 11

Jason's plan, to accost Scott there and then, had an unexpected crimp put in it the moment he and Alan walked onto the pool deck. Scott wasn't there.

Princess, though, was relaxing in the pool, talking to the gorgeous young lady he'd noticed in the hangar. The other dark-haired brother, Virgil, was sitting on the side, putting in the odd word and quite clearly with one eye on Mark, who was sprawled on a sun-lounger in a position that was somehow subtly wrong. Tense and unhappy, not relaxed.

"So where's Keyop?" he asked of nobody in particular.

"Talking to Brains," Virgil told him. "He had some inner ear damage from the pressure, and Brains is checking that he's OK. After a bit of a misunderstanding."

Jason groaned. "Do I even want to know?"

"Brains has a bad speech impediment, and Keyop thought he was being made fun of." Princess sighed. "It's all been sorted. I hope."

"Good." Jason smiled at the other girl in the pool. "I didn't catch your name?"

"It's Tin-Tin," Alan said pointedly, "and she's spoken for."

"Let's have no more misunderstandings." Mark pushed himself to his feet, and every alarm bell in Jason's mind went off. This was just like before - all trace of confidence and decisiveness gone, Mark was clearly running on nothing but habit and determination. "G-2, would you walk with me?"

"Yes, Commander." The response was instinctive. His other instinct, to ask Mark whether he was okay and to steady him on his feet, he managed to resist. Mark would kill him - if not now, then later when he was feeling more himself.

He wasn't at all sure Mark was capable of walking at all, but he made it the ten yards to the beach, and thirty yards along it to a point out of sight and earshot of the pool before turning to Jason.

"Report, G-2. Status of the Phoenix?"

"Full of water eleven hundred feet down."

"And you just left her there?"

"No, I got everyone out before she collapsed under the pressure and we all drowned." Jason glared. "It was my call. I still think I did the right thing." Time enough to give Gordon his credit when Mark's actually thinking straight.

"We need to get her back."

"I know. I've already discussed it with Alan."

"Any other parts of my job you've taken on yourself?"

"Mark, be reasonable! You weren't available. I picked up the slack. That's what seconds do."

"Seconds who are watching for their chance to take command."

Jason was opening his mouth to snap that the ray was clearly causing paranoia on top of everything else, but before he got there Mark had his hands to his head. This time Jason did reach out to steady him - and then caught him and lowered him as he slumped, all colour draining from his face as he collapsed to the sand and curled into a tight, silent, shaking ball. It was a good couple of minutes before he sat up, and Jason could see the raw effort in his face just to do that. This was Mark putting out everything he had to try to appear normal - and it wasn't close to enough. Jason knew what it felt like to have your world collapsing in around you despite everything you told yourself. That had been dire enough - still was, occasionally, when the PTSD decided to get its teeth into him. But never dire enough for it to be visibly obvious when it was happening. This was hugely, monumentally bad, and Mark needed help right now. He was no shrink. He settled for a tight grip round the other's shoulders, and telling him that it would pass. It had to, right? It had before, and the last time they'd been shot down by that weapon Mark had been fine after a few days. He didn't even want to think about the same not being true this time.

Eventually, it must have stopped, or at least reduced enough for Mark to hide it. His grip was shrugged away, and Mark met his eyes in silent, horrified, embarrassment.

"Tell me what you need me to do."

Mark looked away. "Nothing you can do."

"I can pick up the slack. If you want me to. Not otherwise." At least, not unless you're incapable. And at that point, we both know I'm not going to ask.

He got a nod. "We have to get the Phoenix back. That'll be you going back down, and Tiny, I guess. How much diving experience do you have?"

"Some," Jason evaded. It had never been relevant - Mark, Tiny and Keyop all knew exactly what they were doing, and at that point all he needed was competence. "It's their diving specialist who's locked up with Tiny right now, decompressing. He may not be fit to take us down for a while."

"Aw, crap." Mark sat up, elbows on his knees and chin on his hands, staring out to sea. "This is such a mess."

"Yeah." Heaven on earth, the perfect tropical island, everything out of their hands, an absolute guarantee that the alarm wasn't going to go off and summon them to action - and he felt exactly the same way Mark did. It was a total mess.

"While they're off, Virg, can I have a word?"

His older brother shrugged. "Sure thing, Alan. What's up?"

Alan flicked a look at the younger woman in the pool, hoping Virgil would take the hint, and with a twist of his mouth the other got casually to his feet and wandered off in the opposite direction to that taken by the two G-Forcers. Fifty yards, several large rocks and a palm tree later he stopped.

"And?"

"We need to recover the Phoenix for them."

Virgil stared. "We do? They must have a backup ship. We don't do property, Alan, you know that."

"I know that. You know that. But they're desperate. That is their backup down there. Until they can finish the new one, Earth's depending on conventional forces and hope."

"You've only their word for that."

"True. Ten days ago, Jason said, that's when they lost their primary ship. I'm thinking John should be able to confirm that for us."

"Confirm they lost a ship, yes. They probably have ten backups."

"What, like we do? Look, Virgil, I don't know this guy but I know his reputation, and I know a hundred others like him on the track. No way would he be asking for help if it wasn't a matter of life and death."

"We don't do property. We don't do military."

"We save lives. So do they. I don't see the difference."

"It's a slippery slope. Plus I'm not stupid. You're asking me because you know Scott'll say no."

"Not to you he won't." Alan met his eyes. "They need our help bad. Do you need me to have John confirm it, or do you think the Condor's lying to us to save a few dollars for ISO?"

Virgil gulped. "Oh. If you put it like that..."

"Doesn't sound so likely, does it?"

"No. But it doesn't make a bit of difference what we think. If Gordon's not up to it, it won't happen."

Chapter 12

"How much longer?"

Tiny dragged his eyes open, resisting the urge to just curl up and sleep. He'd said he'd do this for Gordon, and it was nearly done. The pressure gauge read three metres, and while he couldn't remember exactly how long they were supposed to be here, he didn't think it was that long, and it was a while since the last change in pressure.

"Can't be long. How are you feeling?"

Gordon grunted noncommittally, and rolled over gingerly. Tiny sympathised. This chamber was tiny - neither of them could stand upright, even had Gordon been in any shape to do so, and the two couches, one down either side of the cylinder, were narrow and hard with a twenty inch wide slot of floor space between them. Facilities were basic and public, and poor Gordon had spent a non-trivial amount of time on his knees in front of it as his stomach simply refused to cope with even slow pressure changes. Now, though, he was empty and exhausted, and had actually slept for most of the previous hour. Tiny would have loved to do the same, but he knew that if he did so he wouldn't wake up again for a very long time. He could sleep when this was over. Soon. If Gordon's bloodwork suggested he had to go straight back down - and Tiny had only taken the blood samples every half-hour, he hadn't seen any results at all - then someone else would have to go with him this time. Someone who'd rested.

"Tiny?" the intercom crackled.

"Here."

"Ready to surface?"

He glanced across, and saw Gordon set his jaw. "We're ready. Nice and slow. Gordon, the more you can relax --"

"I know." It was said through gritted teeth, and Tiny weighed up sympathy against Gordon's pride before deciding that he was coping for now. And, giving the seating arrangements in his sub, very obviously used to flying solo. He sat back down on his own bench, back hunched to accommodate the curving wall-into-ceiling, and swallowed until his ears popped. He'd had more than enough himself - both of this pressure treatment, and of time on his own.

It had been his fault, no doubt about it. Mark had made the tactical decisions. Jason was in charge of firing their explosive device off. Princess and Keyop had both spotted the new, rear-firing photonic weapon as soon as could be reasonably expected. And him? He'd taken exactly the same line in as he had done the last time they'd come up against this type of ship, and then he'd completely failed to get them out of the way afterwards. If that final loop had been at four-thirty, maybe five o'clock to the direction of flight instead of the naive, predictable six o'clock he'd chosen, he'd have had much more leeway to pull away fast. Now they had no ship at all. Jason would have done better. Jason would probably have to, once Anderson got hold of the mission reports. What an idiot.

"Crap," Gordon muttered, and started to struggle upright. Tiny was jolted from his train of thought into alertness. It was pretty obvious what the problem was - bright red blood trickling between the fingers of the hand held to his nose. And it had happened several times already in the past few hours. He must have damaged a blood vessel, somewhere down in the deep of the ocean, and now every change in pressure was splitting it open again.

He'd obviously had enough, too. He must know he needed to sit upright, to put pressure on it, to get the bleeding stopped, but he'd got no further than propped on one elbow. And his pride was suddenly a lot less important than Tiny helping him to sit up as properly as someone six feet tall could do in here, getting a wad of tissue over his nose with an icepack behind it, and giving him a towel to dribble blood into. The last thing Gordon needed right now was to be swallowing blood.

"Problem?" Brains' voice asked over the intercom, concern evident.

"We're good," Gordon replied, muffled by the towel, before Tiny could open his mouth.

For some definitions of 'good', maybe. But there was nothing that stopping now would make any difference to, and he could appreciate just how bad the other wanted out of this tin can and into a real bed.

There was a final release of pressure, so slight Tiny barely felt it, and the door swung open with a creak and the sucking sound of a good rubber seal. Gordon didn't move, and Tiny stayed where he was as a a tall, dark-haired man who he vaguely recognised folded himself almost double and inserted his head and shoulders through the cylindrical hatch at the end.

"You about ready to come out of there, Gordon?"

"Yes." He didn't move, though, and concern started on the other's face.

"Brains!"

"I'm fine," Gordon insisted, as a second face, this one bespectacled, looked into the pressure chamber and stuttered, "His blood t...t...tests are fine, Scott."

"Just sore as hell?"

Gordon nodded and winced, and Scott reached inside the chamber and put out two supporting arms. "Come on then, tough guy. I'll save the lecture for later."

"Lecture?" Tiny queried.

Scott raised his eyebrows. "We have procedures round here. Gordon didn't follow them." But his tone was mild, and Tiny had the distinct impression that Gordon was due more of a slapped wrist than a serious reprimand. He sincerely hoped so. He was, after all, quite sure that no organisation anywhere had procedures which included crash decompression from eleven hundred feet. He was also reasonably sure that any rescue organisation with International Rescue's reputation for pulling off the impossible must accept that, on occasion, procedures were there to be broken. If Gordon had followed procedure today, G-Force would be dead. They all knew that.

Gordon still didn't move, and Tiny considered the options. Lifting him in here would be an excellent way to put his back out, implant or no implant. He was still thinking that this was a lousy design for anything which was designed to take people who were, by definition, not exactly in good health, when Scott extracted himself from the chamber.

"Tiny, can you help him lie down again? Then come out. We'll bring the couch out."

"But --"

They have antigrav, Tiny." That was, quite unmistakably, Jason. "Just get yourself out here."

He did as he was told, emerging into a giant, featureless hangar dominated by a huge green plane of design so bizarre it made his Phoenix look normal, and abruptly the world was dipping and swaying around him, and Jason was lowering him to the floor. "Heaven only knows what these guys think of us, falling all over the place like this - let go, Tiny, he's fine. Go into recharge mode."

"The Phoenix --"

"We'll discuss this tomorrow. Shall I get Mark to make it an order? Go to sleep, Tiny."

Concrete floor and all, that was exactly what he did.

Chapter 13

"I know you've all been discussing our policies," Jeff's voice cut clearly through the after-dinner chat, and immediately the room fell silent.

"We do not rescue property. We only save people. Property can be replaced."

"But --" Jason started, and only stopped when Mark kicked him, hard.

"But," Jeff continued, his eyebrows raised, "I am going to make an exception. We will be recovering your ship, because of the likely cost to human life of not doing so. Provided that we can do so without needing to go outside Thunderbird Four. Which is what I would like to discuss now."

"Thank you," Mark said shakily. He'd been worrying about this all day, knew there was no point, knew he should admit to Jason that he had a real, major problem and needed to hand over command - and couldn't. He suspected that Jason knew all too well, though. Not only Jason. Every time he turned round there were eyes on him. And it didn't help at all that he knew it was the aftereffects of the photonic beam, that it was unjustified paranoia. He'd spent the whole day feeling cold and shaky, had twice had the sort of panic attack where the whole world went red and functioning was no longer an option. He hated this. He wanted to be himself again. Having the Phoenix back would be something - even if that would mean the G-1 was accessible again. The thought of getting in a plane made him feel sick.

"Gordon, you had a suggestion?"

"Yes, Father." The young man had spent the day slumped on a couch by the pool, sporting the most astonishing array of bruises Mark had ever seen. An effect of the pressure which, thankfully, he and his team didn't have to worry about, since the enhanced healing provided by their implants had dealt with any bruising before he had woken up.

"We take Four down, clear off the worst of the debris from the Phoenix, then attach towing cables and put an inflatable bag inside. As that inflates, Four lifts, and we float it gradually. All that requires is enough structural stability to hold the flotation device."

"If it hasn't got that, there's no point recovering it anyway," Princess said. "Sorry, Tiny. But we may as well assume the Phoenix is structurally intact rather than taking that much care."

The pilot looked miserable. "I guess so."

"How do we get the flotation device inside?" Scott asked.

Gordon cracked a smile. "Well, I'm not doing it. It'll be a while before I can go deep again. Brains has a remote control thingy which he thinks will work, provided we pressurise it carefully. It's only got to work for five minutes."

"Let me be very clear on one thing," Jeff said, that indefinable edge of being in control in his voice. "If it does not work, nobody is going out there. Gordon? Scott? Is that clear?"

"It's clear." Scott looked across to Mark. "I think we should discuss who goes down there. I don't think Gordon should."

"You don't have anyone else who knows how to work at those pressures," Gordon replied wearily. "Things behave differently down there, Scott. You need me. I'm happy for you to come, though."

"I want to go," Tiny said quietly. "She's my ship."

"And that's exactly why you're not going," Mark told him. "You're emotionally invested."

"We all are! That's your jet in the back compartment. Jason's car --"

"I said no!" God, where had his command voice gone? He sounded like a petulant schoolboy, and Tiny showed no sign of taking any notice.

"Plus I'm the one with the diving experience --"

"Jeff already said there's to be no diving." That was Jason, and much as Mark hated the need for it, he knew his second was taking up the slack he'd mentioned. "Plus you've been deep twice already."

"Gordon's been down three times!"

"Gordon's the expert. You want the Phoenix back or not, Tiny? This is very simple. You've been deep twice and your implant is flat. Everyone else was unconscious for much longer than I was. I'm going. I'm not a diver, but I don't think I need to be. And they do need one of us there."

"Why?" Alan asked. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to know what to do if something unexpected happens associated with our ship. She's a warship. She's heavily armed, we were in combat, and we didn't have a hell of a lot of time to shut things down nicely."

Mark felt the blood drain from his face. "Jase - are the weapons systems active?"

"Unless someone else deactivated them."

"Why didn't you mention this before?" Scott demanded.

Jason shrugged. "What would be the point? If they were going to fire the first time someone approached, they'd have done it yesterday when Gordon came down. If they've gone into proximity mode, we'll get down there and find a heap of slag."

"Maybe we should just leave it down there," Virgil said. "Rather than risk bringing something which might fire to the surface."

"Our missiles work underwater," Princess told him quietly.

"Jason, I wish you'd told us this before," Jeff said. "But it's done. Can you deactivate the weapons systems remotely?"

"No."

"Jason - remote control robot!" Keyop exclaimed.

"Good point, Keyop," Mark said, forcing himself to get involved. "How sophisticated is it?"

"Not very." Gordon shrugged. "Brains has more sophisticated ones, of course - but crude and simple seemed like what we'd need."

"Doesn't need to be that sophisticated, though. I just need to have it punch the right three buttons."

Gordon went to stand up, gasped, and proceeded considerably more gingerly. "Let's go talk to Brains. He's in the lab checking it has no sealed spaces to get crushed."

"You stay there," Virgil told him, getting to his feet. "Sounds like we don't want to hang around. If we're going tonight, you need rest. Jason, come with me?"

"Jason can stay right there," Mark said before the other could move. "He needs to rest too. I'll come see your robot." And show that I'm still in command of this team.

It was a couple of feet long, as crude as Gordon had suggested, oval with a bump of a camera at one end and four paddle-like appendages. Mark stood and looked at the strange device in some confusion. "How does this work again?"

"It swims," the scientist told him. "We can attach the inflation device to, ah, the back, and inflate it when it reaches the centre of your ship."

"How's it going to get through the doors?"

In reply, Brains held up a remote control before manipulating the levers. A probe extended itself from the 'head' of the machine to a length of about six inches, and as he pressed another switch on the control, a wide-angle view incorporating the tip of the probe appeared on a screen sitting on the desk - or, at least, on a pile of papers on the desk. "Keyop says that, uh, your door c...controls will respond to this."

"Could Jason disarm the missiles using that?" Virgil asked him.

"I don't see why not." Mark thanked everything that they'd never implemented one scheme suggested by their tactical department, where crucial instructions would have been controlled not only by which keys were pressed, but by the timing used. At the time he'd pointed out that if someone hurt a hand it could be a major problem. Being unable to deactivate the weapons by remote control eleven hundred feet underwater hadn't been something he'd considered at the time, but it was definitely going on his list of reasons not to do it. "Are you really planning to go tonight?"

"Why not? Much less likely we'll be observed from satellite, and it's dark that deep anyway. We have to operate at all times of day. You don't?"

"Actually, not so much. Spectra tend to like to see what they're attacking."

"I take your point." Virgil paused. "I'm surprised you're not pushing to come."

"Jason can handle it."

"I mean in Two - the transport." He shook his head. "Sorry - I just presumed - Scott would --"

"Scott didn't just get shot by a Spectran photonic beam." Mark shut his eyes, willing the red haze to stay away, but that desperate cold inadequacy was creeping up on him like the tide coming in. He was vaguely aware of Virgil's concern, but it made no difference. Yet again, he crumpled to his side on the floor, curled in the grip of an icy fear which he couldn't shake off no matter how he told himself that it was causeless.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to find Virgil crouching at his head. "Is this what that weapon did to you? Why you've been running away and hiding all day?"

"Yeah." Mark flushed wretchedly. "I'm not fit to be in a plane right now."

"How long until it wears off?"

"A couple of days? I don't know."

Virgil's expression was sympathetic. "Father will be in radio contact throughout the rescue. Mission. Whatever we call it. I'm sure you can stay with him and advise."

"Base control. Wonderful." Mark pushed himself back to his feet, feeling better again. He hated this, the periods of normality and then, out of the blue, unbearable terror. He just hoped that his glib reassurance was right. Because what he was afraid of right now was that all that would stop it was getting back in a plane. He never wanted to see a plane again.

Chapter 14

"Nice uniforms," Jason commented as three similarly clad figures came into the living area where he'd been asked to meet them. He'd heard radio reports describing International Rescue operatives before, of course, though he'd never seen pictures. Apparently they had some technology which clouded any attempt at photography. Something he would have dearly liked himself. But still - powder blue? That had to be almost as impractical as Mark's startling white.

Virgil looked more than a little affronted. Gordon just grinned, and responded with, "You're a fine one to talk. How do you get in and out of it?"

"That's classified."

"I think we're a little beyond classified here already," Scott said.

Jason shook his head. "This is information Spectra would kill you for. So's my name, but that would only cost me my life. The other could cost Earth its edge. So - no. Sorry."

"How about why you dress as birds?"

Jason shrugged. "The general design is practical for what we do. And the symbolism seems to scare the hell out of the Spectran regulars. At that point, I'm not complaining. So, are we going, or are we going to stand here and swap fashion tips?"

"You're going." Jeff came into the room, Mark at his shoulder. "Jason, I want you to understand that Scott is in command of this mission. If he calls an abort, it is aborted."

Jason gave Mark just long enough to object, should he choose to, before answering, "I'm used to obeying orders. Sir. I only disobey suicidally stupid ones."

"Thank you. I think," Mark said with a grin.

"Huh?" Gordon queried.

"He means he's never disobeyed mine." Mark's fingers flashed. Do what you have to. We need the Phoenix back if it's practical. Out loud, he simply said, "Good luck."

Jason had had some qualms about getting back in the monster green plane after just how rough he'd felt on his last ride, but to his relief he was up front this time, instead of travelling in the pod. And there were windows - a real luxury, one the Phoenix didn't have. Scott pointed him to a seat and Gordon took another one, while Virgil had arrived by some other means and was already up front in the pilot's seat.

"Where are you planning to sit?" he asked.

"I'll be fine," Scott told him, heading for the back wall of the cabin.

Jason started to undo his straps. "I can --"

"You can stay right there." There was a definite edge in Scott's voice, and from the way Virgil looked round, Jason was pretty sure this wasn't usual for him. The air was going to have to be cleared at some point - but not yet. Not just before they went back in that submarine. They all needed clear heads right now, and dredging up old and unpleasant history would be unlikely to help in the short term.

Virgil raised his eyebrows. "We're set for launch." And the giant plane trundled slowly forward into the sunshine, as the entire front hangar wall lifted out of site.

Jason's first thought was utter disbelief. He'd not have fancied getting the G-1 off the ground in the length available, let alone something this size. And yet this was unmistakably a runway, and there was no sign of them stopping to do a vertical takeoff. The plane just kept rolling, until he could no longer see the ground out of the windows and was sure they were going to tip into the water at any moment. It couldn't have the same underwater capabilities as the Phoenix, could it? No - they'd have used them to retrieve the submarine, instead of all that performance with clamp lines and pods. He stole a glance sideways, but Gordon appeared completely relaxed. Whatever was going on here, it was completely normal.

He still clutched at the arms of his chair as the whole ship tilted upward. They couldn't be going for a vertical launch, surely? Aviation wasn't his thing, but he was quite sure that the whole shape was completely wrong. Not to mention that Scott surely couldn't be planning to ride out a vertical launch leaning against the back wall?

No. The background rumble of the engines exploded into something far deeper and louder, and he was pushed back into his seat as the giant plane clawed its way off the ground at a fifteen degree angle. Astonishing.

The ride was better up here, too - or was it just that he was coming off a day's rest, rather than being shot down and diving to some stupid depth? At any rate, he felt fine this time. This plane must be the same sort of size as the Phoenix, though an entirely different shape - bulbous where the Phoenix was angular, constructed for maximum carrying capacity rather than the requirements of jump-field physics. It was hard to tell, flying over water, but he had the impression it was fast, too - much faster than the shape would suggest.

"Hey, Virgil? What's the top speed of this thing?"

The dark-haired pilot half-turned. "What's the top speed of your car?"

"The G-2?" Jason grinned. "Way faster than even I can drive. Our ship does Earth to Mars in a couple of minutes. Not into pissing contests. I just wondered. News reports have you at the scene faster than seems plausible, most times."

"Five thousand, but we have to replace all the exhaust manifolds afterwards. We're doing a little more than one, now. No particular hurry."

"Virgil!"

"Like he said, Scott. I don't do pissing contests, either." He grinned too, and his brown eyes twinkled. "And don't tell me you haven't wanted to show someone what One can do. I figure if you're ever going to get to show her off to someone who appreciates raw speed, the Eagle's your best bet."

Scott snorted. "Like Jason said. He can do Earth to Mars in two minutes. Why would he care?"

"He's a flying nut who'd kill to see inside Thunderbird One," Jason told him. Maybe they needed a bit of air-clearing right now after all. "If you know him at all, you know that. And - I'm asking you to do it. For Mark's sake. What worked last time was forcing him back in a plane."

Scott's eyebrows practically hit the ceiling, but he said no more than, "I see. Virgil, time to target?"

"Ten minutes. You guys want to go down to the pod?"

Gordon gave him a worried glance, and that was all he needed. Jason stood up, totally relaxed, making a point of not leaning on the chair, holding on, or doing anything other than pretending the world was completely flat and stable, rather than vibrating and swaying gently.

"Lead the way."

Gordon got to his feet with a whole lot more effort, a grimace on his face, and Jason abruptly gave up on demonstrating that he was fine and went to help someone who patently wasn't.

"Are you sure you're up to this?"

"All I have to do is sit down and drive." Gordon shrugged off the supporting arm. "I can feel like crap at home or I can feel like crap here. Here there's distraction and I get to be useful. Let's go."

"Lucky it's calm," Scott said as he sat down on the floor behind Gordon's seat. "Virgil's going to lower Two right down before he drops us."

"Drops you? You don't just lower the pod?"

"Most of the time we're doing this in lousy weather conditions and one hell of a hurry. And the pod has a damn good inertial dampening system. But you wouldn't want to be doing it without a seat." Gordon finished strapping himself in, entirely unapologetic.

"I'm thinking we ought to look into fitting some sort of minimal extra seating in here in any case," Scott said. "Sooner or later you'll want it again."

"Hmm. Now let me see..." Gordon made great show of peering under the console. "I know I had a cushion in here somewhere..."

"Concentrate, Gordo." Scott shifted back against the rear wall of the cabin. "We're there. Virgil's hovering."

Tiny had the same sort of instinct, so Jason just went with it, no questions asked. He himself couldn't distinguish this vibration from the sort they'd had five minutes previously. He did feel the whole pod rock disconcertingly, then a 'clunk', presumably as the clamps let go, and then the gentle swaying he remembered with a distinct lack of fondness. A second 'clunk' as the front of the pod dropped down to form the ramp, and he stood up.

Gordon spared him half a glance, busy at the controls. "Best sit down for now."

"I can throw up again if you like. On water I need a horizon to look at."

Neither of them answered, fortunately, since he wasn't in the mood for either sympathy or humour. Jason leant against the back wall and focused out to the point where black, slightly moonlit sea met black, star-encrusted sky. It was very dark out there - and pretty dark in here. Gordon's instruments were backlit, but all the cabin lights were off.

"Good for astronomy."

"No ambient light this far from civilisation," Scott agreed. "John's our astronomer. I guess you've seen them up close."

"Some of them." Not generally those visible from the southern hemisphere, though.

"If I asked you which, would you tell me?"

"No." Truth be told, he was more than a little shaken, even by the small angle of view afforded him by the pod door. It was a long time since he'd seen these from the ground, the constellations of his childhood. These were the ones he'd dreamed of visiting. Bright and clear, offering a child hope that there was more to life than the orphanage and a nine-to-five job when he was old enough. That dream had certainly come true, though not in any way he'd anticipated. Maybe when the war was over. He'd been to maybe twenty different solar systems, was aware of civilisation in maybe fifty more. That left a whole lot of exploring out there still to be done.

Reality struck again with a sharp jolt as the submarine tipped forward, and only Jason's lightning reflexes and a conveniently placed grab handle on the back wall prevented him from landing up on Gordon's control panel.

"Warn a guy, can't you?"

"Sorry," Gordon said. "I'm not used to passengers."

"The term is 'crew', Gordon," Scott told him from the floor.

"Whatever the term is, I'm normally alone in here." He flipped a switch, and powerful beams of light illuminated the rails down which they were creeping, and the black water below.

Jason shut his eyes and swallowed hard. Not nausea, not this time. But going back down there, whatever he'd said in public, was not something he was looking forward to at all. Pitch dark and crushing pressure, and the Phoenix, badly damaged and everything armed. How could he have failed to make it safe before evacuating? He guessed that whatever it was that affected Mark so badly had had some sort of effect on him too. No - that was an excuse. It was his job to remember. He'd screwed up, pure and simple. And now he had to put it right. Somehow. If International Rescue's pet robot frog didn't do the job, he had absolutely no idea how.

And then they were into the water, the line sliding up the glass of the front window, over the top, and TB4 was diving for the bottom of the ocean.

Chapter 15

Scott sat on the floor, taking the rare chance to observe Gordon in action. Virgil and Alan he watched regularly, John too, though John rarely flew missions. Gordon, though - TB4 was a one man vehicle, and Gordon was a one man team within a team when it came to water rescues. He'd often thought that they needed more than one person who knew what they were doing down here, more than he and Alan could learn from simulations and picking Gordon's brain. The next question was always 'who?' and that was where the discussion stopped. The rest of them were pilots, at home in the air. A second aquanaut would have to come in from outside, and while Gordon had said he knew people who would be entirely suitable, that would involve bringing in an outsider. A single non-family member, in a team who had known one another from early childhood. It would never work.

Gordon in control, though, wasn't exactly what he'd expected. He knew Gordon the dedicated athlete. Gordon the joker, and Gordon the team member. Gordon the consummate professional in charge was something he'd known must exist, but never seen for himself. And it was surprisingly natural. He'd thought he might need to take control down here, to provide some sort of interface between the Condor and a brother who didn't know how to handle subordinates. It looked as if he was going to be dead wrong, and he couldn't have been happier about it.

"How far?" he asked.

"Five minutes," Gordon told him, never looking round. "Now that I know there are missiles armed down there..."

You're being more careful. Scott could see Jason's shoulders tense even through the amazing suit, and said nothing. The kid had been unconscious at the time, after all. Now Anderson, he had known. He should have told them to be careful. Gordon could have been killed, if he'd done something to trigger the missiles. Then again, if Gordon had been careful, he'd never have got them out. One of those situations where there was no right answer except for the one where you got lucky.

Jason didn't immediately strike him as the careful type either. One reason he'd insisted on coming down here himself. The only worse combination than these two that he could have envisaged would have been to add Alan into the mix. Jason might have had no interest in a pissing contest with Virgil, but with another race driver? He'd not have put money on it. On either side. He still couldn't get over G-Force being a bunch of kids.

"Nearly there," Gordon said, and since the only reason he could have to say that was if there was something to see, Scott stood up. And promptly crouched back down again, holding his head and swearing. He'd forgotten that Four had been made to Gordon's specs, and that getting into tight spaces had been much higher on the list of requirements than headroom for anyone taller than its pilot.

"Okay?" Gordon asked briefly, half a minute later when Scott had run out of immediately relevant curses.

"An inch shorter than I used to be," he grumbled. "What did you want to show me, anyway?"

Gordon indicated the front window, narrow beams from Four's powerful headlights illuminating something other than black water out there, and Scott squinted into the darkness. "What the hell's that?"

"That's what stopped the Phoenix pancaking on the ocean floor."

Jason showed interest at that, leaning over the front control panel until his nose almost touched the glass. "How?"

"You hit one of them at a glancing angle and skidded down the side." Gordon frowned, an expression Scott knew meant he'd just realised something. "You must have seen it. You piloted Four out of there."

"He did?"

"Well, I sure didn't."

"I don't remember doing it." Jason shrugged. "I don't remember seeing anything like this." From the set line of his jaw, that wasn't a situation he enjoyed being in.

"You know how to pilot a sub?" Scott asked him.

"Does the Phoenix count?" The edge in his voice made it very clear that it was a rhetorical question.

"Hell of a job getting us out of there, if you were pressure-sick." Gordon's tone was utterly matter-of fact, as he guided them down between the rock spires.

The jaw relaxed a little. "Most likely it was Tiny. He's got the experience underwater. More than me, any --"

Jason's voice cut off dead in response to Gordon's left hand coming up in the universal signal for silence, as every light on Four went out and the engine note died. Scott caught himself just in time not to ask out loud what was going on. He'd seen enough submarine movies to guess.

The controls were just vaguely fluorescent, and Gordon was still manipulating them, so Scott guessed they were still moving slowly. Hopefully into a protected position behind the rocks. Personally he could see nothing, and despite the fact that he was allegedly checked out on this craft, he had absolutely no idea how Gordon knew what he was doing.

They drifted to a halt, and, his eyes never leaving the instruments, Gordon whispered, "Company."

Scott peered over his right shoulder, feeling able to get close enough to see properly now his brother wasn't trying to pilot, and Jason did the same on his other side.

"Where? Who?"

Gordon pointed to an amorphous splurge glowing slightly off-centre of his radar screen. "Three hundred yards. It's big."

"Spectra." There was real venom in Jason's murmur. "Is this sub armed?"

"Missiles and lasers."

"You're going to show me how to use them." There was a movement in the dark. "I'm armed. I suggest you do as I say."

Gordon stiffened. "Four's not designed for combat. They're intended for clearing debris. Take on a Spectran mecha and we're all dead."

"Did I ask for a discussion?"

"You're getting one." Scott badly wished for enough light to look the young man in the eye. "We're with you on not letting technology fall into the wrong hands. Now put the gun away and let's figure this out. Quietly, and together."

"It's circling," Gordon commented. "Not getting any closer, not right now."

"What's it doing that for?"

"At a guess, looking for the debris of what you shot down?" Scott suggested.

"Which isn't in these rocks. And it's way too big to fit in here, from that signature." That was Gordon. "Jason, please put the gun away. You don't need it, and if you fire it in here we're all dead anyway just from the ricochet."

"Cablegun," the other said dismissively, but there was the sound of a weapon being holstered, and Scott breathed more easily. "They're looking in the wrong place. That mecha we shot down was huge, way bigger than the Phoenix. It wouldn't fit in here either."

"If it was anywhere close I'd have picked it up when I was scanning for you first time round." Gordon moved, and the lights came up somewhat. "It's moving away. We're out of visual contact tight into the rocks like this, but keep the noise down."

Scott waited his moment, and caught the Condor's eye as he glanced round. "I'm not some Spectran goon to be pushed about, and nor is Gordon. Don't try that again."

"I do what has to be done."

"I know damn well you can wipe the floor with both of us. That won't get your ship back." He considered that this was the second-in-command of G-Force, and decided that Jason was eighteen first and foremost. "Force isn't always the answer, Jason."

"You sound like Mark." But the humour was back in his voice, and Scott relaxed properly again.

"Gordon? Can we move in?"

"They're still on radar. We'll give it more five minutes."

In the event, it was seven before the glowing smudge moved off the edge of the screen and Gordon fired up the motors again. As the headlights came up, Scott could see just how neatly his brother had parked them. Instruments only, in the dark, and they were a whole three feet from the rock face, grabs extended to hold them still. He hadn't even felt the grabs catch hold.

They'd been almost there all along, it seemed. Just round the rock spire they'd been hiding behind, and there was another one appearing out of the gloom, this one with the black rock of its face scarred with new damage. Gordon nodded to himself in satisfaction, tipped Four's nose down a few degrees, and Scott found himself looking right at the red cowling of a giant engine.

"Well, it's still there," Jason said casually, but his tone gave him away. A definite ragged edge of relief there. "God - did we really hit that thing?"

"You don't remember?" Gordon asked him.

"If I'd been conscious, I'd have made sure we didn't." The edge turned to annoyance, and Scott hastily stepped in.

"Okay, so far so good. Jason, which is the best way in for the remote?"

"One of the wing pods."

"I went in through the port one," Gordon told him. "It's a good spot to park, too." He eased the sub along, close to the hull of the much larger Phoenix, and Scott peered through the front window, doing a quick visual check for major damage. There didn't seem to be much - surprisingly little, given the piles of rubble on the ocean floor below. At least some of those rocks had to have struck the ship.

"Can you get any sort of remote telemetry?" he asked. "Damage report?"

"Only what Anderson sent." Jason shrugged awkwardly, leaning half across the console to try to get a good view himself. "Hackable telemetry is a very bad idea for us. Hackable anything. We don't even have an autopilot. Spectra hack into our comms often enough that we don't have anything which responds to external signals."

"Wow. Nothing?" Scott considered that statement. He'd always assumed the Phoenix was state-of-the-art, fly-by-wireless, automatic just about everything. Apparently quite the opposite. Well, that would explain how come she'd gone down like a brick with her crew unconscious. He'd been on enough rescues required because of the failure of automatic systems to appreciate why they'd done it - but still, that huge ship, entirely under manual control at all times? Wow.

"Targeting?" Gordon asked.

Jason grinned cheerfully at him. "Computer advises only. The shot is mine."

"You must be a good shot."

"Oh, I am."

There was arrogance and there was statement of fact, and that was, quite definitely, the second. Scott mentally filed it away with all those other pieces of information which just might come in handy one day and pulled his thoughts back to the matter at hand. First they had to get the remote in there and have Jason disable the missiles. Then they could start worrying about the tons of rock still lying on top of the Phoenix.

Four stopped, settling gently to the ground with barely a bump, and Gordon stretched and started to push himself uncomfortably from his seat. "I'll set up the remote --"

"I'll do it. You stay in that chair," Scott told him, and Jason caught Gordon by both shoulders and pushed him back down.

"This is my job!"

"And you can sit there and tell us how to do it right." Jason's tone was as uncompromising as Scott's would have been, and Gordon subsided with a token growl.

"The Frog's in the locker to your right, Scott."

He'd known that, but decided that saying so would be undiplomatic at this point, instead unclipping the door, pulling the awkward robot out and flipping the switch on its back. Gordon touched a control on his panel and the light next to the camera lens came on.

"So far, so good," Scott commented.

"Stand away from it."

He did so, Gordon manipulated some more controls, and the legs waved in a passable imitation of a swimming action.

"Now. Open the airlock door. Put Froggy facing out, pull out the end of the wire on his back, and check that the release on the end is moving freely. Jason, the inflatable's in the other locker."

Scott carried out his tasks, and turned round to find the Condor with an armful of ultralightweight rubberised cloth, carefully packed and strapped.

"We clip this on to the back of the robot, apparently. Do you know how it works?"

"Yes." Scott pulled a couple of feet of slack from the wire spool on the robot's back and carefully arranged everything on the floor so as to avoid tangles. Frog first, pointing out of the door. Then the inflatable, on top of the rear section, with the wire hooked into the joining point of the straps and then fully retracted to hold the ungainly parcel tight against the upper surface. It wouldn't do for it to get in the way of the swimming limbs.

The combination was seriously top-heavy, and Scott was forced to give up trying to get it to sit up neatly, and instead lay the whole lot down on its side. He stepped out of the way to show the resulting pile to Gordon. "Is this going to be a problem?"

"It'll be fine underwater. Come on out of there."

Jason, who had been watching silently from the doorway, shifted out of the way, and Scott retreated, closing the door behind him and swinging the handle all the way up. There was a brief sucking sound as the system tested its own seals, and then nothing. He turned round to make sure he didn't step on anyone, and wriggled his way back into the gap between Gordon's chair and the side of the console.

"Tight in here," he commented.

Gordon chuckled. "You should have seen it with six. Flooding the airlock now."

There was the whine of pumps starting up, and then the sloshing of water into the compartment behind them. Scott leaned back towards the door, squinting through the reinforced window, and confirmed to his own satisfaction that nothing was tangled or falling off as the robot righted itself in the deepening water.

"No need." Gordon pointed to the video feed, black and white, but showing a perfectly clear picture of the outer airlock door in the top half, water creeping up the lens and a blurrier, but still comprehensible, version of the same image below the waterline. "Only question is, will it work at this pressure?"

"You don't know?" Jason asked.

"It's new. No time to test it in the chamber." Gordon winced. "Since it's been occupied the past couple of days. We don't have anything else suitable for this depth. Keep your fingers crossed."

"No plan B, huh? Been there."

The image on the screen wavered, went momentarily out of focus, and then cleared again as Gordon bit off the tail end of a curse.

"It's failing, isn't it?" The edge was back in Jason's voice, and Scott looked in some alarm at the hand on the grip of his gun. "I'm going to have to do this manually."

"You can't." Scott cursed himself for having allowed Jason to come along on this mission at all, knowing full well that he'd had no choice, that G-Force would never, ever have given anyone else their missile codes. "Not even you. Not twice in three days."

"Gordon did it twice in ten minutes, and he's not even implanted. Don't try to stop me, Scott, or I will have to take you down."

"You don't have to --" he began, but Gordon cut in.

"Scott, I've seen this before, leave it to me. Jason, listen. I know you feel like you have to get out of here. It happens, sometimes. Happened to a friend of mine. They diagnosed him with mild claustrophobia and he had to leave WASP. You ever had any problems in that direction? Because if you have, that's what's talking. You need to be aware of it, before you make any big decisions."

Jason stared at him, eyes hard behind the visor, and then he nodded slowly, once, and his hand dropped to his side.

"You need us to abort?"

"No. I'm good."

"I need to be sure I'm not about to get shot in the back of the head."

The voice was hard. "I'm on G-Force because I can control myself. Is that machine going to work or not?"

"It's going to work." Gordon pressed a button, and the white surface on the screen swung slowly aside, replaced with blackness and the vague impression of rocks in the background. "Here we go."

The screen was small and the image indistinct, and two heads bent over it was more than enough. Scott left them to it, returning to his position sitting against the back wall.

"Three-two-one-seven."

"Extending the probe. Man, am I glad I left the panel retracted."

"I don't think you'd have shifted it with this."

"Me neither. One...seven. Done. Cool bike, by the way."

"Princess's. Car guy, myself."

"Where do you keep that, then?"

"In the nose."

"So, what's in the other wing?"

Normally Scott would have insisted on a little less chatter and a little more focus, but he suspected that this was entirely deliberate on Gordon's part. Given just how shaken Mark obviously was by whatever it was that had shot them down, he had no desire to have Jason freak out on him in here.

"How's it going?" he asked a couple of minutes later.

"At the cockpit door," Gordon told him. "Three-five-two-nine?"

"Nine-two."

"You have a different code on every door?"

Jason frowned. "Yes?"

"Tough to remember in an emergency."

"Not a problem for me. The others have never complained. They may do, now. We'll have to change the lot."

"You don't trust us not to sell your door codes to Spectra?"

"I don't trust you not to break under Spectran torture." Jason's jaw was set. "Maybe you're tough enough that you could take it. But what would you do if it was your father they were going to torture? Or Alan, or Tin-Tin?"

Gordon took an uncertain breath, but Jason didn't wait for an answer.

"People talk when that happens. They betray everything they believe in. Why do you think we're a team of orphans? There's nobody they can hold over us. We've been burnt before, and now we don't tell anyone anything they don't need to know."

Gordon was silent, but Scott understood. It wasn't something you faced in WASP. In the Air Force, it was something you lived with every time you went out over hostile territory.

"We're in," Jason said more normally. "Okay. Centre console. Don't bump it."

"I promise not to push the big red button," Gordon joked.

"That's not on my console," Jason responded seriously, then cleared his throat. "Okay. This I do need to do myself. Are you recording this footage?"

Gordon nodded. "But we can stop."

"Please do."

Gordon pressed some switches, then pushed himself up out of his chair and joined Scott at the back of the cabin, while Jason replaced him in the seat and, somewhat tentatively, began to manipulate the robot's remote controls.

"What's next?" Scott asked him.

"Rubble-clearing." Gordon waved a hand vaguely upward. "The information ISO gave us suggests the ship would take it, but I don't think we've got the flotation power for all the extra weight. If we can get rid of the big pile towards the tail end, that should be enough. Half-inflate the insert so it's all up the starboard side. Then I'm going to fasten a towline on the starboard side and try to pull it right up as steep as I can, tip the rest of the debris off the top, and then pull it straight up out of these rocks on its side. Once we're out, I'll inflate the insert fully, get it back level, and we'll make the best speed we can back to Tracy Island a hundred feet or so below the surface."

Scott hoped his eyes hadn't glazed too obviously, as he nodded encouragingly. "That sounds good. How long's the towing going to take?"

"A while. It's a good shape for towing, from what I've seen - but even so, it's a big ship. Four hours?"

Scott sighed, pushing down the nagging wish that he'd let Alan come after all. He'd not have turned a hair at the thought of a four hour trip in a plane. This, though, really wasn't his scene, and there was very little he could offer to do by way of help.

"All done here," Jason announced. "It's safe."

"I'm impressed your electronics work underwater," Gordon said, retaking his seat.

"Water, vacuum, methane..." Jason shrugged. "Sealed wiring and multiple redundancies. Fourth circuit worked. Hell of a job drying it all out, though."

"I believe Brains has some ideas for that," Scott told him. "Once we have her safely back. Gordon, carry on. Any more sign of our friend?"

"None. Shall I contact Virgil?"

"Do it. He's probably climbing the walls by now - has he not called us yet?"

"Couple of where-are-you pings. Nothing to give us away."

"Always assuming nobody noticed a great green plane circling around."

"It's real hard to scan the air from underwater," Jason commented. "Refractive indices are wrong."

"I'll take your word for it. That your job too?"

"Radar, yeah."

"I'd kill for a radar screen that size," Gordon said.

Scott raised his eyebrows. "How big?"

"Wall sized. Damned impressive." He continued to work at the console, and Scott continued to feel useless. "Insert is starting to inflate. Let's go shift some rocks."

He backed Four out of its protected niche under the end wingpod, and ascended while swinging round to face over the surface of the ship. A vast expanse of blue curved away from them, and he followed the surface over towards the other wing. This one had taken the brunt of the falling rocks; there were dents and scratches, but still surprisingly little major damage. The other wingpod, though, was entirely invisible beyond a vast heap of debris.

Jason gasped as the lights illuminated the full extent of the problem. "You can clear that?"

"No problem," Gordon said confidently. "Just watch this."

Scott didn't think it was going to be half that easy, and he strongly suspected Gordon didn't either. Most of the rocks were small diameter rubble, and grabs and missiles weren't the best tools to clear them. What he needed here was an underwater bulldozer of some kind. Or a lot of time and patience. And time and patience were what they had available.

Gordon didn't even sigh for half an hour or so, when the pile was somewhat reduced and the visibility worse than ever due to the debris he was stirring up. "Okay, so it's still no problem. Damn tedious, though."

Scott considered asking whether Gordon wanted him to take a turn, and decided that wasn't the right line to take. "Can I get some practice at that?"

"I guess so." But he clambered out of the chair far from reluctantly, making way for Scott to seat himself at the controls.

He wished he'd spent more time on the simulator recently. Four was the craft he was least familiar with, and yet the one he was most likely to have to pilot - underwater rescues often didn't have anywhere to set up Mission Control and, despite its size, Two hovered much better than his beloved One did. If Gordon was unavailable, the next name on Four's depth chart was his.

Check reactor function - green. Life support - functioning normally. Missiles - two used, rather ineffectually. The grab controls were still activated, flashing cheerful green lights at him, and he reached out uncertainly to them.

"Are you sure you remember how to do this?" Gordon asked him, hanging on the back of his chair.

"I'm good." He remembered how to do it, but remembering and doing were two separate things, and it was a long time since he'd practised this at all. Somewhat nervously, he settled his hands over the controls and had a trial attempt at manipulating them.

"That's fine," Gordon told him encouragingly. "Now extend. I recommend that pile there."

On the third attempt, he did manage to pick up some of it, swing round, and dump it over the leading edge of the wing.

There was ironic applause from behind him, and Scott swung round in exasperation. "You think you could do any better?"

"No. I think Gordon can."

"He has a point." Gordon prodded him in the shoulder. "You can practise on the simulator when we get home. Now, let me get this lot cleared."

Gordon was orders of magnitude faster than he was at this, Scott had to admit. He'd have got there eventually - but only after hours of mind-numbingly slow work. Gordon's first grabful was three times as large as his had been, in about a tenth the time, and with a sigh Scott returned to sitting alongside Jason. "Guess I'd best leave it to the expert after all."

"You won't notice me volunteering."

Scott considered asking him how he was feeling now, and decided against it. The nervousness was gone, the voice was relaxed, and he looked bored rather than anything else.

It was still another ten minutes before Gordon sighed with relief. "That should do it. Now, I need a strong point to loop a towline round - any suggestions, Jason?"

The young man stood up and flexed his back - like Scott, he was too tall to stand up properly in here. "Can you get it right round a wingpod?"

"They're not designed to come off under stress or anything?"

Jason laughed. "God, no. Princess and Keyop would have the designer's ears, one each. Though it would be useful, sometimes."

He said no more, but he didn't need to. Scott had seen the footage taken by UN planes on more than one occasion as they'd pulled out of a situation too much for them, leaving the Phoenix to go in alone to be frozen, blasted, melted, torn apart bodily...

"Got it!" Gordon exclaimed, and the sub rocked slightly as the line went taut. "Now, then. Let's start inflating."

Nothing seemed to happen for several minutes, and Scott was on the verge of asking if there was a problem when Gordon said, "That'll do," and the vibration changed. The engines were working a lot harder, now.

Jason was forward, squinting out into the blackness, and Scott took up his place on Gordon's other side. "What's happening?"

"Bag's inflated enough to get some lift, and I'm pulling up as hard as I dare on this wing. Watch that pile there."

He pointed down the hull to the remnants of the debris, and even as Scott watched it began to slide away, smaller stones, skittering off the hull altogether to vanish into the blackness. "Come on, old girl. You can do this."

"Old girl?" Scott asked.

"I guess she's a youngster compared to One." Gordon grinned, never taking his eyes off the instruments. "Nearly there..."

When the Phoenix shifted, it was all of a sudden and Four lurched violently as the towline went slack. Scott just barely caught himself from going over backwards, recovering himself with an envious glance at the Condor, who had barely swayed. Perfect balance. He missed it, still.

Gordon was playing the controls, master organist-style, and they were going up fast. Straight up, only feet from the side of the rock pillar, and Scott had to fight not to close his eyes, hoping that the aquanaut had everything under control. Gordon really was good at this. He didn't think he'd ever appreciated quite how good.

They'd climbed five hundred feet before their rate of ascent slowed and Gordon fished under the console for, of all things, a calculator, and started typing numbers and hissing under his breath. Scott contemplated asking if he could help and then decided against it. Gordon wasn't the world's greatest mathematician, but if he needed help, he'd ask for it.

"What are you doing?" Jason asked.

"Figuring out how much air to leave in the flotation device for neutral buoyancy." Gordon's lips continued to move, and then he swore and blanked the calculator before turning it on and fishing under the console again. "Damn. I need to write this down."

"Give me the numbers. I'll do it."

"You know the reduction method to use?"

Jason just grinned. "Gordon, I can compute a course half way across the galaxy. I figure I can handle a few buoyancy calculations."

Gordon nodded - people being better at sums than him was nothing new. "That's the profile of how inflated the bag was with time - and that's the strain on the cable. Oh, and that one's our rate of ascent."

"Bring it down to seventy-three percent of what it's at now."

Gordon handed him the calculator, and Jason shook his head. "Seventy-three percent."

"You're sure?"

"Yup."

"Wow. Scott, this guy would give you and John a run for your money."

"More than that." Scott remembered all too well what ISO had been looking for besides the jump-pilot he might have been. "You're an instantaneous calculator?"

"That's right."

"A what?" Gordon asked.

"He solves equations...fast. Computer-fast."

"Faster." Again, it was the matter-of-fact tone which kept it from being arrogance.

"I could use that. I'm not much of a mathematician." Gordon sighed, and went back to the controls. "Seventy-three per cent of what it's at now. Here goes."

Chapter 16

"They'll be home in four hours," Jeff reported, leaning back in his chair. "In the meantime, I suggest you all go and get some sleep."

Mark sighed with relief, stretched - and then swallowed an embarrassed laugh as he looked around. Alan had declined to stay up, commenting that he never knew when he'd be needed, and someone should be rested. Normally, Mark would have agreed with him. Now, though, it didn't matter how much G-Force were needed unless they could recover the Phoenix from the depths. All his team had insisted on staying up. And now, Keyop was curled up, fast asleep, on the rug, snoring softly. Tiny was barely not snoring, leaning back on the chair, and Princess had her head buried in his shoulder.

"I see your team knows when it's safe to relax," Jeff commented.

"Or they're too stubborn to admit when they're worn out." Mark bit his tongue at the end of the sentence. Way too familiar, Commander, these are strangers. But he was comfortable with this man in a way he was with very few people. Not many could understand the sort of pressure he was under as commander of G-Force. He had the distinct feeling that this man, the head of International Rescue, knew exactly what it was like. If on a slightly less galactic scale.

"It seems cruel to wake them up," Jeff offered.

"They'll happily sleep here." Mark yawned, knowing he was barely coherent, and too sleepy to care. "We've slept in much worse places. I'll join them. If you don't mind."

"Or you could go and sleep in a real bed for four hours. I think you deserve it."

The bed was pure heaven - bought for a family who were without exception inches taller than he was, with crisp white sheets and a blanket which in this temperature could only be there for show. There was a second bed in the room, which Jason had occupied last night, a bathroom, and a chest of drawers in the corner. The view was uninspiring: a vertical rock wall some ten feet beyond the glass, but it was dripping with tropical foliage. It was clearly a guest room. Tiny and Keyop had been assigned a similar one, and Princess a third to herself. Mark had the impression that there were several more, giving this house a number of bedrooms which went well into double figures. He'd known, intellectually, that people this rich existed. He'd just never dealt with them first-hand before.

And, for now, he didn't care. Mark kicked off his shoes, loosened his belt, and stretched full-length on the bed. Four hours uninterrupted sleep, in a bed made by someone else, and the Phoenix coming back here in one piece, more or less. Life wouldn't be good until he could think about flying again without going cold, but it was, at least, improving.

He woke, warm, comfortable, and fully rested, with the sunlight falling on his face. The comfortable feeling lasted for all of ten seconds. Jason should have been back hours ago! What had gone wrong? What more could possibly go wrong?

He was on the verge of leaving the room at near light-speed when something different caught his eye. The other bed had been impeccably made when he'd come in here at oh-stupid hundred hours this morning, despite Jason having left it a tousled mess the night before. It wasn't impeccable now. It was...occupied.

"Hnh?" was the response he got from the occupant. "Get lost, Mark. I'm asleep."

"And if I was a Spectran goon?"

"Then I'd have heard you come through the door, instead of get out of the bed." Jason rolled over and rubbed his eyes. "Gee, thanks. What's the matter - you think I only need two hours' sleep?"

"I think I want to know why I wasn't woken when you got back."

Jason yawned again. "Because after your little performance the other day Jeff wasn't prepared to wake you up physically, and you were so out of it shouting from the doorway didn't work? Or that's what he told me. I guess I could have woken you up when I came in, but what for?"

Mark groaned. "Great. So now I'm being babied by my friend's dad. Since he could have fetched Tiny or Princess to wake me if he was that worried."

"I guess so. There was no need, though, Mark." He grabbed his shoulder and peered in his eyes, so fast that Mark didn't have a chance to pull away. "And you're not right yet, are you?"

"No," Mark admitted. "Better, but no, not right. And that stays between you and me."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. Because I'm such a good candidate to throw you round the sky in a fast jet until whatever-it-is works its way out of your system."

He gulped before he could stop himself, and knew immediately that he'd failed some test. He'd have blown up had Jason's face worn anything but an expression of raw understanding.

"You're going up in a plane. It'll be hell. And two hours later you'll be yourself again."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. I don't know why the beam has that effect on you, Mark, but aversion therapy fixed it last time. It'll work again."

"You have no idea --"

Jason grimaced. "I only wish that was true. Now, come on. Since you've woken me up, let's go find some breakfast."

Mark deliberately relaxed his shoulders, one muscle at a time, before slipping his feet into his shoes and refastening his belt. "Breakfast. I guess you can give me your report at the same time, G-2."

Finally, his second grinned. "I can do that."

"You're saying you left the Phoenix on the seabed, covered her with a sheet and now she's invisible?" Mark stared across the table, coffee forgotten.

"From a distance, yes." Scott leant back in his chair, amusement on his face. "Real close up, she looks like a big plane under a sheet with sand on."

Mark stiffened. "Not much enjoying being made fun of, Scott."

"Not making fun of you. I don't normally get to talk about our tech -- Mark? You okay?"

He had been, right up to half way through the sentence, but suddenly he wasn't. The world went red and terrifying, and then black, and he couldn't identify the voices any more.

"Come on, Mark. Pull out of it."

"Should I get Brains?"

"What - he's a shrink too? Don't bother."

That was Jason, he realised foggily. The other one was Scott. Which meant that the world was back, and he had to face it all over again.

He was still in the chair, at least, not in a heap on the floor. That was something. Raising his head to look Scott in the eye was still one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do.

"You were saying?"

Scott glanced sideways at Jason. "I was about to ask you if you wanted a flight. Brains has been playing with the rudder profile on my jet, and I need to go test it out."

He could say no. But he was a pilot, dammit, and this was getting ridiculous. And if he had to do this to be himself again - and he knew he did - then getting back in the G-1 would be tempting fate. He'd survived forcing himself through it once. His chances of getting lucky a second time were slim to none.

He swallowed, hard, and looked from his second-in-command to the International Rescue man. There was definitely a shared understanding there. Six hours in a tiny sub did that for you, he guessed. "Jason tell you what happened last time?"

"He did." Scott's voice was deep and sympathetic. "He also told me that your father was the one who saved you. And that he isn't around any more. I'm sorry, Mark."

Coming from nowhere, that was too much. Mark dropped his head into his hands and fought with himself. He was not going to break down, not here, not now, not on top of every other humiliation he'd suffered recently.

"Come on. Let's get this over and done with." There was a hand under his elbow, and he let himself be helped to standing and out onto the deck.

Gordon was there, floating on his back on the surface of the pool, a little more colour in his face and less in the bruises than there had been the day before.

"Problem? Brains isn't ready to bring the Phoenix up just yet. High tide, remember?"

"I thought I'd take Mark for a spin."

"Rather him than me." Gordon grinned, making it obviously a joke. "Do you have someone on the radio?"

"Father's working at his desk. Come on, Mark. Let me show you what a Tracy Industries jet can do."

As the lift dropped into clear space, Mark glanced around in anticipation of seeing the giant green ship he'd watched take off the previous evening, but the cavern contained only completely ordinary craft. A corporate jet, a smaller propeller-driven model, and a pair of very similar two-seater fighter-type jets. Scott headed for one of these, hesitating at the wingtip.

"Which seat do you want?"

The nice comfy one back by the pool. Mark shrugged. "I'm easy."

"But your plane's a single-seater, right, so you're used to a clear view? Look, kid, you are so far from being yourself it's not true. The Mark I know wouldn't even hesitate. Now I've heard what happened last time, and I'm right here. Get yourself in that pilot's seat. I was a flight instructor for over a year. You wouldn't be the first to keel over in the front seat. Now, you've not flown this model before? And I guess you'll not be needing to borrow a flight suit..."

He could definitely see Scott as a flight instructor, Mark decided as the other finally professed himself satisfied. Not quite fussy, but absolutely not leaving anything to chance. Not even if it was the commander of G-Force in the other seat. And even then, Scott commented on the short runway, and adverse wind direction, and Mark took the hint.

"You take her up." He could put off the inevitable for another few minutes, at least.

The engines firing up didn't worry him, despite a thunderous roar and degree of vibration which told of a serious amount of power back there. Nor, slightly to his surprise, did the launch, a power takeoff he'd not have been ashamed of. He was just starting to wonder quite how high Scott was planning to go when the thrust reduced and the plane levelled off.

"You still okay?" Scott's voice said in his helmet. "I thought it was flying that triggered the problem?"

Mark forced himself to consider taking the controls - and felt himself stiffen, the red haze just floating at the edges of his vision. "Piloting."

"Well, in that case - you take her now."

"Are you sure?"

"Do whatever it takes to kick yourself back to normal. If that includes passing out, I'm more than competent to take over."

Mark swallowed hard, nodded, and reached for the controls. If anything, this was even worse than the time before. Then, he'd been shaky and frantically unhappy - but totally oblivious to the possibility of what had actually happened. Now, he knew full well that the best thing he could do was to reduce himself to a state of complete terror. He only hoped that this time he could fight his way through it.

He moved the stick experimentally, feeling the plane respond to him. This plane certainly had a lot of engine. He could feel the raw power, sense the speed - and though he really, really didn't want to do this, he knew he had no choice.

"Scott? You ready?"

"I'm ready. Keep it basic to start with."

Mark managed a grin. "Boring. I'll be nice - a few barrel rolls, maybe a couple of loops..." As he spoke, he was easing back on the controls, sliding away and pulling into one of ISO's standard test flight profiles, one they used to determine a pilot's basic aerobatic skills. Most people ended up with a profile which looked like a child's jagged attempt at handwriting. Even in an unfamiliar plane, Mark was sure he could do better than that.

He wasn't himself at all. Jason had said it, Scott had said it, and they were both correct. This should have been heaven, second nature, total relaxation. Instead it was taking all his concentration to coordinate, his hands were starting to stiffen on the controls, and every loop was more effort to get right than the one before.

One moment he was halfway through a smooth roll, this one counterclockwise, just starting to pull out and set up for the next move, and the next the world was red, he couldn't remember whether to pull or push on the stick, gravity was impossible, he couldn't see, didn't know which way up he was, the roll was turning into a flat spin, and it was all just like before. Hopeless, useless, no way out of it...

Chapter 17

If only all nineteen-year-olds could fly like this. Sitting in the back seat, Scott was painfully reminded of his months spent training rookie pilots, some no older than Mark, most quite convinced they were God's gift to the air. He'd have given good money to be able to put some of them in this plane right now, to force them to realise just what could be done by someone their age. Easy, precise, effortless, not a wasted movement.

And then, out of the blue, it stopped. From nowhere, the control was gone. Not a sound. No response to his yell of "Mark!" and complete oblivion to the fact that the plane was slewing sideways while spinning in all three dimensions. Scott snapped to full alertness, controlling one component of the spin, then another, taking his time rather than pile the gs on with what he suspected was an unconscious pilot. It wasn't hard, though he suspected that anyone watching would have their heart in their mouth, and he pulled back to level flight with a couple of thousand feet to spare.

"Mark, are you with me?"

Still nothing, and Scott went to the radio.

"Control, I'm coming in now."

"Did it work?" That was Jason's voice, concern in every syllable, and distant, as though he was leaning over someone's shoulder.

"He's out cold. Are we counting that as working?"

"Yes."

"I'll have Brains meet you on the runway," his father said. "You're cleared to land."

"FAB."

Mark still hadn't roused as he touched down and rolled to a halt, and it was with some concern that he popped both canopies and vaulted out of his seat onto the wing, leaning forward to see into the front seat. Mark was slumped against the straps, eyes closed, but his face a better colour than it had been since they'd first extracted him from Four.

He could see Brains running across the tarmac towards the plane, but Jason was closer and leapt up onto the wing beside him without even breaking stride.

"Mark? Nap time's over."

"Should we leave him for Brains?" Scott asked.

"No." The young man was reaching into the cockpit, a quick twist to remove Mark's helmet, and then a sharp backhand to his cheek. "Wake up, Mark. Unless you want me making the decisions round here."

There was a groan, an incomprehensible murmur, and then the blue eyes popped open, looked around sufficiently to realise where he was and who was watching, and closed again as he flushed scarlet.

"Dammit, I really thought I could fight it this time. Didn't even see it coming. Thanks, Scott. I owe you. Twice, now."

"Once. The airshow, remember?"

Mark grinned. "I guess so. Still think I need basic combat lessons?"

"I was hoping you'd forgotten that." Scott put out a hand, which Mark refused - and then grabbed for as he swayed, halfway out of his seat.

"You should, um, take it easy," Brains panted from alongside the wingtip. "Until you feel better."

"I do feel better." The glint was back in his eyes, and he jumped neatly out of the seat onto the wing on his second attempt, and then down to the ground. "A whole lot better. Now, G-2, where's our ship?"

"Waiting for high tide," Jason told him, leaping effortlessly down to join him. "We're going to beach it and then let the water run out as the tide goes down. Less stress than trying to surface any other way, Keyop says. And in the meantime, you can fill me in. What airshow? And what basic combat lessons?"

Mark laughed, and it was the old Mark back again, the laid-back kid who nobody could quite believe had managed to land the job of lead ISO test-pilot. Who nobody had, as far as Scott was aware, ever even considered as a possibility for the commander of G-Force. "Remember Captain Doom? Scott didn't approve of me going up against him in that prototype they had me flying."

"What, like the overwhelming approval we gave you?"

Scott climbed down from the wing a little more circumspectly, to be met with a concerned look from Brains.

"Scott, I think, um, maybe he should be sitting down for a while? He was unconscious for several minutes."

Scott considered the two young men, heading towards the steps in animated conversation. "You think so? I think we just got the Eagle back. Now, how long until we can give him a warship to command?"

Chapter 18

Mark had almost forgotten what it was like to feel normal. For that cold knot of uncertainty to be gone for good. No more paranoia eating away at his soul, telling him that everyone was undermining him. Just...him. No Phoenix, not until high tide in another four hours and then for a while after that while she drained, but apart from that, life was good again. A paradise island, and a group of people who knew who and what he was but still treated him like a human being. And one of them in particular had a plane which he'd wondered about any number of times, and which had to be right here, somewhere.

"Scott?"

The other man looked up - he was sitting a little way back from the pool, glaring at something which had that unmistakeable 'technical document' look to it. "Problem?"

"No. Favour."

The eyebrows went up, and Mark could practically see the other people sitting round the pool projecting 'no, we're not listening, really we're not.' Tiny, Gordon and Alan, at least. Keyop wasn't that subtle, and was listening avidly.

"Well, exchange of favours. Show me that unphotographable plane of yours, and I'll show you the G-1, once we've dried her out."

The document went down with alacrity, and Scott jumped to his feet. "You know? I think you may be recovered."

"Is that a yes?"

"Hell, yeah."

He hadn't expected Scott to lead him inside, to the living room. Much less for him to walk casually over to a blank section of wall, say "Watch closely, then follow me," grab a pair of light fittings, and then pull some sort of revolving door trick.

Mark stared. Then looked back at the piano, where Virgil was playing with what even he recognised as consummate skill and Princess was standing behind him listening appreciatively. She shrugged at his querying expression. Virgil just smiled slightly, before breaking into something he recognised but could never have put a name to.

Then follow. Mark raised his eyebrows at the two at the piano and moved toward the wall, eyeing it suspiciously. It looked just like any other section - no marks, not even any visible cracks where he'd seen it split away from the rest. And the light fittings appeared normal, too. He was quite sure that they'd been working just like any other lamp last night. Now Scott had stood between them, his hands up like - this. Well, something like that. Scott's hands had been shoulder-height. Mark's were almost over his head. He'd taken hold of the fittings, and...presumably, had pressed the almost imperceptibly raised section of metal under the first finger of each hand.

The wall spun behind him, carrying him round with it, and he found himself face to face with Scott, in a semi-lit rock cavern. They were high up, on a gantry, and at the end of it, the nose of something silver and red.

"That's not a plane!"

"She's a rocket hybrid." Scott's voice held a vast reserve of pride. "I wish I could offer you a spin - but given the Spectran interest in the area, Father's given strict instructions that we're only to launch in an emergency."

"He has a point." Mark continued to stare at the bizarre vehicle facing him. "Vertical launch? Swing-wing? And where's the landing gear?"

"Landing struts. Almost never a runway available in the field, but standing on her tail's not stable enough to risk in general. This baby does VTOL in two different orientations. I'm surprised - you use standard landing gear?"

"We have it." Mark grinned. "I don't stand the G-1 on its tail to launch, though. Just standard VTOL. Speaking of which - how the hell do you get her out of here?"

Scott simply pointed down, and Mark followed the line of his finger. Below a mass of engines, giant tracks dropped steeply down and out of sight into the dark.

"You're kidding me. You move the whole lot to outside, vertical?"

"Not exactly outside. Remember that pool on the deck?"

Mark nodded, frowning.

"It slides out of the way and I launch through the hole."

"You're kidding me. A sliding swimming pool? Why? Wouldn't it have been easier to slide the deck?"

"Yes, but the joins would have shown, and someone sometime would have figured it out. Anyway, Brains saw it as a challenge. Gordon would have liked a bigger pool, but that was the largest one we could move without it flexing." He gestured towards the open hatch to the plane. "Shall we stand here and talk civil engineering, or do you want to see inside?"

That was no question at all, and Mark rapidly found himself inside possibly the most bizarre cockpit he'd ever seen. A tilting pilot seat? No windows at all - he was used to that in the Phoenix, but in a craft this size? And the limits on the airspeed indicator made his eyes boggle.

"Mach Twenty?"

"Not quite Mars in two minutes, but it's all I've got."

"All?" Mark stared at him. "Mach Twenty in atmosphere? Damn, I'd like to try that. Is that why you've no windows?"

"Mostly." Scott appeared distracted, unhappy even, and Mark considered the rights and wrongs of it for some seconds before deciding that if Scott could comment on what a mess he'd been, the converse was probably true. Within limits.

"Is there something you're not telling me? Because...hell, Scott, I know you'd want to get your hands on the fastest thing in the air. I just hadn't seen you as, well, bitter that there's one out there that's faster."

The older man sighed. "Bitter. Yeah, I guess I am, some. And since I'm pretty sure your second's figured it out, or will just as soon as he gets his hands on the old ISO records, I should tell you before he does. What do you know about the early days of ISO USA's space program?"

Mark frowned. "Before we knew about Spectra? Very little. My background's ISO Russia. I only came to the US when I was sixteen. G-Force already existed."

"Before they were selected, they cherry-picked a bunch of military personnel and head-hunted them. Gave them a bunch of the weirdest tests you ever saw. Offered those who passed one of their shiny new cerebonic implants and a place in space exploration history. Not just the Moon, Mars, the stations, things NASA could do. Interstellar flight. And...it was perfect. I'd always wanted to be an astronaut, like my father before me, only I didn't just want to carry on the things he'd done, I wanted to be a pioneer like he had been, take it to the next stage. And David Anderson, my father's old college friend, offered me the chance."

Mark gasped in raw disbelief. "You worked for ISO? You're implanted?"

"I was, for four whole months. And then one morning I woke up with what I thought was the flu, just about made it to Medical, and passed out before I could even tell the doc what was wrong. When I woke up three days later the implant was gone. I'd rejected it, and they had to take it out in a hurry. Same for all the rest of us, one by one, over the next couple of weeks. We weren't any use to Anderson any more. ISO cancelled our contracts and sent us back to our old posts."

Mark thought desperately. Whatever did you say to the man who'd wanted the job you had now, who'd thought, for however short a time, that it was his? Who'd known what it was like to have pin-sharp vision, crystal-clear hearing, reflexes beyond human - and had then had them taken away?

"I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"It gets worse." Mark wasn't even sure the other was talking to him any more. "I made the biggest mistake of my life and applied direct to NASA - I mean, my test scores for ISO were so damn good, how could they fail to see my brilliance, right? Not to mention John streaking through the mission specialist training in record time, looking like he'd beat me to astronaut after all. They rejected me out of hand - didn't like the medical implications of recent neurosurgery. So I went back to my original plan, applied to the test pilots. A couple of the high-ups there took seriously against the way I'd tried to bypass them and go straight into NASA. Game over, as far as my career as an astronaut was concerned. I spent two years sidelined as a flight instructor trying to get back into an active posting, and gave up."

Mark considered trying to say something about how important International Rescue was, about how maybe it had been meant to be that way, about how he was sure Scott would have been one hell of a good astronaut - come to that, one hell of a good member of G-Force. All that came out was, "Crap."

Scott looked sideways at him. "Yeah."

"And you even talk to me?"

"Not your fault." Scott visibly pulled himself together. "Now, I'd be grateful if you'd forget this whole conversation. I figure we have half an hour before we have to go beach your ship."

"Consider it forgotten. Just - if you still want to see the G-1, ask."

Scott grinned. "Oh, yes, I want to see her. I tested the prototype, after all. Which puts me one up on you - because I can guarantee you've never flown anything like this."

Coming out of the dark, cool cavern was like entering a different world. Brilliant sunshine and blue sky, with white sand and palm trees like some exotic holiday brochure. The beach was a hive of activity, giant cables snaking down from the rocks at the top to disappear into the water. Mark was no expert, but it certainly looked to be still some way off high tide, with a fair amount of hard, flat sand visible between the water's edge and the white powder at the top of the beach.

"How's it going?" he asked the nearest person, who happened to be Keyop.

"We should be floating her any t...t...time now!" There was exuberance in every line of his body, and Mark smiled in response and patted his young engineer on the back.

"And about time. What can I do?"

Keyop grinned. "Just watch!"

"Which is about all Keyop's doing," Princess said from behind him. "International Rescue have it all well under control. And I, for one, am enjoying having someone else do the dirty work for a change."

Ten feet away, Scott and Virgil were having a deeply technical conversation based around the slope of the beach, the breaking strain of their cables, and what Tiny had told them about the Phoenix's drag coefficient when on the surface of the water. Mark listened for ten seconds, decided that he had nothing to add, and sat down on the sand.

"Let's leave it to the experts. Where's Jason, by the way? And Tiny?"

"With Gordon in TB4," Princess told him. "They're going to float her to just below the surface, fasten these big cables, then pull her up as far as they dare. We open everything up, and as the tide goes out the water drains away slowly."

"And twelve hours later she fills up again when the tide comes back in?"

"No, because Brains has some super-dessicant gas which we can pump in, suck out, and we should be ready to go. Assuming we didn't trash her too badly."

Mark raised his eyebrows. "Big assumption."

"Jason says she looked okay from what he saw. Okay in the get us home sense, anyway."

"Let's hope he's right." Mark cast another nervous glance up the beach. Brains had now joined the other two, and the conversation had hit the stage where he'd dearly have loved to be able to prod Jason for an explanation. Still, he'd said it himself, it was time to leave things to the experts. Just until the Phoenix was out of the water. Then G-Force could go back to being the experts, and life would be back to normal.

"Gordon?" Scott said, and that jerked Mark back to full awareness. "Status report?"

He might have said he'd leave it to them. That didn't mean he couldn't listen in, surely? Mark got to his feet and went to Scott's side as hastily as he felt he could without it being obvious.

"...fastened," he heard as he approached. "Coming up slowly now. Can you see anything yet?"

"How far out?" Mark asked quietly, forcing his vision to focus out there on the waves, trying to ignore the reflected light and just pick out red and blue.

"Two hundred yards," Scott told him.

That was enough information for him to line up down the cables, concentrate, and, yes, that was definitely a set of red noseplates, with a hint of blue behind it, and seconds later for he caught a glimpse of the tip of the G-1's tailfin in the troughs of the swell.

"I see her."

"Visual, Gordon," Scott said into his communicator. Mark just continued to stare out to sea, letting the tension drain away as his ship reappeared inch by inch from the waves. From here they could get her back. If all else failed, they could fly in a team of engineers and have them do field repairs here. He hoped that wouldn't be necessary. The Phoenix was designed to stay airworthy even after a startling amount of damage - and what had sunk her this time wasn't anything the Spectran mecha had done, it was that they'd been in a vertical dive when the photonic beam had rendered them unconscious.

Tailfin, then the two diagonal fins, then, very slowly, the top level of the hull, shedding water like some giant whale raising up out of the sea. Dimly, Mark heard Scott give the order to start winching her in, and with a creak and a groan, the cables started to move, lifting off the sand and tightening inch by inch until they drew a dead straight line from the winch to the nose of the Phoenix, vibrating with strain as the grains of sand pinged off in all directions.

"What's the breaking strain on those?" he asked nervously.

"They're designed so we can winch Two in, should Virgil ever have to ditch her," Scott told him, his eyes never leaving the winch machinery. "Of course, we weren't planning on Two being full of water at the time. Brains?"

"The additional cooling system I fitted to the winch appears to be, uh, working acceptably, Scott."

"Can we speed it up?"

Brains squinted out to sea, one hand up to shade his glasses. "I don't recommend it. When the Phoenix is floating, ah, a little higher, perhaps."

"Gordon? How's your flotation device doing? Can you give us any more?"

"I don't want to stress the hull. It could split apart if I overinflate without giving the water time to escape."

"Your call." Scott glanced back down the cables. "She's moving. Let's not rush things, not when we're so close."

Ten painful minutes of waiting and watching, trying to calibrate what he could see of the hull and decide whether there was another inch visible yet, and Mark decided that this aspect of the rescue business was most definitely not for him. Scott and Brains, at the winch, were entirely relaxed. Casual wasn't the right term - they were entirely professional, obviously aware of exactly what was going on and ready to spring into action at any time. But they were treating this as entirely normal, rather than so slow he wanted to scream. He'd stick to blowing things up.

"Patrolling more exciting than this," Keyop muttered.

Princess laughed. "Can I have that in writing?"

"We'll be a couple of hours yet," Scott told them. "No need to sit and watch if you don't want to."

At that, of course, Keyop flopped down on the sand and stared rigidly out to the Phoenix, as if he'd never complained in the first place. Princess smiled at Mark over the top of his head, and he returned it. He wasn't going anywhere either, regardless of whether there was anything he could actually do to help. And this was one great beach, when it came down to it. All it needed now was a motorboat and a set of waterskis. Failing that, he lay down, wriggled to a comfortable position in the dry powder, and let himself relax, the sun hot on his closed eyelids. The sound of the waves lapping on the beach was calming, and he'd hear if anything happened. Half an hour's rest right now, after all that had happened in the last few days, was just what he needed. Scott one of the early implantees? Well, he'd never seen that coming.

Chapter 19

"Mark, wake up."

That was Keyop's voice, and his body clock confirmed that he'd been asleep. For a while, too. Mark sat up hurriedly and glanced around. The note of the winch hadn't changed, or he was sure he'd have woken instantly, but now there was a whole lot more cable on the man-high reels it was driving.

At the other end of the cables, looking to be floating at almost the right level and nose only twenty yards or so from the water's edge, was their Phoenix. Wings out of the water now, pods with their bottom sections still submerged. The air intakes were open - of course, they'd never been shut - and water was running freely out of them. As it was from a large number of visible cracks on the hull. The beads of water and trickles running down just about everywhere else suggested there were even more of the hairline variety.

"Glad to see her back?" Tiny asked him, and Mark just nodded wordlessly. They'd dodged a huge bullet here.

"We think the water level's still high inside the cockpit - Brains is recommending we don't try to open the doors yet. A sudden flood out could do more damage."

"What about the bubble?"

"Jason thinks we should go in that way. Keyop's worried about the lift motor. Hence you getting woken up."

"You should have woken me earlier."

"You were awake for ages last night after the rest of us crashed out." Tiny was unapologetic. "There was nothing to be done. Now, there is."

Mark stretched and yawned, looking around for someone from IR. It seemed implausible that they'd leave the winch unmanned - and they hadn't, Virgil wandering out from behind the cabledrum as he watched.

"Is she beached yet?" he asked, pitching his voice to carry the few yards to the International Rescue man.

"Not yet. High tide in twenty minutes, so it's pretty much as far in as it gets. Brains will be back in a moment, and we're going to crank the winch up to full speed then and see if we can run her up the beach a bit. Any chance you can get the landing gear down?"

Mark looked at Tiny, who shrugged. "It's hydraulic - it should still work wet. I'll need to get into the cockpit, though."

"Go see if you can make the bubble lift drop down. Keyop, I appreciate your concern. If it burns out, it burns out. What else can we do to help, Virgil?"

"Can you take any of the weight off?"

"Yes!" Keyop exclaimed, and Mark frowned.

"How, Keyop?"

"Swim in under pod, launch the G-4."

Virgil shook his head. "Not very safe."

"Safe?" Keyop exclaimed. "Don't need safe."

"Do it," Mark told him.

"Uh...Mark, there's a hell of an undertow," Virgil told him. "And those doors are still three feet underwater."

And you're looking at Keyop and seeing an average sized twelve year old. Mark just said, "Keyop wouldn't be on G-Force if he couldn't do his job."

He watched as the young man stripped to a pair of swimming shorts he must have borrowed from someone - presumably something long-since outgrown, given that even the shortest of the Tracy brothers was nearer Jason's height than his own - sprinted down the beach and into the shallow water, then dived gracefully into a wave and kept swimming out. He could feel Virgil's tension even from this distance, and deliberately half-turned to Princess. "So where's Jason?"

"On the far wing, checking out the damage. Alan's with him. I asked if he wanted any more help, but he said no. From the conversation as they went down there, I think he was planning to pick Alan's brain on Grand Prix racing."

"If his question's 'how do you manage to do both?' he's going to be seriously disappointed," Virgil said. "Aside from an invitation back to Parola Sands because he was the defending champion, Alan's not been near a Grand Prix race since IR started up. It's not like NASCAR, where you get people driving the odd race here and there. Are you sure that kid's okay?"

"I'd lay money he's a stronger swimmer than any of you," Mark told him, and felt rather than saw Princess twitch in reaction. "No?"

"Maybe not Gordon," she said with a disarming smile.

"Maybe not me either." Virgil's tone remained light, but the annoyance behind it was clear, and Mark sighed inwardly. The last thing he wanted was to get into any sort of 'we're better', 'you're too young' slanging match at this point. They'd survived three days without it, just a few hours more wasn't too much to ask. Was it? Maybe he should have kept quiet about Keyop - but the kid deserved to be treated based on his abilities, not his age. And especially not on the age he looked.

"Apples and oranges, Virg," Scott said easily, coming up from the direction of the house. "They have an unfair advantage."

Virgil took that at face value, suggesting to Mark that he too knew at least vaguely what a cerebonic implant was, and Scott inspected the winch before turning deliberately to Mark.

"Okay, Commander, we're ready to haul her up when you are."

Mark indicated the ship. "I've got three people out there just now. Give me a minute." He went to the bracelet. "G-2, status report?"

"Swiss cheese. But it'll hold until we can get home, provided we take it steady."

"Good. Get back here, both of you. G-5?"

"Three feet of water in the cockpit. One moment...there! Landing gear down. I wouldn't like to lay money on whether the brakes have seized on, though."

"You come back here too. G-4?"

Silence.

"G-4, respond please."

The concern flooded back onto Virgil's face, but Mark knew his youngest team member better than that - and besides, he could see the disturbance in the water under the starboard wingpod. A decidedly orange-tinged disturbance.

"Not in the air, G-4," he warned.

"Aww..." Keyop grumbled, but the G-4 trundled up onto the beach on its treads like a giant turtle, and then turned and headed away until it was well out of range of any disastrous interaction with the Phoenix's wingspan. It turned back to face the way it had come and stopped, before disgorging a cheerfully waving red and yellow figure from its front hatch.

"That is..." Virgil stopped, and then tried again. "You said that flies?"

"Flies, floats, runs on land, underwater. Keyop's our jack of all trades."

"So how --"

"Later, Virgil," Scott laughed, and Mark remembered hearing that Virgil was an engineer by profession. "We're right on high tide. Brains? Are you ready?"

"G-Force, clear the Phoenix," he said into his own bracelet."

"On my way." That was Jason, and almost immediately he saw Tiny, now in birdstyle, appear in the retracted bubble and jump down into the edge of the water. His team had decided it was time for uniform, it seemed. He couldn't blame them. Keyop, especially.

As Tiny, Jason and Alan walked up the beach, another group emerged from the house and came down the steps towards them. By Mark's reckoning, that made it everyone on the island standing out here watching. He mentally crossed his fingers that there would be a success for them to watch, and strolled down the beach to meet his team-mates.

"What does she look like?"

"Wet," Jason said succinctly.

"Will she fly?"

"Landing gear went down first time," Tiny said. "So I'd hope so."

"Took me four tries to find a circuit to disarm the missiles."

"So, fingers crossed." Mark glanced back at the ship - he couldn't believe how much of a relief it was to have her there, even though she was still lower in the water than she should have been. "Drying her out should help."

"I didn't go back up in the lift," Tiny said. "I jumped up, and left the bubble open. So she's open to the sun at the moment. That should help, with the bits that aren't underwater."

"What's she like inside?"

"Three feet of water, still dropping when I left. All the consoles are clear of it."

"And the hull damage, Jason?"

"The frame's fine, as far as I can tell. The skin's so full of cracks they'll be replacing it."

"We can live with that," Mark said. We'll have to.

"Everyone's clear," Gordon reported, having counted heads to ensure that nobody was within range of a breaking cable.

"FAB." Scott nodded to Virgil, who fiddled with the winch's control panel. The note rose, and the cable began, ever so slowly, to reel in again.

Gordon mentally crossed his fingers - he'd been privy to a concerned conversation between Virgil and Brains about the sheer mass of the ship they were trying to pull onto the beach. The Phoenix might appear superficially less bulky than TB2, but a whole lot of Two's volume was cargo space. As far as ISO had been prepared to tell them - and they'd been less than communicative - almost all of the Phoenix was one set of engine or another. And engines were heavy. Not to mention that it was carrying a full fuel load, and their suggestion that they should pump some of the fuel off had been met with the sort of negativity which said that it would be a really bad idea for all sorts of reasons. Gordon didn't know what powered that ship, but he was pretty sure it must be volatile in the extreme.

"Are you sure those cables are up to this?" Tiny asked him.

Gordon forced a smile. "We're sure."

The pitch of the winch continued to rise, as the reel speeded up visibly. There was silence now, every pair of eyes fixed on the giant ship which was ever so slowly starting to lift out of the water and head towards the beach.

"What if they break?" Keyop asked from his other side.

Don't these people trust anyone else to be competent? Gordon dropped his shoulders and smiled reassuringly, just as he had to hundreds of kids on rescues. "Then we fix them and try again. But they won't break."

He wished he felt as confident as his words were intended to convey. Truth was, there was a lot of tension there. The winch note was uncomfortably high, telling of a motor working far too hard, and the vibration in the cables told him that they were beyond their design parameters. That ship must be seriously heavy.

It was moving, though. The nose had started to rise further out of the water, water sluicing from the hull as the nosewheel began to emerge. A quick word from Scott, and the winch note rose to an uncomfortable level. The Phoenix inched forward, up the beach onto dry land, inch by inch, foot by foot - and abruptly there was an unpleasant grinding sound and the winch stopped, just a puff of oily smoke rising from the vents.

"That'll have to do," Scott said unnecessarily. "Can you lock the brakes?"

Tiny nodded, and sprinted for the nearest wing. One leap onto it, another to the top, and then down into the ship. Gordon just stared. For a big man, he was astonishingly quick. And those vertical jumps - how far? Fifteen feet? Twenty? G-Force might look human, sound it, behave like it - even throw up like it - but there had to be more to them than that.

"Left brake's locked on," Jason commented, pointing down the beach. It was true - the nosewheel and the right hand set of wheels had left treadmarks in the sand, and were white all round the tyre. The left hand set had left a ploughed trench, and the top of the rubber was still black and wet.

"Rusted on?" Gordon asked. "But she's designed to submerge, isn't she?"

"She is, but not with the landing gear down. We've got significant damage, though, and every compartment flooded." Mark spoke into his bracelet. "G-5, report?"

"Eighteen inches of water in here now. I'm going to open the underneath hatch, if it'll respond."

"Do that."

Twenty seconds, and then a crack opened in the base of the ship's hull, and as a panel started to drop down there was a mighty outrushing of water.

"I guess it's working," Tiny's voice said on Mark's bracelet. "Level's dropping fast in here now."

"It's open." Mark gestured to the remainder of his team. "Come on, guys. We need to get her dry."

"I, ah, think I can help with that." It was Brains, standing alongside the winch with a gas cylinder almost as tall as he was on a trolley. "This is a dessicant, uh, gas. If you can drain the, uh, standing water and close the top hatches, ten minutes with this should bring the moisture content down to the ambient level."

That was the point where those not used to the scientist generally took a pause to figure out what Brains had actually said. Mark did no such thing, just nodding.

"Thanks. Give us five minutes to open everything up, then we'll take it in through the bottom hatch."

"I would, ah, very much like to see inside," Brains said.

Mark started to shake his head, but Jason caught his arm. "Gordon's been inside already. Scott's seen it on the monitor. No technical questions - but I figure we owe them at least a glance at what they've saved."

Gordon tried not to look over-eager - but he really did want a proper look at that radar screen - and, more importantly, he wanted Brains to take a look at it and get inspired. Something like that would be just fantastic for locating whatever he was looking for on the sea bed. Not that large, of course, or there would be no space left in Four for him, but bigger than the eight inch variety which was all he had at present. Flat against a side wall like theirs was would work just fine. There was no reason it had to be part of the console, which he suspected was the presumption Brains was working from.

He sat back and relaxed, while the G-Forcers strode down the beach and disappeared inside their ship. They were all obviously fine now. He still felt like he'd been beaten with a stick while running a marathon, and he was more than a little jealous. At least, until he considered that they were about to go back into the air in a plane so full of holes the water had been oozing from every panel. Scott might think he took too many risks - but, for him, every risk was calculated. Underwater, it was almost always a question of whether he thought he could do what was required. He simply didn't need to factor in hostile third parties. Didn't want to, either. No, G-Force could keep their superpowers, their amazing recovery speed, and their all-purpose plane-cum-spacecraft-cum-submarine. He was happy doing what he did.

Chapter 20

Once through the hatch, Mark followed Tiny's example and transmuted. Hospitality and help was all very well, but it was past time his team got back to self-sufficiency. He'd take IR's offer of their dessicant because it would be stupid not to, but after that they'd go it alone. He hoped to be out of here inside two hours. Parked here, on the beach, they were a sitting target.

He didn't need to tell them what to do. Jason had headed towards the front of the Phoenix, opening doors as he went, and Princess and Keyop down different routes to the back. Every open door added another sluice of water down the passage, though those towards the back were, of course, heading away from the open hatch.

"Cargo hold, G-4," he said.

Keyop waved cheerfully as he disappeared round the corner, and Mark headed up the steps to the cockpit level. There was a steady trickle of water down them, but the main volume must be out already.

"Hey, Commander," Tiny said as he walked onto the flight deck. "I've opened everything on this level. It's drained about as far as it's going to get." He indicated the back corner, still with several inches of water under Jason's console at the low point of the room. "Is a dessicant going to get rid of that much liquid?"

"I'd suspect not."

"Shall I call --"

"No." There must have been an edge in Mark's voice, because Tiny jumped visibly, his jaw dropping in surprise. "We have the technology to get rid of this much water ourselves, don't we?"

"Yes, but --"

"We won't have International Rescue on Riga, or Arcturus."

Tiny nodded resignedly. "I'll get the hoses out."

Five minutes later and they had their own small bore yellow hose snaking from the back of the cockpit, out of the door, down the steps and out of the hatch, their own emergency pump running, the lake was rapidly turning into a puddle, and Mark's mood was much improved. The cargo hatch was at the low point of the ship and water was trickling from all four sides of it, though the constant flow had slowed to a steady drip. Princess had opened both wingpod hatches, and Keyop had examined the engines and pronounced himself satisfied that the beach was sufficiently steeply angled for them to have drained out through the exhaust, and that from a mechanical point of view they were water-free enough to be fired.

One last place remained to be checked. The G-1's bay still had a foot of water in the back of it, and rather than risk the electronics, Mark extracted the windlass from its emergency locker next to the bay doors, inserted it into the socket, and started to turn. He didn't need to open the doors, just to break the seal. Three and a half turns and he felt the change of resistance, and the water began to swirl as it found its way out.

He was, he realised belatedly, going to have to cry off on his offer to Scott. At least, he supposed that they could borrow Jason's cablegun, Scott could winch himself up...but he certainly couldn't jump up that high, and using the lift with its systems still wet would be a stupid unnecessary risk. Plus, Scott clearly still had a problem with whatever had happened to him at ISO. Maybe he could repay the other for his help. Get him back through the gates of ISO on a pretext, and maybe it would work as some aversion therapy of his own.

More than a pretext. Anderson had ditched Scott when the implantation process failed. Well, he wouldn't have been any use to a jump-team, Mark supposed, but even so...that seemed more than a little harsh. Callous, even. Mark knew intellectually that Anderson couldn't have got where he was today by being, well, nice, but still... What Scott had described was ruthlessly cold. And Scott deserved more than that.

He only realised he'd been standing there staring at the water when there was a sucking sound and the pool was gone, just a few trails of water still snaking across the bay floor to the crack of an opening. The G-1 had already drained, since its bottom hatch had been open all along, with the seat down in the passage below, and he had no plans to do so much as switch her instrument panel on until she'd been properly dried out back at ISO. There was nothing more for him to do up here, except to reseal the back doors.

With impeccable timing, his bracelet beeped just as he landed on the floor of the corridor below.

"We're all done down here," Jason's voice said.

"On my way."

Mark led a fully transmuted team down the ramp, to find an equally formally dressed International Rescue squad lined up and waiting for him. Four of them, at least - Brains and Tin-Tin weren't in uniform, standing slightly off to one side with a short, squat drum on a platform.

"All dry?" Scott asked him.

"As dry as she's going to get." Mark indicated the gas cylinder. "That's it?"

"That's it. Permission to come aboard, Commander?"

"Granted." Mark did his best to make it sound normal, though it was anything but. Very, very few people ever made it onto the bridge of the Phoenix. Early on, he'd not worried about civilians seeing it. Not any more, not since it had become entirely obvious that Zoltar had no compunction about using any possible connection he could find to get to high-ranking ISO personnel. This, though, was different. Scott was hardly going to advertise the fact, and Mark trusted him sufficiently to be sure that none of his team would, either.

He nearly fell over when he realised that the platform, some three feet square, was now eighteen inches from the ground and hovering steadily.

"How do you do that?"

"Gravity generator, Commander." Jason's voice held that wry tone which told him that fun was being poked, very gently. "You remember them?"

"It's three feet across. How the hell?"

Brains opened his mouth, but Scott was faster. "No hard feelings, Mark - but this cuts both ways. Either we're sharing technology or we're not."

"We're not," he said reluctantly. "At least, not unless Anderson agrees."

"He won't," Keyop put in, disgusted. "And I wanted to see that!"

"You and me both, kid," Jason said. "Mark's right, though. I guess we can't tempt you away to work for ISO, Brains?"

"Dr Anderson did, ah, already ask me that. Several times, over the years."

Virgil laughed out loud and clapped the engineer on the back. "No tropical island, hey Brains?"

The man didn't answer, though his cheeks were more than a little flushed. Instead, he turned his attention to a remote control, and the platform and its cargo began to move down the beach and towards the hatch. Very, very smoothly. Mark tried not to regret his decision - but it was hardly irreversible. One for ISO and IR to thrash out between themselves. Not a field command decision.

"But, without discussion of technology?" Jason asked. "We're still letting them in, right?"

"Briefly." Mark grinned at his second. "Go show off your car."

Jason was gone through the hatch and forward, with Alan following him. Brains and Tin-Tin accompanied Tiny and Princess with the cylinder, presumably to set up on the flight deck, and after a moment's hesitation, Virgil and Gordon followed them. Keyop had already leapt up to the top of the Phoenix and was busily closing the bubble. That left him and Scott.

"Well, Commander. I believe you promised to show me a plane."

"About that." This was going to sound lame, but Mark kept going anyway. "The G-1 isn't designed to get wet. I can't so much as turn the instruments on. Can we take a rain check, and reschedule for the next time you're near ISO?"

Scott didn't exactly twitch, but Mark had the distinct impression he'd had to make an effort not to. "That would depend on whether there's interest accrued."

"Interest?"

"I know when I'm being played. You want to get me to come to ISO - well, you're probably right. I've avoided it for a long time. Still would, unless you make it worth my while."

Mark took a deep breath. Strictly speaking, this wasn't his to promise - but he doubted he'd be overruled. Especially given that a result of closer ties with IR could be portable antigrav. Man, could they use that.

"Flight in the G-1. And...hell, you can hack into our systems, from what Princess told me. Maybe we can make it a bit more formal. Warn you if we know where the mecha are, so you don't launch right into them. Stay out of each other's way."

Scott smiled. "I think my father and Anderson already had this conversation. But the offer's appreciated. And yeah, I'd like to fly the G-1 again. Wasn't called that, back when I flew it, of course. No matter. You can expect to see me, next time I'm playing heir to Tracy Enterprises. I can always use a break from being polite to men in suits."

"Rather you than me."

Scott grinned back at him, but the grin fell away to seriousness. "Repeat that the next time some mecha's got you by both wings and your ship's falling apart at the seams...heck, I don't know what to say. You guys do one hell of a job. Keep it up."

"You too." Mark held his hand out. "Maybe when the war's over...who knows. It'd be nice to do something which didn't involve killing people. In a few years, if you're looking for a trainee - give me a call."

"I plan to give you a call a whole lot sooner than that." Scott took his hand, briefly, professionally. "I'll be in town in three weeks. That suit you?"

"I'll just ask Spectra when they plan to attack..."

"Well, barring that. And people needing rescuing, of course."

Mark laughed. "That sounds fine. Do you want to see inside?"

"You can show me that in three weeks, too." There was a pause. "You'll have to get clearance from Anderson, won't you?"

"For you to fly the G-1, and go in the Phoenix's hangar? Oh, yeah."

"Will he give it?"

"Yes. In person." Mark looked at the sand. "Hell, Scott, I feel like I took your job, and I never even knew. I can't make it up to you. But maybe I can do this. Besides, you're one hell of a test pilot, and, dammit, Mach Twenty? I want your professional opinion on the G-1, because I've got Mach Four, tops."

"Earth to Mars in two minutes?"

"Not normal flight and you know it." Mark indicated the Phoenix, with Brains and Princess just starting to come down the ramp out of the bottom hatch. "It's thanks to you we have Earth to Mars capability at all right now."

Scott just nodded, and called down the beach. "Brains? How long?"

"The gas is, uh, permeating right now. We should be done in ten minutes."

"There's people still in there!" Mark exclaimed.

Brains looked surprised. "This gas is intended for use in rescue missions, Commander. It is, of course, completely safe to breathe."

"I contacted ISO and asked Chris," Princess put in. "We won't even absorb it."

"You know, you're going have to go back to keeping me in the loop, G-3."

Princess flushed. "Yes, Commander. Sorry."

"And the others are?"

"Jason and Alan are up front, I'd guess they're drooling over the G-2. Tin-Tin is listening politely to Keyop explain how everything works -"

"What? I said no technical discussion!"

"If fighting Spectra ever grows old, the kid could get a job writing technobabble for a TV show. Trust me, he's not giving anything away. Oh, and Tiny and Gordon are swapping diving stories and when they think they'll next have leave at the same time."

"At least a month after I'm assured Gordon's safe to dive again," Scott commented wryly. "Brains, are we expecting to see anything?"

The engineer just pointed. Water was again flowing freely from the Phoenix's bottom hatch, a thin stream running down the ramp and on towards the sea. Even as Mark watched, the flow increased, cascading over the drop at the bottom of the ramp. Gallons and gallons. He couldn't even begin to imagine how long it would have taken for that much to evaporate naturally, or even with the encouragement of tropical sunshine and some big fans.

"Wow," said Princess simply.

"I'm glad to, uh, have an opportunity to test the gas," Brains told them, adjusting his glasses. "I did suggest we might use Thunderbird Two as a test vehicle, but Virgil, uh, didn't agree."

"Where is Virgil?" Scott asked.

"Last time I saw him, he was walking round the flight deck with his mouth open." Princess grinned. "He seemed to think someone had been winding him up about our not having an autopilot."

"That was a windup?" Scott frowned. "Jason told me, I told Virgil."

"Just so long as the Chinese whispers stay on the island. And no, we don't have an autopilot." Mark considered the water, now slowing rapidly to the merest trickle. "Is that it? Or will there be another flood?"

"That's it." Brains began to walk back down the beach. "If I can just, uh, retrieve the cylinder - it has monitoring devices on it which have been measuring the humidity."

Mark raised his bracelet to his mouth. "G-Force? Would you all come outside, please - and bring the cylinder with you."

Brains didn't look entirely impressed, and Mark suspected he'd wanted a second look inside, this one without worrying about the performance of his dessicating equipment. All the more reason to deny him one, at least until the technology-sharing was mutual. Especially if he could do so without needing a confrontation.

The water had stopped completely by the time Keyop appeared in the bubble. Mark couldn't see quite what was going on, but he was obviously balancing on the edge rather than having come up on the elevator. They'd be using as few electronic systems as possible until the Phoenix had had a complete overhaul, and Keyop was opening the bubble with the same type of handle that he himself had used to drain the G-1's bay. Venting the last traces of the gas by getting an airflow right through the ship had to be a good idea - though he suspected that Keyop was more interested in making a grand entrance.

The young man eased himself out between the two sides of the clear dome, stood on tiptoe, and leapt, wings outstretched. It was a perfect photo opportunity, silhouetted against the perfect blue sky with the peak of the island just off to one side, as he spiralled down, taking his time in the warm tropical aircurrents.

Scott sighed. "That I'd have liked to try, just once."

"Can't help you there," Mark told him regretfully.

"I'll live. Anyhow, Brains, that wasn't ten minutes? More like four."

The engineer was wearing an ear-to-ear grin. "Indeed, Scott. I am, ah, most encouraged."

"If it worked." Scott waved a hand at the group now emerging from the hatch, following the hovering platform down onto the sand. "Hey, Virgil? What's it like in there now?"

"Dry." Virgil had the remote control for the platform, and he guided it up to the top of the beach and lowered it to the ground next to the winch. "Can't vouch for anything working, though. I wish you'd let us help test your systems, Mark."

"Not enough time. I want off this island as soon as possible." He realised immediately how that sounded. "Because you're vulnerable for as long as we're sitting here. We appreciate everything you've done, but we need to get out before Spectra notice the Phoenix sitting on your beach and decide you might know something. It's unlikely, but..."

"It's necessary." Jason was at his shoulder, and the rest of the team alongside him, Keyop landing foot-perfect in his space between Princess and Tiny.

"Exactly. Thank you seems inadequate, somehow. If there's ever anything we can do..." He paused. "You have a pen?"

"You don't?" Scott laughed, digging in a pocket. "All that equipment and no pen? Here."

He handed over a notebook with a pencil tucked in the ringbinding, and Mark scrawled a phone number before handing it back.

"That goes direct to our ready room in ISO, and on to one of us if nobody's there to answer it. Don't abuse it, don't lose it, don't give it to anyone else. But if you need help, we'll come, no red tape attached. We owe you."

Scott's eyebrows went up. "Understood. Mine's a bit more prosaic." He handed Mark a Tracy Enterprises business card with an extra number at the bottom. "That's the main phone number here on the island - there's always someone here. Transmitting a request for International Rescue on all frequencies should work, too."

"Let's hope we don't need to," Tiny muttered.

"Indeed. Good flight home - and I'll see you in three weeks, Mark."

Mark just nodded, taking one last look around at the place which had been their refuge for the past few days. Heaven on earth. But not their paradise. For G-Force, it was time to go home.

Epilogue

"Commander, I need to apologise," Tiny said as soon as they were at cruising altitude and speed - or what passed for it today, with a ship still full of holes and next to no redundancies left in the systems.

"Apologise?" Mark frowned at him. "What did you do?"

"I didn't think. I came in dead straight on that mecha and gave them a perfect shot. It's my fault we went down."

"Mine," Keyop said. "Didn't scan carefully enough. Should have seen the new weapon mounting."

"I should have suspected something when --"

"Enough!" Mark cut Princess off mid-apology. "Jason, were you about to be next?"

His second nodded ruefully.

"We were all complacent. We thought we already knew how to handle it, and we didn't consider that Spectra can adapt just the same as we can. Now, Anderson's going to tear strips off us in the debrief - and we deserve it. We were very lucky. Let's not rely on luck again."

He looked around the cockpit, dim in the emergency lighting what was all they dared use, and saw four heads nod. That was all he could ask for. They'd screwed up, and they knew it. It wouldn't happen again.

"Kids," Virgil said disgustedly. "Kids. No wonder ISO's so darn secretive about their identities. There would be mass panic if anyone found out."

"Nobody's going to find out." Scott leaned back, savouring the last drops of his after-dinner brandy. "Who's going to suspect that the commander of G-Force is too young to drink?"

"Or the Swallow's too young to drive?" Virgil sighed.

"Or that the Swan's too young to lust over?" Alan grinned, prodding Gordon with his foot.

"You watch it. I'm pretty damn sure the Condor's not too young to lust over Tin-Tin."

"She'd tell him where to get off." Alan's eyes defocused, a sure sign that he was plotting something. "It's pretty minor league, that series he races in. I wonder if they allow guest drivers?"

"Have you ever even driven a stock car?" Virgil asked him.

"Not for a few years...but hell, racing against the Condor would be something else. You think Brains would be up for designing me something?"

Scott laughed. "You're incorrigible. Probably."

"Did I hear you say you're seeing Mark in three weeks?" Virgil asked.

Scott felt the butterflies rise in his stomach, but it wasn't anything like as bad as he'd expected. And if he could talk about it, doing it should be no problem. "Mark's promised me a flight in the G-1, and a look round the Phoenix when the lights are on."

Virgil gave him a long sideways look. "And a nice chat with your old boss Anderson?"

"Probably. Long overdue, though, Virg. It's old history. Time I put it behind me for good. And hey, if it had never happened, if I'd stayed with ISO - I wouldn't be here."

"And that would be a damn shame," Gordon said softly, and then cleared his throat, almost as if he'd embarrassed himself. "Okay, I'm off for a swim. Anyone want to join me?"

"Aren't you supposed to be taking it easy?" Virgil demanded.

Gordon smiled ruefully. "Yes, and I will be for a while. A nice gentle, relaxing swim. Nobody?"

"Have fun," Scott said. "Though if I were you, I'd never want to see water again."

"Just as well you're not me, then, isn't it?"

"Actually, maybe I will come. At least to make sure you don't drown." Scott put his glass down and followed Gordon to the pool in the twilight. The sun had gone now, but the sky was still red and orange away in the west. Another perfect evening.

They'd reached the pool deck before Gordon turned so suddenly that Scott almost ran into it. "So, what gives? You want to chew me out for taking risks - again?"

"The opposite." Scott looked into the distance, trying to word what he wanted to say. "You're the underwater expert, Gordon. I know I haven't always acknowledged that, and...I'm sorry. I still think you need to ask for a second opinion occasionally, though, and right now there's nobody who can give you one worth having. So I wanted to ask, in private - who do you want to train up properly on Four? Really properly. Not just knowing how the controls work and doing the odd simulator session. So you can have someone whose opinion you trust."

Gordon's face cracked into its trademark grin. "That'll teach me to make assumptions. You're right. And I'll think about it. Not you, you've got too much else to worry about - though I wouldn't mind you being a bit more familiar with what I do. I'm thinking maybe Tin-Tin. I've been thinking about it for a while."

"Tin-Tin? She's a --"

"Girl? Like the Swan is? She's a damn good engineer, a fair swimmer, and she's got as much diving experience as any of you."

"True."

"So, can I ask her?"

"I don't see why not." Scott squashed his automatic 'no' reflex way down. Gordon was right - Tin-Tin was the obvious candidate, and her sex shouldn't really be a barrier.

"Tomorrow, then. For now, I need that swim." He stripped off his shirt, revealing still-livid bruises that made Scott wince in sympathy, and eased himself into the pool rather than going for his usual dive. That in itself told Scott just how much his little brother still hurt.

Scott sat in one of the poolside seats and watched Gordon's idea of a gentle and relaxing swim, remembering the events of the past few days. Yes, they were lucky - but they made their own luck. They were careful, and skilled, and well-equipped, and watched each others' backs. And because they were, G-Force had flown off into a clear blue sky, to live and fight another day.

"I hear you have something you consider interesting enough for me to care." The Spectran leader's voice dripped sarcasm, and the young Spectran sensor operator looked almost ready to drop his printouts and run.

"Yes...yes, my lord Zoltar. If you observe..." He spread the papers out on the desk, pointing to what to Zoltar were merely undefined blobs in a sea of noise.

"Explain." He didn't bother to sound patient, and the man's voice rose a good octave.

"Sir...this shows a ship of the correct size and shape to be the Phoenix, launching from an island several hundred miles from where it was shot down, and some three days later."

"And which island would this be?"

The young man laid a standard map over the printouts, his finger shaking as he pointed to one of the tropical islands which peppered that particular part of the map. "This one, sir. I took the liberty of investigating it myself...in the records, I mean. It's the home of an aerospace tycoon. He has five sons."

"And your point, mister?"

The young man gulped audibly, laying a page from a glossy Earth magazine on the table. "This man is one of them, sir. The press believe him to be the Condor."

"And so, apparently, do you." Zoltar's voice took on a tone of disgust. "Guard? Punishment detail for this young fool. No, no, leave the papers. I will burn them myself."

As the man was dragged out, begging for forgiveness for his lack of judgement, Zoltar sat back, considering. The Phoenix, beached on an inhabited island when there was a whole wealth of uninhabited ones to choose from. The owner of that island, one of the wealthiest men on the planet, with a vast industrial empire at his beck and call. And his youngest son, who might or might not have direct connections to G-Force, but who most certainly spent time in public. A party-goer, it seemed. A socialite. Someone whose appearances might be predicted. A perfect target.