John Varley - Red Thunder

And he did seem to enjoy it. He kept looking back to the model, turning it slowly, squinting at it, so we’d stop and wait for his attention to return.

We had divided the presentation into four parts. I got to go first because I’d been named chief design officer. Sure, I thought, until Travis gets back, and I pray for that day. I was terrified that, once he saw the details, he’d be laughing again.

[226] But he didn’t laugh again. Most of the time he was nodding, some of the time he was even smiling. I got my part over in about twenty minutes, giving the broad general outlines of our thinking, showing everything we had on the screen. Then I handed the control wand to Dak and sat down, wishing I had a towel for the sweat that was drenching me in spite of the powerful air conditioning.

Dak was wearing two hats on the project. First, he was systems engineer. He had been hard at work learning what communications we needed to keep in contact with planet Earth. He was also struggling to design the ship’s internal power systems, and it was becoming a problem. He didn’t exactly gloss over it but he didn’t spend a lot of time on it, either. I knew a mental note had been taken.

The second hat was surface transportation, and Dak hadn’t been around the warehouse much in the last few days as he and Sam got started on that.

Then it was Alicia’s turn, and the rest of us crossed our fingers. We had named her environmental control officer. Yes, we were all officers. Why not?

Alicia labored under a triple inferiority complex. The first part was math and science anxiety, which most girls I’ve known have. It seems to come with the territory. Second, she had never finished high school. Given her life story, I thought it was a miracle she had attended school at all; and learned anything at all. But Alicia felt outclassed by her three honor student friends.

Third, she felt that Dak was much, much smarter than she was, and she was afraid she would never be able to keep him because of that.

Some of that was obvious to anybody who was watching, and some of it I learned lying on my pillow with my arm around Kelly, who was doing everything she could-as Dak and I were, too-to convince Alicia she was wrong to worry about all three points. Which was the simple truth. Alicia might not know how to extract a cube root, but she had tons of smarts, in areas that really mattered. Come to think of it, I can’t extract a cube root, either, without a calculator.

But, my lord, how that girl had been working.

Her desk in the other office was piled high with printouts. Dak had [227] gotten her started, showing her which sites to go to for the information she needed. Most of them were government sites, many of those part of the NASAWEB. It’s amazing how much stuff you can get free from the government if you know where to look.

She spoke for about twenty minutes, using the clicker to highlight the air tanks and fans arid ventilation ducts we’d designed. As she went on, her confidence grew. She talked knowledgeably about carbon dioxide scrubbers, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, about the heating and cooling systems, and our biggest bugaboo, radiation.

She had learned more about it than Dak and I had known.

“Astronauts working on the space stations and flying in VStars have a radiation protection we’re not going to have,” she said. “The Earth’s magnetic field captures a lot of the radiation from the sun and twists it and turns it down at the poles, where you can see the results in auroras. The level of that radiation varies with activity on the sun’s surface. Solar flares and prominences produce high-energy protons that can be harmful if you aren’t protected from them.” With a click, she brought up a series of pictures of solar flares, beautiful and potentially deadly. “That radiation can even reach down to the Earth’s surface. In 1989 a flare shorted out the power supply in Quebec. Six million people didn’t have any electricity for a while.

“But we can have a little warning about the solar radiation. We’ll have a piece of optical equipment aboard that will watch the sun and if it spots a flare, it will sound an alarm.” She brought up a graphic on the Telestrator. “The light from a flare will go faster than the dangerous protons. We would have a minute or so to get into what they call a ‘storm cellar.’ Basically, we’ll surround one room in the center of the center module with polyethylene, which will stop the protons. They use this stuff on atomic submarines to shield the crew from the reactor.”

One more point Dak and I hadn’t known, discovered through Alicia’s diligence. I glanced at Travis and saw him nodding.

“The other radiation is scarier, to me.”

“Me, too,” Travis put in, quietly.

“They call it ‘cosmic radiation.’ It comes from far out in space, from stars that blow up in a supernova. This stuff travels at almost the speed [228] of light and it’s very powerful. Even the Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t stop all of it, but exposures are higher in outer space. There’s no practical way to shield from it.”

She paused, and it didn’t seem like a good place for a pause, to me. Skim over this part , I wanted to shout. But in the end I guess it’s better to be straight and honest.

“To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t want to be on that Ares Seven ship, or the Chinese one, either. The best way to deal with cosmic radiation is to limit your exposure to it. We’ll get to Mars in somewhere between three and four days. That’s a chance we all agreed we’re willing to take.”

I thought I heard a grumble from my mother, but when I looked at her she was just glaring at the flares on the Telestrator screen, looking as if she’d like to put a lot of bullet holes in it. Somehow I had just known that the idea of radiation passing through her son’s body was not going to exactly thrill her.

It was only toward the end Alicia faltered a bit.

“I haven’t had time to work on waste management,” she admitted. “I guess we’ll need some plumbing. Toilets, some way to heat water…”

“When you go to Sears to get that freezer,” Travis said, “pick up a water heater, too. And a toilet seat.” Alicia smiled uncertainly. “I’m not kidding. Don’t worry about it, Alicia. It won’t be a problem.”

“Well, I guess that’s about it…”

Kelly was already up. She embraced Alicia and invited her to sit down. Then she began her own presentation, clean, crisp, well ordered, and comprehensive without being long-winded, just as I’d expected from her. She covered the financial situation and the procurement status, all the business side of the project.

When she sat down there was silence for almost a full minute. Who would fire the first shot? Mom, or Travis?

Travis. And of course it wasn’t a shot at all.

“Well, I’ve seen worse briefings before a liftoff. Many worse, in fact. Practically all of them.” He turned to Mom. “Betty, I’ll tell you the bad news first.”

[229] “Travis, the only news I want from you is that you can build a safe ship. These kids are going to Mars if there’s even a one in a hundred chance of getting back, I know that. I figure Manny’d go if he had to pedal a bicycle and hold his breath. They’d lie to me if that’s what it takes; I would have, when I was their age. But from you, I expect the truth, or I’ll find a way to make you pay.”

“Then the bad news is actually good news,” Travis said, not seeming to mind the threat. I did, though. I was getting a little bit pissed off at her.

“We’ve got a terrific start here. They’ve laid out the basics of a ship that can get there and back.”

“Then you’d let your daughters fly in it, is that what you’re saying?”