Free The getaway special by Jerry Oltion

space station overhead. It was only twenty feet away or so; Gerry had nearly held them back too long.
    They didn't have time for the Manned Maneuvering Unit, the thruster chair that they normally used for moving around in space, nor did they have time to set up a cable and traverse the distance with carabiners. They would have to jump free. While Allen unstrapped his hyperdrive engine, Judy kicked off. For a heart-wrenching moment she was sure she'd screwed up and would miss the space station entirely and drift off into space until she ran out of air, but at such a short distance she'd have had to be trying hard to keep from hitting something. As it was, she'd gone nearly straight up; she had to push off from the stations airlock and scramble along handholds to reach the descent modules. Carl had seen her pass over his target. The radio came to life with his frantic call, "Judy, what the hell are you doing out there?"
    She didn't answer. Every second counted now. If the station had someone suited up and waiting in the airlock, he could still stop them.
    "Judy, answer me."
    She pulled herself up against the closest descent module, opened the hatch, and climbed inside. It was a tiny thing, barely big enough for the two seats it held. Judy crawled into the one farthest from the door and studied the control panel. It was simple enough; a power switch, a switch to blow the bolts holding the module to the station, a joystick to control the attitude thrusters, and a single red button labeled "Retro." Gauges and radio controls and manual overrides for the retro jettison and parachute release systems filled up the rest of the panel, but she had seen more complicated kitchen appliances. She flipped the switch that put the emergency locator beacon in manual mode, made sure the manual switch was set to "Off," then she flipped the main power switch and smiled when the green light above it lit up.
    "Who do you think you are?" Carl demanded. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? You're in space, for god's sake! You can't just steal a horse and ride out of town!"
    "Wanna bet?" she muttered, but her mic was still off. She leaned back out the hatch to see how Allen was doing. He had one of the canisters loose, and was working on the other. Judy waited nervously while he got the second one free, tucked one under each arm, then tilted his head back to see where she'd gone. She waved at him from the hatch of the descent module. He waved back, but nearly lost the canister under his right arm. He grabbed it again, but that motion lifted him off from the cargo bay and started him tumbling. He realized his predicament instantly, but instead of waiting for Judy to come get him, he kicked out with his left leg, evidently hoping to at least get himself moving toward her.
    It didn't work. Judy watched, helpless, as he tumbled away at a forty-five degree angle. He'd managed to do the nearly impossible; it looked like he was going to miss the entire station, and there was nothing Judy could do to help him. If she jumped to intercept him, they'd both float off into space, and if she took the time to clip her safety line to a handhold, she'd never reach him. The radio was a confusion of voices, Carl calling "Man overboard," Mary shouting orders to someone else inside the station, and ground control demanding to know what was going on. Judy was about to switch on her transmitter and tell them to shut up and do something useful, like send someone out with an MMU, when Allen did the only thing he could do to save himself: he took the canister from under his right arm and threw it as hard as he could out into space.
    Judy gasped. The hyperdrive! Or part of it, anyway. She hoped Allen had saved the valuable half. It didn't look like he'd even stopped to consider it, though; he'd just thrown what he'd had in his hand. The canisters weighed nearly a hundred pounds each; the reaction was more than Allen had expected. He nearly swept by the station on the other side,