John Varley - Red Thunder

“Isn’t fifteen years kind of old?” Kelly asked.

“Yes, and no.” He didn’t explain, and Kelly went on.

“And why weren’t they ever used?”

“Obsolescence.”

“Is that good?” Alicia asked. “I mean, are they-”

“Okay? They should be as good as new ones, mostly. I couldn’t afford to buy the new model, chilluns. These’ll have to do.” He removed a helmet from one of the other boxes and twisted it into place. He stood and admired his work.

“What you should know about Russian engineering, crew, is that it often doesn’t have the bells and whistles Americans usually design into their stuff. But it works . This kind of suit protected many a Russki behind during many a lonely man-hour. I’d stack ’em up against NASA suits any day.”

I picked up what looked like an instruction manual from the scattered debris. Naturally, it was printed in Russian.

“Do you read Russian, Travis?”

“Passably well. We’ll get one translated, and I’ll check you out on all the Russian labels that are actually on the suit.”

We helped him tie weights to the arms and legs of the suit and he snapped a fitting from the suit into an air compressor hose. Then we tossed it in the pool and started pumping it full of air.

Pretty soon the surface of the pool was boiling with foam, like we’d dropped in a giant Alka-Seltzer. Kelly turned away, grimacing. I think I may have groaned. I heard the freight train of history pulling away without me. Good-bye , trip to Mars . …

[263] Travis kicked off his shoes and put his wallet on the patio table. He picked up a swim mask and put it over his head, then jumped in the pool. He was down only a short time, then came to the surface and clambered out, sopping wet but grinning.

“All the leaks are coming from the connector gaskets,” he announced.

“This is good news?” Dak wondered.

“All according to plan, Dak. You know, the Smithsonian has dozens, maybe hundreds of space suits in the attic. They’re mostly falling apart, there’s no good way to preserve them. The plasticizers in these suit gaskets are simply going to bleed out eventually. All we have to do is change the gaskets and we’re in business.”

“Can you get them off the shelf?” Sam asked.

“No, they’ll have to be custom-made, but it shouldn’t be hard. I know an outfit in Miami can do it. Alicia, I’d like to put you in charge of-”

“Alicia’s classes are too important,” Kelly said. “Let me take it over, Travis. I’m beginning to have a little spare time, plus it’d be nice to do something with my hands other than type and move a mouse.”

Jubal, Sam, Dak, and I loaded the empty coffins back in the U-Haul, and I took them to the dump, glad Mom had not seen them or the leak-like-a-sieve space suits.

AT THE ENDof the day we all took Travis to the warehouse to see Red Thunder . His reaction was gratifying: his jaw dropped as his neck craned up.

The cradle was finished, and the central tank had been upended, lowered into place, and braced, awaiting the six other tanks which would provide it with more support.

It looked weird, sticking up like that. The top was off so we could install the flanges and the openings which would soon hold the five Plexiglas windows of the cockpit, as Travis called it, or the bridge, as Caleb and Sam did.

[264] And all of it painted a bright Chinese red.

Travis took it all in, then grinned at us.

“Ladies and gents,” he said, “for the first time, I feel like we’re going to Mars.”

WE MOUNTED THEsix external tanks over the next three days, and it was a perfect example of the learning curve. It took us all day to do the first one, but we did two the second day and the remaining three on the third. And there she stood, basically complete on the outside except for bolting on the tops of five of the tanks.

Tank one contained the air lock. We would enter that tank from the center, as with all the others. There was a deck there, with a hole and a ladder to climb down to the suit locker deck. There the five suits hung on simple racks. There were outlets to charge the suit batteries, and couplings to recharge the backpacks with compressed oxygen. Oxygen instead of the compressed air we’d be breathing aboard ship, because that’s how the suits were designed, and because, even if we could reengineer them, carrying compressed oxygen gave us five times the suit time that compressed air would have.

In the floor of the suit deck was an airtight hatch and another ladder down to the lock itself. When we had that deck finished we all practiced climbing up and down the ladder, fully suited, and operating the locks by ourselves, as we might have to do in an emergency. It was tough going. But we’d never have to do it in full Earth gravity.

[266] Outside the lock we built a platform large enough for four suited people to stand on, surrounded by a safety rail. Then we attached a ramp we could raise or lower with pulleys. It was ugly, but it was simple, and easy to fix if something went wrong.

Tanks two and five carried water and air. Compressed air was in ordinary pressure bottles, ten feet high and about a foot and a half across. The system was arranged so that one system could be entirely shut down without affecting the other, and either system would keep us alive for up to two months. It all fed into a system of fans and ducts and scrubbers. One of us would be awake and in charge of air control twenty-four hours a day, in four-hour shifts. We all had to practice on it until we knew what valve to turn for any possible situation.

Water was in big rubber bladders. We had debated mounting them up high, letting gravity provide our water pressure. But Travis pointed out we were going to have to bring water pumps anyway, in case we had to spend any significant amount of time in weightlessness, such as doing repairs on the ship or rescuing distressed Ares Seven astronauts. So down to the bottom they went.

The plumbing system of Red Thunder was about as basic as you could get: water bladder, pump, a T-joint and pipes that led directly to the cold water spigot over a deep sink, or to our Sears water heater and from there to the sink. The tap was the source for drinking water and bathing water. We were bringing enough clothes to change every day, but if we really felt we had to wash clothes we could do it in that sink.

Bathing would consist of running a measured amount of warm water into a bucket, then sitting on a stool in the bathing room-a prefab shower stall with a drain in the floor-and washing with soap and a washcloth. Alicia wrinkled her nose when we showed her that part of the plans, but said nothing.

But I thought she might mutiny when she saw the plans for the toilet.

“A hole and a bucket?” Alicia said, scandalized.

“We’ll have a toilet seat over the hole,” Travis pointed out.

“Oh, sure. And all the way to Mars and back, I’ll have to put the [267] damn seat down. Dak never puts it down, and I bet none of you do, either.”

Nobody denied it, though Kelly got a case of the giggles which we all caught. Eventually Alicia laughed, too.

“Keep it simple, keep it basic,” Travis said, over and over. “A flush toilet is too complicated, and it wastes water. Same with a shower.”

He was right. We’d discussed all the possibilities before settling on the “one-holer.” People who live in RVs and trailers have what they call gray-water and black-water tanks. Gray water is from the sinks and shower, and black water is from the toilet. We would have a gray-water tank, since all it needed was a pipe from the drain to the waste tank, in the bottom of tank two, and a valve that could be turned if we had to go into free fall, to prevent the water from backing up. As for the black waste…