Red Thunder (28 page)

"I think Travis is right," Kelly said.

"Sorry," Alicia said.

"Hell, no, Alicia. It was a very good observation. Keep 'em coming."

The consensus was that Travis should fire off the red herrings, five or six of them, widely scattered, with no pattern.

Travis and Jubal took off in the van for points unknown. They
carried Jubal's tools and, of course, the Squeezer, of which there was
still only one. They would buy the instruments and the materials they
needed along the way.

So Dak and I could have waited for their return in two weeks. But
two weeks wasted put us a lot closer to the deadline, and there was no
way we were going to greet Travis without at least some proposal of
where to get started.

That's when I had my brainstorm about the railroad tank cars.

KELLY EXPLORED THE world of tank cars for us. Like so many things, it was a lot more complicated than you'd think.

"Your 'average' tank car is forty feet long by ten feet across," she
told us. "I've found half a dozen companies that make them. They're all
made of solid, thick steel, they're very strong."

"That's what we need, strong ones," I said.

"You can order a standard model, or name your own specs. You don't
carry milk in the same kind of car you'd carry gasoline in. Some are
lined, some are refrigerated or insulated to carry liquid gases. You
can have just about anything you want... and the price for a new one is
one hundred thousand dollars and up."

"Just your standard car," I said, once more intimidated by the price tag.

"I presume you don't mind a used one?"

"Please, yes,
please,
a used one."

"Run you from ten to twenty thousand each. We're in luck, there's a
glut right now. I can probably shave some off even that
ten-thousand-dollar figure."

Dak wondered if we should put a deposit down until Travis got back,
but Kelly said there'd be no trouble getting as many as we needed.

We needed seven.

We tried for most of one day to figure out how to fit everything we
were going to need into just one, but it was impossible. Next step up
was three, bundled together, but that didn't look good, either.

"Remember, weight is no object," Dak said. "We can brace this sucker any way we think is necessary, inside and out."

With a few mouse clicks he created a bundle of seven cylinders.
Looked at from the end, it resembled a honeycomb, one circle in the
middle surrounded by six others.

"Put the bridge in the center one," Dak said. "It's a longer one
than the others, about ten feet or so. Put some windows in that. On the
deck below the bridge we have flight stations for the rest of us."

"So one deck below that," I said, moving the mouse, "we have sleeping quarters. Still got a lot of space below."

"Remember our cardinal rule. If you think you might need it,
bring
it. Right?"

"Roger. And if you really have to have it, bring
three
."

So it began to take rough shape.

"A HUMAN BEING needs about six pounds of water every
day," Dak told Kelly and Alicia the day we showed them Design A, about
halfway through Travis and Jubal's road trip. "That's just for
drinking. We want to stay clean, we'll need more."

"I'll vote for clean," Kelly said.

"It's not a problem. A gallon of water weighs about eight pounds.
Say we all drink one gallon a day. That's forty-eight pounds a day.
Trivial. Add another ten gallons for washing, brushing teeth, cooking,
water balloon fights... we're looking at five hundred pounds of water
per day."

"So how many days will we be gone?" Alicia asked.

"We're expecting about two weeks," I said. "That's three and a half
tons of water. But we intend to carry enough for twice that, as a
safety margin. Say seven or eight tons. Two thousand gallons."

"Seven
tons?
" Kelly asked.

"Two
weeks?
" Alicia looked surprised. "I thought we'd be gone, I don't know, months and months."

"Don't have to with Jubal's gadget, hon," Dak said. "We can get
there in about three and a half days. I don't think you even want to
know how fast we'll be going when we get to the halfway point and turn
around to slow down."

I wasn't sure I did, either. Three and a half
million
miles
per hour. That's almost a thousand miles per second, a long way from
light speed of 186,000 miles per second... but we'd have to reset our
clocks forward a few seconds when we got back. One day I'd have to do
that calculation, too... when I figured I was emotionally ready for it.

"We figure the water can come in handy for radiation shielding,
too," Dak said, and I could have kicked him. In fact, I figured I
would
kick him, first chance I got.

"Radiation...?" Dak might as well have suggested we eat cyanide.
Alicia would not eat genetically engineered vegetables or fruit, but
her special dislike was irradiated food. I liked Alicia, but she
usually fell for the line of the Health Food Mafia.

"Yeah, hon, there's radiation in space. Mostly it won't be a
problem, it isn't strong enough to penetrate our steel hull. Astronauts
get exposed to it every day."

"So what's the problem?" Kelly asked. She was looking dubious, too.

"The sun," I said. "Every once in a while there's a storm on the
sun, a flare, and the radiation gets stronger. We'll be cutting in
toward the orbit of Venus, so we'll be closer to the sun than anybody's
been yet."

"Yeah," Dak said, "but it varies on an eleven-year cycle, and we're not at the peak."

We're only a few years before it.
But I didn't say that.

"We figured we'd make the thousand-gallon water tanks wide and tall
and thin, spread it out to cover as much area as possible. Then, if a
storm comes, we orient the ship so those tanks are between us and the
sun."

"We'll probably fly in that attitude anyway," I said. "Might as well
be safe. But we'll have detectors, too, all around the ship, to let us
know if the level's rising."

"What good does that do?"

"The water soaks up the radiation, babe."

"And then we drink the water?"

"The water doesn't get radioactive. Don't worry about it. This ship
will have steel walls that'll stop ninety-nine percent of it. We won't
have any trouble keeping within safe limits." But Dak and I could both
tell Alicia was going to want to see figures, and that "safe" limits
were endlessly arguable. And there was no way to pretend we weren't
going to get any more radiation than if we stayed home.

In the end, it would be up to her. I was betting she'd go.

"So, that's the water situation," Dak said, changing the subject as
quickly as possible. "Then there's oxygen. We need about two pounds per
day, per person. We figure on taking regular compressed air. A pure
oxygen atmosphere is touchy, a fire can get completely out of hand in
half a second, just ask Gus Grissom's ghost if you don't believe me. So
for every pound of oxygen we bring we'll also be bringing four pounds
of nitrogen. Can't be helped, but again, it's not a problem. We'll have
air scrubbers that take out the carbon dioxide. My feeling is we'll
need an 'air officer,' or something like that, who worries full-time
about the air quality."

"How about 'environment control officer'?" I suggested. I figured Alicia would be a natural for that.

"Okay, that's air and water taken care of," Kelly said. "How about food?"

"I thought we'd go buy a freezer at Sears or something," I told her.
"Fill it up with frozen pizzas and TV dinners. Bring a hotplate and a
microwave oven."

Kelly laughed, thought I was joking at first... then laughed again when she saw it was
not
a joke.

"Except for 'Leesha," Dak said. "For you, we figured we'd buy a big
brick of tofu and a sack of rabbit pellets. Keep your dish full, you
can graze whenever you like."

"I'm getting a little tired of health food jokes, gang," she said,
and shoved Dak hard enough he fell off his kitchen chair, pretending to
be injured.

We were having this discussion in Kelly's office, that is, the
office of the project manager. When we were deciding which of us would
be the best at keeping all the details straight, all the bills paid,
raw materials arriving in a timely fashion, all the jobs to be done,
big and small... Kelly had won unanimously.

The space was in one corner of our warehouse, up one flight of steps
over an area that had been used for storage but was now empty. There
was a row of windows looking down on the warehouse floor, and I
couldn't help thinking of her father's office. I wondered if she'd made
the connection.

"That's one thing we decided early on," I told them. "When we can
buy something off the shelf, that's one more thing we don't have to
make. I know it sounds nuts, but a Sears freezer is just the sort of
shortcut we will take any time we can. Now, maybe it's best just to
bring dry rice and pasta and canned stuff, maybe the hot plate is all
we need, really... but if we want to take frozen food, we can."

"It's amazing how much stuff we'll be able to buy, when the time
comes," Dak said. "Like, the best way to get electrical power in a ship
is with fuel cells. And it so happens you can buy them in any
electrical supply house, just like the ones that go up in the VStar,
and they're not even that expensive. A space program spin-off."

"And we'll bring batteries as backup," I said. "Plain old nickel-cadmium car batteries, about the size of a lunch box."

"Well, I'll provide a better menu than frozen pizzas," Alicia
sniffed, and before she knew it she'd been elected ship's cook. Oh,
boy. I could hardly wait.

"So. Water, oxygen, food... what are the other necessities of life?"

"Music," Alicia said.

"Damn right. Bring your whole collection, we'll be equipped to play everything but eight-tracks and Edison cylinders."

"Food, water, and air are three of the big five," I said. "Then
there's clothing and shelter. Shelter in Florida means a place to get
out of the rain. In Minnesota it means protection from the cold. Where
we're going, pressure is the big deal, and heat or cold right after
that. The ship will be our shelter."

"So we need a big space heater, or something?" Alicia asked. "Outer space is freezing cold, didn't I hear that?"

"You probably did," Dak said, "but it ain't strictly true. Space is
a vacuum, it's not hot or cold, either one. If you're in the sunshine
it can get real hot, real quick. We gotta be ready to cool the air,
or
heat it, since if you're in a shadow you lose heat, and you get real
cold,
real quick."

"Not to mention the weather on Mars," I said.

"Now
that's
cold," Dak agreed. "Nighttime, figure on it getting down around a hundred and fifty below, most nights."

"You're kidding." Alicia looked alarmed.

"No joke, kiddo. Hottest it's ever been—the last million years
or so, anyway—is about sixty Fahrenheit, high noon, equator,
perihelion."

"And perihelion is... what?"

"Closest point to the sun. Mars's orbit is a lot more eccentric...
that means it's not circular, it's elliptical, from one hundred thirty
million to one hundred fifty-five million miles from the sun. On Earth
the seasons are determined by the tilt of the axis, which part gets the
most heat, northern or southern hemisphere, which is why Christmas is
in the middle of the summer in Australia. On Mars it's the shape of the
orbit that determines the seasons, such as they are."

"Sixty degrees doesn't sound so bad," Kelly said.

"I wouldn't bother to pack any sunscreen," I told her. "For one thing, it's not Martian summer right now."

"For another thing," Dak said, enjoying this, "the air pressure is
about one hundredth what it is on Earth, and ain't none of it oxygen.
That's
way
below the pressure on top of Mount Everest.
Ninety-five percent of the air is carbon dioxide, which, when you
freeze it, is what we call 'dry ice.' And it does freeze on Mars, the
carbon dioxide, most every night. So in addition to some real good
thermal underwear, we're gonna need us some space suits if we plan to
leave the ship."

" 'If we plan to?' If we
plan
to?" Alicia looked scandalized. "We couldn't go there and never set foot on it, could we?"

Dak shrugged, but the truth was, we were worried about that. You
couldn't just run down to the Goodwill store and pick up a few used
space suits. I wasn't sure you could buy them anywhere at all, new or
used... or if we could afford them if we
did
find some. A
custom-tailored NASA suit ran right around one million dollars, and
that was a great savings over what they'd have run you ten years ago.
Since our whole budget was one million dollars, I figured we had a
problem.

Because, when you got right down to it... would landing on Mars
count
if you didn't get out of the ship?

It sounds crazy, but what were Neil Armstrong's first words while
standing on the moon? "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant
leap for mankind," right? Anybody who knows anything about space
history or any history at all knows that.

Actually, in the only way that makes sense to me, his first words were, "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The
Eagle
has landed."

Think about it. If I'm standing in the pickup bed of
Blue Thunder,
I'm standing on Planet Earth, aren't I? If not, then I spend very
little time on the planet. Most of the time I'm standing on concrete,
or asphalt, or wood, or carpet or I'm on the second floor of a building
or I'm sitting in a vehicle.

Yet it is universally agreed that Armstrong was not "on" the moon until his foot was planted on lunar rock. His
thickly booted
foot, remember, or else his foot would have suffered a severe burn, not to mention the harsh effects of vacuum.