by John Varley
No such luck. They dug up the story of how he had been killed, gut-shot during a drug deal gone wrong. A reporter brought it up during an interview with my mother, and it looked like they’d sandbagged her, that question coming out of left field, because she looked stunned… then shoved the offending journalist out the front door.
“Oh, Betty,” Travis moaned when he saw it. “Never attack a reporter, no matter how richly he may deserve it.”
“Mom and her temper,” I said, feeling all flushed and sweaty. Kelly took my hand and squeezed it… then rolled an eleven and landed on Dak’s New York Avenue property, with a hotel. For once, Dak didn’t whoop as he raked in his money.
“Let’s lighten up, friends,” Travis said. “We all knew this was going to happen. And not a one of you has done anything to be ashamed of. So don’t be ashamed of the dark side of your families, okay? All families [320] have dark sides. Believe me, when we get back, all will be forgiven and forgotten.”
It wasn’t all rotten. Lots of the sidebar stories made us laugh.
In the days after the launch, they must have interviewed every student and teacher in every school any of us ever went to. Our peers were behind us, 1,000 percent. It started getting embarrassing, hearing them all say how smart we were, how nice we were, how we were always ready to help out anyone who needed help, and how good a friend we had been, to a lot of people who we barely remembered at all. It was like a berserko school shooting-”He always did seem a little weird, he had no friends, hell yes, we all figured he’d shoot up the school one day!”-only in reverse.
We all cheered when they got around to interviewing 2Loose. The dude was good. He instinctively knew how to manage the news, and he was perfectly willing to spend all day in front of a blowup of his artwork on Red Thunder, explaining it to all the viewing audience. And he conducted interviews only in his studio, where people could get a load of all his other work… which was for sale.
BUT THERE WAS more news than just the tabloid-style fluff. It reminded us that what we were up to here had serious consequences, was a lot more than just a jolly jaunt to another planet.
Agents Dallas and Lubbock showed up at the Blast-Off about four hours after we lifted off, along with four or five other agents and a few local cops. The cops didn’t look too happy, I felt they were strongly on our side. They were all admitted into the living room, which was already crowded with our friends… and a small, quiet man with a briefcase who had been sitting by himself in some of the previous shots. What followed might have been funny if we all didn’t have such a stake in the outcome.
The agents clearly didn’t like the presence of the television cameras, and liked it even less when the man in the suit identified himself as George Whipple, from our law firm, representing the Broussards, Garcias, and Sinclairs.
[321] “We’d like you to answer a few questions for us,” Agent Dallas or Lubbock said.
“Sure,” Mom said.
“That is… down at headquarters,” Dallas or Lubbock said.
“Are my clients under arrest?” Whipple asked.
“Er… no, but it might be easier if-”
“My clients will answer any questions you have right here,” Whipple said. Right here, in front of two billion people. “If you arrest them, I will of course wish to accompany them. I advise them to answer no questions unless I am present.”
The incident was basically over right there, though Dallas or Lubbock didn’t give up immediately. But what were they going to do? Handcuff two men and three women and drag them away… charged with what? They couldn’t mention any “national security” baloney. We’d stolen nothing, revealed no secrets to any foreign power. Whipple told us that he had found us in violation of only three laws. One, we had operated an experimental aircraft not registered with the FAA. Two, we had taken off without clearance from Daytona airport or anyone else. And three, we had set off fireworks without a permit. The people at the Blast-Off could only be charged with conspiracy to commit those crimes, “as shaky a legal house of cards as I’ve ever seen,” Whipple said. “If I can’t get all of you off for going to Mars and becoming national heroes, I’ll never practice law again.”
The agents and cops left the motel fifteen minutes after they arrived. The cops were grinning. Lubbock and Dallas were posted to the FBI office in Butte, Montana.
There was no comic element to the other big story, though. We had known China would not be happy to be beaten in the race to Mars. They had invested too much money and national prestige. Their loss of face would be gigantic, if we were to beat them there.
So the official line in China was, It’s a hoax.
We watched the head of the Chinese space program go on television to denounce the whole story. He sounded angry, though I’ll admit that people speaking Chinese or Japanese always sound a little pissed off to me, the way they spit out their words.
[322] “That’s our biggest problem right now,” Travis told us. “We have to prove to the world, even to the Chinese, that we’re not sitting in a television studio in Washington, making all this up.”
“How we going to do that?” Dak asked.
“I’ve got a few ideas,” Travis said, with a grin.
The grin died when we saw the rally of one million angry Chinese in Tien-an-men Square, burning American flags. A good many of those people marched to the American embassy and began throwing stones and firebombs. A Marine guard was killed before the Chinese Army pushed the crowd back. I thought Travis would climb through the screen and start killing rioters himself when that news came in, and we were all ready to go with him.
After that we turned the television off for a while.
IT HAD BEEN hard for me to imagine sleeping while hurtling through space at an insane speed. I hadn’t counted on just how boring boosting through deep space at a constant one gee could be. It was exactly like the five-day drill, except then Travis was throwing emergencies at us.
Dak whipped us all at Monopoly, and nobody felt like starting another game. He was on air watch at the time, and when his watch ended it would be Alicia’s turn.
Kelly yawned and got up from the table.
‘Time to hit the sack, don’t you think, Manny?”
“Go on, y’all,” Alicia said, with a wink.
I followed Kelly down to our stateroom, and once inside she closed and bolted the door and leaned back against it.
“You’ve heard of the Mile High Club?” she asked.
“Everybody’s heard of the Mile High Club.”
“Well, my darling, we are about to join the Million Mile High Club. We may even be the first members.” She joined me on the bed.
First members? Probably not, though nobody on the Heavenly Harmony or the Ares Seven would have copped to it. Both China and my beloved home country managed the news too strictly for that.
Even if we weren’t the first, it was a night to remember. I think I [323] got an hour of sleep, and then Alicia was knocking on our door because I was on air watch.
So a trip to Mars doesn’t have to be boring.
ABOUT TWO HOURS from turnaround the whole ship rang like a giant bell. I was instantly on my feet, and we all heard the alarm sounding and Kelly’s recorded voice.
“Pressure loss from Module One. Pressure loss in Module One. This is not a drill. This is not a drill.”
I was the first to the crossroads deck, and I leaned in and pushed the inner air-lock door shut, and by the time I’d done that Kelly was there to help me into my short-term survival suit, as we had drilled. I had it on in seconds, and stepped into the lock. Kelly shut it behind me, and I heard her slap the metal to tell me it had been secured.
The pressure gauge in the lock was reading normal, and so was the one for the module… wait a moment, I saw it go down just a hair. It was enough that the inner door could not be opened unless I hit the emergency override switch, there in the lock.
Procedure was to activate my suit if the pressure was 10 psi or less. It was still a
long way from that, and if it did begin to fall rapidly, if whatever puncture had been made suddenly grew, I could activate the suit in two seconds flat. So I overrode, and opened the inner hatch. I swung out onto the ladder and took two of the round patches stored there and a smoke generator, which I broke to activate, then held still to see which way the smoke drifted. It went up, so I followed the smoke up the ladder.
At the very top of the module the air was swirling a lot more violently than it had midship. But the pressure was still good, as the automated air system released more air to make up for what was being lost, something it would continue to do unless the losses reached a much higher level. I could see the smoke being sucked away into a tiny hole. Sprayed-on insulation had exploded inward like glass hit by a BB.
“We hit something,” I said over the radio. “There’s a breach, smaller than a BB. You think we hit a BB?”
[324] “If we hit something that big, at this speed,” Travis said, “it would have torn us apart. A speck of dust, or a very small grain of sand. Don’t put the patch on until-”
“I’ve got the situation in hand, Travis. Sorry, I meant Captain.”
“You’re doing fine, Manny.”
The thing cooled fast. I didn’t risk touching it, but I put a patch over it and it held. The smoke stopped swirling. When I was sure it was securely in place I went back down the ladder, then up again with a silicone sealer gun, and caulked around the edge of the patch. Once, twice, three times for good measure. Vacuum did not suck the thick, gooey stuff in around the edges of the patch. Mission accomplished.
“Let’s save this story until we get back,” I suggested when I’d climbed back into the central module and as Kelly was helping me remove and fold the suit.
“Suits me,” Travis said. “Kelly, make a note, would you? When we’re building Red Thunder Two, we add an extra layer of steel outside the nose of the ship, with a foot or so of space between it and the hull. Then something like this hits us, all its energy will be soaked up by the shield.”
“Red Thunder Two?” Kelly asked. Travis grinned.
“Sure. You didn’t think this trip was going to be the end of it, did you?”
“Tell the truth, I hadn’t thought that far ahead at all.”
To say that Dak and I were eagerly looking forward to turnaround would be quite an understatement. What’s the biggest attraction about space travel? When you think about it, much of a life in space has to do with restrictions, on just about everything. Your living space is more constricted than a submarine.
The one area where you are freer than you are on Earth is your freedom from gravity. Free fall. Weightlessness. Flying like a bird, bouncing around like a rubber ball. You can’t possibly read about it, or see it, without wishing you could be that free.
Ironically, Red Thunder took that away. Not that I’m complaining. Months and months of weightlessness, or three days of one-gee acceleration and deceleration? I think anybody would opt for the three days.
[325] But then there was turnover.
It was possible to turn the ship without turning off the drive, but it had never really been done before, and Travis, like all good pilots, was a staunch conservative. He would turn off the drive before turning around, and he would do it slowly, taking between ten and fifteen minutes. So for that amount of time, we would get to have fun in free fall.
We spent the last hour before turnaround tidying up the ship, since anything that wasn’t tied down would immediately float when the drive went off. That could really be annoying since, according to Travis, “It is axiomatic that, in weightlessness, everything you will soon need will seek out and find the absolute worst hiding place possible, sure as bread falls butter side down.”
The last thing that happened before turnaround was that Travis handed out plastic garbage bags. We laughed, and he just gave us a small smile.
Two minutes after engine shutdown, I was sick as a dog.
My only consolation was that Dak was blowing chunks, too. We each filled our plastic bags, and asked miserably for another. Ten minutes into turnaround I was cursing Travis, Can’t you get this over with faster? By then I was into the stage where you’ve brought up everything you have, and still can’t stop. The dry heaves.
How could it possibly be worse? Oh, please. The thing that made it infinitely worse was… Alicia and Kelly were having the time of their lives.
They loved free fall. They bounced off the walls, did midair aerobatics that would have made the Red Baron proud. From time to time they stopped laughing enough to apologize… and then the ridiculousness of the situation hit them again. I doubted I’d ever forgive them.
“Almost there, guys,” Travis called from above us. “Don’t get discouraged. Over fifty percent of people experience nausea on their first flight.”
“Did you get sick?” Dak asked. I said nothing. I was at the point where simply hearing the word “nausea” was enough to send me into a fresh fit of barfing.
“Well, no. Luck of the draw, I guess. Okay. Everybody strapped in? [326] Now, look at the space over your heads. If there’s anything floating in that space, it’s gonna come crashing down on you in about ten seconds. Are you all clear?”
We reported we were clear. Travis eased the throttles up… and I felt myself settling down into the foam of my acceleration chair. There was a g-meter in my line of sight, just a needle attached to a spring, and I watched it creep toward that magic number of one gee…
And the whole ship shuddered, there was a huge thump! from somewhere aft, and Travis eased up on the throttles so fast we all would have been thrown from our couches if we hadn’t been held in place with lap belts.
Instantly I was too scared to be sick. We all looked around, knuckles pale as we gripped the air rests.
“No alarm,” Dak whispered. He was right. No bells clanged, no recording of Kelly told us This is not a drill! How could that be?
“No pressure breach,” I said, scanning my boards for an indication of the problem. All my lights were green. So were everybody else’s… then Dak noticed his signal-strength indicators for the various channels he had been picking up from Earth. All the meters were zeroed.
“The antenna,” Alicia guessed.
“We lost the antenna,” Travis called out from above us. “Has to be. I’m unbuckling now, take a look… yes, it’s gone.”
“What did it hit?” I asked.
“It hit a strut,” Travis said. “Manny, I just flipped a coin and you’re it. Come to the bridge, you are acting pilot for a while.”
I unbuckled, my queasiness returning, and floated up to the bridge. Travis was out of his command chair, leaning close to a side window for a look at the strut.
“I don’t see any damage from up here,” he said, “but I’ll have to go out and take a look.” He lowered his voice, without actually whispering. “If something happens to me, you are in charge. What will you do?”
Throw up, crap in my pants, and have a nervous breakdown, not necessarily in that order, I thought. But I said, “Kill our velocity.”
“That’s locked into the computer,” he said. “Just do what we’d [327] already planned to do. That will bring you to a stop about a hundred thousand miles from Mars.”
“Plot a course back to Earth,” I said.
“Never hurry,” Travis said. “Take your time. You’ll have plenty of time. The tutorials for the navigation program are good. But before you do that, while your speed is low, send somebody out, Kelly or Alicia, to check the strut if I haven’t been able to get a report back to you. You and Dak, you aren’t rated for free-falling suit work until you’ve put in eight hours weightless without throwing up. Sorry, that’s the way it has to be. You can not throw up in a suit. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Go on.”
“Reduce speed to a few hundred miles per hour, relative to the Earth… enter the atmosphere tail first, engines firing… and burn up in the atmosphere, most likely.”
“A neg
ative attitude’s not going to help you. If Kelly or Alicia reports the strut is damaged, land in the ocean. She should float.”
“Blow the emergency hatch, deploy the rubber raft, and get the hell out of here,” I said. The emergency hatch was the top of Module One. It was held on with explosive bolts. A standard airline inflatable raft would deploy automatically when the bolts were blown, and it would be up to us to abandon the sinking ship.
“You might consider a water landing even if the strut’s okay, if you don’t have confidence about easing her down on land.”
“I don’t have that confidence.”
“Do what you have to do. Anyway, this is all just standard procedure, this briefing, you know that. I’ll be back here in twenty minutes.” He grinned.
Alicia poked her head through the hatch.
“Travis, we’ve been talking, we figure me or Kelly ought to go out and check the strut. You’re the captain, you shouldn’t leave the ship.”
Travis sighed.
“There’s wisdom in what you say. But the suits and the lock haven’t been tested, and as captain I won’t send any of you out in them at this [328] point. I have more suit time than the rest of you put together. End of discussion.”
Alicia looked like she was going to say something else, but remembered what she had agreed to. Dak joined her, and he had a suspicious look.
“How do you flip a coin in free fall. Captain?”
Travis took a quarter from his pocket and set it spinning in the air. We all watched it for a moment, then Travis clapped his hands together, trapping the coin. He moved his hands apart and the coin floated there, the “heads” side facing him.
I WATCHED ON a TV screen as Dak and Alicia helped Travis into his suit. I was glad we’d practiced it. When we began it had taken us the better part of an hour to get into one. After a lot of drilling, we could do it in ten minutes, with another five for systems check. Travis did even better, naturally. Kelly joined me on the bridge and we watched through more cameras as Travis entered the lock and cycled it. I saw the pressure gauge drop to zero, then the door opened.