Red Thunder (18 page)

ON THE TENTH, maybe the eleventh night of his stay
with us we were deep in a Monopoly game and I was about to be driven to
the poorhouse, as usual. It was my night on desk duty, so I was
listening for the doorbell with one ear.

Suddenly Jubal stood up and shouted, "Holly!" We all looked at him
and he was pointing at the television screen. I looked, and it was one
of those group portraits NASA is so fond of, with the seven Mars
astronauts hovering chipmunk-cheeked and bushy-haired in their
weightless wardroom. One of the women, Holly Oakley, was holding the
mike and answering a question.

"It's Holly," Jubal said, a bit more calmly.

"That's right," I said. "Do you know her?" Not too tough to believe, what with his cousin Travis having been an astronaut.

"Where she at? She at de station?"

"No, like it says there at the bottom, she's aboard the
Ares Seven
."

"What dis
Ares Seven?
"

"The Mars ship, Jubal," I said. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of it."

"Don' watch TV, me," he said, with a frown. Jubal didn't follow
current events at all, if he could help it. He turned up the volume.

"—and we'd like to thank all of you for giving us so much of
your valuable time. Captain Bernardo Aquino, First Officer Katisha
Smith, Brin Marston, M.D., and mission specialists Doctors Holly
Oakley, Cliff Raddison, Lee Welles, and Dmitri Vasarov. America's
Ares Seven
astronauts. Good luck, and Godspeed, all of you!"

There was a pause of fifteen full seconds as the astronauts hung
there stupidly, smiles frozen on their faces, while the radio signal
went out to the
Ares Seven
and came back at the speed of
light. Television stations had taken to adding a countdown clock in a
corner window so people didn't become too impatient, but it didn't help
much. This was going to be the last live interview. From then on
reporters would ask their questions all at once and the astronauts
would answer them the same way, and it would be turned into a standard
Q&A by tape editing.

...0.03... 0.02... 0.01... "It was our pleasure, and thank you,"
Captain Aquino answered, and the seven of them waved for a few seconds
before we were returned to the show, which was
60 Minutes,
I think.

"So, you know that woman, Jubal?" Aunt Maria asked him.

"Oh, my, used to know her real good, me. She de mother a Travis's two sweet daughters. She Travis's ex-wife, she is."

THAT WAS THE end of Monopoly for that night.

I think we were all amazed and delighted to have a connection to the
Mars mission, however tenuous. We wanted to know more about her, but we
didn't get much. It was too painful for Jubal, for he was endlessly
loyal to Travis and yet liked Holly and the children enormously.

Jubal wanted to know everything there was to know about the Mars
mission. That mostly fell to Dak and me, as our girlfriends and parents
were not nearly so interested or informed on the subject as we were.

But where to begin? It was as much a political story as a scientific
one, just like Apollo, and Project Mercury before that. Back then it
was the Russians.

"Today it's the Chinese we wanted to beat," I said.

"Good luck," Dak snorted.

THE CHINESE HAD been developing a space exploration
program for the last decade. Russia's once grand space program had been
reduced from lack of money to a few station components here and there,
and those arrived late and underfunded, often as not. In addition to
the U.S. and Russia, a few other nations were in the lucrative
satellite-launching business, including Japan, France, Brazil, and
Indonesia. Analysts assumed China would find its place in that group.

They had developed a type of vehicle known in the space business as
a Big Dumb Booster, something NASA critics had been advocating for
forty years or more. The Russians had had a BDB practically from the
start, the
Energia.
The idea behind the BDB was easy to
state: Make it big, and make it simple. It was much cheaper to put
heavy payloads into orbit with a BDB than with a manned space vehicle
like the old Shuttle or the VStar. Manned vehicles had to devote a huge
amount of mass to life support facilities. The level of safety required
for a manned launch was an order of magnitude higher than for an
unmanned one, and all that was costly.

The Chinese BDB did put big satellites in orbit. Then, in a surprise that did not quite rival the launch of
Sputnik One
in the 1950s, the Chinese lofted a small space station and a crew of three.

Not too long after that, they sent out three Mars probes. Two of
them landed safely on Mars. They were "pathfinder" ships, carrying the
supplies needed for a long stay on Mars. Then came the
Heavenly Harmony,
a manned ship taking the minimum-fuel Hohmann orbit path to Mars, and once more Americans went nuts.

THERE ARE A thousand paths to Mars, but they all must take into account some inconvenient facts.

First, all ways to Mars start off in the same direction. Before you
even fire up your rocket, you are already traveling at 66,700 miles per
hour, Earth's orbital speed. To go in the other direction you would
first have to kill that speed. So rule number one is: You go with the
flow.

You must always bear in mind that Mars and Earth move at different
speeds in their orbits, and Mars is farther away from the sun. You must
accelerate out of Earth's orbit, and then bear in mind that every
second of the way the sun's gravity will be slowing you down.

The third thing to remember is that you can't aim at Mars when you fire your rockets. You have to aim at where Mars
will
be when you get there. It's like a hunter leading a bird when he pulls the trigger.

Then there comes the toughest of all the tough things about going to
Mars. You can't just set down on the Red Planet, scoop up some rocks,
snap a few pictures, and then take off and head for home the next day.
Because of fuel limitations and the movements of the two planets, all
proposed trips to Mars involve a waiting period while the planets move
back into a position where a flight between them is economically
possible. With the Hohmann orbit the Chinese supply ships had used, the
wait was over a year.

A human needs three pounds of food, seven pounds of water, and two
pounds of oxygen every day. All round trips to Mars that we can
currently envision take well over a year. A crew of seven would consume
thirty thousand pounds of food, water, and oxygen in a year, and that
doesn't include water for bathing and brushing your teeth. All that
weight must be put into Earth orbit, and then accelerated to a speed
sufficient to reach the orbit of Mars. It takes a lot of fuel.

On your way to Mars, you had better be prepared to fix any broken
thing with what you've got, because Triple-A won't be along any time
soon to give you a jump start.

Out there, you're on your own.

"THE CHINESE TOOK what most folks believe is the most
sensible route to Mars," Dak said. "You send unmanned ships first, by
the slow but cheap path. Takes a year to get there. You send your
astronauts along with just enough food, water, and air to get there.
Then they use the stuff that went ahead of them. They figure to make
their own fuel from the carbon dioxide in the Martian air. The Chinese
are well on their way now. How long is it, Manny? Six months?"

"About that."

"But what 'bout de Americans?" Jubal asked. "Dey be gonna get dere fust?"

Dak snorted.

"No way. People think if our guys just step on the gas pedal a
little harder we could pass the commie ba— ...bad guys, but it
don't work that way. The Chinese will hit Mars in six months, and
either make a real big crater or come down soft. Our guys and gals will
get there about two weeks later. End of story. The first foot on Mars
will be a Chinese foot, dead or alive. Dammit."

Dak looked like he wanted to bite his tongue, but Jubal took no
notice of the swearing. He was staring off into space, his mind
occupied with calculations I doubted I'd ever be able to follow. Then
he focused again.

"De Americans, dey swingin' by Venus, no?"

"Yes," I said. Wondering how he deduced that. "They swing by Venus
and get a free boost from the gravity well there. They get to Mars, and
then they only have to wait about a month before they can launch and
return the ship to Earth. Our guys will be back before the Chinese."

Jubal brooded again, then looked at me.

" 'Merican ship, it don' use reg'lar rockets, hah? Somethin' else, I figger."

"It's called VASIMR," I said. "Variable Specific Impulse
Magneto-plasma Rocket. It's a plasma drive, very high specific impulse,
very low acceleration. But you can keep thrusting through the whole
mission. It adds up."

"I'm afraid you lost me," Kelly said.

"Those astronauts a while ago," I said. "They looked like they were
weightless, but they weren't, not quite. Their engine is firing, but
it's only putting out a fraction of one gee. Not enough to hold you in
your seat. The VASIMR is slow, but it's steady."

"The tortoise and the hare," Alicia suggested.

"...Sort of," Dak said. "But this time, the bunny wins."

Jubal was still pondering. At last he looked at me.

"Manuel,
mon cher,
I need to know all I kin fine out 'bout this VASIMR."

"Sure, Jubal," I said. "I can show you some websites that will get you started."

"Good 'nuff," he said, and slapped his knees and headed for the door. I heard him mutter as he walked ahead of me to my room.

"Fus' people on Mars got to be Americans," he said.

If anybody could make it so, I would have bet on Jubal.

THE SUN HAD gone down, and the pool party was almost over.

The Golden Manatee manager had returned to his glittering tourist trap.

Aunt Maria had just brought out her sixth and last pan full of
muffins and they were disappearing about as fast as the others had,
even though everyone said they'd already had too many.

Mom was sitting in a plastic lawn chair, talking guns and shooting
with Ralph Shabazz, who owned the pawn shop a few blocks away.

Dak was in the pool with a few of my old classmates from Gus Grissom
High, using an old volleyball to play some variation of water polo with
no goal cage.

Alicia was tidying up the snack table, wondering if she should make
another bowl of tofu punch for people to throw in the potted plants.

Kelly was sharing a lounge chair with me. Since the chair had been
designed for one, it took some squirming and a great degree of
closeness to share it, but that was okay with me. She had had one drink
over her usual limit and was making hickeys on my neck when she wasn't
running her tongue all around my ear.

There were half a dozen guests still present, milling around as
guests do when they're not sure if they should go home or stick around
for one more free beer.

That's when the red and black Hummer pulled in. The windshield was
spattered with bugs. There was a brief toot of the Hummer's horn and
Travis got out, waving and smiling at us.

THE SIX OF us, the Rancho Broussard crowd, were
gathered in Jubal's room half an hour later. Alicia sipped at a 7-Up
and the rest of us opted for bottles of beer.

For a while nobody talked about what we all wanted to hear. He told
us a few unlikely stories about adventures on the road not connected
with his search for answers about the bubbles, and we filled him in on
events at the Blast-Off. It all seemed interesting at the time, but
looking at it later, what really went on? Jubal won a lot of Monopoly
games, people checked in, people checked out, we repaired and filled
the pool. Story of my life, so far. Listening to it, I vowed even more
strongly to be
out
of here come this time next year, even if
it meant finding a job desk-clerking in California... or Maine, or
Alaska, or Timbuktu.
Anywhere.

At last Travis settled back against the headboard of Jubal's bed,
where he was sprawled, looking like he'd been driving a long time. Most
of the day, he told us later.

"Well, friends," he said, "I know a lot about what the bubbles are
not.
"

Dak groaned.

"Yeah, it is discouraging. Most of what I know now, we knew before I left, only now I know it even
more
so, out to the limits of currently available testing.

"It's hard. Diamonds make no mark.

"It's tough. A
big
hydraulic press ruptured itself trying
to crack it. Everything I fired at it bounced off, from a high-velocity
bullet to high-energy protons in an atom smasher, to coherent laser
light powerful enough to knock a plane out of the sky.

"It's reflective.
Perfectly
reflective. One hundred percent
of visible light that hits it comes right back. Same with gamma
radiation, radio waves... probably neutrinos, if I could figure out how
to measure neutrino reflectivity.

"I declare to you now, friends, this thing is the most significant
discovery of the twenty-first century, sure-fire Nobel Prize
material... and it scares me silly."

"What for, Travis?" Alicia asked. "Jubal
deserves
a Nobel Prize."

"You bet he does, hon. But I don't think he wants one, do you, Jube?"

Jubal, who had been studying the new Reebok sneakers on his feet, looked up, shivered and shook his head, and looked down again.

"Jubal wouldn't enjoy it, Alicia. Big fuss like that, reporters all
over the place, buying a tuxedo and going to Stockholm to meet the
king..."

Jubal shivered some more, and I thought he was about to bolt out of
the room, looking for his pirogue boat to row around the lake. But
Travis steadied him with a squeeze on his shoulder, and Jubal settled
back on the floor.