Gordon raised his wristcom, shrugging the tension from his shoulders with the movement. "Getting there, Scott. Looks like they were lucky, relatively speaking. Only one fatality."

"I want you out of there pronto. It's going to take a few minutes to get back to Thunderbird Four, get the collar on, start the tow…"

I know, I know… "Understood, Mobile Control." Gordon kept the irritation out of his voice, very aware of the corrosive worry that motivated his eldest brother's brusque manner when he and the others were out in the field like this. "I'm pedaling as fast as I can."

The faint, abruptly cut off snort in the background had to be John, listening in from Thunderbird Five. Gordon grinned; tried to keep that out of his voice as well. "I should be done here in five minutes, Scott."

"FAB." There was a moment of blessed silence. Then Scott came back, fresh strain tautening his words. "IEIC GlobalNet is warning of a possible aftershock in the area within the next sixty minutes. They're estimating as much as magnitude 7.2."

Gordon's grin faded. He didn't want to be around when that hit. A 7.2 could bring the rest of that rock down and bury us all. "FAB," he said, frowning. "Keep me informed. I'll let you know when I'm clear."

He glanced across the floor of the research transfer sub, visually checking on the six unconscious men and women strapped into their medevac stretchers. Sheer luck that the sub, docked on the far side of the sprawling underwater research dome from where the rock fall had caused most of the damage, had been intact when he'd come on the scene. His ingress had been relatively straightforward – use the universal docking skirt on TB4's port side airlock to board the transfer sub and thereby enter the dome itself, and locate survivors of the earthquake induced accident.

He'd found four men and two women, all alive but unresponsive except for one who was still clinging to a thread of consciousness…and one body. The dead man had been crushed by a falling piece of drilling equipment, and from the looks of it, killed pretty much instantly. Gordon had been unable to get much coherent information out of the one conscious survivor, and she'd passed out soon after he started splinting her badly broken left arm. There had been several more fractures to immobilize, other swiftly performed triage-level first aid, and then he'd used the research sub's own gravity sled to collect the wounded and get the stretchers back to the sub. A last pass across the research dome with his portable infrared scan had turned up no more heat signatures, but he'd had John double check from Thunderbird Five just to be sure.

Satisfied that the stretchers were properly tethered and there was no equipment in the surrounding area that could dislodge and fall on the rescuees when he started the tow, Gordon sealed the transfer sub's port side hatch, locking it off from the dome. He turned to go back through the sub to its starboard hatch, docked securely against Thunderbird Four. He would leave the sub's connection with the dome intact for now to hold it steady while guiding the external tow collar into place, then trigger the docking release remotely.

"Mobile Control, Thunderbird Four. Survivors secured for transport. Ready to seal the airlock now."

"FAB, Thunderbird Four. Let's get that tow collar in place."

Yeah, let's. "FAB, Mobile Control."

Gordon went back to the airlock. From inside the docking collar, he had just gotten the outer door of the transfer sub's airlock sealed when the banging started.

One of the survivors must have woken up and somehow gotten an arm free. Cursing the timing under his breath, Gordon unsealed the airlock again and swung the heavy door open. He raised both brows in surprise as he saw all six survivors, still unconscious and strapped into their stretchers. What the –

Then the banging started again. It was coming from the dome.

Oh, God, God, I missed somebody. It had always been his worst nightmare, right from the start, that he would accidentally leave someone behind to die... He had almost been in that position himself, less than five years ago, after the first day of SAR helijet passes over the wreckage of the WASP experimental jetfoil Sea Griffon had failed to locate his shattered body. Thank God they'd kept looking and not simply assumed he was dead in small pieces, like the rest of the six man crew… Gordon reached the other side of the sub in two strides and punched the universal SAR override code that would open the airlock. Seconds later he was swinging open the outer door and staring into the face of a young woman, pale and shivering in her company-issue gray jumpsuit, gripping a large wrench in one hand. The words burst out before he could stop them. "Where did you come from?"

She just stared at him. He reached for her arm, felt how cold and stiff the usually soft material was. It almost seemed to be coated with… "Wait a minute, you were in the freezer?"

She studied his face, still not speaking. "Well, I guess it would seem like a pretty good place to hide, in a mess like this," Gordon admitted. It would also possibly explain why neither of their infrared scans had picked up her heat signature. "You couldn't hear me calling for survivors?"

Her eyes were huge and dark in her paper-white face. Gordon took the wrench from her hand and led her through into the research sub, seating her in one of the fold-down seats in the cabin. She had no visible injuries and didn't seem to be in danger of imminent collapse; he hoped a warming blanket would be sufficient to hold her while he got them out of the danger zone. They didn't have a lot of time.

He got the blanket, tucked it around her and strapped her in. He patted one cold, clammy arm, stifling a murmur of worry. "Hold on, OK? I'm going to get us all out of here."

She just looked at him. Gordon patted her arm again and turned away toward the airlock to Thunderbird Four.

He was turning to close the outer airlock door when the movement caught his eye. The young woman had gotten out of her straps and was across the other side of the sub, keying open the airlock. Gordon muttered an expletive under his breath and scrambled after her, prying her hands away from the door handle. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but I need you to stop it, right now. We have to get out of here. There's another earthquake coming."

He might have been mistaken, but he thought he saw her eyes widen a little further at that revelation. "Come on. I've got to get you settled so I can do my job. OK?"

That got about as much response as anything else he'd said. Gordon towed her firmly back to her seat and tucked the blanket back around her, refastening the straps. "Now stay there this time."

"Gordon, Mobile Control. What are you doing down there? John says he can't see any movement yet."

Gordon checked his wrist chrono. Twenty minutes had gone by since Scott had told him about the aftershock warning. "Sorry about that. Had a little complication down here. It's all contained now."

Except it wasn't. She was out of her chair again, and this time she had the inner door of the airlock half open.

Gordon swore, this time out loud. "Uh, say again?" Scott's voice crackled in confusion.

"Nothing." Gordon took off after the woman. "Look, that…complication I was telling you about, it looks like it's not quite as …contained as I thought. Give me a minute here."

"Gordon…"

"I know, Scott," Gordon said, through gritted teeth as he dodged a well aimed kick. "I know."

She fought him hard this time, clinging to the airlock handle with surprising strength. She tried to wedge her body between the door and the jamb seal so he couldn't close it on her. He got one of her arms, pulling it back, and she shocked him by biting his hand, hard. When he yanked his arm away in reflex, she wriggled free of him and shot into the airlock, punching in the code to open the outer door.

"Stop!" Gordon shouted. "The dome could be totally flooded by now! You could kill all of us!"

She swung around, staring at him. She flattened herself against the door as he approached her. "Lady, I don't know what your problem is, but trust me on this, you're going the wrong way."

Her mouth opened and he could almost hear the soundless, inarticulate wail. She twisted back to the airlock door and pounded on the inside of it with her fists.

And then it hit him. "There's somebody else back there, isn't there."

She didn't answer him, still pounding. Gordon felt ice wrap around his stomach as he raised his wristcom. "Mobile Control, Gordon. Any update on that aftershock?"

There was a moment's silence. Then, slowly and suspiciously: "Gordon, what are you doing..?"

"I've got to go back into the dome, Scott. I think I might have missed someone."

"You did an infrared, so did Johnny. We didn't pick up anything."

"I think they were in the freezer. That's why we didn't get them."

"Them?" He could hear the mounting frustration in Scott's voice as he struggled to get back ahead of what was going on.

"It's theoretically possible," John remarked. "If you take into consideration –"

"John, I do not need –"

Gordon pushed through it all. "Johnny, I need a structural read on the dome."

"What am I looking for?" John refocused instantly in that slightly unnerving way of his.

Bless you. "Quick and dirty, Johnny. I just want to know if the walls are still standing."

A couple of seconds. Gordon could hear the faint clicking sounds of John's computer keyboard as he worked. Then: "Starboard modules seventy two percent flooded. Estimate water will reach breakthrough mass in a little over ten minutes. Structure still holding." John's professional voice softened very slightly. "And you'd better be out of there before that aftershock hits, or you'll live up to your nickname."

Squirt. Oh, yeah. "FAB, Thunderbird Five."

"Gordon," Scott began in his sternest commander's voice, "You are not going to risk…"

"Save it, Scott." Gordon cut him off. "If it was you down here, you'd do exactly the same thing, and you know it."

He took advantage of the sudden com silence to seal the inner airlock door, hoping it would protect the six people in stretchers from what might be about to happen. Then he stepped past the pale woman and opened the outer door.

The interior of the dome loomed in front of them, dark, claustrophobic and forbidding. Here and there the greenish tinge of a still working emergency light flickered, reflecting off the oily-sheened water that now covered the floor. Gordon grimaced – that water would be full of hazards: sharp objects, organic matter, debris. Not the ideal situation by a long shot, and he had no time to go back now for a wetsuit. He would have to trust in the advanced technology of his uniform and boots to protect him.

He carefully stepped down out of the airlock. The water was about eight inches deep…not too bad, considering. He turned back to the woman. "Come on. You've got to show me where to go."

She stepped into the water without hesitation, and began to wade forward with surprising speed. Somewhere off to the right, a long groaning sound made Gordon pause, shivering, bracing for a loud crack and a sudden deadly inrush of water.

But nothing happened. He took off after the woman, who was disappearing into a corridor on the far side of the room.

He had to hustle to keep up with her as she threaded her way through corridor after corridor, her pale skin just visible in the sporadic illumination. Ploughing through the icy water, Gordon hit a couple of underwater objects on the way: the first one just bruised his shin painfully, but the second almost threw him off his feet. He splashed down on one knee, but recovered as quickly as he could and kept pushing forward. If he lost her now he would never find her again…or his way out.

Sparks showered down from a shorted out electrical connection a little distance ahead as the woman at last turned into a doorway. Panting around the corner after her, Gordon saw the stainless steel counters of a kitchen gleaming dully in the half light. At the far end, past the stoves and the storage pantry, he could glimpse the partially open door of an industrial freezer.

She paused as he caught up to her, and he pushed past her to see two figures inside. One, sitting hunched in a survival blanket on the third step of an aluminum ladder used to reach the upper shelves of the freezer, was a little blonde girl of about three.

Gordon went straight to her, his heart thumping painfully against his ribs at the thought of what might have been, if he hadn't listened... "Hi, honey, I'm Gordon. I've come to get you out of here. Are you all right?"

She nodded, eyes big and serious in her pale face in a way that was disturbingly familiar. "Is my mommy all right? She doesn't answer me."

Gordon looked down, following her gaze. The second figure was sitting slumped in the water against the opposite rack, head turned away and down, long streamers of hair covering her face. She wasn't moving. Gordon went down on one knee, ignoring the icy shock of the water, and gently brushed the hair away from her face as he felt for a pulse in her neck.

Her skin was as cold as the freezer wall. A long thread of blood, congealed by the frigid temperature, traced a dark line from her ear to her collarbone. There was no pulse at all. Gordon tilted her head back gently, already knowing what he would find: dead eyes that stared past him unseeingly, both pupils blown by the injury that had killed her.

And then he looked, really looked, at her face, and his heart backed up screaming into his throat.

He shoved away hard, hyperventilating in panic – slipping on the freezer floor, finding traction again somehow and yelling in shock as his back hit the rack beside the little girl's ladder. "What's wrong?" she began to wail. "What's wrong with my mommy?"

Gordon grabbed her off the ladder and went for the doorway. The kitchen was empty now, as he already knew it would be, but he didn't want to look too hard around him just in case. He kept his head down and his eyes focused in front of him. The little girl, thankfully, subsided, seeming to feel his urgency – hanging on to him for dear life with her tiny frozen fingers.

"Mobile Control, Gordon."

"Mobile Control." Scott's voice was still a little tight.

"I need a steer back to the airlock. I've…lost my guide."

"You've…?"

"Scott, please." Gordon made a right turn out of the kitchen, wading as fast as he could through the deepening water. Down here a bit, there was a T-junction, he remembered, and he needed to turn…shit, was it left…?

Scott heard the crack in his younger brother's voice and the caretaker snapped into focus. "I've got you, Gordon. Twenty feet in front of you there's a T-junction. Turn left. Fifty feet, there's a corridor to your right. Take that for another forty feet…"

Somehow, amid sparks and failing emergency lighting and the dark menacing groans of the dying structure, Gordon burst into the final chamber at last. The water hadn't quite reached the bottom of the airlock door yet, but it was getting close. Gordon couldn't get the little girl to let him go, so he held on to her with one arm as he jumped inside, and sealed the door behind them with the other hand. Then it was hurry through the inner door, seal that one too, and make it across the research sub, trying not to notice the warming blanket that was still pooled on the floor beside the empty folded down seat.

Gordon took the little girl right through into Thunderbird Four, sealing the airlock and retracting the docking collar in record speed. He strapped her into one of the two emergency jump seats in the cramped cabin. Then he was swinging into the command seat and trying to control his still racing heart with the familiar routine of firing up Four's turbines and swinging her around in front of the research transfer sub. He keyed in the remote release code for the docking collar on the research sub's port side, watching his rear camera screens as the sub behind him rocked slightly, floating free in the water now.

"Mobile Control, Thunderbird Four. Firing tow collar now."

"FAB, Thunderbird Four. Let me know when you're underway."

Gordon got the inflatable tow collar on to the sub on the first try. As soon as the sensors told him he'd achieved enough pressure for the collar to be secure, he edged Four forward gently, testing the connection. At first nothing happened, then there was a faint jerk through the lines that told him the sub was in motion behind him. A glance at the screens confirmed that the tow was now live.

Then there was nothing left to do but make a course for the sky.

"Are you OK?" The little girl asked him, suddenly.

He glanced at her, startled. "Yes…of course. Are you?"

She nodded. Then she made a very serious face. "You know what this is?"

He shook his head. "No. What is it?"

"This is my brave face. Mommy told me I had to be really brave."

Gordon had to look away, his eyes stinging. "It's a very good really-brave face," he managed.

The com crackled. "Thunderbird Four, Mobile Control."

"Go ahead, Mobile Control."

There was a definitely wired edge to Scott's voice. "Gordon, we've just been told there was a three year old girl in the dome! Her mother is one of the researchers there…her father was visiting with their daughter. Please tell me you got her."

"What's your name?" Gordon mouthed at the girl.

"Jenny," she mouthed back.

"Is her name Jenny?" Gordon asked casually.

He could feel the tension ooze from Scott's overwound body. "You got her. Good job, Gordon. See you topside."

"FAB, Scott."

Gordon's heartbeat finally felt like it was showing signs of returning to normal. He stared ahead through the 180 degree armored glass wraparound of Thunderbird Four's forward shields, not knowing how to think yet about what had happened to him down there in that dome. He had even less idea of how to explain it to his brothers and father. But he knew that it would be a long time before he stopped seeing that pale face and those big, dark eyes.

He stole a glance at little Jenny. I'm sorry about your mother, kid.

"My mommy said I had to stay where I was and be good," Jenny said, almost as if she'd heard him; fixing eyes just like her mother's on his face. "She told me she'd rescue me."

"She did, Jenny," Gordon said, looking hastily forward again and controlling his voice with a sheer effort of will. "She did."