Alan yawned himself awake. It took a moment for him to remember where he was, having traded places with John only two Earth days prior. But soon the familiar walls of the small bedroom off Thunderbird Five's main control center settled into place as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. He rose, bare feet slapping the floor in unison, and shuffled off to the ensuite bathroom to relieve himself.

Some minutes later Alan sauntered into the control room, the sounds of every frequency Five monitored seeping into his consciousness as he made his way to the primary computer console. He looked to see what the space station might've found moderately interesting over the course of his sleep cycle, but while there'd been plenty of rescuing needed, none of the problems anywhere on the planet visible from Five's viewing window had required his family's assistance.

Having cleared those notes out of the recording cache, Alan next turned his attention to hot coffee waiting in the built-in automatic coffeemaker just to the left of the main monitoring station. He had a nice, long list of circuits and antennae and one of the external robotic arms that he needed to start diagnostics on, picking up where he'd left off yesterday. Not the greatest of fun, but he had an awesome new album from Diggity Sprocket to blast throughout Five that would make the work a lot more enjoyable than it might be otherwise.

He filled his favorite coffee mug – given to him by Tin-Tin three Christmases prior – and was about to hit the fridge for some cream when Thunderbird Five's proximity alarm rang. Nothing new there; lots of things passed close by on a fairly regular basis, and in spite of the fact that people figured they'd have THUNDERBIRD plastered on the side of this bird just like they did all the others, they didn't...so even if human beings actually saw her, they never had a clue that it was anything more than the research satellite it was registered as.

Alan forewent fetching cream for the moment just to check out what the sensors had to say. Still holding the mug of coffee in his hand, he moved to the main console to take a look at the radar and just happened to look up and out the long row of windows above the panels and monitors. He froze. The mug slipped from his grip, shattering when it hit the hard metal floor. Scalding hot black coffee splattered on his feet, the floor and the bottoms of his sweatpants. He barely registered the pain as he backed away from the viewing window.

As a spaceship drifted closer.

Alan's training kicked in. He lurched forward and slammed the meat of his hand down on the emergency alarm button, then raced for the nearest storage locker. He jerked the handle and flung the metal door open, quickly grabbing from five hanging space suits the one that was his, and pulled it on over his sweatpants and sweatshirt as fast as his hands could move. He heard his father's voice cut through the cacophony of Five's alarm and the continued background of so many voices and different pieces of music coming through the speakers.

Securing the suit at his neck, Alan grabbed its bubble-like helmet and raced back to the main console. He quickly accepted the incoming transmission from his father. "Dad, there's a drifting ship of a make I've never seen headed right for me!"

"I've got her on-screen, son. Brains estimates she'll hit in eight minutes. Get your helmet on!"

Alan put the helmet over his head and pressed a button on his arm that sealed it to the space suit. All the voices surrounding him faded away, muffled by the thick plastic derivative that would keep him safe from the vacuum of space. He then activated the internal communication system, and heard his father's voice as clear as a bell.

"-launching Thunderbird Three with Scott, John, Brains and Tin-Tin aboard. I'll get hold of the World Space Commission and find out if they can identify that vessel. Board one of the escape pods and get the hell out of there!"

Alan nodded, "FAB, Dad. Heading to Titan, it's the closest."

"Hurry, son."

The concern in his father's voice was palpable. But Alan's mind was less on reaching Titan, one of Five's six escape pods, than it was on keeping the space station from getting knocked out of orbit. There had to be some way he could divert that vessel from its head-on collision course with Five. He couldn't just let the thing hit. What kind of rescuer would he be if he couldn't save one of their birds?

And so as he often did, Alan disobeyed an order from his father. This time, he reasoned to himself, it was just a delay in following the order, in favor of first trying to save Five. If he succeeded, then there'd be no danger of her true nature being discovered, or of them losing the satellite altogether. If he failed, he'd still be able to get to Apollo, another escape pod on the opposite side of Five from where that ship was going to hit.

He got into the elevator and sped to two levels above the control room. Judging by the size of the spaceship, and the shape...roughly sixty feet long since she looked to be no bigger than the Mole...and the conical tip combined with the larger tail end where he presumed her boosters to be, Alan was pretty sure he'd be able to throw her off-course.

And he was going to do this, he vowed to himself, in the five and one-half minutes he had left.

Scott knew his youngest brother well enough to know that in spite of their father's order for him to get to an escape pod, he wouldn't be doing any such thing until the last possible second. How Scott wanted to ream him as they waited for Thunderbird Three's rockets to finish spooling so they could lift off. But how could he reprimand Alan for doing exactly what Scott himself would do if he were up there instead? He couldn't. All he could do was contact him and hope like hell he wouldn't be listening to the brother he'd helped bring into this world, die.

"Rockets ready. Systems green," Scott reported, eyes locked on the readouts from Three's launch sequence. He pressed a button to his right. "Thunderbird Three to Base, requesting clearance for takeoff."

"Base to Thunderbird Three, you are cleared for launch."

"FAB," Scott replied and keyed in Three's launch code. He noticed that his dad hadn't cut the line.

"I don't think Alan's heading straight for Titan."

Scott shook his head, seeing the worry he felt reflected on his dad's face. "I don't think so either. I'm going to get him on the line. I'll pull you in."

Jeff nodded once, features schooled carefully back to placid, as Scott started a three-way patch. "This is Thunderbird Three to Thunderbird Five. We've just lifted off. ETA one point three five hours, top speed."

"FAB, Scott," came Alan's instant reply. "Gimme a twenty on that rogue ship, will you?"

Scott turned to Brains, who was sitting in the copilot's chair this flight. His hands were already flying across the keyboard in front of him, and in the blink of an eye their forward view screen displayed a shot of the spaceship from one of Five's external cameras.

"It's, ah, only fifty-seven seconds to, ah, impact, Alan," Brains reported.

"Then don't talk to me again for the next fifty seconds," Alan replied.

Scott chewed the inside of his cheek, fingertips tapping on Three's console. What the hell was Alan up to? As he watched the seconds tick by on his watch he decided that whatever it was, if his youngest brother survived, he'd first praise Alan, then hug him and then as his field commander, put him on toilet duty for a year.

Alan checked the readout on the small console next to the door of the tube that led to Five's Apollo escape pod. He was going to use nearly every bit of power Five had to try this, and he'd only get one shot...in approximately thirty seconds.

"Alan to Scott."

"Scott here."

"Are we on a secure line?"

Alan heard some rustling and the swish of a door. "You're on my comm. Why the subterfuge?"

"I'm going to use Five's main antenna to blast that ship with the biggest sound wave you've ever seen."

"In space? Alan, it's a vacuum, the sound has nothing to travel on!"

Alan smiled faintly as the seconds ticked by.

Eight.

"It will on the oxygen and CO2 I'm shooting out with it."

"Oh, my God."

But that was all he had time to hear Scott say.

Four.

Three.

Two.

His finger jabbed the Enter button on the tiny keypad before him. The great hulk of Thunderbird Five shuddered as nearly every ounce of CO2 in her reserves, and half the oxygen she had on board, was jettisoned in a stream that might itself shove the spaceship off-course. But Alan wasn't taking any chances. He watched his readouts and at the exact moment he'd calculated, tapped in a command and hit the Enter key again.

Five roared so loudly from the feedback of the high-energy sound wave blast it had just fired, that it was deafening even through his space helmet. The satellite jerked violently, nearly knocking him off his feet.

"Alan, report!"

"Did it work?" Alan asked, frantically trying to access Five's main computer. But it wouldn't respond to his commands. "Did the sound wave work?"

"I'll be damned. I don't know how, but you did it!"

Alan breathed a sigh of relief. He sagged back against the bulkhead, sweat pouring down the sides of his neck. He wanted to take his helmet off so badly but first he had to make sure Five's life support systems were still operating. Gravity? Check. But the main computer still wouldn't give him anything.

"That was hare-brained at best, Alan. But you did good."

Half-smiling, Alan opened a panel at the edge of the door that would take him from Apollo's airlock back to Five's lower decks. "Just get here, would you? That's about enough excitement for me for one day."

"FAB," Scott replied, and Alan could hear the smile in his voice.

There were only thirty-six minutes left until Thunderbird Three arrived, and Alan intended to make the most of them.

He used the camera control, which somewhat resembled an old-style video game joystick, to zoom Camera Alpha in closer to the unidentified vessel. His father had advised that the World Space Commission hadn't been able to tell them anything about what the ship was or wasn't. Alan noted that he could find no identifying marks anywhere on the hull, and that the small bank of windows near its nose cone provided the only way for him to see inside.

Now a little under five hundred kilometers away from Thunderbird Five, the ship was spinning just enough from the sound blast Five had thrown its way that within a few seconds, Alan would be able to actually zoom Camera Alpha close enough to the window that he'd at least be able to see something of the cockpit.

Just as the spaceship's nose cone rotated into view, Alan realized that whatever the ship was made of had prevented Thunderbird Five from reporting one extremely important fact.

"Thunderbird Five to Base! Dad, there's a person on that ship!"

"I thought Five's scanners said there were no life signs!"

Alan shook his head vigorously as he zoomed the camera in closer. "My God," he breathed. "She's in the cockpit, I can only see her from the shoulders on up. No helmet, but she might be wearing a spacesuit. Looks like she's trying to do something with the controls. I'm going to try to raise her."

"FAB."

Alan laid in a series of commands that directed Five's antennae to broadcast on all frequencies in a six-hundred kilometer radius. "This is Research Satellite One-Three to unidentified spacecraft five hundred kilometers from present position. Please respond."

Nothing.

"Space station calling unidentified craft. You are drifting, do you require assistance?"

Shaking his head, Alan returned his attention to Base. "Either we can't get through for the same reason we couldn't pick up the life sign, or her radio's not working."

"In that case, son, it looks like it's a good thing Three's on her way. Base to Thunderbird Three."

Alan listened as the call was received, still staring at the image of the woman seated in the spaceship's cockpit. She seemed frustrated, and looked as though she was talking. If only he could get her to respond!

"Thunderbird Three here."

"Scott, Alan's got a visual on a woman in the cockpit of that ship. I want you to redirect and effect a rescue of her and anyone else she may have aboard."

The ensuing conversation between Scott and their father faded into a distant buzz as Alan's mind worked to determine how Five's scanners hadn't picked up on the ship being manned. He ordered a scan of the ship's hull but she came up empty in trying to determine its composition. When he allowed the island-to-Three conversation to reenter his consciousness, Scott was confirming the change in Thunderbird Three's course.

"Anticipate rendezvous with disabled craft in twenty-two minutes," Scott advised.

"Alan, keep us on a three-way open line," Jeff ordered.

"FAB," Alan replied, securing the three-way and turning his attention to Thunderbird Five's radar screen. He quickly keyed in a series of commands that would bring up historical readings from two hours prior to Five's proximity alert being activated. The mysterious nature of the vessel had his brain going the speed of a bullet monorail, and something told him he might get some answers as to the ship's origins by tracking its trajectory.

He watched the radar replay but saw absolutely nothing out to two thousand kilometers from Thunderbird Five, in all directions. He fast-forwarded the playback at four times speed but nary a blip appeared. Frowning in confusion, he doubled the speed, eyes glued to the screen. It took all the way to one minute prior to Five's proximity alert being triggered, for anything at all to appear.

And when it did, it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

"How is that possible?" he whispered, rewinding and replaying the radar image again.

"How is what possible?" Scott asked.

"If Five's radar was working properly, that spaceship didn't come from anywhere."

A moment of silence, and then, "Come again?"

"It just blinked into existence. One second there's nothing around me for two thousand kilometers, the next second there she is, less than three hundred k's from Five. She just appeared from nowhere."

Alan sank into his chair, completely baffled, as a lively conversation between Base and Thunderbird Three ensued. He simply could not figure how anything could not be there one moment and then be there the next. Especially something sixty meters in length. This wasn't space dust they were talking about, it was an entire ship with at least one person aboard, if not more.

What the hell?

Scott and John, fully outfitted in space suits, prepared to leave Thunderbird Three for a short spacewalk – or, more accurately, space jump – from Three's forward exit to what they had identified as the rogue spaceship's only entrance. The door was positioned directly behind the cockpit in which Alan had seen the woman. They'd all been watching Five's video feed of her, and just as they approached and slowed for the rendezvous, her eyes had gone wide, her jaw had dropped and she'd exited her cockpit faster than a jackrabbit who'd just seen a coyote.

John exchanged a look with his brother as Brains' voice came over the intercom. "All right, ah, Scott, you and John are safe to, ah, exit now. Tin-Tin is still unable to penetrate the ship's hull with our scanners, so we, ah, have no way of knowing what you'll encounter if you're able to, ah, gain access."

"FAB," Scott replied. "Opening hatch now."

It would figure, she lamented as she awoke on the floor of the cockpit with a groan. The one time she'd listened to Jerry Rafferty's wild ideas and it had put her somewhere so off the charts she couldn't even hope to identify what part of the galaxy she was in. And then, as she was working to maneuver Traveler away from the space station it was headed for, BAM! Out of nowhere something had slammed into the ship and sent her flying back up to the cockpit, where she'd whacked her head on her pilot's seat and gone out like a light.

How infuriating. She was going to have some choice words for Jerry when she got back to her part of the universe. And for who or whatever had made Traveler now dead in space. She wondered briefly if that space station she'd been on a collision course with had hit her with something just as she'd gotten her thrusters online and fired them. Whatever it was, she was glad she'd been able to move Traveler out of its trajectory, or she – and anyone aboard that station – would be dead right now.

Picking herself up off the floor, she held the back of her head with her left hand while her right made a move to the console that controlled every aspect of her small exploration craft. She'd been on so many test flights for her brother's company, Deep Space Exploration, that she knew the Traveler like the back of her hand.

Yet when the computer finally blinked awake under her touch, the readouts she was receiving weren't anything the vessel had ever shown her before. Not only, did it seem, was she nowhere near her original coordinates, but if what the monitor told her was true, the Earth she was seeing out the front cockpit windows wasn't the Earth she'd left behind.

Ignoring her headache, she scrambled to her chair and began trying to hail the DSE control room, but her calls went unanswered. And that was when she saw something she never would have dreamed in a million years was possible to see in real life.

There, not two hundred kilometers from Traveler, was a rocket she would recognize anywhere: Thunderbird Three.

Her eyes widened. Her jaw dropped. "How the hell is that possible?" she breathed.

Yet apparently it was possible, because not only was the entire rocket fully visible, but it was coming closer. As the Traveler spun slowly to her right, something else came into view. She recognized it as the space station she'd seen briefly before fighting to get Traveler's thrusters back online to avoid hitting it. There was no writing on it save a serial number printed beneath the row of windows that encircled it, but it was the windows, combined with seeing the rocket, that made her stomach bottom out.

"Thunderbird…Five?" she whispered. "No…they're not real!" She got to her feet and moved backward toward the doorway leading to the control room. "They can't be!"

She stumbled, lost her balance and fell sideways against the panel that protected the Traveler's navigation and environmental controls. A strong wave of nausea swept over her, forcing her to swallow hard four times just to keep from losing the contents of her stomach. As soon as that had passed, she felt so dizzy it seemed like the bulkhead was spinning wildly around her. In that moment, finding nothing to grab hold of, she collapsed to her knees.

She knew she was hyperventilating, felt like she was going to throw up and her head had started pounding like an entire row of timpani drums was being played by madmen. As darkness closed in on her field of vision, her last thought was one she spoke out loud. "If it is them…oh, my God." And then she blacked out.

It had taken about thirty minutes for John and Scott to assess the likelihood that they'd be able to get into the drifting spaceship. The answer, when it came, made no one involved very happy.

"I don't like the idea of towing this ship to Five," Jeff advised from Tracy Island. "We can't even get our sensors to tell us there's a life sign aboard. How can we know for sure there isn't something deadly that will kill you all when you make contact?"

"Well, we can't just leave her here, Father. If that's what you want us to do, we may as well let John transfer to space duty a week early and come back home with Alan." Scott's scowl was evident through his space helmet. And John's nod told him he was in complete agreement.

"Ah, Mr. Tracy, if I may suggest something," Brains piped up from Three's cockpit.

"What do you have, Brains?" Scott asked impatiently. Time was ticking away and he wasn't one for standing around flapping his lips when action was the thing needed most.

"Well, ah, I suggest we utilize one of our mobile airlocks as a, ah, quarantine center. We can extend it from Thunderbird Three's aft storage hatch and, ah, retract it inside once the, ah, victim has been loaded into it. From there, it's simply a matter of, ah, keeping the oxygen flowing."

"Well, if we do that, one of us has to be the one to get her out of her ship and into ours," John observed. "I call it."

Scott looked sharply at his brother. John was known for toeing as close to the line that separated field commander from field operative as possible, but he knew that this time John was actually the more qualified of the two of them when it came to being an astronaut. He'd put in far more hours in space and had gone through years of training above and beyond what their father's astronaut training school provided.

"I say we do it," Scott said with a firm nod.

They heard their father sigh resignedly. "All right, boys. Get in, get out and get back to Earth in one piece, will you?"

"FAB," John and Scott replied simultaneously.

"Scott, this is Tin-Tin. I'm moving the portable airlock into position. I'm suited up, and will help you extend and retract it once John has the victim on-board."

"FAB, Tin-Tin. I've just attached the Composition Analyzer to the ship's hull. With any luck it'll tell us enough about what it's made of to give us an idea how to get through it."

Twenty minutes later and all Scott and John had to show for their efforts was a mobile airlock that was ready to go, and nowhere to attach it to. Scott growled in frustration as the Analyzer's readouts told him once again that the machine was unable to identify the spaceship's hull composition.

John, too, was at a complete loss. He'd never before encountered, in all his work with spatial bodies and aboard Thunderbird Five, anything like this particular vessel. He ventured alongside her, Brains reeling out more feet of tether as he moved, and took a good, close look at her tail section.

When Scott had finished reporting to one and all that they were getting nowhere in their attempts to rescue the woman in the ship, John spoke up. "Brains, I'm turning on my helmet cam. I want you to get a look at this array."

With that, John pressed a button on the arm of his spacesuit. Seconds later, Brains' voice came over the line. "What kind of, ah, propulsion system is that?"

"Damned if I know," John replied. Just the configuration of what appeared to be navigation rockets, was like nothing he was familiar with. And the fact that it had no boosters to speak of, no rockets powerful enough to lift it from a planet into space, was confounding. It was almost as though… "No way," he breathed, running a hand along the nearest small nacelle.

"What, ah, are you thinking?"

Excitement crept into John's voice. "Could it be that this ship doesn't actually blast off from a planet? That it's stored in space?"

"Like from a, ah, space dock of some sort?"

Scott broke into the conversation. "Guys, geek squad stuff later, okay? We've got to figure out how to get into this ship!"

But as it turned out, they wouldn't have to figure it out at all.

She awoke and was instantaneously miffed that she'd lost consciousness again. Never had she been such a sissy; it was one of the reasons she was so often the one from her team nominated to make these journeys.

But in this case, she wasn't sure where her journey had taken her…not sure at all. Plus she couldn't shake the infernal nausea that was flipping her stomach every which way and the previous headache that had now worked itself into full-out brain pain.

What she thought she'd seen had to have been her imagination. There were no such things as Thunderbirds; those were toys based on a really old television show from before she was ever born. Of course she knew well enough about it because after all, it'd been where her brother had gotten the idea for his space-faring organization in the first place: seeing Thunderbirds Three and Five in action on reruns of the series that Charlie insisted she watch.

Maybe whatever had gone wrong in this test had fried her brain cells, causing her to see things that weren't really there. That would also explain why she felt so ill, if the journey had taken her somewhere her body wasn't used to being.

But where was she? And more importantly, how could she return to where she was supposed to be with her on-board computer deciding it would keep basic things like life support and artificial gravity running, but not connect to her navigation system no matter how many override protocols she tried?

Once again hauling herself to her feet, holding on to the back of her pilot's chair in order to stay on her feet, she about jumped out of her skin when a banging came from the Traveler's one and only entryway, a couple feet to her left.

Moving forward so she could better see out of the small part of the cockpit windows that curved around to the left, her eyes widened in disbelief as the back half of a very recognizable rocket slowly came into view. She blinked. Then she rubbed her eyes and kept them closed. Slowly her eyelids opened. She was convinced Thunderbird Three would not be there this time; that it had been nothing more than a figment of fried brain cells.

But when she reopened her eyes, the ship was still there.

"This is not possible," she whispered out loud.

She jumped again when there was another bang on her door. Swallowing hard, she moved to the door, raised her fist and pounded on it.

They banged again.

She banged again.

Her attention was distracted by something out her right peripheral vision. Sure enough, just outside the cockpit window was a man in an all-white well-fitting space suit, with a bubble-like helmet over his head. A man who resembled so strikingly...no. It couldn't be.

She moved to the edge of the console, as close as she could get to him. He held up a small computer pad the likes of which she'd never seen before, which said on its screen: ATTACHING AIRLOCK. CAN YOU OPEN DOOR?

Nodding and feeling as though she might just be about to either throw up or faint, she read a second message that appeared on it. WAIT FOR ME TO GIVE YOU ALL-CLEAR.

So she nodded again and moved along the edge of the console, craning her neck to watch as the man – who looked so much like the marionette version of Scott Tracy – pushed off her ship and landed in an open hatch on Thunderbird Three. Maybe-Scott and someone else in a spacesuit who was too far away for her to identify, pushed something square, large and plastic-looking out of the hatch. Another person in a spacesuit came over to help them, and soon Maybe-Scott and the person who was already tethered outside of Thunderbird Three disappeared from sight, leaving the one aboard the rocket standing there hanging on to a handle just inside the hatch so she wouldn't float out into space.

Wait…she?

Yes! The one on the rocket was a she! Her spacesuit was well-fitting enough that it showed its wearer to be female. And the only female in her mind that would be aboard Thunderbird Three was Tin-Tin Kyrano.

She stumbled backwards, hitting the arm of her chair. Shaking her head, which made it pound even more than it already was, she moved around to the front of the chair and sank back into it, completely at a loss to explain what she was seeing. For crying out loud, these were television characters! Charlie had a photo of the whole cast of them hanging in the main entryway of DSE. She had to have lost her mind. Or died. Was Heaven a place where marionettes turned into real people?

There was suddenly a series of bangs coming from the area of her door, and then nothing. She looked up as Maybe-Scott once more floated into view outside her window. OK TO OPEN DOOR. AIRLOCK IN PLACE was what the little computer screen said this time.

She got to her feet and moved slowly to the door. Her helmet was who-knew-where at this point, and for a moment she considered leaving them hanging while she went to search for it. But then she realized they might just know something she didn't, and be trying to save her life with only minutes to spare, so she keyed in a five-digit code to unlock the door.

She froze.

Maybe-Scott Tracy.

Thunderbird Three.

If she'd been correct before passing out, Thunderbird Five.

And, possibly, Tin-Tin Kyrano.

When she opened this door, what would happen? Would she somehow walk into a television show, her muddled brain wondered? Had she crossed some weird space/time continuum barrier that made TV shows come to life? Would she disintegrate the moment she stepped off the Traveler?

Her stomach tried to empty itself of its contents which, thankfully, weren't much. She managed to swallow it back down and grasp the circular handle that would open her little ship's door. Feeling like someone had her head in a vise, she twisted the handle a quarter-turn to the right and heard the telltale hiss of its magnetic seal releasing. She pushed, and the door opened outward.

When she finally got an up-close look at Maybe-Scott, the 'maybe' part flew out the window. And her mind, barely able to function as it was, went completely blank.

"Are you okay?" Scott asked. The woman before him was dressed in what appeared to be a spacesuit, made out of a metallic red material he couldn't identify at first glance. There was a circular white patch above her left breast, with the letters DSE emblazoned in red upon its face. Her dark brown hair was fairly long, he guessed, because it was pulled back in a ponytail braid like he'd sometimes seen Tin-Tin wear. Brown-eyed, fair-skinned and far too pale for his liking. Adding to his surprise at her reaction was the fact that her eyes were so wide the entirety of her pupils was visible, and her jaw was dropped, mouth forming a perfect O shape.

"We're International Rescue," Scott said, trying to get some sort of reaction. He'd experienced victims in negative panic mode before, but this looked and felt more like disbelief to him. What had this woman been through to cause such a reaction? "We're going to use this mobile airlock to transport you to Thunderbird Three," he explained, pointing back over his shoulder with his right thumb. "Do you have a helmet?"

"Scott?" she breathed.

He stared at the woman, but didn't recognize her no matter how much he tried to place her. His mind barked at him about secrecy and protecting his family. "Do you have a helmet?" he repeated, trying like hell to silence the alarm bells going off in his head.

"I...I don't know where it is," she replied, still staring at him like she'd seen a ghost.

He nodded curtly. "You should be all right in the airlock," he said, voice as cool as a cucumber. "Is there anyone else aboard?"

She shook her head haltingly, as though having to force herself to do so consciously. "Um...no, I-I'm alone." He watched as she swallowed hard, then swayed. He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling, and when he did, she stared at the point where his gloved hand was wrapped around her uniformed arm. "You can't be real." She looked back up to his eyes, then closed her own. "I...I don't fffeeel...so...good," she huffed out breathlessly.

With that she lost consciousness and fell forward against him. Shaking his head, he lifted her into his arms and turned to look at John, who was five feet away at the opposite end of the mobile airlock.

"How'd she know your name?" John asked, coming forward to take the woman from his brother's arms.

"I don't have a clue. I don't recognize her. She sounds like she might be from somewhere around Boston. I'm going to search her ship quickly, see if I can find anything to identify it or her. Scott to Tin-Tin."

John nodded and took the woman from Scott's arms as Tin-Tin responded, "Here, Scott."

"I'm going to seal off the mobile airlock with John and the victim inside. Pull them back to Three, keep it sealed as planned."

"FAB," came Tin-Tin's reply.

"Ah, John, you'll, ah, have to remain in the, ah, airlock until we return to Tracy Island where we can, ah, transfer the victim into our, ah, quarantine area. The, ah, move of the airlock to Quarantine will be a, ah, challenge due to her size, but the access tunnel behind the, ah, Pod conveyer belt will be wide enough."

"I hope these suits are as impervious to space bacteria as you claim they are, then, Brains," John replied as he watched Scott board the spaceship. He waited until his brother was out of sight, then said, "Okay, Tin-Tin, seal Side A of the airlock."

"Sealing Side A," Tin-Tin advised. "Estimate forty-five seconds to completion."

"FAB," John replied. He looked down at the face of the woman and noted that not only did she appear more pale than he would've expected for a Caucasian with her hair color, but even unconscious she was frowning deeply. "You're going to be okay," he said. "International Rescue has you now."

Scott allowed himself just fifteen minutes to search the woman's ship. Although its computer setup was labeled in English, he couldn't for the life of him figure out how to turn it on. There was one small locker on board, but all it contained was two days' worth of women's underwear and flight suits, as well as a spacesuit identical to the one she was wearing. The only other storage space on the small craft was a cupboard in which he recognized something similar to the dehydrated food packs astronauts took into space with them. Way back near what he guessed was the craft's engine area he found a cracked space helmet of a design he'd never encountered, lying on the floor. He picked it up and kept searching, but could find no identification for her, the ship, or the letters on her uniform's chest patch.

Frustrated, Scott radioed Three. "How's the mobile airlock return coming?"

"Ah, Tin-Tin has just brought John and the victim aboard. Your, ah, tether is waiting to pull you back."

"Well, the ship's a bust, but we need to make sure it doesn't drift into something else like it almost did to Five. Scott to Alan."

"Alan here."

"What's your current status?"

"I've got all systems online, green across the board. I'm down to just under half oxygen levels but it'll build back up to full within forty-eight hours thanks to the recent modification Brains and Virgil made to our carbon dioxide recycler. I just have to do a lot of heavy breathing to get it there."

Scott snorted, glad that Tin-Tin hadn't been in a multi-channel call for that one, or they'd never have heard the end of it. "All right, I want you monitoring this craft as you're rechecking Five's systems. I'm trusting you can keep yourself in one piece until we bring Three back up to do a more thorough check of Five."

"FAB. Who's that lady I saw in the cockpit, anyway?"

"Don't know yet," Scott replied as he grabbed hold of his tether to Three, floated out the spaceship's door, turned and did his best to pull the door as far shut as he could. He then pushed off the ship's hull and felt the tether grow taut, then start reeling him in toward Three's forward hatch. "I'm sure we'll find out soon, though. We'll keep you updated, Al. Scott out."

And Scott definitely wanted to find out who the woman was. Because if she knew him well enough to recognize him while he was inside a spacesuit trying to rescue her, then it could spell a whole lot of trouble for their secret organization.

Thunderbird Three's return flight to Tracy Island was uneventful. John monitored their victim's vital signs from within the mobile airlock, with Tin-Tin monitoring environmental conditions inside it continuously. Three hadn't found anything malicious inside the airlock, microscopic or otherwise, and John's thorough check of the woman's flight suit had yielded no clues as to her identity. Brains had advised Jeff of their plan to quarantine the woman, and Scott had advised them all that she'd called him by name. That had Jeff, Virgil and Gordon working triple-time to figure out what the hell spacecraft she'd been in and who exactly she was.

By the time the Round House's laser guidance system had helped Brains and Scott land Three back in her silo, none of them were any closer to answers. Alan continued to check Five over inch by inch and monitor the woman's drifting spaceship just so they could keep tabs on it.

It was during the laborious process of transferring the mobile airlock, with a fully-suited John and still-unconscious woman inside, to their Quarantine area behind Thunderbird Two's hangar, that a surprised yelp from Alan came over every International Rescue channel in existence.

Seated at his desk in the lounge, Jeff looked up as his youngest son's back replaced his portrait on the wall. "Alan? Report!"

Alan turned and stared at his father. "I don't believe it."

"What's happened?"

"That ship, it just...there was this bright flash of light, so bright I could see it here in the control room...and it's gone! It just...disappeared!"

"How could it just disappear?"

"I don't...Dad, I don't know! But it's not there! I no longer have a visual and Five is reading nothing within six thousand, four hundred and forty-two kilometers!"

"Visual!" Jeff demanded, rising to his feet and moving closer to Alan's portrait. His son's face was quickly replaced by a live feed from one of Five's cameras. A feed of nothing more and nothing less than empty space. "What the hell," Jeff breathed.

"What do you want me to do?" Alan asked.

"There's nothing we can do," Jeff replied. "Except try to wake that woman up and find out what the hell's going on. Let me know if anything changes, I'm on my way to Quarantine. Base out."

"How much longer 'til I can get out of this thing?" John asked, eying Tin-Tin, Brains, Virgil, Gordon, Kyrano and Scott, who were all present outside Quarantine Room E. Inside which was nothing but the mobile airlock containing John, still in his spacesuit with only twenty-five percent of his oxygen left, and the woman, whose pulse had slowed and oxygen levels had decreased enough to be alarming. "I need to get her on the table!"

The table was a medical treatment bed, much like any standard Emergency Room bed, surrounded by life-saving equipment like IV fluids and oxygen masks. Concerned as the woman seemed to grow more pale by the second, John largely tuned out Brains' answer, hearing only that it would be another ten minutes or so until they could be certain it was safe for John to shed his suit.

A frown permanently etched into his face, John sat down next to where he'd laid her out on the airlock's floor, and pulled the upper half of her body into his arms. She wouldn't be able to hear him, as his helmet communicator couldn't be changed to external speakers, but he couldn't help wanting to say something to her anyway. He pushed a button on his arm to make sure his comm was turned off before he did.

"I don't know who you are but you're not doing so well right now. Just...hang in there, okay? We're going to do everything we can to keep you alive." He ran a gloved hand along her arm, hoping the contact would rouse her. "Can you wake up for me?" he asked, his own voice echoing back at him from the inside of his helmet.

There was a loud banging on the quarantine room window, and John knew that meant they'd realized his comm was off. He switched it back on.

"Don't turn that off again!" Scott barked in his ears.

John rolled his eyes. "Status?"

"Ah, five minutes, John. It looks like you're going to be okay to remove your suit and, ah, begin medical treatment. I'll guide you through anything you, ah, need help with."

"Thanks, Brains."

All was silent as John watched the woman's slack features. Then, though it was fleeing, he was certain he saw her eyelid twitch. "Come on," he whispered. "You can do it."

There! It twitched again! Then her head moved, her lips parted, and a soft groan emerged.

"Is she waking up?"

"I think so, Scott."

John watched the woman's face carefully. Within a couple of minutes her eyelids started to flutter. Just as Brains' voice came into his ears to tell him he could safely remove his spacesuit, the woman sat bolt upright and vomited all over his legs and the airlock floor.

John leapt to his feet as the woman fell forward onto her hands and knees.

"Glad I hadn't taken the suit off yet," he deadpanned as he removed his helmet.

His sweat-dampened hair cooled quickly in the airlock environment and made him shiver slightly as he placed the helmet on a clean part of the floor. Then he moved to the airlock door and keyed in the code for it to release. As it hissed quietly open, he turned to the woman, who was trying to get to her feet.

"Hey, hey, slow down," he admonished gently, grasping her arms and helping her steady herself enough to stand. She looked up and froze the instant her eyes hit his face. Probably scared to death, he thought to himself. "It's okay. I'm going to help you. I need to get out of my suit and take you out of the airlock to a bed. Then I'm going to hook you up to some oxygen and fluids. All right?"

"John?" she whispered. "You've got to be John."

Taken aback, John blinked. "Do I know you?"

She shook her head no, hands grasping his forearms so tightly it hurt even through his spacesuit. "No, but I know you. And...Scott. And...Thunderbird Three, and...was that Tin-Tin?"

John noted that no one from outside Quarantine had spoken even though he knew they had to have heard. He swallowed and said, "Let me get you to the bed, okay? Can you tell me your name?"

He let go of her long enough to rid himself of his spacesuit and then, wearing just a generic blue flight suit and socks, gently began pulling her toward the airlock door. Slowly, with her clinging to him, they made their way the few feet from it to the bed. "I'm..." She swayed and then swallowed hard. "My name's Cora Mitchell."

"Hi, Cora. It seems you already know my name."

She nodded as he helped her up into the bed. But she didn't lie down right away. He looked toward where her gaze was fixed and realized that she could see every single resident of Tracy Island, except his grandmother who was currently shopping in Sydney, out the four-panel viewing window of the Quarantine room.

"Jeff?" Cora said in disbelief. "And there's Scott...Brains...Virgil, Gordon...Tin-Tin and even Kyrano!"

Oh, yeah. His family was hearing every word if the looks on all their faces were any indication.

"Let me get an IV line in you, Cora," John said, keeping his cool and carefully easing her down on the bed. "We're in quarantine right now to make sure you didn't bring any unwanted visitors with you."

"You can't be real, I...I keep telling myself that, but you can't! You're a TV show!"

John smiled, wondering if Cora had some sort of space sickness and was in the process of losing her mind. "We're a TV show, huh? That's how you know all our names?" She nodded as he pulled the necessary IV components out of a cabinet. "Okay, I'll need to get this needle into your arm."

"I feel so sick, I...my head hurts so bad."

"We'll get you something for that, I'll put it in the IV."

"John, how...where am I? Is this your headquarters on Tracy Island?"

John's movements faltered only slightly at her words. "You're safe. Once we get you stabilized, we'll take you a hospital where you can be properly taken care of and returned to your family. Now, can you bare your left arm for me so I can get this needle inserted?"

Cora's trembling fingers slowly unzipped her flight suit from neck to navel, revealing a tight black exercise bra beneath. She struggled to pull her left arm from the sleeve. John carefully helped her finish the task, then said, "Okay, hold still. Can you tell me how to contact your family? I'm sure they'd like to know you're all right."

Watching his face carefully, Cora replied, "I'm with Deep Space Exploration. It's run by my brother, Charlie. You can reach him at DSE headquarters. He's probably worried sick about me."

As soon as John had the needle in place and taped down, he turned to look out the window. Scott, hunched over a computer monitor, looked up at Jeff and shook his head no. Which John knew meant he'd found no such company in the search he'd just done. And John wasn't surprised because he, an astrophysicist and space explorer himself, had never heard of a company called DSE. He turned his attention back to her and found her studying his family.

"You've never heard of it, have you?" she asked, her voice soft as she looked back up at him. "You have no idea what I'm talking about." He blinked at her, wondering how she'd come to that conclusion. "Come on, I can read facial expressions."

John saw Jeff staring steely-faced at Cora. He knew his family was thinking the exact same thing he was. This woman could be a spy, lying about who she was to get access to International Rescue. Maybe even working for that guy who was always after pictures of their birds. Or maybe she was simply someone who'd been in space for so long she'd lost her mind.

But then John's eyes moved to Brains, and the look on his friend's face suddenly made him wonder...after all, they'd found rock snake aliens on Mars during the ill-fated second Zero-X mission. What's to say there weren't human-like aliens out there somewhere, too?

Cora closed her eyes as the nutrient-rich fluids flowed into her veins. "You know I'm the one who kept Traveler from hitting Thunderbird Five, right?" She opened her eyes to find him frowning at her. "I mean, I assume that was Thunderbird Five up there, and I assume since he's not here, Alan's the one aboard her this month."

"Wait, you maneuvered your ship away? We thought Alan did that." John knew he'd said too much and mentally kicked himself.

"I'd just gotten my thrusters working, but only at quarter-strength. I'm guessing whatever Alan did combined with what I did probably saved both our lives. I doubt Traveler's thrusters were strong enough to keep her from ramming your space station."

John nodded. "Could very well be you helped rescue International Rescue."

She smiled faintly. "I'm not where I'm supposed to be, John. I know I'm not because where I'm from, you aren't real. None of you are real. You're a television show created by Gerry Anderson. You know, the guy who created Stingray, UFO, all those shows?"

John stopped just as he was about to inject a mild painkiller into the IV line. "What do you want me to say?"

"You're probably...ow, my head...afraid I'm a spy or something. That I work for the Hood?"

John parroted, "The Hood?"

"Yeah, you know, bald guy with a temple in Malaysia who's always trying to steal your secrets. Well, I'm not with him, John. And I know everyone else is listening. I'm not a spy, I'm not trying to steal your secrets. I don't even know where I am!"

Gerry Anderson? Stingray? UFO? Was this girl on drugs? John couldn't help but wonder. "I can assure you of one thing. We're not a TV show."

"Oh, really. Then how do I know all your names? All your birds? How do I know that you're International Rescue and you're headquartered on Tracy Island? Show me how any of that makes sense to you if what I'm saying isn't true."

"Show me something that tells me you're really Cora Mitchell from a company that doesn't exist rather than someone who's trying to hurt my family."

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," she quipped, and John stifled a snort.

He injected the painkiller into her IV. One more glance through the viewing windows told him that those outside the Quarantine room weren't having any luck verifying her identity or her story.

So John decided to take matters into his own hands. Already, Cora's color was returning to a much healthier pink, and he truly was intrigued by what she'd said so far. They had to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible because International Rescue's entire existence could be at stake.

"Let's try to make this easy," John began, leaning back against the wall where she could still see him from her prone position. He folded his arms over his chest. "Where are you from?"

"Boston, originally. I work for DSE, my brother Charlie's company, like I said, not far from Sedona, Arizona. We've been testing a new device invented by Jerry Rafferty, DSE's chief engineer. I was using Traveler, that's my ship, for its first live test."

John cocked his head. "What's this device for?"

Cora pushed herself up to a seated position. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Even though it's 2065, the mainstream astrophysicists think Charlie's nuts for actually trying it."

John felt the color drain from his face. "2065?"

"Yeah. Why, what year is it here?"

"2029," John blurted out, then groaned inwardly at his mistake. He didn't dare look at the windows right now; he was sure his father and Scott were glaring at him.

"Ah, so you did start operating in 2026. That's a matter of some debate among fans of the show even today."

John was thoroughly perplexed. Fans?

Cora half-smiled at his confusion. "The device, JOR468X, is the first ever attempt to bend time and space in order to travel great distances, rather than what everyone's been trying to do for years, which is travel those distances linearly."

John looked out the window again, this time directly at Brains, who was staring at Cora. John just knew the scientist's mind was working overtime on that little tidbit. He looked back at her skeptically. "You're telling me you've found a way to travel by bending time and space?"

"Apparently a little too well," she lamented, rubbing the base of her skull and grimacing. "As soon as I saw Thunderbird Three out my cockpit window, I knew I wasn't where I'd started out. Trouble is, I don't know where I am. Where I could be that you and your brothers, your father and Brains and all this," she continued, waving her right hand in the air to encompass everything around her, "could actually be real."

Moved by a force even he couldn't hope to explain, John stepped forward and took Cora's left hand between his two. "We're very real. I don't know what you mean about a TV show. You're on Earth. In the year 2029. You obviously know who we are, but we've never heard of you or your brother or DSE or this device you're talking about. None of that exists here."

"And rather than just being an old TV show from a hundred years ago on the Earth I come from, you're actually alive here, on a different Earth, in a different year."

John shrugged, but still held to her hand tightly. He just didn't know what else to say or do.

Cora marveled at the warmth of his hands. At the fact that they were real flesh and blood, that this was no marionette standing before her. That Thunderbird Three, which had ferried her safely from the disabled Traveler, wasn't just a model on strings. She moved her right hand atop his and looked into his eyes. "Maybe I'm dreaming," she breathed, feeling like she could get lost in their crystal blue depths. "But if I am, I really don't want to wake up."

"You're not dreaming," he replied softly. "Not unless all of us are, too."

"What if..." she faltered, feeling like she would sound more maniacal than sane if she actually gave voice to the theory she'd begun formulating. "What if Jerry's device did work? Only what if it worked too well, and instead of sending me from orbiting the Moon out to just beyond Mars, which was my target...well, what if it somehow transported me to..." Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip, looking away from John and toward the viewing windows, where each and every person – each and every real person – was watching her intently.

"Transported you to where?" John asked, pulling her attention back to him.

"What if it took me to a parallel dimension?"

She watched as John looked up at Brains who, after staring blankly at him through the window for a few seconds, slowly nodded his head.

"That's it, isn't it?" she asked. "Brains thinks it's possible, doesn't he? You're in a dimension parallel to mine. There's an Earth, there are human beings, everything's sort of the same but sort of not."

John looked back at her, gently pulling his hands away. "I don't know. I mean, theoretically it's possible. Brains has even been working on a hypothesis he has about breaking through dimensional walls, but...if you're really from another dimension, and you're able to know all this about us because we're on a TV show where you're from, I..."

He seemed at a loss, and Cora was pretty sure she understood why. "Maybe somehow, Gerry Anderson picked up on you. On who you are, what you do. Maybe he tapped into this dimension, and it gave him the idea for the show."

John shook his head. "If that's true, if someone can tap into us here, can relay all our secrets that you seem to know..."

Cora suddenly got it. "Unless someone comes from my dimension to yours, and starts telling the Hood or some other bad guy all your secrets, I don't think there'd be a problem. I mean, it hasn't happened so far, right? Of course, now that I've made it happen, that makes me a major liability in your father's eyes, I'm sure."

She looked directly at Jeff, whose face told her nothing of his thoughts. But she was certain she'd hit that nail on the head the way Scott was scowling.

Before she could take that thought a step further, she felt her skin begin to tingle all over. Something told her she'd felt this sensation before, but...what the hell...she became dizzy, and felt John catch her before she tipped sideways enough to fall off the bed.

"What's going on, Cora?"

She looked up at him, but his face was out-of-focus. "It's...it's like before," she said, in that moment recognizing the tingling and dizziness.

This was exactly how she'd felt when she'd activated Jerry's device at the beginning of the test. Right before she'd traveled, and then awakened to find herself in a place...a dimension...not her own. The same sense of displacement, loss of orientation. To her, it could only mean one thing.

"I think…they're pulling me back!" she cried, reaching out and grabbing hold of John's arm tightly. She forced her vision to right itself, to see his face clearly, up close, one more time. If this worked...if Charlie and Jerry and everyone back at DSE were trying to retrieve her using the identification chip embedded in her arm, that meant she only had seconds to memorize how very real John Tracy was.

She smiled up at him even as she saw darkness creep in around her vision. "You know," whispered, "as a fellow astronaut..." She gasped as dizziness overtook her. "You always were my favorite."

And then she saw nothing.

John heard the tink of the needle hitting the edge of the bed, then the clatter as it fell to the tile floor. He could still feel the grip she'd had on his arm. Could still feel the warmth on his hand where he'd had it against her back. Could still hear the sound of her whispered confession right before she...impossibly...blinked out of existence in a blinding white light just like the one Alan had described when the Traveler had disappeared.

He turned and looked at his family through the viewing window. Every one of them was motionless. Whether from disbelief or simply complete shock, John didn't know. But he did know one thing. He would never forget Cora Mitchell, maybe from some other dimension, maybe just nuttier than a fruitcake, who'd gone from being a blip on the radar to someone whose brief existence in his world would haunt John for the rest of his life.