The getaway special

by Jerry Oltion

  "How's it going?" she asked over the intercom.

  "Just about got it," he replied. "I've got all five hundred channels ready to accept my input when I give the command, so now all I need to do is hook up the video stream." The black-and-white screen beside the back windows was showing an old rerun of Space Rangers at the moment. Normally it was used to watch the manipulator arm at work, but they could patch any signal they wanted to it. Allen had strung an antenna out in front of the satellite so they could monitor its broadcast, and Judy had tuned through the microwave channels until she had found an unscrambled show. "I can't believe it," she said. "You can just plug in your computer and take over an entire communications satellite?"

  He laughed. "Well, it helps if you've got the control program already loaded."

  "And where did you get that?"

  "Friends in high places."

  Carl, who'd been glowering from the copilot's chair all the while, laughed derisively. "Another nut case from INSANE, no doubt. I hope he hangs alongside you when the Feds catch up with him." Allen didn't bother to reply. Neither did Judy. She was just as tired of shutting him up as she was of listening to him. The only reason she hadn't locked him into a bunk alongside Gerry was because she knew he wouldn't do anything to stop her or Allen from what they were doing. He'd lost the argument, but he wasn't the type to try forcing his way. He would wait for the courts to exonerate him, and in the meantime he would snipe at them and make them feel guilty.

  Judy would have felt guiltier if she believed him, but she still didn't buy his rationale. There might be some economic disruption as people got used to the idea that they weren't stuck on one planet anymore, but throwing the internet into chaos to stop the plans had probably caused more financial damage than the hyperdrive would. And as for the personal consequences, she might lose her job for failing to follow orders, but she couldn't believe she'd be in any real danger when they got home. This wasn't the seventeenth century, after all, and unlike Galileo, neither she nor Allen would have to recant their beliefs on pain of death. Once the secret was out, scientists everywhere would confirm it, and when that happened the government would have far bigger things to worry about than prosecuting Judy and Allen for giving it away.

  "Okay, I'm ready," Allen said. "Here goes." The notebook computer was dangling at the end of its data cable; he grasped it in his left glove while he pushed the "Enter" key with his right index finger. Space Rangers whirled into static, replaced by a bright blue screen with white words: "Emergency Alert. If you have videotape equipment, set it to record the following program." Allen's calm, classical-station-disk-jockey voice read the message aloud, then the screen cleared to show Allen himself, dressed in a white spacesuit liner, in a sequence that Judy had filmed just minutes earlier with one of the shuttle's public relations cameras. They had stored the image digitally on his computer's hard drive, and he was playing it back now through the video interface.

  "By now you may have already heard that the Space Shuttle Discovery has demonstrated a revolutionary new device, a faster-than-light engine for traveling through space. I am Doctor Allen Meisner, the inventor of that device, and I've interrupted your program today to give you the plans for it." He smiled wide for the camera, and Judy winced at how goofy he looked. Nobody was going to believe him. People all over the world were no doubt switching channels already, sure that he was selling something.

  But then, he was on all the channels. They could switch satellites if they wanted, but even then they would probably encounter him on at least half the channels there. All the communications satellites were linked these days, relaying signals around the globe. Even the European satellites were part of the system. They could be taken off-line from the ground, but Judy knew not all of them would be. Not in time, anyway. The ones under private control—like the one they had hijacked—probably wouldn't go off-line at all. After all, this was news, and none of the networks would want to be the only ones not carrying it. The video zoomed in on the computer screen, which showed an image of the circuit diagram that Allen had attempted to email to everyone. In a voice-over, he described how to assemble it and how the finished engine worked. The whole thing took less than ten minutes, including the last-minute addition that he had hastily cobbled together to explain the distance calibration. The presentation looked like a bad high school physics film the way he—or more often just his hand—pointed out various parts of circuit diagrams, but as Judy watched him describe how to build and operate a hyperdrive engine, she couldn't help but be impressed. Some people, anyway, would record it, and that's all that mattered. It wouldn't take long for them to realize it was genuine, and once the secret was in private hands, it would spread throughout the world just as fast as an email virus.

  The radio came alive with frantic calls from Mission Control the moment the television broadcast began, but Judy switched it off. She already knew what they would have to say. Her skin prickled as she waited for a laser blast from the defense satellites, but she didn't really think that would happen. This was an international communications satellite, and unlike the automatic shot that hit the shuttle's tail fin, shooting at them now would take an executive decision to authorize. She was willing to bet nobody would stick their neck out to do that, not without thinking it over very carefully, by which time Judy and her crew would be gone.

  They let Allen's video repeat once before they unplugged it and let the satellite resume its normal programming. Judy brought the arm and Allen down into the cargo bay again, then moved the shuttle away with the maneuvering engines as soon as Allen was in the airlock. A few minutes later he had removed his spacesuit and joined her on the flight deck. "Where to now?" he asked, taking his position at the hyperdrive controls.

  "The space station, I guess," Judy said. "I think we've done about all we can do from out here." Carl snorted. "Believe me, you've done more than enough."

  7

  Space Station Freedom had not lived up to its designers' dreams. That was less the fault of the architects and the engineers than it was the fault of the waffling politicians and the vociferous minority they represented, but whatever the cause, administrative costs and "tactical compromises" had eaten so much of the budget that there was little left for hardware. So little, in fact, that the astronauts had taken to calling it " Fred" in order to save forty-three percent on the cost of the name. For a while it had lost its name entirely. When the Russians had been part of the project, NASA had decided that calling it "Freedom" might be considered a slap in the face to the former Soviet power, so some poetic genius in the front office had decided it should be referred to by the totally uninspired, bureaucratically functional title of "the International Space Station" instead. The Russians, who had poetry in their souls, had hated that even worse than "Freedom," but they were too polite to say so. Then, after the inevitable political split, NASA revived the old name and tried to pretend that the alliance had never happened. Never mind that billions of dollars had been poured down the drain on hardware that was now useless without its Russian counterparts; the official dogma was that we had never counted on their help and didn't need it now.

  That was true enough, Judy supposed. The place held air and six crewmembers. But it was a far cry from what it could have been.

  Even so, when the lumpy row of habitat modules and their crosswise boom of solar panels blinked into existence only a few miles away, Judy felt a strong sense of relief. With the vertical stabilizer missing there was no hope of landing, and with the toilet stopped up they only had a few hours before they had to break out the waste bags. Whatever else its shortcomings, at least Fred had working plumbing. But more than that, as soon as they docked she could turn over the hyperdrive to someone else. She wouldn't be responsible for it anymore, and wouldn't have to keep making decisions that would affect the whole human race.

  She switched the radio to the ship-to-station frequency and spoke into the tiny microphone that snaked around the side of her face from her communications ca
rrier. " Freedom, this is Discovery, do you copy?"

  The voice in her headset was female. That would be Mary Hunter, the station commander. She didn't sound excited about the call. "Roger Discovery, this is Freedom. We copy, and have you on radar. What is your status?"

  All business, eh? Judy shrugged and said, "Nominal, except our vertical stabilizer is damaged beyond repair. And the toilet is backed up again. Request permission to dock and wait for the next shuttle."

  "Ahh . . . Discovery, be advised that the United States government has issued a warrant for your arrest. If you dock here, we'll have to confine you to quarters and turn you over to the Feds on the next flight down."

  Judy laughed. "Confined to quarters? Mary, the habitat module is thirty feet long. Where are we going to go?"

  "With Doctor Meisner's device on board, who knows? I don't particularly want to find out, and besides, we have orders."

  Judy looked over at Carl in the copilot's seat, strapped in for the thrust they'd never needed. Normally Gerry would be sitting there, but he was still locked into his bunk. He'd given them plenty of reason, but suddenly it didn't seem quite so unlikely that Mary would do the same to them.

  "Told you so," Carl said smugly.

  Turning around so she could see Allen in the equipment bay behind her, Judy said, "Well, it looks like we're in for a long wait in a closet until they have another shuttle ready to fly. Unless you have another trick up your sleeve."

  He shook his head. "It wasn't supposed to work this way. People were supposed to be overjoyed. We were supposed to go home to parades and speeches."

  Carl laughed. "Oh, there'll be plenty of parades, all right, with our heads on spikes out in front of

  'em."

  "Not funny," Allen said petulantly.

  "Neither is upsetting the global economy," Carl said. "Or giving every country on Earth an instantaneous delivery system for nuclear bombs. Or—"

  "It can't be used for that," Allen said. "You can't open a pathway into the atmosphere; there's too much matter already there."

  "How long you want to bet it'll be before somebody figures out how?"

  "They won't, because it's impos—"

  Mary's incoming voice cut him off. "What are your intentions, Discovery?" I intend to stay free, Judy thought, but aloud she said, "I don't see that we have much choice."

  "Neither do we. Do I have your word that you'll submit peacefully to arrest?"

  "No," Judy said automatically. "I mean, give us a minute to talk this over. We weren't expecting quite this kind of reception." She turned off the radio. "Well?" Carl said, "Well what? We don't have any other option."

  "Sure we do," Judy said. "We've got over a week's supplies left, don't we?" Carl nodded reluctantly.

  "We've got twice as much oxygen as we'll ever need now that we can't use the OMS engines for landing, and the fuel cells will keep providing water, so we could actually stay two or three weeks before we have to give ourselves up. The question is, would we be any better off if we did that?"

  "Nope," Carl said. "You'll still be guilty of treason and piracy. They'll just add resisting arrest to the charges."

  "If they can catch us. Allen, isn't there any way you can use that drive of yours to set us down on the ground? Someplace out of the way, where we'd have time to escape before they caught up with us?" Allen shook his head. "Like I told you before, it won't put something into a space that's already got something in it. Not even air. It takes too much energy to open the gateway. I could maybe drop us down to thirty miles or so above ground, but anything below that would burn out the engine." She felt a moment of irrational annoyance. What good was a hyperdrive if you couldn't land once you got where you were going? She pushed the thought aside and tried to visualize the problem. "Can't you transport what's there into space, and put us in the vacuum left behind before it closes?" Allen shook his head again. "No. Not without another engine on the far end, and split-second timing. And you'd have to have the calibration down cold, to within a foot or two, or it wouldn't work. I suppose it might be possible, eventually, but with the way the jump field is affected by mass you'd have to account for so many variables that it'd take forever to calculate. The density of the air itself would probably affect it, and the composition of the ground below, and—"

  "Okay, okay, I get the picture." Judy looked out at the space station, its habitat module shining white in the direct sunlight. The airlocks sticking out of either end were surrounded by machinery and tool lockers; placed where they would be easy to reach during EVAs. Half a dozen emergency descent modules clustered around the airlocks as well, poised for quick evacuation in case the habitats lost pressure or came under enemy fire. Nobody had ever actually ridden one down from orbit, but they were basically the same system as the old Gemini capsules, two-seat reentry vehicles with ablative heat shields and parachutes. NASA had originally intended to build a miniature shuttle for a lifeboat, but the X-38 program had fallen to the budget axe along with so much else.

  Judy eyed the descent modules critically. "Carl, what's our ground track, anyway?" she asked. He called up the display on the center monitor. The station and shuttle were over western Australia, heading northeast. Not good. If they were to de-orbit now, they'd wind up in the north Atlantic, or worse, in the Middle East. But in one more orbit they would pass over the U.S. If they timed it right, they could make like they were going to dock with the space station, then grab an EDM and be gone before Mary and the rest of the station crew could react. The modules were mostly composite material; radar couldn't track them. If Judy and Allen switched off the emergency beacon, they stood a good chance of making it to the ground without detection. NASA could only calculate where they would land to within a few dozen miles; that was a big area to search. With any luck at all, they could make a clean escape. Provided they survived the descent.

  Judy flipped on the radio again. "Mary, you still there?"

  "Still waiting. Have you made a decision yet? Ground control is getting a little nervous."

  "We're still thinking about it. Have you got any idea just what they've got planned for us?" Mary laughed. "Well, what do you expect? They were willing to give you a simple trial and execution until you pulled that stunt with the communication satellite, but now I think they're leaning more toward public humiliation and stoning."

  "Not funny," Judy said. She looked out at the descent modules again, wondering just how far off the mark Mary was. Not far enough, she was afraid. All right, then, time for plan B.

  "I'm willing to stand trial," she said, "but I want some assurance I'll get a trial. If the President promises us safe conduct, we'll surrender." There, that ought to ensure a long enough delay to get them into position.

  In the meantime, she made Allen keep breathing oxygen so he could get back into his spacesuit when the time came, and she began washing the nitrogen out of her own system as well. Normally a transfer from shuttle to space station didn't require suits, but Judy explained that she wanted to be ready in case they had docking problems, and she made Carl and Gerry breathe oxygen, too, so they wouldn't suspect her real plan.

  But ten minutes later, Mary came back on the radio and said, "Switch over to ground control. The President is waiting."

  If Judy had needed any assurance that she was in deep trouble, she'd just gotten it. President John

  "Private Interests" Stevenson didn't respond that quickly to a call from his stockbroker. That was his voice on the radio, though, saying, "Well, Miss Gallagher, you've certainly caused a ruckus, haven't you?"

  Judy was beyond being impressed by politicians. She said, "It seems to me that whoever spread the virus on the internet is the one who caused the ruckus."

  "That will be a matter for the courts to decide." He cleared his throat, then said, "You've asked for my word that you'll be treated fairly when you return. I can assure you that you will receive the full protection of the law in your prosecution for high treason, piracy, hijacking, computer hacking, and violat
ion of Federal communications regulations."

  He had to be reading that from a note card. Good. If she ever wound up in court, Judy would subpoena the document and every memo that led up to it. There were bound to be some interesting surprises in the paper trail.

  She didn't plan to let it get that far. She said, "Thank you, Mr. President," and switched back to the space station frequency. "All right, Mary, we've got what we asked for, I'll bring it in for docking, but I'm going to take it slow. That hit we took could have screwed up our maneuvering engines." Mary evidently didn't want to risk a shuttle crashing into her space station, either. She said,

  "Understood, Discovery. Take your time."

  Judy did, using the aft work station controls to inch the shuttle closer to the habitat's airlock with tiny bursts of the smallest thrusters. She managed to stretch it out for over an hour, which gave them just fifteen minutes before they would be in position to make their break.

  Carl had been watching her work, criticizing her timid piloting all the while. She'd been counting on that; when the shuttle was still a couple hundred feet away, she turned to him and said, "All right, then, you finish it," and pushed away from the controls. He leaped to the task like any backseat driver given a chance to prove his superior talent, and while he concentrated on the docking, Judy pulled Allen with her down into the mid-deck.

  "Okay," she said when they were out of Carl's hearing. "You get a choice. You can go back on the next shuttle and stand trial, or you can leave with me in one of Fred's emergency descent modules. We've got a twenty-minute window of opportunity opening up about ten minutes from now." Allen blinked in surprise. "You mean there's another way down?" From his bunk, Gerry said, "No, there isn't. Those things were never meant to be used. They were meant to make the public think NASA was doing something for safety." Judy had been filling her spacesuit's pockets with valuables from her personal locker; she stopped and looked over at Gerry. "The cynical spy speaks," she said.