Red Thunder (40 page)

I found my acceleration couch and buckled in, semireclining, and put
on my headphones. All the instruments I needed to see were on a movable
panel, dozens of tiny television screens, three computer screens,
switches, a trackball, gauges, red- and green-light pairs. Everything
was showing green.

"Dak, get me the Coast Guard freak," Travis said.

"Comin' at ya, Cap'n Broussard," Dak said. I saw the rows of numbers
flash onto his screen. Meanwhile Travis had switched to a marine band
to talk to the tugboat.

"Captain Menendez, take us to the middle of Strickland Bay and cast us off. Then withdraw to a distance of one mile."

"We're almost there already, Captain. I will do as you order."

I was going nuts, not having a window to look out of, and I think
Dak and Alicia were, too. For a moment I couldn't catch my breath,
thinking of living in this little tin can for the next three weeks. But
the feeling passed.

We could hear a big racket outside, the helicopter hovering close,
and somebody speaking though a bullhorn. Travis tuned the Coast Guard
frequency.

"—are ordered to cut your engines and prepare to be boarded. I
repeat, tugboat and barge, you are ordered to—" Travis's voice
cut her off.

"Coast Guard helicopter, this is private spaceship
Red Thunder,
aboard the barge. My countdown clock is running, and it is T minus one
minute thirty seconds and counting. We have broken no laws, but you are
welcome to board the tug or the barge after we lift off. Until then, I
advise a distance of one mile, as the exhaust produced by this ship
will be very large, and could endanger you. Over."

There was a long, long silence.

"Private spacecraft
Red Thunder,
this is Captain Katherine
O'Malley, United States Coast Guard. I think we'll take our chances
with your... your exhaust. Prepare your ship for boarding. Over."

"Crew," Travis said, "there are two Coast Guard cutters headed our
way. Captain Menendez should be severing the lines in..." There was a
slight lurch as the lines fell away from the barge and we were quickly
dead in the water.

"Captain Broussard, this is Captain Menendez. What's going on? You told me this wasn't illegal."

"It's not, Captain. I'd advise you to let yourself be boarded, as you've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.
Hasta la vista.
"

"
Hasta la vista
to you, too. And good luck... wherever you're going."

"Will do." There was a click as Travis switched channels. "Well,
boys and girls, looks like it's put up or shut up time. Are you ready?"

"
Go for it,
Captain," I said, happy to hear no quaver in my voice.

"Let's go," Alicia said, and looked over and grinned at me. She reached over and took Dak's hand. Dak smiled.

"Banzai!"
Dak shouted.

"Up, up and away..." Travis muttered.

For the first few seconds nothing much happened. I kept my eye on the three strain gauges, registering the weight of
Red Thunder
on each of her three legs. The numbers began to go down. And a loud roar was building outside.

"Look at that helicopter skedaddle!" Travis shouted. He turned one
of our cameras on it. Sure enough, it had turned and fled as if we were
a bomb... no point in thinking about that.

The roar built. The strain gauge numbers fled quickly across my screen.

"Almost there...," Travis crooned. I tapped a key and watched Travis
sitting there surrounded by his controls and instruments. He had on an
expression almost painful to watch, made of equal parts worry and
euphoria at finally going back into space.

There was a lurch, and the ship seemed to lean a bit before Travis
corrected. The roar now was a living beast, a truly amazing noise.

"Crew,
Red Thunder
has left the planet," Travis said, and
the three of us cheered. One second later the ship lurched hard to the
left, and Travis said something you don't ever want to hear a pilot
say: "Oops!"

"What is—" That was Alicia, gripping the arms of her chair.
But the ship righted itself. I switched to an external camera, looking
down from the top of the ship. The superheated steam obscured most
everything... but I could see some of the water surface, being dashed
to oblivion by the power of our drive.

"Where's the barge?" I asked. Travis laughed.

"That baby crinkled up like a potato chip and went straight to the bottom."

Damn. We didn't own that barge, we leased it. Oh, well.

"Hang on to your hats, friends. I'm outta here."

I quickly realized the noise I'd heard before was like a kitten
purring. When Travis opened the throttles for a full two gees the sound
became unimaginable. I think it might have deafened me if I hadn't been
wearing headphones.

On the screen I saw the water dwindle away. Two Coast Guard cutters
came into view, then the borders of Strickland Bay, then the freeway
bridges. The bridges were bumper to bumper with stopped cars. I could
see people standing on the roadway.

Two gees is not bad. Imagine someone your exact size and weight
lying on top of you. Not pleasant, but not really painful, either.

On a VStar flight acceleration built up gradually as fuel was burned
while thrust remained more or less constant. Near engine shutdown,
VStar passengers experience up to five gees. Our two gees would be
constant, falling off only as we left the pull of Earth's gravity
behind. Here at the launch, one gee was from gravity, and one gee from
our acceleration.

In moments I could see the whole city of Daytona on my screen. Then
the whole county, then the whole state of Florida. Another camera
showed the sky turning a darker and darker blue, then black. The
roaring of the engine faded to a grumble as the air thinned into
nothingness.

My God, I was in space.

IT DIDN'T TAKE long before the gee forces fell to one and a quarter.

"Okay, y'all," Travis said. "I want an inspection, top to bottom,
see if everything survived the strain. Get it done quick, and you can
come up to the bridge. And move carefully! We'll be heavy for a while
yet."

One point two five gees was sort of like carrying a big backpack, it
would have been easy to hurt myself if I got frisky. Before I opened
the tank six interior air lock I checked the two pressure gauges, one
for the interior of the small internal lock, one for the
air-lock/space-suit module. Both gauges read a perfect 15 psi. I opened
the hatches and swung out onto the ladder and down to the suit deck.

I immediately saw that one of the suits had fallen from its rack. It
was lying there, facedown. I wasn't too worried. The helmet material
was the stuff they use in "bulletproof" windows, and was guaranteed to
withstand a .45-caliber slug.

I was about to bend down and pick it up, when the suit moved.

I jumped a mile, even in the high gravity.

"Oh my god. Kelly?"

She rolled over and sat up. I could hear her saying something, and
helped her work the fittings of the helmet. I didn't know whether to be
happy or horrified. But pretty soon happy won me over. I had even
started to laugh as I pulled the helmet off.

"I can't believe you—Jesus! What—" There was blood
running from her eyebrow and down the left side of her face, into her
mouth, over her chin.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she said. "Hurry, help me get out of this thing!"

"But..."

"Hurry!" I asked no more questions, and in a minute I had it off
her. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, just like I did. She scrambled for
the ladder and started up. There wasn't much I could do but follow.

When she reached the crossroads deck she headed down, past Travis's
quarters and the room that would have been Jubal's if he had come, then
down again... and into the head. She slammed the door, and I could hear
her laughing in relief.

"I've been in that thing
all night
," she said.

I heard someone coming down the ladder. It was Alicia, looking confused.

"Kelly," I said, and grinned at her. Her face lit up.

"Oh, boy. Travis is going to be
so
pissed...."

BUT HE WASN'T, not nearly as much as we had feared.

When she followed me up the ladder onto the bridge he did a
double-take worthy of Laurel and Hardy, then buried his face in his
hands. When he looked up he had a small smile on his face.

"I should have known," he said. "I should have checked."

"Listen, Travis, you're off the hook with my father. I mean, he's
going to hit the roof, sure, but he was going to do that anyway when he
finds out how much of my trust fund I've spent. I'll take full
responsibility. You didn't—"

"If I had a brig, I would throw you in it."

"Aw, c'mon, Travis," Dak said. "She outwitted you, fair and square."

Captain or no captain, Travis knew he was outvoted on this one. It
wasn't until later I wondered... was it a total surprise to him? He
didn't search the ship before launch, and anyone who knew Kelly might
have been suspicious at how little fuss she had given him about being
left behind. Had he been giving her the opportunity to take matters
into her own hands, so he could wash
his
hands of responsibility for her?

Yeah, but
I
knew Kelly pretty well, and
I
never
thought of it. My only excuse is, I was so busy I never had time to
think of it. When, just for a moment, I felt a little hurt that she
hadn't even confided in
me,
I reminded myself I hadn't thought of helping her stow away, and I
should
have. I really
should
have. I felt lousy about that.

Alicia had examined her before we went to the bridge, cleaned up the
blood and the wound, which turned out to be just a cut above the
eyebrow. She shined a flashlight into Kelly's eyes, pronounced her fit
and healthy, gave her two aspirins for her headache.

"I fell off when Travis stepped on the gas, but before he reached
the full two gees," she told us. "A good thing, too. I hit hard enough
at a gee and a half, or whatever it was. I wouldn't recommend two gees
in the prone position...."

One drawback to blasting at one gee all the way to Mars is that it
was hard to see where you'd been. Naturally we all wanted a look at the
Earth. In a free-falling ship like the Chinese
Heavenly Harmony
you could just swing the ship into any attitude you wanted. But we couldn't do that on
Red Thunder,
because while we were thrusting we had to keep the nose pointed toward where we were going.

There were five round windows on the bridge, one at each point of
the compass, and one overhead. We could see where we were going, but
not where we'd been. Where we were going was nothing but a bright,
reddish star. The window that faced the sun was polarized almost to
black, to prevent burning and blindness.

But Travis was able to angle the ship slightly by reducing the
thrust of one of the three Phase-2 thrusters beneath us, enough that we
could crowd close to the window and see a piece of the Earth. We were
all astonished at how small it had become.

"We're past the moon's orbit already," Travis said. "Sorry to say
the moon's way over on the other side of the Earth right now, so we
can't see that, either. And in another few hours the Earth's going to
be just a real bright star."

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. So amazing to realize
that, already, we were further from the Earth than any humans had ever
been, except the crews of the
Heavenly Harmony
and the
Ares Seven
....

"Kelly," Travis said. "Did you figure out how you're going to leave the ship when we get to Mars?"

"Sure. I got my own suit. I put Jubal's suit in..." She frowned.
"Where's Jubal?" She was as shocked as we had been when Travis
explained it to her. "His suit is aboard. The suit I was hiding in is
mine."

"All those 'defective' pieces then...?"

"A few were actually defective. But I bought my suit piecemeal, an
arm and a leg at a time. And I used my own money. Believe me, I was
tempted to charge it all to you, after the way you've treated me."

"I told you—"

"I know. Your reasons were good. But you're off the hook, and I'm
here, and that's the way it had to be. So can we bury the hatchet?"

"I don't have a hatchet, Kelly."

"Uh-oh," Dak said. "Friends, we got a problem."

Travis hurried to the window, where Dak had been pressing his face
close to get a last look at Earth before Travis straightened the ship
again.

"What?" I said. "What problem?" My stomach tightened.

It was our "high-gain antenna." That's what we called it, anyway,
though it had started life as a satellite dish and had sat for many
years in Travis's yard, obsolete and rust-streaked. It was mounted on a
tripod mast that looked out over Module Five, and motorized so we could
fine-tune the aiming. One leg of the tripod had twisted a little,
enough to make a stress fracture at the base, where it was welded to
the body of the ship.

Travis sent Dak down to the systems control deck where the controls
for the dish were part of his duties. Gingerly, Dak tested the motors:
azimuth, altitude, skew. The dish moved okay, but with each move a
small bouncing motion was introduced that made the weak weld open and
close about a quarter of an inch.

"We do that too much, we'll snap it off like a dry stick," Travis
said. He sighed. "Dak, we'd better listen for a bit while we still have
it, okay?"

"Roger, Captain.
Calling Planet Earth
..."

After a few minutes of fiddling Dak picked up a strong signal. He
frowned as he listened, static filling the television screen in front
of him, then he grinned.

"It's CNN," he said, and we saw two familiar anchorpersons, Lou and Evelyn. The banner beneath them read, THE FLIGHT OF
RED THUNDER?