The getaway special by Jerry Oltion Page A

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 carrier. " 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