John Varley - Red Thunder

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ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,

events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

RED THUNDER

An Ace Book

Published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

Text design by Kristin del Rosario.

reproduced in any form without permission.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means

without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only

authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of

copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

First edition: April 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Varley, John, 1947-

Red thunder / John Varley.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-441-01015-6 (alk. paper)

I. Title.

PS3572.A724R42003

813’.54—dc21

2002038231

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Spider Robinson and

Robert A. Heinlein

for the inspiration;

and to Lee, for that,

and everything else.

Contents

PROLOGUE ....................................................................................................................... 5

PART ONE......................................................................................................................... 7

1....................................................................................................................................... 8

2..................................................................................................................................... 12

3..................................................................................................................................... 16

4..................................................................................................................................... 21

5..................................................................................................................................... 28

6..................................................................................................................................... 32

7..................................................................................................................................... 36

8..................................................................................................................................... 42

9..................................................................................................................................... 47

10................................................................................................................................... 59

11................................................................................................................................... 66

12................................................................................................................................... 75

13................................................................................................................................... 81

14................................................................................................................................... 90

PART TWO ...................................................................................................................... 93

15................................................................................................................................... 94

16................................................................................................................................... 97

17................................................................................................................................. 107

18................................................................................................................................. 118

19................................................................................................................................. 128

20................................................................................................................................. 133

21................................................................................................................................. 142

22................................................................................................................................. 152

23................................................................................................................................. 160

24................................................................................................................................. 168

25................................................................................................................................. 177

PART THREE ................................................................................................................ 185

26................................................................................................................................. 186

27................................................................................................................................. 198

28................................................................................................................................. 208

29................................................................................................................................. 216

30................................................................................................................................. 224

31................................................................................................................................. 235

32................................................................................................................................. 243

TEN YEARS LATER..................................................................................................... 249

About the e-Book............................................................................................................ 258

PROLOGUE

* * *

INSPIRATION IS WHERE you find it. You can’t force it, and you can’t predict when

and where it will come. I had nothing to do with the inspiration that made our great

adventure possible. But the inspiration that made it practical came to me while I was

walking with my friend Dak through a railroad freight yard in my hometown of Daytona.

Dak is a string bean, well over six feet, and could hide behind a flagpole. African-

American, though he doesn’t use the term, and fairly dark. Dak is short for Daktari,

which is Swahili for doctor, “A hell of a thing to wish on a newborn baby,” he once said.

He’s my age, from the same graduating class but different high schools. We often took

these long walks, often on the tracks. Here we sorted out the big questions of life. Is there

a God? Are we alone in the universe? Is Britney Spears too old to stay on the Top Ten

Babe of All Time list? Would Al Johnson switch to Team Chevy before the next 500?

“Does it look like rain?”

I looked around and sniffed the air.

“Sure does.” Thunderheads were towering in the east, and what else is new? This was

Florida, it rained every day. Today the temperature was only about eighty, but the

humidity was 210 percent.

[2] Two minutes later it started to pour.

We ran to a line of a dozen rusting black tank cars that had been parked on a siding for

as long as I could remember, and ducked under one. No trains came through this part of

the yard anymore, and the grass was thick where spilled oil hadn’t killed it. I wondered if

the EPA had heard of this place. You probably should have had a hazmat suit and a gas

mask to even come here.

There wasn’t enough room to stand under the tank car, so we sat on the gravel and

listened to the rain pelting on it. I think rain is harder in Florida than anywhere else. I

don’t mean it comes down harder, I mean the water is harder. We didn’t say anything for

a while, just picked out suitable golfball-sized rocks and chunked them at a rusty old

fifty-five-gallon drum about twenty yards away. My arm was better than Dak’s, I was

getting two hits to his one.

Not the worst way in the world to waste time. But we hadn’t made any progress on the

big question of the day.

“So, how do we go about building a spaceship on pocket change?”

That was the big one. Some question.

We had been round and round it over the last few days. We weren’t going to get any

help, we had been specifically told we were on our own. Neither of us had ever designed

a canoe, much less a spaceship. My experience with rocketry was limited to a few illegal

broomstraw-tailed squibs on the Fourth of July. Dak’s was no better.

We had what we thought were some pretty good ideas on many aspects of the problem,

all helped considerably by the fact that the central, toughest problem of space travel,

propulsion, was pretty much solved. But now we had to build something, and what we

kept coming back to was, Where do you begin?

“Pressure,” Dak said, for maybe the five hundredth time in the last few days. “It’s

gonna be tough to build something that can stand up to thirty psi for two months.”

It really only had to stand up to 15 psi, but everything about the ship had to meet

double the necessary tolerances.

We listened to the rain some more, and Dak tossed another rock, which made the drum

ring like a gong.

[3] “We can’t start from square one,” I said. “Too much welding, and every weld we

make is a place for trouble to begin.”

Dak sighed. He’d heard it before.

“We need components. Things we can slap together quick.”

“Where we gonna get them? Go to the NASA junkyard, patch up an old ship?”

“A pressure hull,” I said. Something was tickling the edge of my awareness.

“A globe,” Dak said. “Or a ...”

“A cylinder. A metal cylinder.”

I jumped up so fast I hit my head on the bottom of the tank car.

I ran out and stood in the downpour, looking back at the old, rust-streaked, greasy,

flaky paint, birdpoop-spattered tank car.

“Knock off the wheels,” I said. “Stand it on its end ...”

“... and there’s your spaceship,” Dak whispered.

Then we were laughing and actually dancing in the driving rain.

BUT OF COURSE that all came later. It started about a month earlier. ...

PART ONE

* * *

I ALWAYS THOUGHT the VentureStar looked like a tombstone. When it was standing

on end it was twice as tall as it was wide. It wasn’t very thick. It was round at the top. For

a night launch it was illuminated by dozens of spotlights like an opening night in

Hollywood. It could have been the grave marker for a celebrity from some race of giant

aliens. The stubby wings and tail seemed tacked on.

The VentureStar didn’t spend much time flying, which was just as well, because it flew

about as well as your average skateboard. Sitting on the ground it looked more like a

building than an aircraft or a spaceship.

That’s okay. In about thirty seconds it would leave every airplane ever built in a wake

of boiling smoke and fire.

“Manny, a Greyhound bus leaves Cocoa Beach every day for Tallahassee. Why don’t

we go watch that some night? We could get a lot closer.”

That was my girlfriend, Kelly, trying to get my goat. Her point being that VStars left

Canaveral once a day, too. Point taken.

“Who wants to neck at the Greyhound terminal?” I said.

“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 Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, Gordon

Cooper, Scott Carpenter ... the original Mercury astronauts. None of this seven looked

particularly nervous or excited. The white-knuckle days of space travel were over, or so

everyone said. Mom says they’ll never be over for her generation, who saw Challenger

explode.

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 grinning like fools. Cliff Raddison held one

hand out in the aisle, palm up. That took strength at 2.4 gees. Across the aisle, Lee Welles

took up the challenge, reached out and slapped Raddison’s palm. Then they got their

arms back as the gee forces continued to mount.

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.

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