John Varley - Red Thunder

“What about the exhaust?” Cliff asked. “Is half a mile enough?”

“Should be. The exhaust is hot, but not toxic.” We had been filling Cliff in on the story of Red Thunder . Though NASA had not tried to hide our existence from the Ares Seven, they hadn’t exactly been full of information.

[389] “If they actually end up making a movie about you guys,” he said, laughing, “you can bet they’d build a mock-up of your ship and turn it into a ride at Orlando.”

“That’s it!” Kelly shouted. We all looked at her. “We land at Orlando!”

I got it, and grinned at her. Then Dak got it, and Cliff, and finally Travis.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”

TRAVIS SLIPPED USinto a fairly low orbit around the Earth.

Dak didn’t get sick. He had done okay at turnover, too. It cheered him up, but only a little. We were all aching to get down, Alicia most of all. She had stabilized Aquino, but he was still in critical condition. She had little patience with Travis’s decision not to land immediately.

“I don’t believe in those spooks you talk about, and this man needs better care than I can give him. Now!”

We managed to cajole her for a while. Travis promised we wouldn’t remain in orbit more than six hours, tops. Then he’d set Red Thunder down, one way or another.

Suddenly we were busy again. This close to Earth we didn’t need the lost dish to transmit a signal the people on Earth could pick up. Calls were coming in from all channels, wondering if we were Red Thunder . At first we just let the phone ring.

Kelly logged on to her ISP and went to the websites of the various theme parks south of Orlando. In five minutes she had a map that showed what she wanted.

“Lot G,” she said, pointing to the map. “The ‘Goofy’ lot. It’s the biggest parking lot in all the parks. Look at the scale, it’s almost a mile across.”

“Almost,” Travis said, still dubious. “And that monorail runs right through the middle of it. What time is it? Eastern Daylight.”

“Almost noon,” Dak said.

“We give them two hours,” Kelly said. “Make up your mind, Travis. You wanted a big, empty space with lots of people to witness the [390] landing. And I hate to put it this way, but if we crash on top of people, we’ll all be dead and not have to worry.”

“Are you an atheist, Kelly?”

“I’m an ex-Baptist, that’s all I’ll say.”

Travis thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

“Best we’re going to do, I guess. Now all I have to do is get the President of the United States on the phone.”

“Already did, Travis,” Dak said, beaming. “I’ve got her on hold. Don’t look at me that way. She called us , okay?”

“Okay, Dak. Now put this signal out to everybody. Everybody .” He sat in Dak’s chair and took a deep breath.

“Good morning, Madam President,” he said.

“It’s just afternoon where I am, Captain Broussard.”

“And where is that, Madam President?”

“I’m aboard Marine One .” The picture came on, and we could see her sitting next to a window in a helicopter. “I hate flying in these things. I don’t know how you people would dare to fly all the way to Mars. I congratulate you all. Captain, is this line secure?”

“No, ma’am, it is not. We don’t have scrambling capability, never figured we’d need it.” Actually, there were scrambling programs in many of our computers; the White House or one of their spook agencies was bound to have a compatible program. The President must have known that, but ignored the lie, like the former diplomat she was.

“Very well. I’m on my way to Andrews Air Force Base, should arrive in five minutes. Many members of your families and other loved ones are already en route to Andrews in a gover-… in a chartered jet. I would like you to land your ship there. We intend to hold a ‘welcome back’ ceremony.”

We all had the same reaction when she mentioned our families: Hostages.

I’m ashamed to have harbored that thought. But the government ought to be ashamed, too. How did it happen that most of us don’t trust our government not to trample on the Constitution, under the umbrella of National Security?

“I presume our lawyers are aboard that plane, too, Madame [391] President,” Travis said. One of the things he’d stressed the most to our friends and relatives was that, until Red Thunder returned, your lawyer is your Siamese twin. The only way our lawyers would not be aboard was if our families had been arrested by force, in which case our legal brigade would earn their outrageous hourly charges by raising a stink in the media bigger than this media-happy country had ever seen.

“Yes, I believe they are aboard.”

“It’s a kind offer, ma’am,” Travis said. “And please forgive me, but Andrews is on your home grounds. It’s your stadium, your ball, and your bat. We intend to land a little closer to our home turf.”

“What do you propose?” Diplomat or not, she looked a little pissed when she said it. I guess Presidents don’t hear the word no very often, or even no , thank you.

Travis told her, and she was shaking her head before he got very far.

“Out of the question.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t state my intention clearly. We are going to land in that parking lot. I’ll be in position to land in another two hours. That should give you plenty of time to do a few things:

“Clear that parking lot. Change the course of that government jet, have it land at Orlando and then fly our loved ones by helicopter to Lot B, that is the ‘Bambi’ lot, which is the closest point people should be allowed to approach our ship until I broadcast the all clear. I don’t want to see any soldiers. Local police only.”

“Is that all?” Her voice had a definite edge to it now.

“No, ma’am.” Travis grinned. “I’d like to respectfully extend to you an invitation to witness the landing, the return of the first men and women to walk on Mars.”

The President looked stricken when Travis said “Mars.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Please forgive me. In the heat of the moment, I forgot to mention the very first thing I should have told you. A few days ago our Mars mission, the Ares Seven , suffered some sort of onboard explosion. We’ve heard nothing from them since, and we-”

“It’s not a problem, Madame President. I have some good news to report to all Americans, and people around the globe. We found the Ares Seven.

[392] “There is some bad news, too, I’m afraid. Astronauts Welles, Smith, Marston, and Vasarov died of their injuries before we could get there.

“But we rescued Holly Oakley and Cliff Raddison and Bernardo Aquino. Aquino was badly injured, and I’m sure his life was saved by our medic, Alicia Rogers. But he is still in critical condition. Please excuse my abruptness, but there is a lot we need to do before the landing, in two hours’ time. Good-bye.”

Travis looked happy. It must be a heady feeling to put the President on hold, refuse an order, and hang up on her, all in the space of ten minutes.

TRAVIS WAS TELLINGanother lie when he said we’d be very busy over the next two hours. He had already plotted our landing trajectory, a matter of five minutes of computer time, almost all of that feeding in the data.

Dak and Cliff and I had nothing to do at all. Holly and Alicia were standing their vigil by the still-unconscious Captain Aquino. Holly had started doing that about twenty hours into our return, when she was getting over the effects of her living nightmare. Was there something going on there? Oakley and Aquino? Ares Seven had been in space a long time. But it wasn’t my business.