Red Thunder

21

TRAVIS GRABBED MY face with both hands and kissed me on the forehead. While I was still too stunned to speak, he turned to everyone else, his arm around my shoulder.

“If they had a Nobel Prize for engineering, these guys would get it,” he announced. He let me go and moved toward Dak, who backed away cautiously.

“It was Manny thought it up,” he said. “I don’t need no kissing.”

“Genius. A stroke of sheer genius,” Travis said.

We were in a room we had been using for meetings, which had become a nightly ritual where we could all be brought up to speed on what everyone else had been doing, and figure out what most urgently needed doing the next day. It was down a short hallway from the office Kelly and Alicia shared, one of half a dozen rooms on the upper level of the warehouse, most of which were empty. This one had a big conference table and a few desks and tables against the back wall, all rented. There was a big brass espresso machine sitting on one of the tables, a gift from Kelly’s mom from when she dropped by one day to see how the “movie prop” business was coming. Now I was afraid I might be spoiled forever. It would be hard to go back to cheap coffee [222] after getting used to a couple lattes every morning before getting to work.

Boxes of Krispy Kremes had been set out in anticipation of Jubal’s return. At the rate he’d been going through them I thought we might look into getting a franchise ourselves, in case this whole Mars business didn’t pan out.

We had gone to the Blast-Off to meet them when they arrived, but Kelly and I had both overslept and didn’t wake up until Aunt Maria pounded on the door and shouted, “They’re here, Manuelito!” We dressed quickly and went down to be embraced by Jubal and Travis. My guts were churning, because that afternoon we had to present our ideas to Travis and the whole project would either continue, or crash and burn, depending on his reaction. I didn’t even want to admit how much it had all come to mean to me.

Before long we all piled into our various vehicles and were on our way to the warehouse, except Maria, who had to work the front desk while Eve, the temp girl we’d hired with money we really couldn’t spare, cleaned up the rooms.

Travis had done a complete walk-around of the warehouse when we got there. The four of us kept up a constant nervous patter, handing it off from one to the next as we went, trying to anticipate any questions he might have.

For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was giving us an honest chance. We had all realized during the two weeks of his absence that, let’s face it, all he had to do at any time was to say, “It’s not safe,” and the whole project would be over. Was he already determined to shoot it down? Was he just humoring us-and more important, misleading and humoring his brilliant but dependent cousin-never having intended to give his okay? Were we going to get a fair shake? And would we even know if we weren’t?

THEIR VAN WAS good for some laughs. They had taken it into some places that would have been a lot easier in Travis’s Hummer. There was a dent in the left side where they’d slipped on a muddy dirt road in the [223] Oregon Cascades and banged into a tree. There were scratches from where they’d squeezed through thick brush. And there was dirt. Lots of dirt, with only the windows wiped clean.

“We were in a hurry,” Travis had explained. “No time for car washes.”

The inside was revealing, too. The front seats and floor were neat and orderly, but from there on back it could have provided some students with an interesting two-week archaeological dig. Travis’s military training apparently wouldn’t allow him to tolerate trash in his immediate vicinity, but once it was tossed over his shoulder into the backseat it was gone, as far as he was concerned. There were fast-food wrappers and boxes from all the major companies.

“Krispy Kremes hard to find, up Yankeeland way.” Jubal sounded scandalized.

There were plenty of soft drink cans and paper cups, too. I saw Alicia’s eyes scanning the litter, eyes that could spot a can of Bud in a mountain of empties a hundred yards away. She didn’t find a beer can. Which was a big relief to me, because the one time Mom and I had talked about this whole thing while they were gone, it was because Mom brought up Travis’s drinking.

“That man takes one drink,” she had said, “that man takes one drop of liquor, Manuel, and I withdraw my consent. Then you can go or stay, which you’ll do anyway, but it will be without my permission.”

“Mom, that man takes one drink, you won’t have to withdraw your consent,” I had said. “I won’t go if he drinks.” And ever since, I’d wondered if that was true.

NOW OUR HO-gauge model spaceship was sitting in the middle of the conference table, considerably spruced up since we first glued it together.

Inside what would be the bridge we had put a light to glow through the windows. We had mounted radio antennas and a big dish receiver on it. We’d built a cradle of plastic girders to set the whole thing on, made from bits scavenged from model plane and car boxes, just like [224] they used to do it in Hollywood. The three landing legs and pads came from, of all things, a model of the old Apollo Lunar Excursion Module. The big springs we’d need had come from a radio-controlled Hummer model. Tiny red and green flashing clearance lights gave it a more animated appearance.

Down beneath were three globular cages built to hold five-foot-diameter Squeezer bubbles, now represented by silver Christmas tree ornaments. We didn’t know what that part would actually look like. That would be entirely up to Jubal.

Then we’d sent it out and had it painted high-gloss candy-apple red. There was an American flag embossed on one side, and the bold words RED THUNDER on the other.

In fact, we’d spent more money on this whole presentation deal than I had thought necessary, and I had questioned Kelly about it.

“Never skimp on the gloss and glitz,” she told me. “I would never try to sell a dirty car. We’ve got guys, soon as a rain shower passes over, their job is to go out in the lot and swab all the cars down with a chamois, so they don’t dry with streaks on them.”

“I agree,” Alicia had said. “Guys, if Travis intends to give us a fair hearing, we need to give the impression that we do thorough work. For that, appearance counts.”

So we made sure the plan, the ship model, and all the backup materials were as professional as possible, and hang the expense.

We rented a huge flat-wall SuperHiDef screen and spent a few hours learning to use the Telestrator system in our shipbuilding program so we could point and click with an electronic wand to expand, slice and dice, rotate, swoop and swirl, pan, zoom, and dolly in or out with ease as we explained the various features. Pretty soon we were creating graphics as good as any television sports broadcast, in real time.

Hanging on the walls around the Telestrator screen were three-by-four-foot color prints of some old magazine covers and Walt Disney posters from the 1950s, for no better reason than that they looked good… and showed some spaceships that actually looked like Red Thunder.

We had found them during computer searches. An artist named [225] Chesley Bonestell had painted covers of spaceships for science fiction magazines, the result of the best scientific thinking of the time, some of them in space, others sitting on the Martian surface. And the Disney organization had made some short subjects around that time, speculating about how we might conquer space. One of the Disney ships bore a startling resemblance to Red Thunder, a central cylinder surrounded by cylindrical fuel tanks, though the tanks were not as large as Red Thunder’s tank cars. Printing and hanging them had been my idea, I admit it. I thought that, surrounded by these lovely old renderings, my crazy idea for a Martian ship didn’t look quite so crazy. I’d downloaded them and had them printed professionally, photo-quality.

So what was the first thing that happened when Travis walked into the conference room with us and saw the model, sitting there in the middle of the conference table under a baby spotlight?

He stopped and frowned for a moment, then he burst out laughing.

My face felt like it was on fire. I actually felt dizzy for a moment. It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat. It was undiluted humiliation.

Luckily, Travis realized it in a second, and the next thing I knew he was hugging me, kissing me, calling me a genius.

FROM THERE. THE sailing was pretty smooth.

We each took our turns at the Telestrator, as we had rehearsed it. Travis would watch, and nod or occasionally frown. When he frowned we waited to see if he had a question. We felt… we hoped we had an answer to all but a few of his possible objections, and thought we ought to get them taken care of as quickly as possible. But he always told us to go ahead.

And he did seem to enjoy it. He kept looking back to the model, turning it slowly, squinting at it, so we’d stop and wait for his attention to return.

We had divided the presentation into four parts. I got to go first because I’d been named chief design officer. Sure, I thought, until Travis gets back, and I pray for that day. I was terrified that, once he saw the details, he’d be laughing again.

[226] But he didn’t laugh again. Most of the time he was nodding, some of the time he was even smiling. I got my part over in about twenty minutes, giving the broad general outlines of our thinking, showing everything we had on the screen. Then I handed the control wand to Dak and sat down, wishing I had a towel for the sweat that was drenching me in spite of the powerful air conditioning.

Dak was wearing two hats on the project. First, he was systems engineer. He had been hard at work learning what communications we needed to keep in contact with planet Earth. He was also struggling to design the ship’s internal power systems, and it was becoming a problem. He didn’t exactly gloss over it but he didn’t spend a lot of time on it, either. I knew a mental note had been taken.

The second hat was surface transportation, and Dak hadn’t been around the warehouse much in the last few days as he and Sam got started on that.

Then it was Alicia’s turn, and the rest of us crossed our fingers. We had named her environmental control officer. Yes, we were all officers. Why not?

Alicia labored under a triple inferiority complex. The first part was math and science anxiety, which most girls I’ve known have. It seems to come with the territory. Second, she had never finished high school. Given her life story, I thought it was a miracle she had attended school at all; and learned anything at all. But Alicia felt outclassed by her three honor student friends.

Third, she felt that Dak was much, much smarter than she was, and she was afraid she would never be able to keep him because of that.

Some of that was obvious to anybody who was watching, and some of it I learned lying on my pillow with my arm around Kelly, who was doing everything she could-as Dak and I were, too-to convince Alicia she was wrong to worry about all three points. Which was the simple truth. Alicia might not know how to extract a cube root, but she had tons of smarts, in areas that really mattered. Come to think of it, I can’t extract a cube root, either, without a calculator.

But, my lord, how that girl had been working.

Her desk in the other office was piled high with printouts. Dak had [227] gotten her started, showing her which sites to go to for the information she needed. Most of them were government sites, many of those part of the NASAWEB. It’s amazing how much stuff you can get free from the government if you know where to look.

She spoke for about twenty minutes, using the clicker to highlight the air tanks and fans arid ventilation ducts we’d designed. As she went on, her confidence grew. She talked knowledgeably about carbon dioxide scrubbers, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, about the heating and cooling systems, and our biggest bugaboo, radiation.

She had learned more about it than Dak and I had known.

“Astronauts working on the space stations and flying in VStars have a radiation protection we’re not going to have,” she said. “The Earth’s magnetic field captures a lot of the radiation from the sun and twists it and turns it down at the poles, where you can see the results in auroras. The level of that radiation varies with activity on the sun’s surface. Solar flares and prominences produce high-energy protons that can be harmful if you aren’t protected from them.” With a click, she brought up a series of pictures of solar flares, beautiful and potentially deadly. “That radiation can even reach down to the Earth’s surface. In 1989 a flare shorted out the power supply in Quebec. Six million people didn’t have any electricity for a while.

“But we can have a little warning about the solar radiation. We’ll have a piece of optical equipment aboard that will watch the sun and if it spots a flare, it will sound an alarm.” She brought up a graphic on the Telestrator. “The light from a flare will go faster than the dangerous protons. We would have a minute or so to get into what they call a ‘storm cellar.’ Basically, we’ll surround one room in the center of the center module with polyethylene, which will stop the protons. They use this stuff on atomic submarines to shield the crew from the reactor.”

One more point Dak and I hadn’t known, discovered through Alicia’s diligence. I glanced at Travis and saw him nodding.

“The other radiation is scarier, to me.”

“Me, too,” Travis put in, quietly.

“They call it ‘cosmic radiation.’ It comes from far out in space, from stars that blow up in a supernova. This stuff travels at almost the speed [228] of light and it’s very powerful. Even the Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t stop all of it, but exposures are higher in outer space. There’s no practical way to shield from it.”

She paused, and it didn’t seem like a good place for a pause, to me. Skim over this part, I wanted to shout. But in the end I guess it’s better to be straight and honest.

“To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t want to be on that Ares Seven ship, or the Chinese one, either. The best way to deal with cosmic radiation is to limit your exposure to it. We’ll get to Mars in somewhere between three and four days. That’s a chance we all agreed we’re willing to take.”

I thought I heard a grumble from my mother, but when I looked at her she was just glaring at the flares on the Telestrator screen, looking as if she’d like to put a lot of bullet holes in it. Somehow I had just known that the idea of radiation passing through her son’s body was not going to exactly thrill her.

It was only toward the end Alicia faltered a bit.

“I haven’t had time to work on waste management,” she admitted. “I guess we’ll need some plumbing. Toilets, some way to heat water…”

“When you go to Sears to get that freezer,” Travis said, “pick up a water heater, too. And a toilet seat.” Alicia smiled uncertainly. “I’m not kidding. Don’t worry about it, Alicia. It won’t be a problem.”

“Well, I guess that’s about it…”

Kelly was already up. She embraced Alicia and invited her to sit down. Then she began her own presentation, clean, crisp, well ordered, and comprehensive without being long-winded, just as I’d expected from her. She covered the financial situation and the procurement status, all the business side of the project.

When she sat down there was silence for almost a full minute. Who would fire the first shot? Mom, or Travis?

Travis. And of course it wasn’t a shot at all.

“Well, I’ve seen worse briefings before a liftoff. Many worse, in fact. Practically all of them.” He turned to Mom. “Betty, I’ll tell you the bad news first.”

[229] “Travis, the only news I want from you is that you can build a safe ship. These kids are going to Mars if there’s even a one in a hundred chance of getting back, I know that. I figure Manny’d go if he had to pedal a bicycle and hold his breath. They’d lie to me if that’s what it takes; I would have, when I was their age. But from you, I expect the truth, or I’ll find a way to make you pay.”

“Then the bad news is actually good news,” Travis said, not seeming to mind the threat. I did, though. I was getting a little bit pissed off at her.

“We’ve got a terrific start here. They’ve laid out the basics of a ship that can get there and back.”

“Then you’d let your daughters fly in it, is that what you’re saying?”

“No way. There’s a hundred things wrong with it, and until I satisfy myself that they’re all fixable, and then that we can fix them, I’m nowhere near ready to sign off on it. The thing is, I expected there’d be a thousand problems. We’re much farther along than I’d dared hope.” He turned to Sam Sinclair. “What’s your feeling, Sam?”

“I have to admit, it looks sound,” Sam said. He smiled wryly. “Given that the basic idea is flat-out nuts.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. We’ve got a lot of work to do before it stops being nuts. Here’s where it stands, Sam, Betty… and the rest of you, too.

“The biggest hurdle facing this project is that we’re not going to be able to test the ship before we set out for Mars. If I had my way, I’d take her into orbit first, alone. Then the moon. I’d only go to Mars after that. But you know why we can’t test that way.

“So Jubal and I have been testing it every possible way but a full-scale liftoff. We spent about half our time experimenting to measure the thrust levels we can achieve. We know now how much reaction mass we’ll need for the trip. The bubbles seem to squeeze out just about the maximum power, total mass-energy conversion. So one bubble could produce thrust for years and years. Hell, for centuries.

“The rest of the time we tried to make the system fail.

“And we did have failures on the ground. Nothing to get alarmed [230] about, every research project has failures along the way, and it’s best to have them early on, on the ground, than to have them sneak up on you at the worst possible time, which is what usually happens.

“I’d confidently raise ship and put her in orbit tomorrow, for a short orbital flight, if we had a full-scale ship ready and didn’t have to worry about who would see the launch and return. Jubal has engineered a system of containment and release of the ship’s thrust that is as foolproof as anything made by imperfect humans can be.

“We told you about my fiasco in the ’Glades. That wasn’t any flaw in the bubble technology, it was caused by us not knowing how much energy would be released, and how fast, by Jubal’s… by what we’re calling the Phase Field Interrupter. The PFI. We got it calibrated now, I can release energy accurately down to one percent.

“I told you the PFI makes a pinhole in the bubbles. That’s not strictly accurate. Jubal showed me the math but it was beyond me. What it does, it puts a twist in space so the matter trapped and squeezed inside the bubble makes a little trip through another dimension-and I’m not even sure if it’s the fifth or the sixth dimension-”

“Fift’,” Jubal said. I was surprised, I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“If you say so. The energy twists through some sort of wormhole and travels a distance much shorter than the diameter of a proton, and ends up in our universe, and when it gets here it produces thrust. I know this is hard stuff, I can go back…”

“Go on,” Sam said, and my mother nodded.

“That’s just about it. We couldn’t get the bubbles to blow up, or release any energy at all, except with Jubal’s PFIs… and they’re the only ones on Earth, so far as we know. If someone else has one, they’re being as careful as we are, because there is absolutely no sign that anyone but Jubal is aware of this new branch of physics.

“What I’m saying… in a long-winded way, sorry… I consider the engine part of this rocket to be as safe as any source of power can ever be. Foolproof. Lots safer than a VStar, which is pretty safe.

“But when we light one of these off, we’ll get thrust that will be applied to… well, to a ship I’m far from confident about.

“This will be our problem. Very simply, the quicker we get there and [231] get back, the happier I’ll be. Space is an incredibly hostile environment, and the longer we’re out there the better chance of something going wrong. Assuming we go at all, of course.”

Again, a silence. Travis had his arms on his knees and was staring at the floor. Jubal was nodding quietly. Then Sam spoke.

“A shorter trip is better, right? Safer?”

“Shorter in time, yes. Up to a point. We could boost harder, but that would stress the ship more, and it wouldn’t be any fun for us, either.”

“How long you figure on staying?”

“One week in space, and about a week on the ground.”

“Three weeks total, then?”

“Oh, no, that’s one week total travel time, there and back.”

Sam frowned and shook his head.

“Don’t seem possible. Mars is so far away.”

“We’ll be doing three million miles an hour, Sam.”

“How can you go that fast?” Mom wanted to know. “I’d expect it’d kill you.”

“We won’t even feel it. We won’t even be able to tell we’re moving.”

Mom shook her head again, and stood up.

“I’ll never understand it.” She grimaced, then tried to smile. “I’m sorry I’m acting like such a bitch, Manny, and all y’all. It just scares me. But… I’m really impressed at what y’all have got done. I almost felt convinced there, for a minute.”

“You will be convinced, Betty,” Travis said solemnly.

“Not likely. Anyways, I’d best be getting home. ’Night, folks.”

Sam joined her, and Travis and Kelly and the others took them out the door. I could hear them talking on the way down the stairs. Myself, I didn’t want to face her just then, I might say something I’d regret.

So I sat there for a while, looking at the model ship. It was weird, but it had its own beauty. I imagined her lifting off on a pillar of flame…

NEXT THING I knew, Travis was shaking my shoulder. I’d fallen asleep in my chair.

[232] “Nobody here now but us chickens,” Travis said. “Fill your coffee cups and join me at the table in five minutes. We’ve got some talking to do, but it won’t take long.”

I made a very strong cup of espresso and fumbled my way back to the table.

“Manny, you’re looking like a raccoon,” Travis said.

“It’s just my Jimmy Smits eyes, Travis,” I said.

“Jimmy Smits after a three-day bender, maybe. How much sleep are you getting?”

“Travis, I haven’t got more than six hours of sleep a night since I was ten.”

“Four hours? Three?”

Two, the previous night. Never more than four the last two weeks.

I knew it was a problem, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Even with Eve helping out, Mom and Maria couldn’t get everything done every day without my help. We were in the middle of another financial emergency. Business was just enough to make too much work without being enough to keep us out of the red. But I didn’t see any reason to bother Travis with all that.

“Never mind,” he said. “I know how to fix it.” The others found their way to the table and sat down.

“Good news first,” he began. “First-rate presentation. If I was an investor, I might actually put some money into this venture. Not a lot of money, you understand. Because I did notice some weak spots, and some spots you got through maybe a little quicker than you should have. But all in all, great.

“Now the bad news. You’re not going to be able to do it. Not as things stand. We can shut it down now… or we can make some changes.”

We all looked at each other. I honestly hadn’t expected that. I thought we were going to get the green light.

“What kind of changes?” Dak asked suspiciously.

“Bring in some help. Help from the family.”

“The Broussard family?”

“Exactly…” He stopped, and lowered his head, then looked up again.

[233] “Sorry. There was one item of business I meant to cover first. Back up a minute. We’ve got to figure out who’s in charge here.”

“Who’s in…” Alicia looked around at us. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“So far, I figure we’re a limited democracy. Limited, because I told you I have to make the final go, no-go decision… aided by Jubal, who has the only vote that counts about that. And I did set that one condition, that your parents had to be aware of what we’re doing. Sorry, Kelly.”

Kelly shrugged. She wasn’t likely to ever join Travis’s fan club, but over the last weeks she seemed to have resigned herself to not going. She seemed to be putting herself into the work wholeheartedly. At least, if this was how hard she worked when she was halfhearted, then wholehearted would be a wonder to see.

“I nominate myself to be captain of this boat. That means, I make the final decisions on how the ship is made and I’m in charge of the mission from Earth liftoff to Earth landing, with the powers of a ship’s captain as established in space law.”

“Second the nomination,” Alicia said.

“All in favor…” I said, and everybody said, “Aye.”

“Thank you,” Travis said. “It probably sounds silly to you, but it’s like the contract we signed. It has to be written down. Some situations we could get into, I’d need to expect… to count on… total, unquestioning obedience, just like a Navy ship of the line. Get your dad to tell you how that works, Dak, and fill the others in.”

“Will do, Captain Broussard.”

This time Travis didn’t correct us, as he had done when we called him Colonel. I realized he was dead serious, and I figured he was probably right.

“Here on the ground I’m not a dictator, okay? You can question orders, refuse orders, even jump ship entirely, fold up your tent and go home if you don’t like the way I’m doing things. But after launch, if I issue orders I will expect them to be obeyed.”

Nobody objected.

“Fine. Next, I nominate Kelly to be project manager.”

[234] “Thanks, Travis,” Kelly said, with a look that could melt through steel.

“She will be in control of building the ship. She will coordinate everything, she’ll have to be familiar with all the hundreds of tasks this project entails.”

“I second the nomination,” I said. There was a chorus of ayes again.

“Which is pretty much what I’ve been doing”-she held up her hand to silence Travis-“and yes, I agree it needed to be formalized. So I accept. And I have a suggestion to make.” She turned to Alicia.

“You’ve done a great job on the environment systems. But now I’d like you to turn your work over to Manny and Dak. I want you to go full-time on the medical stuff we discussed a few days ago. By launch time, I want you to be qualified as an EMT. You’ll be the medical officer.”

“Great idea,” Travis said.

“Well… okay,” Alicia said. She seemed a little conflicted, worried that Kelly was pushing her out of work she wasn’t qualified for, but relieved at the same time to be back at work she could understand. She already had some training as a nurse, and she was a natural for it.

“Anything else?” Kelly asked, and I realized she had taken over the meeting. Which was exactly what Travis had wanted and expected.

“Yeah,” Dak said. “I got a question for Trav… sorry, for the captain.”

“Don’t worry about the captain stuff till we’re aboard,” Travis said.

“Whatever. I hope this isn’t out of line, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to… anyway, you say you’re worried the Ares Seven will blow up… and your ex-wife is aboard. I figure I’d be pushing this thing a little harder, maybe be willing to take some chances… you know what I’m saying?” Dak looked embarrassed to have brought it up. But it had bothered all of us.

“No problem, Dak, you’ve got every right to ask about that.” He took a deep breath. “It was a messy divorce, friends. I don’t love her anymore, don’t even like her very much. We’d probably have broken up anyway, even without the drinking… but it was the drinking did it. [235] That’s why I barely have any visitation rights with the girls. And the judge was right. I was the party at fault, even though she is a bitch.

“And she is still the mother of my daughters, and I want her to stay alive if for no other reason than that. Her death would hurt them. For that matter, I want them all to stay alive and healthy… but we can’t do it by blasting off in a home-built spaceship and then die freezing when it falls apart.

“The morals of rescuing people are hard to define precisely. You hear about it, three or four people drowning, trying to save one guy who may already be dead. Helicopters crashing trying to pull people off the roofs of burning buildings. If I’m going down a cliff face to rescue a stranded mountain climber, I have the right, even the obligation, to see that my rope is sound. Do you see what I’m saying?” Dak nodded, looking embarrassed.

“The odds of rescuing the Ares Seven if a disaster does happen… the odds are terrible.” I think we were all surprised, though I had wondered about it. “Most accidents I can envision would kill them all, instantly. But say there are survivors and they’re just drifting, helplessly, with no rocket to power them… just finding them is highly problematic. You can’t really imagine how vast space is, even here in the cozy little solar system. Friends, what we’d all better do is cross our fingers and hope Jubal is wrong, because our chances of rescuing them are small.”

We all thought that one over. None of us liked the sound of it.

“So this idea of being there to get them out of a jam…” I said, and didn’t know how to finished the sentence. Travis did it for me.

“… is the only reason I’m still in this at all, and the only reason I will push as hard as any of you, maybe twice as hard, to get this thing built and on its way. I want them to live, so badly that I’m buying into what is probably the most cockamamie idea since Queen Isabella hocked the crown jewels.”

“Sorry, Travis,” Dak said.

“Don’t be sorry. When in doubt, ask. Any more questions?”

“I’ve got one,” I said. “Dak and I are stumped when it comes to space suits.” I told him my notion that unless we stood on the Martian [236] surface, our trip would be suspect. He grinned slowly, and then slapped me on the shoulder.

“You’re a worrier, Manny, aren’t you? Well, the funny thing is, I think you may have a point there. But I got an order for you. Stop worrying. About the suits anyway. I’m putting myself in charge of suits from this moment, and you are not to think of it again until you see them. Okay?”

“Okay.” Worrier? Well, I guess so. My life thus far had certainly prepared me to be a world-class worrier.

“All right, boys and girls, class dismissed. Go home, get some sleep, I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.

“And you know what? Maybe we’ve got a chance of going to Mars!”