John Varley - Red Thunder

Boxes of Krispy Kremes had been set out in anticipation of Jubal’s return. At the rate he’d been going through them I thought we might look into getting a franchise ourselves, in case this whole Mars business didn’t pan out.

We had gone to the Blast-Off to meet them when they arrived, but Kelly and I had both overslept and didn’t wake up until Aunt Maria pounded on the door and shouted, “They’re here, Manuelito!” We dressed quickly and went down to be embraced by Jubal and Travis. My guts were churning, because that afternoon we had to present our ideas to Travis and the whole project would either continue, or crash and burn, depending on his reaction. I didn’t even want to admit how much it had all come to mean to me.

Before long we all piled into our various vehicles and were on our way to the warehouse, except Maria, who had to work the front desk while Eve, the temp girl we’d hired with money we really couldn’t spare, cleaned up the rooms.

Travis had done a complete walk-around of the warehouse when we got there. The four of us kept up a constant nervous patter, handing it off from one to the next as we went, trying to anticipate any questions he might have.

For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was giving us an honest chance. We had all realized during the two weeks of his absence that, let’s face it, all he had to do at any time was to say, “It’s not safe,” and the whole project would be over. Was he already determined to shoot it down? Was he just humoring us-and more important, misleading and humoring his brilliant but dependent cousin-never having intended to give his okay? Were we going to get a fair shake? And would we even know if we weren’t?

THEIR VAN WASgood for some laughs. They had taken it into some places that would have been a lot easier in Travis’s Hummer. There was a dent in the left side where they’d slipped on a muddy dirt road in the [223] Oregon Cascades and banged into a tree. There were scratches from where they’d squeezed through thick brush. And there was dirt. Lots of dirt, with only the windows wiped clean.

“We were in a hurry,” Travis had explained. “No time for car washes.”

The inside was revealing, too. The front seats and floor were neat and orderly, but from there on back it could have provided some students with an interesting two-week archaeological dig. Travis’s military training apparently wouldn’t allow him to tolerate trash in his immediate vicinity, but once it was tossed over his shoulder into the backseat it was gone, as far as he was concerned. There were fast-food wrappers and boxes from all the major companies.

“Krispy Kremes hard to find, up Yankeeland way.” Jubal sounded scandalized.

There were plenty of soft drink cans and paper cups, too. I saw Alicia’s eyes scanning the litter, eyes that could spot a can of Bud in a mountain of empties a hundred yards away. She didn’t find a beer can. Which was a big relief to me, because the one time Mom and I had talked about this whole thing while they were gone, it was because Mom brought up Travis’s drinking.

“That man takes one drink,” she had said, “that man takes one drop of liquor, Manuel, and I withdraw my consent. Then you can go or stay, which you’ll do anyway, but it will be without my permission.”

“Mom, that man takes one drink, you won’t have to withdraw your consent,” I had said. “I won’t go if he drinks.” And ever since, I’d wondered if that was true.

NOW OUR HO-gauge model spaceship was sitting in the middle of the conference table, considerably spruced up since we first glued it together.

Inside what would be the bridge we had put a light to glow through the windows. We had mounted radio antennas and a big dish receiver on it. We’d built a cradle of plastic girders to set the whole thing on, made from bits scavenged from model plane and car boxes, just like [224] they used to do it in Hollywood. The three landing legs and pads came from, of all things, a model of the old Apollo Lunar Excursion Module. The big springs we’d need had come from a radio-controlled Hummer model. Tiny red and green flashing clearance lights gave it a more animated appearance.

Down beneath were three globular cages built to hold five-foot-diameter Squeezer bubbles, now represented by silver Christmas tree ornaments. We didn’t know what that part would actually look like. That would be entirely up to Jubal.

Then we’d sent it out and had it painted high-gloss candy-apple red. There was an American flag embossed on one side, and the bold words RED THUNDER on the other.

In fact, we’d spent more money on this whole presentation deal than I had thought necessary, and I had questioned Kelly about it.

“Never skimp on the gloss and glitz,” she told me. “I would never try to sell a dirty car. We’ve got guys, soon as a rain shower passes over, their job is to go out in the lot and swab all the cars down with a chamois, so they don’t dry with streaks on them.”

“I agree,” Alicia had said. “Guys, if Travis intends to give us a fair hearing, we need to give the impression that we do thorough work. For that, appearance counts.”

So we made sure the plan, the ship model, and all the backup materials were as professional as possible, and hang the expense.

We rented a huge flat-wall SuperHiDef screen and spent a few hours learning to use the Telestrator system in our shipbuilding program so we could point and click with an electronic wand to expand, slice and dice, rotate, swoop and swirl, pan, zoom, and dolly in or out with ease as we explained the various features. Pretty soon we were creating graphics as good as any television sports broadcast, in real time.

Hanging on the walls around the Telestrator screen were three-by-four-foot color prints of some old magazine covers and Walt Disney posters from the 1950s, for no better reason than that they looked good… and showed some spaceships that actually looked like Red Thunder.

We had found them during computer searches. An artist named [225] Chesley Bonestell had painted covers of spaceships for science fiction magazines, the result of the best scientific thinking of the time, some of them in space, others sitting on the Martian surface. And the Disney organization had made some short subjects around that time, speculating about how we might conquer space. One of the Disney ships bore a startling resemblance to Red Thunder , a central cylinder surrounded by cylindrical fuel tanks, though the tanks were not as large as Red Thunder’s tank cars. Printing and hanging them had been my idea, I admit it. I thought that, surrounded by these lovely old renderings, my crazy idea for a Martian ship didn’t look quite so crazy. I’d downloaded them and had them printed professionally, photo-quality.

So what was the first thing that happened when Travis walked into the conference room with us and saw the model, sitting there in the middle of the conference table under a baby spotlight?

He stopped and frowned for a moment, then he burst out laughing.

My face felt like it was on fire. I actually felt dizzy for a moment. It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat. It was undiluted humiliation.

Luckily, Travis realized it in a second, and the next thing I knew he was hugging me, kissing me, calling me a genius.

FROM THERE. THEsailing was pretty smooth.

We each took our turns at the Telestrator, as we had rehearsed it. Travis would watch, and nod or occasionally frown. When he frowned we waited to see if he had a question. We felt… we hoped we had an answer to all but a few of his possible objections, and thought we ought to get them taken care of as quickly as possible. But he always told us to go ahead.