Red Thunder (26 page)

Sam Sinclair sat up alertly from the very first time Travis made a
silver bubble appear in the air. Mom and Aunt Maria looked puzzled.
Clearly they understood this was something out of the ordinary, but
they weren't sure why. Travis made the bubbles pop loudly both from
vacuum and from compressed air. Then he fitted one into a small device
Jubal had made. With Jubal operating his controller, they made
compressed air leak out of a minute pinhole, what Jubal called a
"dis-continual-uity," and particle physicists would more likely call a
"discontinuity." He let them feel the air coming out, and experience
the pressure the little thing exerted on their hands.

"That's thrust. It's the same thing that happens when all the smoke
and flames come out the bottom of a VStar. You can fire all your thrust
in a few minutes and get up to a very high speed and coast all the way
to Mars. Or you can fire continually, like the
Ares Seven.
You'll speed up slowly, but eventually you could end up going faster than the Chinese ship."

"This don't make too much sense to me," Aunt Maria admitted.

"I know, I know," Travis said. "Nobody gets this stuff easily," he
went on, "not without studying physics for years. Because it goes
against everything you know. Cars don't work like that, do they?"

Morn tried a question. "But with this thing Jubal has made..." I
think I was the only one who knew how much this was costing her, to ask
a question that might sound like a
dumb
question. Mom was
mortified by her lack of education, and she didn't deal with
mortification well. "With this Squeezer thing, you can fire it all the
way to Mars and never run out of gas?"

"Exactly. We get the best of both worlds with the Squeezer. We can
fire a powerful rocket, the equal of any rocket that's ever been built
in terms of thrust... and we can fire it
all the way there!
"

Short pause for everyone to think about that, me included. I still found it almost impossible to believe.
Free energy.
The world had never seen anything like it. And every time I thought about it, it scared me more.

Sam Sinclair, too.

"I don't like what I'm hearing here," he said.

"How's that, Sam?"

"Like you said. It's a lot of power. In my experience, power is dangerous, if you don't handle it right."

"I couldn't agree with you more."

"How big can Jubal make these things?"

Travis paused, then looked at his cousin. I think he might have prayed a little, too.

"How about it, Jubal? How big?"

Jubal had been dying inside for almost an hour now. He hated it that
Mom and Maria and Sam, his friends, were acting so hostile, and he
hated it even more that he was the cause of it. Or the thing he had
created, which was about the same thing.

"I don' know, me. Plenty big, oh yeah."

"How about a ballpark figure?" Sam asked.

Travis fielded it, and Jubal relaxed some.

"We can make enough power to blast at one gee all the way to Mars
and back," he said. "That's all we need to know to build the ship."

"Yeah. But there's power, and then there's
power.
You know what I'm saying?"

"I think I do."

"Why you? Why should you and Jubal control all that power? Shouldn't it go to... I don't know. The people in charge?"

Dak was looking at his father with admiration in his eyes... and
panic everywhere else. Proud of the old man for seeing to the core of
the issue, the part we'd hardly discussed, worried that the cat was
coming out of the bag.

"Do you trust your government that far, Sam?"

"I'm an American."

"So am I, and God bless her, forever. But that's not what I asked you."

Sam said nothing, but nodded slightly, allowing Travis the point.

"Why me?" Travis said. "Better ask
why us?
Because it's on
us
now. Not just me and Jubal, and not just your sons and Kelly and
Alicia. You, too, the three of you. We nine people are now the only
people on the planet who know about this... and if there had been any
way to keep your children out of it, I would have. But for better or
worse, Jubal discovered it, and he didn't know what he had... sorry,
Jubal..."

"It's okay,
cher.
I ain't got no practicals about me, no."

"He means he never sees the practical side of something he makes.
That's my job. Anyway, Manny found out about it, and that makes all of
us responsible for it."

He sighed and shook his head.

"I started out here asking you all to keep this matter private, to
never tell anyone about it. I see now I can't hold you to your promises
about that. It's too much. Sam, Maria, Betty, if any of you think the
thing to do here is to turn it over to the government, say the word,
and I'm on the phone to Washington."

I hope I concealed my horror a little better than Dak did. He looked
like he'd been stuck with a hot poker. Alicia looked worried, too, but
patted his knee. Kelly was imperturbable. Don't let anybody know your
business, she had once told me, and in this case it meant not showing
your feelings openly.

"I'll reserve that decision for now," Sam said.

Mom and Maria looked at each other, then at Travis.

"Go on," Mom said.

"Thank you. I promise you this. If we give this thing to anybody, it will be the United States."

"If? What's the alternative?" Mom asked. She was leaning forward
now, a lot more interested in practical questions than blue-sky
engineering. "I presume you mean sell it, not give it away. Or do you
mean you might just hold on to it?"

"Forever? That might be an option if only me and Jubal knew about it. I'm not dissing anybody here, but secrets
always
leak, if more than one person knows the secret. I assume there are
people who are looking for us. Some of them might resort to some pretty
strenuous methods to get the secret. But I don't think I'd try to hold
on to it even if I was the only one who knew. Because someday someone
else will discover this and... well, I can think of a lot of
possibilities, none of them very good."

"What do you think we should do, then?" Sam asked.

"For now... just hold on to it." He sat back in his seat, let his
breath out slowly. "I haven't discussed this part yet with anyone. Not
the kids, not Jubal.

"This is a powerful technology, and a lot of good can come from it.
No more energy crisis, energy is now free. Tear down all the dams, shut
down all the nukes, stop mining coal, oil, and gas. Think of the
environmental benefits of that alone. We can even solve the garbage
problem. No more landfills, no more burning, just squeeze it all down
to the density of a neutron star, and let the energy out a little at a
time." He saw he had lost them with the neutron star business, and
leaned forward again.

"But it can also be worse than the hydrogen bomb. The only
good
thing I know about atomic bombs is that they are hard to make, and
expensive. What if everybody could make something just as powerful?
What if that crazy kid shot up his junior high school last month got
his hands on a Squeezer?"

"Sounds like the best thing to do is just shoot you and Jubal," Alicia said.

Travis didn't smile.

"Don't think that wouldn't occur to some people," he said. "Only
they wouldn't stop with us. I hate this like hell, Sam, Betty, but your
children know too much for their own good."

I couldn't hold back anymore.

"It's my fault," I choked out. "I never should have picked the damn
thing up." To my horror, I felt tears running down my cheeks.

Mom looked stricken, and started to get up. I waved her away. What
more to make my humiliation complete but to have Mommy come rushing? I
guess she figured that out, because she sat back down, reluctantly.
Kelly put her arm around me.

"Not you, Manny," Jubal said. "Me. Me and dis... dis t'ing I gots, cain't leave nothin' alone where it oughta be, no."

"Not either of you, Manny," Travis said, quietly. "You can blame me.
If I'd been paying attention I'd have been with Jubal when he learned
how to do this."

"There's no point trying to point a finger," Sam said. "What's done is done."

"I don't mind pointing a finger," Mom said, through clenched teeth.

"Let's hear what he wants to do, Betty," Sam suggested.

"Thanks, Sam. I thought about just handing it over. We can still do
that, at any time, unless they find us and take it from us first. The
alternative is to go to Mars."

"That's stupid," Mom said.

"No, Betty, stupid would be going to Mars to get there before the
Chinese. I know that's what started us down this crazy road, but even
Jubal agrees it's not enough reason to go. A better reason is to be
there to help if what Jubal says is likely to happen, happens. To save
lives. But it's not enough, and Jubal can't say it's a certainty.

"I need a platform. Something to stand on while I shout the news to
the world. Right now, what am I? A disgraced astronaut, and a drunk.
What is Jubal? A tinkerer, and a man with a communication problem that
people are going to interpret as retardation. Nobody's going to listen
to kids, and nobody's going to listen to any of you.

"But the first people on Mars...
them
they'll listen to."

He paused to take a drink of his soda pop. Aunt Maria got up and
went into the kitchen and I could see her gathering tortillas and beans
and pulled pork from the fridge for making
carnitas.
Maria,
at least, had decided this gringo was worth listening to, thus worthy
of being fed. But before starting she poured some of the cheap sangria
she enjoyed one glass of most nights, and carried it to Travis.

"Go on, everybody, I can listen from in here," she said. Travis
sipped the wine and smiled like it was the finest French vintage.

"One glass," Alicia said, primly. Travis saluted her.

"The only hope I can see for this thing," Travis resumed, "is to get it out in the open. The
fact
that it exists, and its dangers and its possibilities—
that
we have to make public, in a big, gaudy way so the news media will
cover it and people will listen. I don't think one country, or more
likely, a small group of powerful people in one country, should control
it, because they will classify this Ultra Top Secret. I don't think one
country should control it."

He sat back, drained the rest of his wine, and folded his arms.

"God damn you to hell, Travis Broussard," my mother said, quietly.

"Yes, ma'am."

"How stupid do you think I am? You come here, you talk about needing
my son's help to build this crazy machine. You talk about how
you
need to go to Mars... to Mars, for heaven's sake! It's
you
this and
you
that, and did you think I'm just some redneck bimbo runs a worthless
mo
-tel and I'd be easy to fool?

"Don't you think we know you plan on taking these children with you?"

"Is that true, Travis?" Sam asked.

"All I'm here to do tonight is tell you they want to help build the ship, which has to be done quietly."

"Don't you lie to me," Mom said. "Did you tell them they can go with you?"

"Only with their parents' permission," Travis said, quietly.

"God damn you to hell."

"I wish I was there now," Travis admitted.

TRAVIS WASN'T THE only one to go through hell that
day. As soon as he told us about asking our parents' permission,
earlier that day at the Cape visitors' center, Alicia got up from the
table and walked away. Not a word, she just left. Kelly leaned close to
Dak.

"What is it with Alicia and her parents, Dak?"

"I don't know. Every time it's come up she just clams. Not a word. I don't know if they're alive or dead, even."

"Me, too," Kelly said. "Maybe I'd better—"

"No, I'll do it," Dak said, and he got up and ran after her. We
watched them for a while, too far away to hear. Dak had an arm around
her, talking. She was just shaking her head, not even looking at him.

"I don't know what
her
problem is," Kelly said, "but I'll tell you, this isn't fair."

"Didn't say it was," Travis said. "All I'm saying is, I'm not
getting into a thing like this without talking it over with your
parents. I just couldn't do that."

"Travis, be reasonable! We're not old enough to drink legally, but
we're old enough to vote, and serve in the military. And we're old
enough not to need our parents' permission on anything anymore. Not a
one of us comes from a sitcom family. Manny's father is dead, Dak's
mother pretty much abandoned him. My parents are divorced and my father
is remarried. You want to talk this over with my stepmom, too?"

"Just your mom and dad would be okay."

"Then why not just buy a big ad in the
Herald?
'Ex-Astronaut Going to Mars!' It wouldn't spread the news any quicker
than telling my dad. And I guarantee you, the people he'd be telling it
to would be the police and the media and his lawyer. Correction, his
lawyers.
He'd tie you up so bad you wouldn't be able to walk to the bathroom without getting a writ, much less go to Mars."

They glared at each other and I thought it might have come to blows,
but over the cawing of the seagulls we heard Dak shout something. We
all looked, and Dak pulled Alicia into a hug. She fought him for a
moment, then relented.

"Should we do something?" Travis asked.

"Leave them alone," Kelly said. "We'll know about it soon enough."

They came back to the table, Dak holding her protectively, Alicia walking stiffly and not looking at any of us.

"Alicia has something she wants to tell you," Dak said.

"Not that it's any of y'all's business," Alicia said with a harsh
laugh. "You want to talk to my papa, Travis, you'll have to drive a
while. He's in Raiford, doing twenty-five to life for killing my
mother."