[316] Once Earth had dwindled to a bright star and while Mars was still just another, bright reddish star, the starry background was fixed. It was hard to believe you were moving at all, much less streaking along at the fastest speed humans had ever traveled.
So what did we do? We played Monopoly and watched television.
Soon all the networks were beaming their signals to us. Dak set it up so we could monitor a dozen of them on a picture-in-picture screen, like an animated quilt, and when we saw something interesting he’d throw that image and sound onto a big screen.
The two most critical systems, navigation and air, ran automatically on computer control and we only needed to monitor them. Travis was technically always on duty while the ship was in motion, but the autopilot was proving to be perfectly reliable, so he could sleep with an alarm bell beside his bed that would sound if the computer lost the star it was fixed on. The star was never lost, and Travis slept soundly.
We did stand four-hour watches on the air system, but it didn’t interfere with the Monopoly game, since the control console could be run with a remote from the common room deck. All the lights stayed green.
Television went to work on us.
We’ve all seen it. A celebrity is murdered, or accused of murder. A powerful politician is caught in a scandal. A certain story catches the interest of the public. Suddenly ordinary people are caught in the media spotlight. Suddenly your entire life is under a microscope. The media wants to know it all, the good and the bad, but most especially the bad. Few of us are so blameless as to withstand that spotlight.
Kelly, through our new best buddy, Lou the Anchorman, tried to contact her mother, but got only a busy signal. Then her mother arrived at the Blast-Off and had to fight her way through the cameras and mikes until Mom let her into the lobby. The cameras caught them through the windows as they hugged. Then, of course, the media got to listen in as Kelly and her mom talked, briefly. Her mom was worried sick, of course, but there was no nonsense about turning the ship around.
Mr. Strickland, with the sure business sense of a barracuda, decided to jump on the Red Thunder bandwagon with both feet, both arms, and his big fat ass, all at once. When the news crews arrived at Strickland [317] Mercedes-Porsche-Ferrari, banners were already going up: HOME OF RED THUNDER CREWPERSON KELLY STRICKLAND!
When Strickland was interviewed you’d have thought he built Red Thunder single-handed. He even managed to brush away a tear when asked how he felt about his daughter going into space with this possibly crazed ex-astronaut.
“I have the highest confidence in Captain Brassard,” he said, and if I hadn’t known better I’d have believed he and Travis “Brassard” were the best of friends. “I’m sure he’ll bring my precious daughter home safe and sound.”
With a smile that wasn’t pretty at all, Kelly asked to be connected to our law firm, and told one of the shysters there that she had reason to believe Strickland Mercedes-Porsche-Ferrari was in violation of the law, displaying a trademarked term without permission. She had copyrighted and trademarked everything with the remotest connection to the Red Thunder Corporation, and at that very moment injunctions and summonses were being prepared and served on the dozens of souvenir stands and T-shirt shops and the single car dealership that were seeking to profit from our enterprise.
“We intend to sue for damages when we return,” Kelly told Lou, and soon the news was being told to an audience of about two billion, planetwide. A camera crew showed the forced removal of the banners from the car lot of Strickland MPF. The camera caught, for a moment, an unguarded expression on Strickland’s face as he hurried back into his building with Miss Iowa.
When the media is looking at you that hard, people you hardly know show up. Dak’s mother showed up at the Blast-Off.
What better boost could one imagine for a singing career that had floundered for almost as long as Dak had been alive? It was as if the brother of a no-talent singer was suddenly elected President of the United States.
She didn’t try to fight her way through the crowds like Kelly’s mom had. She lingered there, with her perfect hair and makeup and teeth. She projected concern for her darling son. She was praying for Dak’s safety, and appearing nightly at the Riviera Room in Charleston, South Carolina.
[318] But by then the media had already started to grow some teeth. She had no good answer when asked why she hadn’t visited her son in twelve years, and she retreated into the Blast-Off. She emerged about fifteen minutes later, not nearly so eager to talk to reporters. But the next day she canceled her gig at the Riv and moved up to a club in Atlantic City. She never did try to talk to Dak. Must have slipped her mind… or maybe she had a pretty good idea of what Dak would say.
Much about Travis clearly had the media frustrated. Vast as his clan was, they were unable to locate a single person who would go on camera and talk. The biggest potential story there was obviously the guy with the white beard, painted on the side of the rocket ship, but no Broussard was talking about that except to say, off the record, that cousin Jubal was mildly retarded. Jubal was being kept hidden because things like this would upset him. Which was exactly what Travis had told them all to say.
But the juiciest story about Travis was that his ex-wife was one of the Ares Seven, en route to Mars in the Ares Seven.
The crew of the American ship held a press conference when we were about a day out from the Earth. They could barely conceal their irritation, though the public face they had obviously been told to put on was that if, if this ship existed, and was crewed by Americans, then we wish them the best of luck. After all, it doesn’t matter who gets there first, the important thing is that people are going to Mars.
Holly Broussard Oakley seemed baffled. It must have been nightmarish for her, a few weeks away from landing on Mars only to find that her ex-husband might be waiting for her when she arrived. We all felt sorry for her, even Travis.
But the worst for Travis was when they tried to bring his daughters into it. The question was immediately raised concerning how smart it had been to embark on a trip as hazardous as this while the mother, who had custody, was in a similar situation. A procession of talking heads discussed how traumatic it would be for the children to have both parents killed in outer space. School pictures of both children and live shots of the front door of Holly Oakley’s apartment building and the girls’ grandparents’ house were shown. Television people, [319] desperate for pictures, went so far as to pester neighbors as they came and went during the day. Being a reporter must be a very nasty job, if you have any human sympathy at all.
The story of Travis’s emergency landing in Africa was told many times, and also of his landing in Atlanta. Sources who would not be named hinted there was more to that story than met the eye, and the reporters kept digging. I hoped they wouldn’t find out, it wouldn’t help my mother’s peace of mind… but I knew by then it was best to be prepared for the worst.
The worst case was Alicia, of course. A father in prison at Raiford, for killing her mother? Terrific story. An old mug shot was dug up of a baffled-looking white man with unkempt hair and a cut lip, side by side with a picture of a smiling black woman. Court TV had covered the trial, so highlight tapes of that were shown, particularly the sentencing. About the only good news was that her dad had refused to talk to reporters.