“But that wasn’t power,” Kelly said. “That was just a vacuum. Wasn’t it?”

“It takes power to make a vacuum,” I told her.

“That’s pretty much it,” Travis agreed. “Reverse it, Kelly. You know it takes power to compress air into one of the bubbles, because you hear the explosion when the bubble goes away. Same with the vacuum, only in reverse.”

“I don’t know anything much at all about this,” Kelly said, with a smile. “I think I follow you, though.”

“Me, too,” Alicia confirmed.

[140] “So…” Travis said, and scowled. “I suppose there are things we could make to take advantage of the bubbles’ perfect reflectivity. I can think of a few. And as for its durability, everlasting ball bearings would be just the beginning.

“But it just stands to reason that the application most people will be most interested in is the ability to make a big bang. A real big bang.”

“A really, really big bang,” Dak said, and I knew he’d been thinking pretty much like I had, though we’d never talked about it.

“Lots of money in big, big bangs,” Travis said. “And I’m not talking about fireworks, sorry, Jubal.”

“No problem, Travis,” Jubal said, still studying his shoes.

“The people who like big bangs the most are the generals, of course. Put a small one of these in a cartridge, turn off the bubble, you got a free bullet. Put one in a steel pineapple, you got a free grenade. Make a real big one full of vacuum, you could probably implode a building. Jubal, how big can these things get?”

He looked up again, briefly, and shrugged.

“Don’ know, me. Maybe not too much bigger than you seen.”

“That would be a relief,” Travis said. “But I’m not going to put it in the bank just yet. Thing is, you and me all know that some of the people who like big bangs are not very nice people at all. Think about a terrorist who gets his hand on a Squeezer. Free bombs, an unlimited supply.

“There are people who would do anything to get this thing. Anything. Our own government is only one of them. Word of this gets out, we’d be lucky if all that happened was they took it away from us.”

Everyone was silent, thinking that one over.

“For now, can I get your word you won’t talk about this?”

He looked at us one by one, and we all nodded. Kelly squeezed my hand. I’d never seen her looking so serious.

Travis looked relieved… a little. I could pretty much read his mind: How far can I trust these flaky kids? Well, short of torture, he could trust me all the way, and I was pretty sure of the others, too.

Travis scowled.

“I hate this thing. I really hate it. If only there was a way to release [141] its energy slowly. Control the release. We could be solving the world’s energy problem.”

“I can do dat t’ing,” Jubal said. For a moment Travis looked like he was about to go on with what he was saying, then he did a double-take right out of Laurel and Hardy.

“Say again, Jubal?”

“I can maybe fix dat t’ing, do what you say. Dribble it out, maybe.”

“Maybe? You haven’t actually tried to…”

“No, mon cher. Travis, why don’ you tell me ’bout de folks goin’ to Mars, huh?”

Travis got a bad case of conversational whiplash over that one. Mars?

“You never asked, Jubal. And I didn’t know you’d be interested.”

“I’m innersted, me. Travis, de fus’ folks on Mars, dey should be Americans.”

“Yeah, I wish it was going to be Americans, too. But it’s too late.”

“Not too late. No, suh! Not too late at all. I’m goin’ to Mars, yes, I am, and I beat de Chinese, too. Even if I hafta make my own spaceship, me.”

Travis stared at his cousin, then drained his long-neck bottle of Dixie beer.

PART TWO

15

THE BUILDING KELLY wanted to show us was over on Turnbull Bay, across from the New Smyrna Beach airport, one of a dozen similar structures built in marshy ground as part of an industrial park that never quite panned out. Only three or four of the buildings were currently occupied.

It was made of corrugated metal lapped over a steel framework. There were streaks of rust all over the sides and tall weeds growing in cracked concrete and along a railroad siding that was one of the chief reasons we were looking at the building. A sign along the roof ridge read: THE R. W. WHITE COMPANY.

Kelly parked in front of a loading dock with three truck bays, all closed and locked. Dak and Alicia pulled up in Blue Thunder as we were getting out.

We all stood there for a while, taking it in. It was noon on a hot, muggy day, five months away from M-day, the day the Chinese were going to land on Mars.

“Railroad siding goes right into the building, that’s good,” Dak said.

Kelly took a big ring of keys out of her purse and led us to a small [146] door scaled for people, not boxcars. The third key she tried turned out to be the right one.

It was cooler inside, which surprised me. The concrete floor was part of it, but I saw that overhead there were big fans that kept the air moving.

“I left the fans on after I saw the place yesterday,” Kelly said. “It was like an oven in here without them.” She turned to an electrical panel and flipped six rows of switches, one row at a time. Big overhead lights came on in sequence and we could see the extent of the space inside.

“We don’t need no more than a third of this space,” Dak said.

“Dak, if you think there’s another place within fifty miles of-”

“Shush, babe, I ain’t complaining. Better too much than not enough.”

“It was a hell of a list you gave me.” She began ticking off points on her fingers. “Railroad spur. High ceiling-but you never said how high. On the water. Heavy lifting capability-and again, you didn’t say how heavy. That traveling crane up there is rated for five hundred tons.”

“More than enough, more than enough, Kelly,” Dak said.

Kelly got out her laser range finder-a real good thing to take along if you’re hunting for an empty factory, lots better than climbing to the ceiling and dropping a string. She pointed it at the roof, then glanced at the readout.

“One hundred twenty feet,” she said. “Is that enough?”

“It’ll have to be,” I told her. “We’ll build it with that in mind.”

Our voices echoed in the big empty space.

The building consisted of two distinct areas. The part where we were was 120 feet high, as Kelly had just determined, maybe a hundred feet wide, and two hundred feet deep. Running on heavy rails overhead was a big traveling crane that could cover that entire area.

The rest of the building was only about twenty feet high. It accounted for two-thirds of the floor space. In a far corner of this lower area was standing water. Above it were rust streaks. Kelly saw where I was looking.

“That leak would be easy to patch,” she said.

“I don’t think we’ll really need to,” I said.

[147] We followed her to the big doors. She slapped an outsized button and the big doors began to slide back, making warning beeps like a bus backing up. The sun streamed in and we all squinted but Kelly, who was wearing her sunglasses.

Outside was a wooden wharf. An old guy sat on the pier and dangled a line down around the pilings. He looked at us, then went back to fishing. I could smell creosote, and warm brackish water, and fish.

“The rails for the crane run right out to the end of the wharf,” Kelly pointed out. “You said something about a barge. You can get a barge right up under the crane here.”

“That’ll make loading it a lot easier,” Dak said.

Kelly pointed to the east, then north.

“Turnbull Bay here connects with Strickland Bay. Then under the bridge on U.S. 1 and you’re in the Ponce de Leon Cut, turn left, and a mile later you’re in the open ocean.”