Red Thunder (25 page)

I didn't have a problem with that.

THAT MORNING I caught up on some chores, got a few
minutes' sleep in the afternoon, and then spent the evening and night
in Kelly's little apartment on the beach south of town. We swam, lay on
the beach and talked until it was dark, bought a pizza and took it to
her place.

Kelly talked a lot about making a final break with her father but
she hadn't done it yet. The fact was, she still kept a lot of her stuff
in the huge, gated, fake-Greek pile of stone where her father lived
with his second wife. She spent some nights there, some with her mother
in Ormond Beach, some with me, and some at her own place. She didn't
really
live
anywhere, in the way that most of us do.

The fact is, she didn't make enough money to afford the payments on her Porsche if she'd had to buy it herself.

She had money. I didn't know how much, but I figured it was
substantial. It was in a trust her father had set up so she couldn't
use any of it until she was twenty-five. Until then, she had to get by
on the wages her father paid her—which even she and I, who
loathed him, had to admit were fair for the work she did. He knew her
value, and intended to keep her under his thumb as long as he could.

"I could quit and find another job pretty easy," she said. "I would
probably take a small cut in pay, but it might be worth it not to have
to deal with him every day. But I'd be just as bored as I am now. What
I know is the
car
business. And I
hate
the car business. But what I do like is
business,
and I think I'd be good at it."

So she vacillated, and we talked. She never laughed at my plans to
find a career in space, and she helped me with my studies. And we never
talked about getting married.

THE NEXT DAY Travis and Jubal picked us up, very
early, in a five-year-old Ford van with enough seats for the six of us.
Before getting in Kelly looked it over quickly and asked Travis what
he'd paid for it. When he told her she winced.

"You should have talked to me, Trav," she said.

"Just get in, Ms. Strickland Mercedes, okay?"

We picked up Dak and Alicia and hit the road, destination unknown.
Boxes of Krispy Kremes and cups of strong coffee were passed around.

We took the A1A exit and crossed Merritt Island and entered the
Kennedy Space Center grounds through an entrance I'd never used before.
Travis showed a special pass to the gate guard, so I guess he still had
a little pull around there.

We got there in time to witness something I'd never seen before: the
raising of the world's largest garage doors to reveal the retired
Shuttle
Atlantis
and the old
Saturn 5,
newly
restored after many years of sitting in the Florida sunshine and rain,
now standing proudly and awesomely erect in one of the bays of the old
Vehicle Assembly Building. All done to music, of course...
Also Sprach Zarathustra,
which was probably always going to be the anthem of space exploration, thanks to Stanley Kubrick.

"I want y'all to just look at that
Saturn 5
for a moment, kiddies," Travis said. "I want you to look at it, and I want you to consider the concept of
hubris.
"

"And dat be... what?" Jubal asked.

"That's what the ancient Greeks said when somebody was getting too
big for his britches... or whatever Greeks wore under their togas.
Excessive pride. Arrogance. I want you to look at that rocket and ask
yourself... 'Are we biting off more than we can chew?' The builders of
that thing are gods, in my book. And the Greeks warned mortals not to
try to act like gods."

"It's not the same, Travis," I protested.

"No. We've got a few advantages over the guys who built and launched
these things. Chiefly, unlimited fuel. Ninety-nine percent of that
rocket was fuel, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, which are very
tricky to handle, very dangerous in themselves, even if you don't burn
them in those huge engines. We don't have to worry about that.

"But we have to worry about just about everything else. Do you know
how many million parts were in that thing, fully loaded, on its way to
the moon?"

"No, how many?" Alicia asked.

"Well... I don't know, but it's a bunch. Somebody here can tell us.
My point, though, is one faulty transistor could bring this behemoth
down in flames. One screwup in space, and we'd be dead. Can we build
that well?"

"Sure," Dak said, but it was impossible to stand in the shadow of
that thing and say "sure" with any confidence. So I backed him up, and
so did Alicia and Kelly. That left Jubal, and we all turned to him, the
only guy whose vote really counted.

"I t'ink we can, ma fren's. But I promise you dis. De firs' minute I t'ink we
cain't
do it, I tell you right off."

It didn't bring a smile to Travis's face, but eventually he nodded his head.

"Let's go see the museum," he said.

KELLY AND ALICIA had never seen it. Isn't that always
the way? I think our visit to Kennedy that morning fascinated them,
gave them a glimpse of the fire that burned in Dak's and my guts. And
if you were even vaguely considering something as screwy as going to
Mars in a home-built spaceship... well, you couldn't help wanting to
know more about the ones who had gone before you and the hazards they
faced. The hazards
you
might soon be facing.

We ate our picnic lunch at a table in the shade near the rocket
park, where many of the early missiles launched from Cape Canaveral
made a metal forest of white trunks. It was hot, there weren't many
tourists around. I had a funny thought. If we do this, and get famous,
when they made a movie about us the director would want to shoot right
here, where it all was decided.

"Have you given any thought to how much all this will cost?" Travis asked.

We all looked at each other. I'd certainly thought about it, but I
didn't have a clue. The one thing I could say with absolute certainty
was that it would take far, far more money than I had. Another thing I
was pretty sure of was that if Travis didn't have enough money to do
it, then it just wouldn't get done.

"One million dollah," Jubal said.

We all looked at him. Travis was frowning.

"Where did you get that number, beloved cousin of mine?"

"I pick it outta de air," Jubal admitted, and we all laughed. "But it oughta be plenty enough, I t'ink."

"I t'ink so, too," Kelly said, and Jubal patted her on the back.

"Okay, where did
you
get that figure?" Travis wanted to know.

"It's what I have in the bank, more or less," she said quietly.

Stunned silence.

"But I thought—" I started, then felt the daggers she was
staring at me. Well, of course. The night before last I had watched her
turn a red car into a black one. She had the computers, she had the
security codes, the passwords, the bank account numbers, the PIN
numbers. She could probably steal her old man blind, if she wanted to.

But that wasn't something we had to share with everyone.

"I know, it's awful," she said. "One person having so much, others
having not anything. I can't help it. It's not easy, having money when
your three best friends don't, and they won't let you give them some
help here and there, when it's needed. It hurts me to see Manny's
family struggling so hard... but none of them have ever asked me for a
thing, and they haven't held my money against me.

"So, yeah, I've got money. About a million dollars. And I've been
drifting since high school. I've been looking for something to do with
my life. I've tried a lot of things. I met Alicia while I was
volunteering at the battered women's shelter."

"She did more than that," Alicia said. "She put her money where her
mouth was a couple times, saved the place from closing down once."

"It didn't take much," Kelly said. "And that kind of work is not for
me, I found out. I'd get too depressed at the hopelessness of it all if
I tried to make it my life's work.

"Today I learned about people who wanted to go to the moon, and they
did it. It hasn't been my dream, and it may never be, but it's a place
to start." She looked at Travis. "So how about it, Mr. Ex-Astronaut? Do
you want to go to Mars, or will you let the chance pass you by? I'll
bet you a million dollars we can do it."

Travis shook his head and smiled, slowly.

"I won't take that bet. Because if we do this thing, I'll jump in with both feet. So I'd be betting against myself."

"You faded, Kelly," Jubal said.

"What's that?" Travis asked.

"I say, I bet her one million dollah we cain't build us no ship and
get to Mars. Dat way, I win, I kin give her back de money she waste
jus' on account a believin' in me.
She
win, we go to Mars and she get my one million dollah."

"Jubal, I hate to remind you of this—"

"I know. You my loco parent. I always figgered dat one loco parent
was plenty enough, yes." He smiled, and I tried to smile back, but it
was tough, thinking of Avery Broussard and what he'd done to his
brilliant son.

"In loco parentis,"
Travis said, wearily. "It means I'm your legal guardian."

News to me, but not surprising. Somebody like Jubal would have to have someone to look after his affairs.

Travis had mentioned once, before this whole scheme got started,
that he and Jubal were living on the earnings from Jubal's patents.
Jubal was the creative one, he had the crazy visions and built the
marvelous things. Travis was the financial side. Though he didn't claim
to be a whiz at handling money, he did it a thousand times better than
Jubal ever could, and in fact, without Travis or someone like him to
figure out the practical applications of Jubal's inventions and
discoveries, Jubal would have nothing at all. "We do well," Travis had
said. "Jubal's never going to lack for anything."

Oh, no? Well, now little Jubal wants a toy, Travis.

And now Jubal was frowning.

"You done said it was jus' to proteck me," he said. "From dose bad folks, take our money away, we ain't careful."

Travis was looking uncomfortable. I looked at Kelly, who was
following with intense interest. She raised one eyebrow at me, and
shook her head.
Don't interrupt.

" 'Bout all I ever spent it on is de Krispy Kremes," Jubal said. Alicia laughed, and patted Jubal's hand.

"Is it my money, Travis? Is it my money?"

"It's your money, Jubal. Well, half of it is, anyway."

"And I gots de million dollah?"

"Yeah, you gots it. More than that. I'll show you the books, you
don't believe me." He looked around at all of us, and got angry. "I'll
show all of you the goddamn books if you want. I've never cheated Jubal
out of a dime. Excuse the language, Jubal."

"Nobody ever thought you did, Travis," Kelly said. "But have you
maybe... sheltered him too much? I'm not criticizing, it's none of my
business, but Grace told me they'd like to see Jubal more. I think
Jubal would like that, too."

Travis hung his head, then nodded, still not looking at us.

"I'm a drunk, okay? I've spent a lot of the last five years pissed
out of my mind, as bad off as I was the night you almost killed me. I
went out there on the beach to watch my ex-wife take off on her way to
Mars...
because I was supposed to be on that ship!

"I've
always
known, since I was a child, that I was going
to be the first man on Mars. I planned for it, I worked hard. I made
myself into the best pilot in the space program, so they
had
to choose me, there would be no one else.

"And then I drank it all away."

We were all quiet for a time. I watched a seagull that seemed to be
building a nest in the top of one of the old rockets surrounding us.

"I knew I wasn't doing right by Jubal, but mostly I was too drunk to
care. Since I met you guys I've been sober—mostly—and I
want to thank you for that."

"It's all up to you, Travis," Alicia said.

"I know that."

"I be doin' okay,
cher
," Jubal said. "I been worryin' 'bout
you,
oh yes, but you done good by me, you has."

Travis looked up and spread his hands in surrender.

"Okay. We'll build the ship."

None of us said anything. You could feel the excitement in the air, but there was no celebration.

Just as well.

"As soon as we get permission from your parents."

TRAVIS WAS GOOD. I think even Mom and Aunt Maria would
have agreed, though nothing in their faces and their postures would
admit to it. Sam Sinclair just sat, neutral, not accepting and not
rejecting Travis's words. Sam Sinclair was a cautious man.

I knew a terrible surmise was growing in my mother's mind. Why was
Travis telling them all this? There was really only one way to go with
it, wasn't there? But she was afraid to let herself acknowledge it,
because then she'd have an impossible problem.
How do I tell Manny he can't go... when I can't tell him he can't go?

Travis outlined the present situation in space, with the Chinese due
to arrive on Mars first, and the Americans taking a new, radical, and
untested technology on a different path, which could not beat the
Chinese... and might get them killed.

The spiel faltered only when he tried to get Jubal to help him
explain the problems Jubal had found with the "Vaseline" drive. Jubal
just wasn't up to it. His best effort so far had been calling his
bubble-generating device a "Squeezer," and even then his mangled syntax
had rendered it as "Squozer."

"Get on with it, Travis," my mom said, eventually. "If Jubal says it's going to blow up, I'll believe it's gonna blow up."

"That's enough for me, too," Sam said.

So Travis moved on to Part Two. That was good. Part Two was the real
crowd pleaser. In Part Two he got to put the Squeezer through its paces.