The getaway special Read Free

felt a thrill rush through her as she asked the question. Could they really be? This was the sort of thing she had always dreamed of. Captain Gallagher of the Imperial Space Navy! Hopping from planet to planet at her merest whim, leading humanity outward from its cradle toward its ultimate destiny in space . . . But right behind it came the thought, I'm not in command of my ship . Allen said, "If my initial calculations were correct we are. We'll know in a minute."
    "How?"
    "I sent a timing signal just as we jumped. When it catches up with us I'll know exactly how far we moved. It should be coming in any second now."
    Judy looked toward the computer. The top line of the display kept counting seconds and the radio remained silent. Allen began to look puzzled, then worried. He began typing on the keyboard again.
    "Stop!"
    He looked up, surprised.
    "Get away from there. Reinhardt, get between him and that panel." Carl nodded and pulled himself over beside Allen.
    "I'm just checking the coordinates," Allen said. "I must have miskeyed them." After a moment's thought, Judy said, "Okay, go ahead, but explain what you're doing as you go along. And don't even think of moving the ship again without my permission." She nodded to Carl, who backed away again, then she suddenly had a thought. "Christ, go wake up Gerry. He'd shoot us if we didn't get him in on this too."
    A minute later Gerry Vaughn, the copilot, shot up through the hatch from the mid-deck and grabbed the back of the command chair to slow down. He looked out the forward windows, then floated closer and looked overhead, then down. He turned and kicked off toward the aft windows, looked around in every direction, and finally backed away. Then, very quietly, he said, "Son of a bitch." Allen beamed.
    "Where are we?"
    Allen lost some of his smile. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "We're supposed to be two and a half light-minutes from Earth in the direction of Vega, but we either missed the signal or went too far."
    "Signal?"
    "Before we jumped, I transmitted a coded pulse. When the pulse catches up, we'll know our distance. Next time we jump I'll send another pulse, and as long as we jump beyond the first one then we can triangulate our position when they arrive. That way I can calculate the aiming error as well as the distance error."
    "Oh," Gerry said. He looked out the windows again as if to assure himself that the Earth was really gone. Finally he said, "Look at the sun."
    "What?"
    "The sun."
    Judy looked. It was shining in through the forward windows. She had to squint to keep it from burning her eyes, but not much, and now she could see what Gerry was talking about. The solar disk was about a fourth the normal size.
    Carl, floating just above the mid-deck hatch, looked too. He made a strangling sound, looked over at Judy as if he was pleading for help, then his eyes rolled up and he went slack.
    "Catch him!" Judy yelled, but it was hardly necessary. People don't fall when they faint in free-fall. Neither do they faint. Blood doesn't rush away from the brain without gravity to pull it. So what had happened to him?
    As she debated what to do, the answer came in a long, shuddering breath. "Oh," she said. "He forgot to breathe." She laughed, but it came out wrong and she cut it off. She wasn't far from Carl's condition herself.
    Get it under control , she thought.
    "Gerry, help him down to his bunk."
    Gerry nodded and pushed Carl back through the hatchway into the mid-deck. When they had gone below, Judy said, "Well, Allen, this is a pretty situation you've got yourself in."
    "What do you mean?" he asked.
    "I mean hijacking and piracy."
    "What? You've got to be—" He stopped. She wasn't kidding. "All right, I can believe hijacking, but piracy?"
    "We're carrying a full load of privately owned cargo, which you diverted without authority. That makes it piracy. You should have thought of that before you started pushing buttons." Allen looked at her without comprehension. "I don't get