Red Thunder

by John Varley

  “Go on,” Sam said, and my mother nodded.

  “That’s just about it. We couldn’t get the bubbles to blow up, or release any energy at all, except with Jubal’s PFIs… and they’re the only ones on Earth, so far as we know. If someone else has one, they’re being as careful as we are, because there is absolutely no sign that anyone but Jubal is aware of this new branch of physics.

  “What I’m saying… in a long-winded way, sorry… I consider the engine part of this rocket to be as safe as any source of power can ever be. Foolproof. Lots safer than a VStar, which is pretty safe.

  “But when we light one of these off, we’ll get thrust that will be applied to… well, to a ship I’m far from confident about.

  “This will be our problem. Very simply, the quicker we get there and [231] get back, the happier I’ll be. Space is an incredibly hostile environment, and the longer we’re out there the better chance of something going wrong. Assuming we go at all, of course.”

  Again, a silence. Travis had his arms on his knees and was staring at the floor. Jubal was nodding quietly. Then Sam spoke.

  “A shorter trip is better, right? Safer?”

  “Shorter in time, yes. Up to a point. We could boost harder, but that would stress the ship more, and it wouldn’t be any fun for us, either.”

  “How long you figure on staying?”

  “One week in space, and about a week on the ground.”

  “Three weeks total, then?”

  “Oh, no, that’s one week total travel time, there and back.”

  Sam frowned and shook his head.

  “Don’t seem possible. Mars is so far away.”

  “We’ll be doing three million miles an hour, Sam.”

  “How can you go that fast?” Mom wanted to know. “I’d expect it’d kill you.”

  “We won’t even feel it. We won’t even be able to tell we’re moving.”

  Mom shook her head again, and stood up.

  “I’ll never understand it.” She grimaced, then tried to smile. “I’m sorry I’m acting like such a bitch, Manny, and all y’all. It just scares me. But… I’m really impressed at what y’all have got done. I almost felt convinced there, for a minute.”

  “You will be convinced, Betty,” Travis said solemnly.

  “Not likely. Anyways, I’d best be getting home. ’Night, folks.”

  Sam joined her, and Travis and Kelly and the others took them out the door. I could hear them talking on the way down the stairs. Myself, I didn’t want to face her just then, I might say something I’d regret.

  So I sat there for a while, looking at the model ship. It was weird, but it had its own beauty. I imagined her lifting off on a pillar of flame…

  NEXT THING I knew, Travis was shaking my shoulder. I’d fallen asleep in my chair.

  [232] “Nobody here now but us chickens,” Travis said. “Fill your coffee cups and join me at the table in five minutes. We’ve got some talking to do, but it won’t take long.”

  I made a very strong cup of espresso and fumbled my way back to the table.

  “Manny, you’re looking like a raccoon,” Travis said.

  “It’s just my Jimmy Smits eyes, Travis,” I said.

  “Jimmy Smits after a three-day bender, maybe. How much sleep are you getting?”

  “Travis, I haven’t got more than six hours of sleep a night since I was ten.”

  “Four hours? Three?”

  Two, the previous night. Never more than four the last two weeks.

  I knew it was a problem, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Even with Eve helping out, Mom and Maria couldn’t get everything done every day without my help. We were in the middle of another financial emergency. Business was just enough to make too much work without being enough to keep us out of the red. But I didn’t see any reason to bother Travis with all that.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I know how to fix it.” The others found their way to the table and sat down.

  “Good news first,” he began. “First-rate presentation. If I was an investor, I might actually put some money into this venture. Not a lot of money, you understand. Because I did notice some weak spots, and some spots you got through maybe a little quicker than you should have. But all in all, great.

  “Now the bad news. You’re not going to be able to do it. Not as things stand. We can shut it down now… or we can make some changes.”

  We all looked at each other. I honestly hadn’t expected that. I thought we were going to get the green light.

  “What kind of changes?” Dak asked suspiciously.

  “Bring in some help. Help from the family.”

  “The Broussard family?”

  “Exactly…” He stopped, and lowered his head, then looked up again.

  [233] “Sorry. There was one item of business I meant to cover first. Back up a minute. We’ve got to figure out who’s in charge here.”

  “Who’s in…” Alicia looked around at us. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “So far, I figure we’re a limited democracy. Limited, because I told you I have to make the final go, no-go decision… aided by Jubal, who has the only vote that counts about that. And I did set that one condition, that your parents had to be aware of what we’re doing. Sorry, Kelly.”

  Kelly shrugged. She wasn’t likely to ever join Travis’s fan club, but over the last weeks she seemed to have resigned herself to not going. She seemed to be putting herself into the work wholeheartedly. At least, if this was how hard she worked when she was halfhearted, then wholehearted would be a wonder to see.

  “I nominate myself to be captain of this boat. That means, I make the final decisions on how the ship is made and I’m in charge of the mission from Earth liftoff to Earth landing, with the powers of a ship’s captain as established in space law.”

  “Second the nomination,” Alicia said.

  “All in favor…” I said, and everybody said, “Aye.”

  “Thank you,” Travis said. “It probably sounds silly to you, but it’s like the contract we signed. It has to be written down. Some situations we could get into, I’d need to expect… to count on… total, unquestioning obedience, just like a Navy ship of the line. Get your dad to tell you how that works, Dak, and fill the others in.”

  “Will do, Captain Broussard.”

  This time Travis didn’t correct us, as he had done when we called him Colonel. I realized he was dead serious, and I figured he was probably right.

  “Here on the ground I’m not a dictator, okay? You can question orders, refuse orders, even jump ship entirely, fold up your tent and go home if you don’t like the way I’m doing things. But after launch, if I issue orders I will expect them to be obeyed.”

  Nobody objected.

  “Fine. Next, I nominate Kelly to be project manager.”

  [234] “Thanks, Travis,” Kelly said, with a look that could melt through steel.

  “She will be in control of building the ship. She will coordinate everything, she’ll have to be familiar with all the hundreds of tasks this project entails.”

  “I second the nomination,” I said. There was a chorus of ayes again.

  “Which is pretty much what I’ve been doing”-she held up her hand to silence Travis-“and yes, I agree it needed to be formalized. So I accept. And I have a suggestion to make.” She turned to Alicia.

  “You’ve done a great job on the environment systems. But now I’d like you to turn your work over to Manny and Dak. I want you to go full-time on the medical stuff we discussed a few days ago. By launch time, I want you to be qualified as an EMT. You’ll be the medical officer.”

  “Great idea,” Travis said.

  “Well… okay,” Alicia said. She seemed a little conflicted, worried that Kelly was pushing her out of work she wasn’t qualified for, but relieved at the same time to be back at work she could understand. She already had some training as a nurse, and she was a natural for it.

  “Anything else?” Kelly asked, and I realized she
had taken over the meeting. Which was exactly what Travis had wanted and expected.

  “Yeah,” Dak said. “I got a question for Trav… sorry, for the captain.”

  “Don’t worry about the captain stuff till we’re aboard,” Travis said.

  “Whatever. I hope this isn’t out of line, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to… anyway, you say you’re worried the Ares Seven will blow up… and your ex-wife is aboard. I figure I’d be pushing this thing a little harder, maybe be willing to take some chances… you know what I’m saying?” Dak looked embarrassed to have brought it up. But it had bothered all of us.

  “No problem, Dak, you’ve got every right to ask about that.” He took a deep breath. “It was a messy divorce, friends. I don’t love her anymore, don’t even like her very much. We’d probably have broken up anyway, even without the drinking… but it was the drinking did it. [235] That’s why I barely have any visitation rights with the girls. And the judge was right. I was the party at fault, even though she is a bitch.

  “And she is still the mother of my daughters, and I want her to stay alive if for no other reason than that. Her death would hurt them. For that matter, I want them all to stay alive and healthy… but we can’t do it by blasting off in a home-built spaceship and then die freezing when it falls apart.

  “The morals of rescuing people are hard to define precisely. You hear about it, three or four people drowning, trying to save one guy who may already be dead. Helicopters crashing trying to pull people off the roofs of burning buildings. If I’m going down a cliff face to rescue a stranded mountain climber, I have the right, even the obligation, to see that my rope is sound. Do you see what I’m saying?” Dak nodded, looking embarrassed.

  “The odds of rescuing the Ares Seven if a disaster does happen… the odds are terrible.” I think we were all surprised, though I had wondered about it. “Most accidents I can envision would kill them all, instantly. But say there are survivors and they’re just drifting, helplessly, with no rocket to power them… just finding them is highly problematic. You can’t really imagine how vast space is, even here in the cozy little solar system. Friends, what we’d all better do is cross our fingers and hope Jubal is wrong, because our chances of rescuing them are small.”

  We all thought that one over. None of us liked the sound of it.

  “So this idea of being there to get them out of a jam…” I said, and didn’t know how to finished the sentence. Travis did it for me.

  “… is the only reason I’m still in this at all, and the only reason I will push as hard as any of you, maybe twice as hard, to get this thing built and on its way. I want them to live, so badly that I’m buying into what is probably the most cockamamie idea since Queen Isabella hocked the crown jewels.”

  “Sorry, Travis,” Dak said.

  “Don’t be sorry. When in doubt, ask. Any more questions?”

  “I’ve got one,” I said. “Dak and I are stumped when it comes to space suits.” I told him my notion that unless we stood on the Martian [236] surface, our trip would be suspect. He grinned slowly, and then slapped me on the shoulder.

  “You’re a worrier, Manny, aren’t you? Well, the funny thing is, I think you may have a point there. But I got an order for you. Stop worrying. About the suits anyway. I’m putting myself in charge of suits from this moment, and you are not to think of it again until you see them. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Worrier? Well, I guess so. My life thus far had certainly prepared me to be a world-class worrier.

  “All right, boys and girls, class dismissed. Go home, get some sleep, I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.

  “And you know what? Maybe we’ve got a chance of going to Mars!”

  22

  * * *

  I HAD THOUGHT we were operating in high gear the two weeks Travis was gone. Turns out I didn’t even know what high gear was.

  Early the next day Travis sent me and Kelly out to the airport to meet a plane full of Broussards. We went to the general aviation terminal, got there just as a Gulf stream private jet was landing. First out was Caleb Broussard, followed by Grace and Billy. Then we were introduced to Exaltation “Salty” Broussard. He was a small, quiet man, almost completely bald, and didn’t look anything like Jubal and Caleb.

  Last out of the plane was Gloria Patri “Patty” Broussard-Wilson, an attractive blonde in her late thirties who could have been Caleb’s fraternal twin. She was the pilot of the plane. It belonged to her employer and she had borrowed it for a few days, to pick up Caleb and Grace in Fort Myers and Salty in Huntsville, Alabama, so they could all drop in and visit brother Jubal and cousin Travis. She let me and Kelly go aboard and look around while the baggage was being unloaded. There was a bar, a full-service media center, and all the way in back, a bedroom. This is the way to travel, I decided.

  Kelly… well, Kelly had been riding in a plane much like this for as long as she could remember. Her father and a few other businessmen [238] leased one together, the price tag for one of these babies being a bit steep even for a Mercedes dealer.

  I HAD NEEDED a rest, or at least some kind of break, and the trip back to the Blast-Off, while you couldn’t say it was restful, was certainly refreshing. These people talked a lot, loudly, and laughed a lot, just as loudly. They hadn’t seen each other in a year in one case, and three years in the other. There was a certain amount of catching up to do, though they talked and e-mailed frequently. Patty’s stories of bush piloting in Alaska and Africa had me anxious to hear more, and I was sorry to hear she wouldn’t be staying on beyond the next day.

  I felt enveloped and warmed by a feeling of family I’d longed for all my life. An extended family, something the racism of all my grandparents had deprived me of. By the time we arrived I was ready to change my name to Broussard… but eventually realized I didn’t have to, as I’d already been adopted into this big, messy, ornery clan.

  FOR THE FIRST few minutes things were a little chilly when we arrived at the Blast-Off. Caleb, Salty, Grace, and Patty immediately picked up on the hostility between Mom and Travis. You would have had to be in a coma to miss it. But between Aunt Maria’s determined efforts and the magic of the Broussards, it was soon put away. Grace insinuated herself into Maria’s kitchen without making Maria feel crowded, quite an achievement, and soon it was clear we were about to be treated to a Battle of the Brunches, Cajun versus Cubano. The only sure winner in a contest like that was our pepper-blasted taste buds, and the only sure loser was our waistlines.

  We pulled all the outdoor tables together around the pool, and when that whole bunch sat down around them it was a toss-up, for me, as to whether I’d rather go to Mars or just stay right there, soaking up the love.

  “Will somebody say grace?” Jubal asked.

  “Grace,” I said.

  [239] “What?” Grace asked, and first the Broussards, then the rest of us, broke up. Then Jubal offered up the prayer-”Please bless dis fam’ly, O Lord!”-and we dug in.

  Soon it became clear to me that the new arrivals were aware of the nature of the Red Thunder project. I wasn’t worried about that. It was clear to me that “family” meant as much to these people as it did in the Mafia. Being closemouthed was deep in their genes, they would never reveal anything important to any outsider.

  Without ever asking a question, I learned a lot about them from the constant happy chatter. I learned, for instance, that Salty was an electrician. And I learned that, among many other skills, Caleb was a welder, that he plied that trade on offshore oil rigs when his family’s myriad other enterprises weren’t bringing in enough cash.

  Somehow, I doubted this was a coincidence.

  “So,” I said to Caleb at one point, “did Travis hire you to do welding on… the project?” He laughed, finished a mouthful of boudin sausage.

  “Travis couldn’t ’ford me, Manny. I get union scale, and triple time on Sundays.” I must have looked confused. “But that’s when I hire out. I got me my own company, too,
and I can charge as much or as little as I like, since I’m the boss.”

  Kelly had been listening.

  “Caleb, Travis didn’t tell me he’d offered-”

  “He’s not buttin’ into your department, Kelly. We done our own deal, I’ll get my money outta Travis and Jubal’s share. Keep it off the books, that way, help keep the expenses down under one mill.”

  Kelly didn’t look entirely convinced, but she let it go. It turned out Salty had the same arrangement. By bringing in a professional electrician, I thought maybe Travis was horning in on my department. I told Dak about it, and we drew ourselves up in righteous indignation… for two seconds, purely for form’s sake. I was never so delighted to see someone in my life, and Dak felt the same way. We were in way over our heads, trying to design a system to meet all the electrical needs of Red Thunder.

  The brunch meeting went well. I saw Caleb talking shop with Sam [240] Sinclair, and Salty sought out me and Dak and questioned us about the work we’d done so far, mapping out the electrical system. I gradually realized he was a lot more than an electrician, he was an electrical engineer, with a degree from LSU. And Dak and I were about to become apprentice electricians, in a big hurry.

  The only worry was when I saw Travis take my mother to the other end of the parking lot. They talked for a long time, mostly with my mother shaking her head in that dogged way she can do better than anyone else. You don’t have a chance, Travis, I thought. No matter what you’re trying to sell her.

  It turned out he was selling her some free help… and he sold it, which was a first in my memory. Not long after that she pulled me aside.

  “Grace and Billy are moving in for the duration,” she said, not making eye contact with me. What was she worrying about, that I’d think less of her for accepting help? “It was either that, or pack it in. Shut the doors and let the sheriff put all the furniture out on the street. I almost wish I’d done that, too.”