Red Thunder (19 page)

"There's a side to this thing you may not have thought of. Lots of
power wrapped up in these." He took a silver bubble from his pocket and
held it carefully up to the light. "Free energy. Don't look for
that
in any physics book. Energy is paid for,
always.
Only not here. Jubal's Squeezer works without using any energy I can
detect. You saw how much power was unleashed when I... stupidly...
turned one of them off."

"But that wasn't power," Kelly said. "That was just a vacuum. Wasn't it?"

"It takes power to
make
a vacuum," I told her.

"That's pretty much it," Travis agreed. "Reverse it, Kelly. You
know
it takes power to compress air into one of the bubbles, because you
hear the explosion when the bubble goes away. Same with the vacuum,
only in reverse."

"I don't
know
anything much at
all
about this," Kelly said, with a smile. "I think I follow you, though."

"Me, too," Alicia confirmed.

"So..." Travis said, and scowled. "I suppose there are things we
could make to take advantage of the bubbles' perfect reflectivity. I
can think of a few. And as for its durability, everlasting ball
bearings would be just the beginning.

"But it just stands to reason that the application most people will be most interested in is the ability to make a big bang. A
real
big bang."

"A really,
really
big bang," Dak said, and I knew he'd been thinking pretty much like I had, though we'd never talked about it.

"Lots of money in big, big bangs," Travis said. "And I'm not talking about fireworks, sorry, Jubal."

"No problem, Travis," Jubal said, still studying his shoes.

"The people who like big bangs the most are the generals, of course.
Put a small one of these in a cartridge, turn off the bubble, you got a
free bullet. Put one in a steel pineapple, you got a free grenade. Make
a real big one full of vacuum, you could probably implode a building.
Jubal, how big can these things get?"

He looked up again, briefly, and shrugged.

"Don' know, me. Maybe not too much bigger than you seen."

"That would be a relief," Travis said. "But I'm not going to put it
in the bank just yet. Thing is, you and me all know that some of the
people who like big bangs are not very nice people at all. Think about
a terrorist who gets his hand on a Squeezer. Free bombs, an unlimited
supply.

"There are people who would do anything to get this thing. Anything.
Our own government is only one of them. Word of this gets out, we'd be
lucky if all that happened was they took it away from us."

Everyone was silent, thinking that one over.

"For now, can I get your word you won't talk about this?"

He looked at us one by one, and we all nodded. Kelly squeezed my hand. I'd never seen her looking so serious.

Travis looked relieved... a little. I could pretty much read his mind:
How far can I trust these flaky kids?
Well, short of torture, he could trust me all the way, and I was pretty sure of the others, too.

Travis scowled.

"I hate this thing. I really hate it. If only there was a way to
release its energy slowly. Control the release. We could be solving the
world's energy problem."

"I can do dat t'ing," Jubal said. For a moment Travis looked like he
was about to go on with what he was saying, then he did a double-take
right out of Laurel and Hardy.

"Say again, Jubal?"

"I can maybe fix dat t'ing, do what you say. Dribble it out, maybe."

"Maybe? You haven't actually tried to..."

"No,
mon cher.
Travis, why don' you tell me 'bout de folks goin' to Mars, huh?"

Travis got a bad case of conversational whiplash over that one.
Mars?

"You never asked, Jubal. And I didn't know you'd be interested."

"I'm innersted, me. Travis, de fus' folks on Mars, dey should be Americans."

"Yeah, I wish it was going to be Americans, too. But it's too late."

"Not too late. No, suh! Not too late at all. I'm goin' to Mars, yes,
I am, and I beat de Chinese, too. Even if I hafta make my own
spaceship, me."

Travis stared at his cousin, then drained his long-neck bottle of Dixie beer.

THE BUILDING KELLY wanted to show us was over on
Turnbull Bay, across from the New Smyrna Beach airport, one of a dozen
similar structures built in marshy ground as part of an industrial park
that never quite panned out. Only three or four of the buildings were
currently occupied.

It was made of corrugated metal lapped over a steel framework. There
were streaks of rust all over the sides and tall weeds growing in
cracked concrete and along a railroad siding that was one of the chief
reasons we were looking at the building. A sign along the roof ridge
read: THE R. W. WHITE COMPANY.

Kelly parked in front of a loading dock with three truck bays, all closed and locked. Dak and Alicia pulled up in
Blue Thunder
as we were getting out.

We all stood there for a while, taking it in. It was noon on a hot,
muggy day, five months away from M-day, the day the Chinese were going
to land on Mars.

"Railroad siding goes right into the building, that's good," Dak said.

Kelly took a big ring of keys out of her purse and led us to a small
door scaled for people, not boxcars. The third key she tried turned out
to be the right one.

It was cooler inside, which surprised me. The concrete floor was
part of it, but I saw that overhead there were big fans that kept the
air moving.

"I left the fans on after I saw the place yesterday," Kelly said.
"It was like an oven in here without them." She turned to an electrical
panel and flipped six rows of switches, one row at a time. Big overhead
lights came on in sequence and we could see the extent of the space
inside.

"We don't need no more than a third of this space," Dak said.

"Dak, if you think there's another place within fifty miles of—"

"Shush, babe, I ain't complaining. Better too much than not enough."

"It was a hell of a list you gave me." She began ticking off points
on her fingers. "Railroad spur. High ceiling—but you never said
how
high. On the water. Heavy lifting capability—and again, you
didn't say how heavy. That traveling crane up there is rated for five
hundred tons."

"More than enough, more than enough, Kelly," Dak said.

Kelly got out her laser range finder—a real good thing to take
along if you're hunting for an empty factory, lots better than climbing
to the ceiling and dropping a string. She pointed it at the roof, then
glanced at the readout.

"One hundred twenty feet," she said. "Is that enough?"

"It'll have to be," I told her. "We'll build it with that in mind."

Our voices echoed in the big empty space.

The building consisted of two distinct areas. The part where we were
was 120 feet high, as Kelly had just determined, maybe a hundred feet
wide, and two hundred feet deep. Running on heavy rails overhead was a
big traveling crane that could cover that entire area.

The rest of the building was only about twenty feet high. It
accounted for two-thirds of the floor space. In a far corner of this
lower area was standing water. Above it were rust streaks. Kelly saw
where I was looking.

"That leak would be easy to patch," she said.

"I don't think we'll really need to," I said.

We followed her to the big doors. She slapped an outsized button and
the big doors began to slide back, making warning beeps like a bus
backing up. The sun streamed in and we all squinted but Kelly, who was
wearing her sunglasses.

Outside was a wooden wharf. An old guy sat on the pier and dangled a
line down around the pilings. He looked at us, then went back to
fishing. I could smell creosote, and warm brackish water, and fish.

"The rails for the crane run right out to the end of the wharf,"
Kelly pointed out. "You said something about a barge. You can get a
barge right up under the crane here."

"That'll make loading it a lot easier," Dak said.

Kelly pointed to the east, then north.

"Turnbull Bay here connects with Strickland Bay. Then under the
bridge on U.S. 1 and you're in the Ponce de Leon Cut, turn left, and a
mile later you're in the open ocean."

"Right there by the Coast Guard station?" I asked.

"That's it."

"Port," Dak said.

"What's that?"

"You don't make a left turn in a boat. You steer to port."

"Oh, the great admiral speaks," Kelly muttered. She was not in a great mood.

"How high is the highway bridge?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"We'll measure it later."

"Wait a minute," Alicia said. "Strickland Bay? As in Strickland Mercedes? As in... Kelly Strickland?"

"My family has lived in the area a long time," Kelly said. Myself, I hadn't even known that wide stretch of shallow water
had
a name.

"Mine, too," Dak said. "Only we been fixin' the cars your daddy been selling."

"Has somebody got a problem with this?" Kelly asked, angrily. She
looked at each of us. Nobody said anything. She sighed and shook her
head.

"We got lucky here, people," she said. "I looked at seventeen places that were
almost
right, but then one thing or another didn't work. No heavy lifting, no rail spur, crowded neighborhood, or
way
too expensive."

"How much for this?" Alicia asked. Kelly named a figure that made me a little short of breath.

"So, doing the math," I said, "we're looking at six months at that rate, which—"

"Did I say month? That figure was per week."

I needed a place to sit down. Talking about that much money makes me queasy.

"I can find you a dozen places much cheaper... but without the
crane. Here's the deal, folks. This place is in a legal limbo at the
moment. The original developer went broke. There are lawsuits working
their way through the courts. They can only rent month to month, which
suits us down to the ground. There's a group of investors who want to
tear all this sh— ...this stuff down and build a golf course."

"Just what Florida needs," Dak said. "Another golf course."

"How'd you find it?" Alicia asked. Kelly gave us a small smile.

"In my father's files. He's the man behind the investors. He may or
may not own this building, depending on how a judge rules on whether it
was all done legally."

"I thought your daddy sold cars," Dak said.

"He's thinking of getting involved more in land speculation."

"Just what Florida needs," I said. "Another land developer." Kelly
punched my arm, playfully, but with an edge to it this time. She really
was feeling bad.

"So what do you say? Should I put down a deposit?"

"We'll run it by Travis this evening," I said.

"Travis. Right," she said, bitterly.

No love currently lost between Kelly and Travis. And to think, no
more than a week ago we were just like one big happy family....

NOTHING FURTHER WAS said the night of Travis's return
about Jubal's plan to build him his own spaceship, him. Travis helped
him bundle up his belongings, which now included a nice selection of
original shell people by Aunt Maria. We stood together and waved
good-bye as Travis drove out of the parking lot.

"I'm going to miss that Jubal," Mom said.

Little did she know how soon she would change her mind about that.

A FEW DAYS went by. After all the togetherness while
Jubal was staying with us, we four who were in on the big secret stayed
apart, maybe taking a breather from each other. I only spoke to Kelly
twice in that time, over the phone.

On the fourth day Travis called me.

"Jubal wants to talk to you," he said. "He hates talking on the
telephone, won't do it unless it's an emergency. Could you come over
sometime this afternoon?"

"Sure," I said. "Things are running more smoothly here since he fixed things up. I can be there in two, three hours."

"Good enough. Thanks, Manny."

I hurried through the rest of my chores and hopped on the Triumph. I
figured it would be my last ride on the grand old masterpiece, so I
opened it up a little, as much as I dared with the damned empty sidecar
cramping my style.

TRAVIS WAS WAITING for me by the pool. He had a big
pitcher of iced tea, and he poured me a glass without asking if I
wanted one. I took a big drink, then sat down.

"Thanks for coming, Manny," he said.

"Sure. What's the problem?"

"Jubal and his pipe dreams is the problem."

"He said an American should be the first man on Mars."

"He meant just what he said. And if those Ares Seven clowns aren't up to the task, he'll just go there himself."

"Sounds nuts."

He rubbed his unshaven chin with one hand.

"No, the nutty thing is, it might actually be possible. Outrageous,
goofy beyond belief... but I can't actually say it's impossible. In
fact, we're going out tomorrow to the 'Glades to do a little testing on
the Broussard drive, see just how possible it is."

"Broussard drive?"

He grinned. "Got to call it something. But there's things I need to
know, now that Jubal says he can release the energy slowly. Like, just
what comes out after you've squeezed a cubic acre of seawater to the
size of a tennis ball? Protons? Atomic nuclei? Gamma rays? I haven't
tried to do the math on it because it makes my head hurt."

"Has Jubal done the math?"

"I don't know. Jubal and me... well, we're hardly speaking, Manny."

I didn't like the sound of that at all.

"Manny... I know this isn't fair. I know it's a lot to ask. But... could you take a shot at talking Jubal out of this?"

"Travis, I..."