John Varley - Red Thunder

In moments I could see the whole city of Daytona on my screen. Then the whole county, then the whole state of Florida. Another camera showed the sky turning a darker and darker blue, then black. The [302] roaring of the engine faded to a grumble as the air thinned into nothingness.

My God, I was in space.

IT DIDN’T TAKElong before the gee forces fell to one and a quarter.

“Okay, y’all,” Travis said. “I want an inspection, top to bottom, see if everything survived the strain. Get it done quick, and you can come up to the bridge. And move carefully! We’ll be heavy for a while yet.”

One point two five gees was sort of like carrying a big backpack, it would have been easy to hurt myself if I got frisky. Before I opened the tank six interior air lock I checked the two pressure gauges, one for the interior of the small internal lock, one for the air-lock/space-suit module. Both gauges read a perfect 15 psi. I opened the hatches and swung out onto the ladder and down to the suit deck.

I immediately saw that one of the suits had fallen from its rack. It was lying there, facedown. I wasn’t too worried. The helmet material was the stuff they use in “bulletproof” windows, and was guaranteed to withstand a.45-caliber slug.

I was about to bend down and pick it up, when the suit moved.

I jumped a mile, even in the high gravity.

“Oh my god. Kelly?”

She rolled over and sat up. I could hear her saying something, and helped her work the fittings of the helmet. I didn’t know whether to be happy or horrified. But pretty soon happy won me over. I had even started to laugh as I pulled the helmet off.

“I can’t believe you-Jesus! What-” There was blood running from her eyebrow and down the left side of her face, into her mouth, over her chin.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said. “Hurry, help me get out of this thing!”

“But…”

“Hurry!” I asked no more questions, and in a minute I had it off her. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, just like I did. She scrambled for the ladder and started up. There wasn’t much I could do but follow.

When she reached the crossroads deck she headed down, past [303] Travis’s quarters and the room that would have been Jubal’s if he had come, then down again… and into the head. She slammed the door, and I could hear her laughing in relief.

“I’ve been in that thing all night ,” she said.

I heard someone coming down the ladder. It was Alicia, looking confused.

“Kelly,” I said, and grinned at her. Her face lit up.

“Oh, boy. Travis is going to be so pissed…”

BUT HE WASN’T, not nearly as much as we had feared.

When she followed me up the ladder onto the bridge he did a double-take worthy of Laurel and Hardy, then buried his face in his hands. When he looked up he had a small smile on his face.

“I should have known,” he said. “I should have checked.”

“Listen, Travis, you’re off the hook with my father. I mean, he’s going to hit the roof, sure, but he was going to do that anyway when he finds out how much of my trust fund I’ve spent. I’ll take full responsibility. You didn’t-”

“If I had a brig, I would throw you in it.”

“Aw, c’mon, Travis,” Dak said. “She outwitted you, fair and square.”

Captain or no captain, Travis knew he was outvoted on this one. It wasn’t until later I wondered… was it a total surprise to him? He didn’t search the ship before launch, and anyone who knew Kelly might have been suspicious at how little fuss she had given him about being left behind. Had he been giving her the opportunity to take matters into her own hands, so he could wash his hands of responsibility for her?

Yeah, but I knew Kelly pretty well, and I never thought of it. My only excuse is, I was so busy I never had time to think of it. When, just for a moment, I felt a little hurt that she hadn’t even confided in me , I reminded myself I hadn’t thought of helping her stow away, and I should have. I really should have. I felt lousy about that.

Alicia had examined her before we went to the bridge, cleaned up the blood and the wound, which turned out to be just a cut above the [304] eyebrow. She shined a flashlight into Kelly’s eyes, pronounced her fit and healthy, gave her two aspirins for her headache.

“I fell off when Travis stepped on the gas, but before he reached the full two gees,” she told us. “A good thing, too. I hit hard enough at a gee and a half, or whatever it was. I wouldn’t recommend two gees in the prone position…”

One drawback to blasting at one gee all the way to Mars is that it was hard to see where you’d been. Naturally we all wanted a look at the Earth. In a free-falling ship like the Chinese Heavenly Harmony you could just swing the ship into any attitude you wanted. But we couldn’t do that on Red Thunder , because while we were thrusting we had to keep the nose pointed toward where we were going.

There were five round windows on the bridge, one at each point of the compass, and one overhead. We could see where we were going, but not where we’d been. Where we were going was nothing but a bright, reddish star. The window that faced the sun was polarized almost to black, to prevent burning and blindness.

But Travis was able to angle the ship slightly by reducing the thrust of one of the three Phase-2 thrusters beneath us, enough that we could crowd close to the window and see a piece of the Earth. We were all astonished at how small it had become.

“We’re past the moon’s orbit already,” Travis said. “Sorry to say the moon’s way over on the other side of the Earth right now, so we can’t see that, either. And in another few hours the Earth’s going to be just a real bright star.”

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. So amazing to realize that, already, we were further from the Earth than any humans had ever been, except the crews of the Heavenly Harmony and the Ares Seven . …

“Kelly,” Travis said. “Did you figure out how you’re going to leave the ship when we get to Mars?”

“Sure. I got my own suit. I put Jubal’s suit in…” She frowned. “Where’s Jubal?” She was as shocked as we had been when Travis explained it to her. “His suit is aboard. The suit I was hiding in is mine.”

“All those ‘defective’ pieces then…?”

[305] “A few were actually defective. But I bought my suit piecemeal, an arm and a leg at a time. And I used my own money. Believe me, I was tempted to charge it all to you, after the way you’ve treated me.”

“I told you-”

“I know. Your reasons were good. But you’re off the hook, and I’m here, and that’s the way it had to be. So can we bury the hatchet?”

“I don’t have a hatchet, Kelly.”

“Uh-oh,” Dak said. “Friends, we got a problem.”

Travis hurried to the window, where Dak had been pressing his face close to get a last look at Earth before Travis straightened the ship again.

“What?” I said. “What problem?” My stomach tightened.

It was our “high-gain antenna.” That’s what we called it, anyway, though it had started life as a satellite dish and had sat for many years in Travis’s yard, obsolete and rust-streaked. It was mounted on a tripod mast that looked out over Module Five, and motorized so we could fine-tune the aiming. One leg of the tripod had twisted a little, enough to make a stress fracture at the base, where it was welded to the body of the ship.

Travis sent Dak down to the systems control deck where the controls for the dish were part of his duties. Gingerly, Dak tested the motors: azimuth, altitude, skew. The dish moved okay, but with each move a small bouncing motion was introduced that made the weak weld open and close about a quarter of an inch.