Red Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page B

Salvation Army thrift store.
    The arrangement suited me. That is, I knew I could do a lot worse.
It took some of the sting out of still living with my family at age
twenty. I had my own door and could play music and come and go as I
pleased. If only I could take a leak without going outside and
downstairs I'd be content.
     
    ONCE OUT OF the shower I turned on my computer, a
ten-year-old Dell laptop I'd picked up for twenty dollars. I went to
the NASA public website, selected "Hall of Astronauts," and typed in a
search for Travis Broussard.
    "We're sorry, the search produced no results. Do you wish to try another search?"
    "Damn right," I grumbled, and shut off the speech function.
    I searched the whole site, and found numerous references to Colonel
Broussard. His flight record was there, beginning fifteen years ago
when he entered the astronaut corps as a rookie pilot trainee. He made
six flights sitting in the right-hand seat before becoming a full-time
senior pilot. Sounded pretty quick to me. I did an info scan and found
it was the fastest anyone had ever made the transition. Twelve years
ago Travis was NASA's fair-haired boy. I would have been eight years
old then.
    His name was blue-lined, as were all astronaut names at the site.
Maybe this was a route to the bio. I clicked on the link, and got a
screen saying, "This page currently under construction." I clicked on
another name at random and was shown to an elaborate biography page,
with eight screens of text and a hundred NASA pics and snapshots of the
astronaut's professional and home life. I requested John Glenn's site,
and it was gigantic, thousands of stories going all the way back to
Life
magazine, albums of pictures, hours and hours and hours of video and film clips, whole movies from
The Right Stuff
to the Glenn bio-pic aired only last year.
    Okay, it seemed that Broussard was the only one of several thousand
current and former and even dead spacers without a spot in the Hall of
Astronauts. How come?
    Back to his flight record. He was listed as chief pilot for seventy
launches. There was a blue link after the date of his last mission, and
once again, clicking it took me nowhere. More links, on Flights 67, 60,
and 53, all leading nowhere. Another dead end on a link way back on
Flight 21. But there was mention of a commendation. I noted the date of
his twenty-first flight and opened a window for the
Miami Herald.
    I had the newspaper search that day and came up with a six-paragraph
story on page three, complete with a picture of a smiling Travis
Broussard, quite a bit younger, shaking hands with... my, oh my, that
was the President of the United States.
    The story read, in part:
    WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) In a brief ceremony in the west
wing of the White House, President Ventura awarded Astronaut Chief
Pilot Travis Broussard with the Alan Shepard Medal of Valor for his
actions on the third of this month in guiding a crippled VStar Mark II
to an emergency landing at a backup airfield in Africa, saving the
lives of the crew of three and seven passengers.
    Broussard had been promoted to the rank of Astronaut Colonel the previous day at the Pentagon.
    I was getting frustrated. A big hero like Travis, and at the NASA
site he was the little astronaut who wasn't there. Absolutely nothing
to be learned beyond the fact that yes, he had been an astronaut, had
flown the VStar, and yes, he won a medal.
    So I went to SpaceScuttlebutt.com, where a lot of spaceheads hang
out, found a room with a few familiar handles in it, and posted:
    Broussard, Travis...?
    Pretty soon this bounced back:
    No such FUBAR. Un-person. Shame on you.
    FUBAR meant Fouled Up Beyond All Repair. I sent:
    Y no bio?
    I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
    Funny guy. I was about to come back when he posted another line:
    Spacemanny? Dat you?
    Unfortunately, it was. I'd made that my web handle years ago, before
it started sounding so dorky. Now it would be too much bother to change
it.
    Y.
    A