John Varley - Red Thunder

We were standing together, smiling, wearing our brown leather bomber jackets. Travis in the back, a hand on Kelly’s and Alicia’s shoulders, Jubal in a place of honor down in front of us.

“My goodness,” Alicia said. “This is really… something.”

“Do y’all like it?” 2Loose asked anxiously.

“You done good, amigo,” Travis said, slapping him on the back.

“We got our money’s worth,” Kelly said.

“What, you paid for this?” Travis asked.

“Shut up, Travis. It was my money, okay?”

Then it came time for somebody to smash a bottle of champagne over her… well, she’d have to sit in a cherry-picker to hit Red Thunder’s bow, so we settled for one of the landing struts.

Travis handed the bottle to Kelly, who looked surprised. But she took it.

[292] “I christen thee, Red Thunder ,” she said, and choked up. She cleared her throat. “Bless all who sail in her.” She swung the bottle, hard, and we all applauded.

“And I think that’ll be my exit line, my friends,” she said. “I won’t be at the launch in the morning. I don’t think I could stand it.”

My throat was burning as I tried to hold back the tears. No one had anything to say, but Mom put her arms around Kelly and hugged her tight. Jubal went to her and hugged her, too. Then Kelly came to me, and we kissed. Her eyes were full of tears, which she blinked away.

“Come back,” she said.

“I will.”

And she turned and headed for the door, never looking back, just raising one hand in a small wave as she left.

The three of us were glaring at Travis, and he looked back at us defiantly.

“Okay, I’m the bad guy. What was I to do? You all heard my reasons.”

“Nothing, Travis, nothing,” Mom said. “You did what you had to do.”

I was still far from sure of that. And about 49 percent of me wanted to run after her, tell her I wasn’t going unless she went… but I didn’t think she’d respect me for it. I had to take her at her word, and she had said go.

“Now everybody get some sleep,” Travis said. “Bright and early tomorrow morning we lift off. Nothing short of a hurricane’s going to stop us now.”

I’d grown so superstitious about the project that I actually checked the weather report, though it was too early in the year for hurricanes. Sure enough, none was in sight.

And I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.

But I slept.

“JUBAL WON’T BEgoing with us,” Travis said. I had just taken a bite of a Krispy Kreme, and suddenly I didn’t want it.

It was four-thirty A.M. Dak and Alicia and Travis and me were sitting around a table that was looking very empty without Kelly and Jubal. The big doors leading out to the dock were open now, for the first time. Red Thunder was hooked to the overhead crane, and the leased barge was tied to the dock.

“Is he sick?” Alicia asked.

“Not really.” Travis sighed. “We decided a few weeks ago that he couldn’t go. He didn’t want y’all to know. He was afraid you’d not like him anymore.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“That’s what I told him, too. But you know Jubal. Once he gets an idea in his head, there’s not much chance of convincing him otherwise.”

“What’s the problem, Travis?” Dak asked.

“Jubal… friends, it was always an iffy proposition, Jubal getting into that thing.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of Red Thunder . “Jubal doesn’t even fly. He’s afraid of flying and, worst of all, he can’t [296] stand small, closed spaces. Maybe you never noticed it, but Jubal doesn’t go aboard the ship. Claustrophobia. If it was just claustrophobia he might have made it. But you add in the other phobia, it was just impossible. He could barely handle one hour the other night.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“That’s another thing. The main reason I wanted to take him with us is that he knows too much. The only place I could be sure of protecting him would be aboard ship. But that’s impossible. Jubal is going underground, people. Caleb left with Jubal last night. He’s taking him… I don’t know where. What I don’t know, I can’t tell. But even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you.

“Jubal’s only hope is for us to get to Mars and back, and I’m afraid that, after we get back, all of you will have a lawyer as a constant companion for a few days, or weeks. Until it becomes clear to whoever might want to arrest us on some national security charge, suspend habeas corpus… . till it becomes clear they can’t get away with it.”

WE HAD RAISED Red Thunder with the overhead crane and were inching it along the rails toward the barge when the rest of the liftoff party arrived, everyone in the know except Caleb and Jubal. Dak was up in the crane cab, sweating blood as he moved it at dead slow speed, just as he’d drilled a dozen times with our extra tank car, which we’d filled with cement to simulate the mass of the ship.

Everyone gathered outside as Dak swung the ship out over the barge. Then three of us jumped down to the barge and pulled on the ropes attached to the landing struts until they were centered on the stress gauges, where we’d reinforced the deck of the barge. Dak eased it down. There was a loud creaking sound that nearly gave me a heart attack, but then she was down and sitting pretty as can be as the sun broke over the horizon and the first red rays shone on 2Loose’s masterpiece.

We were all wearing our bomber jackets, even Mom and Maria and [297] Sam. Every time I looked at them I thought of Kelly, how she should be here. I was being swept by an emotional whirlwind, feeling cheated, alone, abandoned, and about to burst with anticipation because the big day was finally here.

Dak got the ship perfectly in position, and we detached the hooks. Dak rolled the crane back into the warehouse and hurried down to ground level.

Aunt Maria had a video camera, making a record of what could become an historical moment. Grace was snapping pictures with an old Pentax.

“Where’s Seamus the shamus?” Travis asked Salty at one point.

“Sleeping peacefully in a back alley behind a bar,” he said. “He’ll wake up in the drunk tank several hours after you’ve gone, and then he can tell his story to anybody he wants to. By then, you’ll all be famous.”

“Yeah.” He looked around. “It’s a shame we have to be so quiet about this,” Travis said. “We ought to have brass bands, ticker tape, crowds of gawkers. They make a bigger fuss than this when a liner leaves Miami for a four-day cruise.”

We were all standing around, awkwardly, wondering how to say good-bye when you’re off to Mars. Mars , for cryin’ out loud.

Dak and I got hugs from Sam and Mom, respectively.

“You come back, now,” Mom told me, and gave me a last hug.

We all got together for a posed picture at the foot of the ramp, then Travis gave the high sign to the captain of the tug we’d hired to tow the barge out about five miles from shore. Seas were calm, winds low, a perfect day for a launch. Sam and Salty cast off the lines holding the barge to the dock… and we were moving.

Our good-bye waves were cut a little short, though, when a plain white sedan came around the side of the warehouse, going way too fast. It stopped, and Agents Dallas and Lubbock got out.

“Uh-oh,” Dak said. We were maybe two hundred yards from the pier, heading into Strickland Bay. From there we’d have to weave through several palmetto islands, go under a four-lane freeway bridge, [298] then through Spruce Creek, Ponce de Leon Cut, then cross the Halifax River, go through the inlet and out to the open sea. We figured about an hour to the inlet, give or take.