“Don’t know what those folks at NASA would do without you to help get ’em in the air every night,” Dak muttered.

“It’s not every night, it’s more like-”

“Couple times a week.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. It was about that often, at least when I could [12] convince Dak to fire up Blue Thunder and take me out there. “Anyway, this one’s taking the crew up to the Mars ship.”

“What’s your problem, Dak?” Kelly asked.

“No problem. Just restless, I guess. Manny likes to come out here, look at ’em take off. Way I see it, it’s just one more ship taking off without me on it.” Dak looked at the horizon where the rocket had faded into the black sky. He looked hungry. At last he looked back at us.

“How about it, Manny?” he said. “Go back to the heartbreak hotel and hit the books? Or do a little off-reading first?”

“Is that one of those rhetorical questions?”

So me and Kelly piled into the back of the truck and Dak and Alicia got in the cab, and Blue Thunder roared to life. I’ve never asked just what Dak has under the hood, but I figure NASA would be amazed if they could take a look. Put wings on Blue Thunder and it could probably catch up to the VStar. Dak flipped switches on a dashboard only a little less complicated than the ones in airliners, and the lights came on in groups. There were headlights and taillights and searchlights. Yellow fog lights hung below the front bumper. Tiny running-board lights could be made to crawl around the truck, like the sign for a Miami casino. More headlights were mounted on the big chrome roll bar that Kelly and I clung to, standing up in the pickup bed. And right behind a thick Plexiglas spoiler on the hood was the truck’s crowning glory: a blue neon scrawl spelling out “Blue Thunder.” Cuban gangbangers in immaculate low-riders, not an easy group to impress, had been known to drive into ditches in amazement when Dak rocketed past. As more and more lights came on, the color became visible, a blue so rich the only place on Earth you could duplicate it was deep in the ocean, and of a transparency you could only get with dozens of coats of paint and endless hours of buffing. Blue Thunder was more a work of art than a vehicle.