Red Thunder

“I told you-”

“I know. Your reasons were good. But you’re off the hook, and I’m here, and that’s the way it had to be. So can we bury the hatchet?”

“I don’t have a hatchet, Kelly.”

“Uh-oh,” Dak said. “Friends, we got a problem.”

Travis hurried to the window, where Dak had been pressing his face close to get a last look at Earth before Travis straightened the ship again.

“What?” I said. “What problem?” My stomach tightened.

It was our “high-gain ante

Travis sent Dak down to the systems control deck where the controls for the dish were part of his duties. Gingerly, Dak tested the motors: azimuth, altitude, skew. The dish moved okay, but with each move a small bouncing motion was introduced that made the weak weld open and close about a quarter of an inch.

“We do that too much, we’ll snap it off like a dry stick,” Travis said. He sighed. “Dak, we’d better listen for a bit while we still have it, okay?”

“Roger, Captain. Calling Planet Earth …”

After a few minutes of fiddling Dak picked up a strong signal. He frowned as he listened, static filling the television screen in front of him, then he gri

“It’s CNN,” he said, and we saw two familiar anchorpersons, Lou and Evelyn. The ba

“CNN has been unable to confirm the existence of a… as incredible as it may sound, of a home-built spaceship called Red Thunder, currently on its way to Mars at a speed almost impossible to believe. Here’s what we do know.

[306] “At a little after seven this morning, Florida time, something lifted off from Strickland Bay in Daytona. It had been sitting on a barge, being towed toward the open sea, when a Coast Guard helicopter and two cutters intercepted it. We have been unable to get a comment from the Coast Guard, or for that matter, any government agency to confirm or deny this report, but we do have video.”

Whoever they bought it from had a good camera. We watched great clouds of steam billow from Red Thunder. It lifted, hovered… then began to rise… and rise, and… then it was screaming into the sky.

“Will you look at that,” Dak breathed. I think we were all astonished at just how quickly the ship dwindled into the sky.

“Simultaneous with the liftoff, we received a press release via the Internet, and a website address, claiming to be from the families of the people aboard the ship. The release claims this ship, this Red Thunder, has a crew of four, headed by a man named Travis Brassard… no, sorry, I’m told his name is Broussard. Travis Broussard.”

“Damn right, you idiot,” Travis said, as his picture filled the screen. It was one taken by Grace, as were all the following pictures. He had a smile in this picture that reminded me of Bruce Willis, though Travis doesn’t look much like Willis.

“We have confirmed that Broussard is an ex-astronaut, a former VStar pilot who has made numerous trips into space. We have a crew on the way to his home.”

“Good luck,” Travis said. “Nobody home there but a lawyer with a copy of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The cops better have a search warrant… not that there’s anything to find. The place is absolutely clean.”

Then Dak’s picture came up.

One by one we were identified, an unlikely rogues’ gallery. I thought I looked pretty foolish, but then I always dislike pictures of myself.

Then there was a photo of the six of us, Kelly and Jubal included. We were in our bomber jackets, posed almost like 2Loose’s portrait of us on the side of the ship.

“Also involved in the project are a Kelly Strickland, age nineteen, [307] and Jubal Broussard, Travis Broussard’s cousin.” I was surprised that picture had been released, and looked at Travis. He shrugged.

“Kelly approved it,” he said. “Her dad had to find out sooner or later.”

“I wish I could watch when he finds out I’m here,” Kelly said with a giggle.

“As for Jubal, there’s no point trying to keep him a secret. Too many people know about him. But everybody in the family has been instructed to describe him as… well, as retarded. Most everybody outside of the family thinks he really is retarded.” He looked at the ceiling, pursing his lips. “Sorry, Jubal,” he muttered. “You know Jubal doesn’t lie too well… but I’m hoping, first, that nobody finds him. If they do, Jubal’s been told just to act confused, not to answer any questions at all, that way he doesn’t have to lie. He can handle that. Hell, he will be confused, no acting necessary.”

“You figure they’ll think it was you, invented the drive?” Dak asked.

“Not for long, if they get a look at my physics grades at college. But I think they’ll be inclined to postulate a seventh person, a Dr. X, as the mastermind. They can look for him all they want, since he doesn’t exist.”

“We here at CNN have been trying to contact Red Thunder since first reports came in,” said one of the anchorpersons, and got our attention at once. “We have confirmed that, when it last appeared on the weather radar at a local television station in Daytona, the ship was accelerating at a constant speed. We have also been told by an anonymous source that tracking radar indicates the acceleration has continued unabated.”

The screen showed a huge satellite dish, and the a

“We have aimed our largest transmitter at the spot where we believe Red Thunder would be if it continued to accelerate at the same rate-and I emphasize that all our scientific consultants tell us this is impossible… still, if you can hear us out there, Red Thunder, please transmit on the frequency that should be… there, at the bottom of your screen. We want to tell your story to the world.”

Travis gri

[308] “That sounds like our cue, lads and lassies. You ready to speak to the world?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Dak said, gesturing frantically. “Look!”

The scene had changed… to a close shot of the Blast-Off Motel sign. The camera pulled back, and a black woman moved into the shot, holding a microphone, pressing her ear with one hand, obviously trying to hear her producer over an earphone. Then she smiled when she realized she was on the air, live.

“Lou, Evelyn,” she said, “this is La Shanda Evans reporting from the Blast-Off Motel here on the beach at Daytona. The Blast-Off is a local institution around here, dating back to the early days of the space program. There was even a suggestion a few years back to declare the sign a national historic site, though nothing came of it. Lately it’s fallen on hard times, and today it doesn’t seem to be open at all.”

The camera pa

“Mrs. Garcia, we’d like to have a word with you, if we could.”

“Uh… not yet, okay? Like I told you, we’ll have a press conference in about an hour, as soon as the people aboard the ship send back their first messages.” She glanced at her watch, and I could see the worry on her face. I glanced at my own watch, and saw we weren’t really late, yet. But it was only a few minutes.

“Travis, we-”

“Just a minute, Ma

The door was locked again, and the camera came back to Evans.

“Well, you heard it, Lou. We’re waiting for word from this alleged Red Thunder, which I guess is your department. We were the first on the scene, about half an hour ago. But everybody else is arriving now, and it promises to be a bigger media zoo than the 2000 presidential election.”