John Varley - Red Thunder

This time it was Xu’s turn to be shocked. Red Thunder could fool longtime astronauts that way, at first. It could take them a while to realize, on a gut level, just how much Jubal’s baby had changed all the rules of space travel.

“Yes… yes, of course. If there is anything, that is, if I can help in-”

“Do you have any kind of maneuvering unit, a suit jet or a low-powered rocket unit we could use for an EVA if we can find-”

“Pardon me… what is this EVA?”

“Extra-Vehicular Activity-one of those NASA jawbreakers, this one means stepping outside the ship for a bit.”

“Yes, we have such a device, and I would be happy to give you one.”

“Can we go get it? Now? Time is critical.”

“Certainly.”

“Crew, I hope to lift from here in no more than one hour. Batten down all the hatches, secure everything, you know the drill. Captain Xu, let’s go.”

“I can get Blue Thunder stowed away in about an hour, Cap…” Dak saw the sad look on Travis’s face, and the air went out of him. “Sorry, Captain, I wasn’t thinking. I just hate to abandon her. Captain Xu, you’re welcome to use her when we’ve left.”

“Drive it about half a mile away and leave the keys in it, Dak,” Travis [358] said. He was kidding about the keys. “We’ll come back in a few months and pick her up.”

Dak brightened at that thought, and joined Travis and Xu on the way to the lock.

DAK CAME BACKin a foul mood.

“One of the electric blanket connections was loose,” he said. “One of the tires turned into black confetti. She’s not going to be any use to Captain Xu or anybody else, and I didn’t bring a spare.” He kicked a chair in his frustration.

Travis and Xu came back with the space propulsion device.

“Somebody at NASA or some branch of government figured out we were the only possible hope for the Ares Seven ,” he said. “So they sent the last telemetry from the ship to Captain Xu. It’ll give me a pretty good idea where to look for them.” He held up a silvery DVD. “Thanks, Captain.”

“I was glad to help. But I must mention another problem.” It took him a while to get going, and I could only imagine how much this was costing him in face.

“Comrade Chun has… has suffered a mental breakdown. We received orders not to pass this information on to you. I felt the origin of the orders was dubious, not through the proper chain of command of the space agency. Chun ordered me to… to destroy your ship, or disable it in some way. He became violent, and had to be restrained.”

He looked down at his feet for a long time, and none of us said anything. Destroy our ship? Had they brought explosives along? Then I remembered that part of that day’s agenda was to set off charges and study the seismic vibrations, like wildcatters did when searching for oil. Red Thunder was tough, probably tougher than those Chinese murderers back in Beijing realized, but like any ship there were vulnerable places, and it wouldn’t take much of a charge to weaken or destroy them. That son of a bitch!

“We face a very long sojourn here on Mars,” Xu finally went on. “I was wondering if it was at all possible… to… for you to carry [359] Comrade Chun back with you and hand him over to the authorities, or to your Chinese embassy. I… I don’t know how we are going to guard him and restrain him during all that time. And since you will be back on Earth in just a few days…” He seemed unable to go on.

Travis put his hand on Xu’s shoulder, looked into his eyes, and shook his head.

“Can’t do it, friend. I’m not going to have my people guard him twenty-four hours a day, no matter how short the trip is.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sure I’d feel the same way. Then, failing that… do you have anything aboard ship that would be helpful in restraining him? It appears that we left Earth without a single pair of handcuffs.” His small smile was ironic.

“That, we can do. Though we somehow forgot the handcuffs, too.”

We gave him half a dozen rolls of duct tape and a spare coil of poly rope. They hadn’t brought any duct tape, believe it or not. One good rule for living, in my opinion, is to never go beyond the city limits of your hometown without a roll of duct tape in the trunk and a Swiss Army knife in the glove box.

“I don’t think you’ll have to sweat out the whole time here, though,” Travis said. “Plenty of others ought to show up in the coming months. Hell, I’ll come back and get you myself if no one else will.” He paused a moment. “I don’t know how much hot water you’re going to be in over this business, Captain Xu, but if I come get you, I’ll take you back to wherever you want to go on Earth. You know what I’m saying? Anywhere.”

Xu smiled. “I understand perfectly, and thank you. Unfortunately, I have a very large family, many relatives, and could not go abroad without them. And, I must say, I love my country, though not always those who govern it.”

“Well said. I’ve enjoyed knowing you. Give my love to Mei-Ling and Dr. Li.”

We all seconded that, and shook his hand.

Fifteen minutes later, just long enough for Xu to get out of the way, we raised ship for an unknown destination.

[360] WE BOOSTED FORabout four hours. Turnaround-and, hallelujah! I didn’t feel half bad-then boost again for another four hours. Then weightlessness.

Dak was still sick. I wasn’t tempted to giggle, not even for a second.

I don’t know how to describe the problem Travis had to solve for us to have any hope of finding the Ares Seven.

Up until she blew, she was continuously sending back information as to her position, and we had the last seconds of that. She had slowed down below solar escape velocity so, undisturbed, she would swing way, way out into the cometary zone and return to the inner solar system in about a thousand years.

But the explosion itself would certainly have provided enough energy to alter her course. All Travis could do was to try to bring Red Thunder to rest in the area where she should be if we extended her orbital parameters from the time of the explosion.

We had good orbital mechanics software. We had middling-to-poor navigation optics to tell us our precise position. We had good data from Earth. We had poor-to-bad radar for the final stage of the intercept. Good news, bad news, good news, bad news.

But in the good news column I would put the fact that Travis Broussard had proved himself to be the best seat-of-the-pants spaceship pilot in the history of man in space. If anyone could get us there, if anyone could find that ship, I was betting on Travis.

He brought us to what seemed the most likely area and velocity. We set up, and we waited, like a traffic cop waiting for a speeder to come by. But we couldn’t wait for too long, the situation was too dynamic.

Casting around for a sighting involved a lot of starting and stopping. As time wore on Travis grew less gentle with us, going from weightlessness to three gees, the maximum Travis felt he dared subject Red Thunder to. It got to where I was looking forward to free fall, at least it afforded ten minutes of stability. Dak was still very sick, trying to ignore it, and even Kelly started to look a little green.

We did this for two hours. Travis seemed ready to go on with it until [361] hell froze over or we ran out of gas. The rest of us grew increasingly discouraged. We realized Travis was, too, when he started shouting down to us, asking if we saw anything, when he had to know that if we did we’d shout it out instantly.

Normally I was in charge of the radar. I still was, but we had the radar display up on all four of our screens. What else was there to do? We stared at our screens until our eyes hurt, and saw nothing at all.