John Varley - Red Thunder

This one had once been a tourist boat. There were four rows of comfortable bench seats, with pads faded and cracked open by the relentless sun over the years, yellow foam stuffing showing here and there.

We all piled out of the vehicles, the mosquitoes swarming again now that we’d stopped. We put on more repellent, but nothing was going to make them go away completely, so we worked quickly, hoping to get moving again soon.

Travis and Jubal lifted a big cardboard box out of the back of Blue Thunder . It didn’t appear too heavy. They opened it and for the first time we saw the experimental test vehicle Jubal had cobbled together.

I can’t really say that it looked too impressive.

It was a five-foot tube of heavy-duty six-inch gray PVC pipe, the kind you’d buy for an ordinary plumbing project. A tapered nose cone had been fitted on the top of it. Below were three metal fins that also acted as legs for it to stand on. Under the tube was a spherical metal cage, the only part of the contraption that looked as if a fair amount of work had gone into it. Without knowing about Jubal’s Squeezer dingus, I’d never have known what it was for. It was intended to hold a silver bubble about the size of a softball.

I’d seen better rockets at the school science fair.

They put it on its side on the front bench of the airboat and tied it down with bungee cords. Two aluminum suitcases were set on the floor in front, and we were ready to go. Caleb climbed up into the pilot’s seat and started the engine.

Soon we were flying along on the smooth water.

THE WIND INour faces whipped away even the steroid-pumped Everglades mosquitoes. The day had not yet begun to get hot. The water below us was the color of weak tea and the sky above blue and [174] cloudless. We barreled along through a primeval world where I could easily imagine duck-billed dinosaurs browsing in the trees. Kelly squeezed my hand and smiled at me. I’d had worse days.

ON A MAPyou can see hundreds of what they call hammocks scattered through the Everglades. There are also islands, streams, creeks, sloughs. The hammocks on the maps could be miles long, but even the smallest-scale maps didn’t indicate the ones that were only an acre or two, because they weren’t very permanent features.

Caleb finally beached the airboat on a bare knuckle of cracked mud that might have had enough room to park a dozen cars… if you didn’t mind seeing them sink like mammoths in the La Brea Tar Pits. We had to step carefully when we got out. My first step cracked through the skin of dried mud and I almost lost a shoe. The footing was a bit firmer in the center of the little island.

Looking around, I wasn’t sure why Caleb had selected this place, an hour’s ride from where we’d left the vehicles. Most every mile of swamp we passed through seemed just as isolated as any other mile, though I knew this wasn’t strictly true. We saw other airboats passing in the distance, and once came close enough to wave at the driver.

We quickly saw that we were basically just along for the ride, and because Jubal wanted us there. Travis and Jubal set the rocket on its end near the center of the hammock, then started placing other devices around it. Neither of them had anything to say, they just worked steadily stringing wires, plugging things into other things, sweat dripping off their foreheads. The rest of us stood around, slapping at mosquitoes.

It occurred to me that, if this thing worked, we might be about to witness something as historic as the Wright brothers’ first flight. But to tell the truth, all I wanted to do was get it done and get out of there. I was getting eaten alive!

I mentioned the Wright brothers analogy to Kelly, and she slapped her forehead and dug around in her purse. In a moment she found a pink throwaway PrettyPixel camera and started snapping pictures as [175] fast as she could click the shutter. Travis frowned, and told her those pics would have to be considered classified information for the time being.

“Yes, sir, Colonel Broussard,” she said, and kept snapping away. “And stupid me, I left my vidcam home sitting on my desk.”

Which is why there is no video of the maiden-and final-flight of the good ship Everglades Express , and why Kelly appears in only one picture taken that day, when Caleb insisted the six of us pose in front of the completed rocket setup, a bug-bitten family looking like they’d rather be anywhere else but this hellhole.

They had it all ready in no more than half an hour. Jubal stood looking at it, his fists on his hips, nodding in satisfaction. He put his hand on the conical nose cone. There was a round piece of glass set into it.

“Dis eye,” Jubal said, “dis eye find de sun, yes she does. Lock on to de sun, den keep herself in dat attitude fo’ all de flight. Dat way she go straight up.”

We all piled back in the boat and Caleb eased us off the mud flat and back through the shallow water as Travis paid out a cable from a Radio Shack reel.

At two hundred feet Travis looked at Jubal.

“Far enough, Jube?”

I didn’t like the frown I saw on Jubal’s brow. He muttered, then looked around, and smiled when he found what he was looking for.

“Ovah dere,” he said. He was pointing at another hammock, this one a bit bigger than Rocket Hammock. Caleb moved the boat over there, and we could see on the other side there was a small eroded bank, maybe three feet high, with a fallen tree trunk lying on top of it. Now we could crouch down behind the bank and the tree and be protected if the rocket should blow up.

Travis and Jubal took another five minutes plugging the ends of the wires into an old laptop computer and then they were ready. Travis handed out safety glasses and hard hats from the boat, and we all put them on.

“I think we should all get down behind the bank,” Dak said.

[176] “Can’t we peek over the top?” Kelly asked. “I want to get pictures.”

We all looked at Jubal, who was again looking nervous.

“Go ahead on,” he said. “Peek. But be careful, cher .”

Travis had the remote control in his hands. I put my arm around Kelly. Then I looked at Jubal. He grinned, and shrugged.

“T’ree, two, one, an-”

He flicked the launch switch as he said “zero,” and the world exploded.

There was a shock wave that blew my helmet off, an explosion that sounded like a bomb going off. And directly ahead I saw a wall of mud rushing toward me.

“Oh, me oh my,” Jubal said, and the wall hit us.

It was actually a wall of water, a big wave maybe four feet high, but it was thicker than water had any right to be. It was full of mud, decaying leaves, twigs. We all tried to fall back in front of it, but there was nothing but more water behind us. I staggered a few steps before sitting down in the glop, and the wave crested over the bank we’d been sheltering behind, then over us.

For a few seconds everything was dark, then my head broke through and I was gasping… and that’s when the water and mud that had been blown into the air started to rain down on us. I don’t think the planet has often seen a filthier rain. A bullfrog landed on me and sat in my lap for a moment, stunned.

Travis was shouting something I couldn’t hear clearly, something about covering our heads. My hardhat had been swept away. I found Kelly and we huddled together, hunched over, hoping the explosion hadn’t been powerful enough to throw any sizable rocks or tree trunks into the air.

It was over in a few seconds, though it seemed a lot longer. The water settled down, the mud stopped falling from the sky.

“Did it blow up, Jubal?” Alicia shouted.

“No ’splosion, cher ,” he said, then pointed into the air. “Look!”