Red Thunder

“Hah. The only thing you’ve necked with so far is those binocs.”

[8] I put down my binoculars and thumbed up the brightness of the little flatscreen on my lap. I got a view looking into one of the windows of the cockpit blister. The flight crew were on their backs, going through the final items on the prelaunch checklist with no wasted motion. A woman with curly red hair was sitting in the left seat. I could read the name sewed on her NASA-blue flight tunic: WESTIN. A younger man with a blond crewcut sat on the right.

“VStars are noisier, I’ll give you that,” she said. We were sitting side by side on the tailgate of Dak’s truck.

“Ain’t you got no poetry in your soul, woman?”

I used the tip of the screen’s stylus to touch 7, then 5, then enter on the tiny flatscreen keypad. Camera 75 showed a view looking up from the massive concrete abutments that supported the VStar. Center screen were the long, pinched shapes of the six linear aerospike rocket engines that stretched across the ship’s wide tail. Wisps of ice-cold hydrogen and oxygen escaped from the pressure valves and swirled in the warm Florida night air. Down in the corner were the words “VStar III Delaware,” a mission number, and a countdown clock. In less than a minute camera 75 would be toast.

In a corner of the screen the countdown clock went from twenty-five to twenty. I pressed 5, then 5, then enter. A head-on angle of the cockpit crew, slightly fish-eye from a wide-angle lens. There were no more checks to perform, no more toggles to switch. They were almost motionless, waiting for the automatic launch sequence.

I pressed 4, then 4 again: Looking down the center aisle of the passenger compartment. It was built to carry as many as eighteen, but only seven chairs were filled, all of them toward the front of the module.

I knew those seven faces as well as an earlier generation of space nuts had known the faces of Al Shepard, John Gle

I don’t think they’ll ever be completely over for me, either. I mean, [9] I didn’t expect the ship to blow up or anything, but was I the only guy on the planet who thought this VStar launch was just a little out of the ordinary? Was I the only one who noticed the Ares Seven had discarded the standard NASA-blue coveralls for bright red ones?

Mars. They’re going to Mars. The passengers in the VStar were the Ares Seven, the crew, on their way up to the Ares Seven, the ship.

Fifteen seconds.

3, then 1, then enter: The last gantry arm detached and quickly swung to the left, out of the way.

Eleven seconds.

5, then 4, enter: A view from a camera on a helicopter three miles away, vibrating slightly because of the long lens.

Nine seconds.

75, enter: I was looking up at the engines. The floodgates opened and a million gallons of water streamed down, to cool the launch pad and soak up some of the thunder that would kill an unprotected man before the flames vaporized him.

Five seconds.

The candle was lit, with a huge cough of orange flame that quickly moderated to an icy blue.

Two seconds. Camera 75 melted.

45 enter: A camera looking at the hold-down latches.

One second.

The latches fell away and the VentureStar immediately leaped into the night sky.

62 enter: This one was perched on the top of the tower. The deep blue body of the VStar roared upward, followed by a fountain of fire. Camera 62 melted.

The sound hit me, miles away. As always, I thought I could feel it blowing my hair, like an explosion. I looked up to see the line of fire arcing in the night. I could see the VStar accelerate.

55 enter: The flight crew were pressed back into their chairs, their faces distorted by an acceleration of two gees and growing. I looked up again. The ship was completing a roll maneuver, and turning down-range.

[10] 44 enter: The Ares Seven were all gri

39 enter: I saw four globular objects in a line. Two were very dark, the other two a much lighter brown.

What the hell? Camera 39 was supposed to be aft-looking, mounted on the ship’s tail. It was one of my favorite angles, looking back to see light-spattered Florida shrink and vanish over the horizon…

“Dak!” I shouted. “You bastard!”

I jumped down from the high tailgate, raced around the pickup, and was just in time to see Dak and Alicia straightening and pulling up their pants. I gave Dak a shove and he was laughing so hard he simply fell over onto the sand. Dak’s laugh was a high-pitched giggle; Alicia had more of what I would call a belly laugh, and she was not in much better shape than Dak, leaning against the truck, holding her pants up with one hand. I turned away; I didn’t want Dak to see me smile.

Kelly came around to the front of the truck in time to see Alicia collapse in the sand beside Dak.

“Can somebody tell me what’s going on?”

I went to the front of the truck and pointed to the o in Dodge.

“There’s a camera in there,” I told her. “It’s about the size of a postage stamp.” Kelly bent to study it, but couldn’t see anything.

“Television camera?”

“Just in case,” Dak said, sitting up with tears streaming from his eyes. “Bad things can happen to a Nee-gro in the deep south. If the cops ever do a Rodney King on my nappy head, I’m not going to cross my fingers and hope somebody has a camcorder.”

“I still don’t get it,” Kelly said.

I showed her the flatscreen, thumbed the backup button until I had the image Dak had pirated into the NASA data stream.

“Yes sir!” Dak shouted. “That rocket ain’t going to Mars, it’s going to the moon, baby!”

There was barely enough light for me to see the smile on Kelly’s face [11] as she realized what she was seeing. I looked at the sky, where the VStar had now dwindled to a very bright speck to the southeast. A white vapor trail, barely visible by starlight, was twisted by the high-altitude winds.

“You’ve got a big zit on your ass, Dak,” Kelly said.

“Huh? Let me see that.”

She held it out of his reach, then tossed it back to me. Dak realized his leg was being pulled. He helped Alicia to her feet. The four of us stood together a few moments, watching the VStar’s light dwindle and vanish below the horizon.

“Say hi to John Carter, swordsman of Mars, when you get there, guys,” Dak said.

“Or Valentine Michael Smith,” I added.

“Just so it isn’t those H. G. Wells Martians,” Kelly said.

It was a pleasant Wednesday night in the spring, one of those times that almost makes up for the heat and humidity in Florida most of the year. We were standing in a shell parking lot in Cocoa Beach. At the north end half a dozen cars clustered under the flashing neon of the Apollo Lounge. It advertised nude table dancing, pool, no-cover-no-minimum, and “World Famous Astroburgers.” We had the south end of the lot to ourselves. Before us was a sand dune, the beach, and the Atlantic Ocean. Not far behind us was the Banana River, which isn’t a river at all but a long, slender bay cut off from the sea by the barrier island that contains Indian Harbor Beach, Patrick Air Force Base, Cocoa, and Cape Canaveral, just a few miles to the north. There were places to get a little closer to the launch complex without a visitors’ pass, but none that offered us a better view of the downrange flight of most VStars.