Red Thunder (43 page)

"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 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.

"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.

"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
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?"

"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.

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?
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.