“But he could do the Sistine Chapel,” I said, “if you didn’t mind God driving around in a low-rider and Jesus with spiky hair and tattoos.”

“I like it,” Alicia said.

“Me, too,” Kelly laughed. “Let’s ask him.”

[274] “Hey, wait a minute,” Travis said. But we voted him down and, true to his word, this was still a democracy until we took off. So we decided to offer 2Loose the commission.

ANOTHER WEEK OF hard work, and we gained another day on the timetable.

It was becoming clear that the sticking point would be in the last week. Travis had scheduled a full-blown systems test for that week. For seven days, all of us but Travis and Jubal would be sealed into the ship, totally isolated from the outside environment. We would drink the stored water, breathe the canned air, and eat the frozen food, all the while we were training, training, training.

He was adamant that it had to be seven days.

“Seven days is already a compromise,” he told us. “I’d be a lot happier taking a full month. The only reason I’m settling for seven is that Red Thunder is so powerful and so fast that we’ll never be more than three and a half days away from Earth. I figure most things can be patched up well enough to last three and a half days.”

WE GAINED ANOTHER day by cutting out hours of sleep. With three days until M-day minus seven, the day we had to begin the long-duration systems tests, we bolted down the top of tank seven, the central module, and Red Thunder was complete… from the outside. But we still had five days of work that had to be done before the test could begin.

On that day the Chinese Heavenly Harmony ship arrived at Mars and began its aerobraking maneuvers. Aerobraking had been used by all but the earliest unmanned Mars missions. Instead of firing rockets to achieve an orbit around Mars, a spacecraft would dip into the upper reaches of the Martian atmosphere. Friction would slow the ship enough that it would fall into a highly elliptical orbit; that is, one that looped far away from Mars-to what was called apoapsis-before curving back down to the orbital low point, the periapsis. Once there, it [275] would dip into the atmosphere again, slowing more and making the orbit less elliptical. After half a dozen orbits of decreasing size the ship would settle into a circular orbit, and proceed to the Martian surface from there.

This all took time. The first long, looping orbit would take Heavenly Harmony a full six days. The next orbit would be four days, and so on. But who cared? Nobody was in a big hurry. The American Ares Seven was far behind.

“Maybe they’d hustle a little more if they knew we were here,” Dak said, but his heart wasn’t in it.

We were all watching the big television set in the warehouse, feeling defeated. On the screen, a million Chinese had packed Tien-an-men Square, shouting and chanting. Billions of firecrackers were going off. Dragon dancers snaked through the crowds. Somebody was waving a big sign, which the CNN anchorman told us translated as

THE EAST IS RED!

CHINA IS RED!

MARS IS RED!

“I’d like to give ’em something red,” Dak muttered.

We had known this would happen, but it didn’t lessen the impact. The Chinese were the first humans to reach Mars. But we kept bearing in mind that the first humans to reach the moon were Jim Lovell and the crew of Apollo 8, not Apollo 11.

“Travis,” I said, “are we really going to lose… because of two lousy days?”

He kept shaking his head and I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But when he looked up, his face was anguished.

“Manny, I made promises. To you, to your parents, and to myself. I think we need a full seven-day test. I can’t back off from that.”

“For myself,” I said, “I release you from that promise. I think we won’t know anything more after seven days than we’d know after five.”

“Me, too,” Alicia said. “Five days is enough.”

[276] “You want my vote?” Dak said. “I’m with them.”

“I don’t get a vote on this,” Kelly said, “but I think they’re right.”

“Let ’em go, cher,” Jubal said quietly. “Two days… it don’t signify.”

Travis looked at him, and for a moment he seemed to be considering it. Then he looked down again and shook his head.

I caught Kelly’s eye, and we got up and left the meeting.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER I pulled into the Blast-Off parking lot, driving Travis’s Hummer. The goddamn old Blast-Off, how I hated the place now. For weeks my home had been in the warehouse, Red Thunder growing out on the warehouse floor. In another week Red Thunder would be my home, if I had to whack Travis on the head and hijack the ship and pilot it myself. One way or another, I was going. We’d come too far to stop now. I vowed I’d never spend another night in room 201.

We hurried into the lobby. Mom was behind the desk. I went behind it and flipped the switch that lit the NO in our NO VACANCY sign, and Kelly turned the window sign over so that it showed CLOSED.

“Mom, you’ve got to come with us,” I said.

“Manuel, are you crazy? It’s… three o’clock on-”

“Please, Mom, do this for me. I wouldn’t ask you to if it wasn’t important.”

She started to say something, but she must have seen something in my face, because she nodded, and followed me.

Mom, Maria, and Grace got in the backseat and I took off for the Sinclair garage. I wasn’t surprised to see Dak backing our rental truck out of the driveway, Alicia in the front seat and Sam in the back. I gave Dak the high sign, and he grinned and returned it.

Fifteen minutes later we all arrived at the warehouse. Once inside they all had to stop and stare. None of them had seen Red Thunder in her completed state, and she was an awesome sight to behold… unless you burst out laughing.

We herded them to the ramp and up onto the platform and then through the outer air-lock door. I showed them how it worked, how [277] strong it was. Then up the ladder through the inner pressure door in the floor of the suit room. The five suits hung there, chubby and bright red, all with the Red Thunder logo prominent on the chest and backpack. The room had that new car smell. It was a rich smell. It was a smell that somehow seemed to inspire confidence. I hoped it was working on Mom and Sam.

Then up the ladder again and through the submarine-type hatch into the central deck of the central module.

“This is our radiation shelter, too,” I told them. “It’s shielded by the other modules, and by a layer of polyethylene plastic. That’s what they use on atomic submarines to shield the reactor compartment.”

Down the ladder to the staterooms, which looked pretty good in the low lamplight, as good as the accommodations on a budget cruise ship. Then up again, to the common room, to the systems control deck, and finally to the cockpit. I stood by and let them look out the windows, see the pictures on the monitor screens. It all looked very professional, very competent, I thought. If I was buying a brand-new spaceship, would I buy this one? I asked myself. Damn straight I would. I had had a part in every rivet, every weld. Give me time, I could take her down to the last nut and bolt and put her back together. With my eyes closed. Would this ship take us to Mars and back? I would bet my life on it. I wanted to bet my life on it.

I looked out the window. Travis stood down there, looking up at us, his arms folded across his chest.

“I PROMISED I’D not cut corners,” Travis said, when we were all gathered at the foot of the ramp. “Shaving two days off the systems test is cutting corners, in my book. It’s as simple as that.”

“You said we’d never be more than three and a half days from Earth,” I pointed out. “Five days is well over that margin.”