Red Thunder

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.

[135] “THE CHINESE TOOK what most folks believe is the most sensible route to Mars,” Dak said. “You send unma

“About that.”

“But what ’bout de Americans?” Jubal asked. “Dey be go

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.”

[136] “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 bu

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.

14

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 ru

There were half a dozen guests still present, milling around as guests [138] 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 co

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 [139] 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.

“There’s a side to this thing you may not have thought of. Lots of power wrapped up in these.” He took a silver bubble from his pocket and held it carefully up to the light. “Free energy. Don’t look for that in any physics book. Energy is paid for, always. Only not here. Jubal’s Squeezer works without using any energy I can detect. You saw how much power was unleashed when I… stupidly… turned one of them off.”