“Good morning, Madam President,” he said.

“It’s just afternoon where I am, Captain Broussard.”

“And where is that, Madam President?”

“I’m aboard Marine One.” The picture came on, and we could see her sitting next to a window in a helicopter. “I hate flying in these things. I don’t know how you people would dare to fly all the way to Mars. I congratulate you all. Captain, is this line secure?”

“No, ma’am, it is not. We don’t have scrambling capability, never figured we’d need it.” Actually, there were scrambling programs in many of our computers; the White House or one of their spook agencies was bound to have a compatible program. The President must have known that, but ignored the lie, like the former diplomat she was.

“Very well. I’m on my way to Andrews Air Force Base, should arrive in five minutes. Many members of your families and other loved ones are already en route to Andrews in a gover-… in a chartered jet. I would like you to land your ship there. We intend to hold a ‘welcome back’ ceremony.”

We all had the same reaction when she mentioned our families: Hostages.

I’m ashamed to have harbored that thought. But the government ought to be ashamed, too. How did it happen that most of us don’t trust our government not to trample on the Constitution, under the umbrella of National Security?

“I presume our lawyers are aboard that plane, too, Madame [391] President,” Travis said. One of the things he’d stressed the most to our friends and relatives was that, until Red Thunder returned, your lawyer is your Siamese twin. The only way our lawyers would not be aboard was if our families had been arrested by force, in which case our legal brigade would earn their outrageous hourly charges by raising a stink in the media bigger than this media-happy country had ever seen.

“Yes, I believe they are aboard.”

“It’s a kind offer, ma’am,” Travis said. “And please forgive me, but Andrews is on your home grounds. It’s your stadium, your ball, and your bat. We intend to land a little closer to our home turf.”

“What do you propose?” Diplomat or not, she looked a little pissed when she said it. I guess Presidents don’t hear the word no very often, or even no, thank you.

Travis told her, and she was shaking her head before he got very far.

“Out of the question.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t state my intention clearly. We are going to land in that parking lot. I’ll be in position to land in another two hours. That should give you plenty of time to do a few things:

“Clear that parking lot. Change the course of that government jet, have it land at Orlando and then fly our loved ones by helicopter to Lot B, that is the ‘Bambi’ lot, which is the closest point people should be allowed to approach our ship until I broadcast the all clear. I don’t want to see any soldiers. Local police only.”

“Is that all?” Her voice had a definite edge to it now.

“No, ma’am.” Travis grinned. “I’d like to respectfully extend to you an invitation to witness the landing, the return of the first men and women to walk on Mars.”

The President looked stricken when Travis said “Mars.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Please forgive me. In the heat of the moment, I forgot to mention the very first thing I should have told you. A few days ago our Mars mission, the Ares Seven, suffered some sort of onboard explosion. We’ve heard nothing from them since, and we-”

“It’s not a problem, Madame President. I have some good news to report to all Americans, and people around the globe. We found the Ares Seven.

[392] “There is some bad news, too, I’m afraid. Astronauts Welles, Smith, Marston, and Vasarov died of their injuries before we could get there.

“But we rescued Holly Oakley and Cliff Raddison and Bernardo Aquino. Aquino was badly injured, and I’m sure his life was saved by our medic, Alicia Rogers. But he is still in critical condition. Please excuse my abruptness, but there is a lot we need to do before the landing, in two hours’ time. Good-bye.”

Travis looked happy. It must be a heady feeling to put the President on hold, refuse an order, and hang up on her, all in the space of ten minutes.

TRAVIS WAS TELLING another lie when he said we’d be very busy over the next two hours. He had already plotted our landing trajectory, a matter of five minutes of computer time, almost all of that feeding in the data.

Dak and Cliff and I had nothing to do at all. Holly and Alicia were standing their vigil by the still-unconscious Captain Aquino. Holly had started doing that about twenty hours into our return, when she was getting over the effects of her living nightmare. Was there something going on there? Oakley and Aquino? Ares Seven had been in space a long time. But it wasn’t my business.

Kelly was the only one of us with lots to do. She was on the phone right up to the point we had to strap in. She visited the New York Stock Exchange to check up on Red Thunder, Inc., which was trading up almost 100 percent before the exchange suspended trading to let things settle down. I hadn’t even known we had stock to be traded, much less that I owned a big chunk of it. I’d been too busy building and training.

The document presented in the Initial Public Offering was interesting, though. As a corporate statement of purpose there were just two things: “To construct and launch a manned vehicle to take human beings to Mars and return them safely to the Earth” and “To promote, publicize, and in any other manner to exploit the trademarked and copyrighted symbols associated with the ship and its crew and its mission, in any medium whatsoever.”

[393] While I was loafing through my last few hours in space, Kelly was determining what kind of sneakers I’d be wearing for the next year. She had Nike and Adidas in a bidding war. While the ship was still building, Kelly had made the acquaintance of the publicity and promotions departments of dozens of companies who relied heavily on advertising to sell their stuff… and who doesn’t? She had pitched it as a motion picture tie-in, naturally, and had to be careful not to get anybody too interested in our phantom flick. Then, the day before launch, she had e-mailed all those people… you may recall our conversation of August 9… telling them to watch the skies the next morning.

After launch-a thousand years ago, it seemed, and in a previous lifetime-she had worked the telephone until we lost the dish. She even inked a few deals by fax, all subject to our safe return, of course.

We were all going to be on the Wheaties box, if we lived…

TRAVIS BROUGHT US almost to rest ten miles above Orlando, and began our descent at a speed not much greater than the express elevators at the Empire State Building.

“I’ve never eaten a single flake of Wheaties in my life,” I told Kelly.

“You’ll eat a whole bowl of it in a few days,” she assured me.

We watched on the screens as the grid of lines below us resolved into streets, and buildings. Then we could see the maze of freeways snaking their way through America’s theme park heaven. They were all gridlocked, no one moving an inch anywhere. But they didn’t seem to mind. They stood on their cars, beside the road, or behind yellow police tape, facing an almost solid line of squad cars from every community close enough to get there in two hours. A dozen helicopters were parked in Bambi Lot, one of them Marine One. Dozens more hovered at a safe distance, their telescopic lenses sending the picture back to networks all over the world.

Travis brought Red Thunder in like he did it every day.

“Touchdown on strut one!” Dak called out. “Touchdown three! Touchdown two! We’re down, Captain.”

“Shutting down engines,” Travis called back.

[394] But the engine noise did not die out. Red Thunder was still shaking.