Free Far Space by Jason Kent

exertions.
    The man opened his mouth to speak again.
    Ian gave the man a push with his foot, sending him through the hatch.
    The elevator car shuddered and jerked violently. Ian guessed something big had torn loose.
    Without a word, Ian hooked a foot into a bootstrap, grasped Jennifer’s arm and tossed her out the emergency hatch.
    “Hey!” was all Jennifer managed to shout before disappearing through the self-sealing threshold.
    Ian looked back at the remaining knot of people. His eyes met those of the still un-suited Head Steward. The man nodded tightly then went back to his duty.
    Ian bent his legs, readying himself to cross the room. He had a vague notion of knocking the reluctant passengers out with a quick punch then stuffing them into their suits.
    The car lurched again.
    Ian’s hand-hold tore free. Acting quickly, he kicked off from the bulkhead before he drifted too far and managed to give himself enough momentum to make it to the floor where he fingered another fabric loop.
    “Outta time,” Ian breathed as he cast himself toward the same hatch through which he had shoved Jennifer.
    The conformal inner seal squeezed around him. Once his arms and head cleared the threshold, he felt the material grasp and pull him forward - like a thousand tiny fingers passing him toward the exit. An instant later, he burst forth through the outer threshold and found himself flung into the vacuum of space.
    Twisting, he could see the elevator car, huge for the moment but getting smaller with each passing second.
    His spin brought him around to a nice view of Earth.
    The home-world looked much too close for comfort.
    The small pack on his back automatically fired its tiny gas thrusters, orienting him so that he faced out into space again and mercifully away from the planet he was now inexorably falling toward. Ian recalled vaguely the EERS suits were completely automated - designed to deliver even an unconscious person back to the surface safely. He smiled to himself, glad he had paid attention to at least part of the safety briefing on previous elevator rides. He also remembered one other fact the crewman had thrown into a safety brief to liven up the mood, ‘It may seem crazy but it’s guaranteed to get you home in a blaze of glory!’
    Ian imagined himself engulfed in a ball of flame hurtling ground-ward. “Great,” he muttered. “So who’s guaranteeing this drop?”
    In his new orientation, Ian again found himself looking back at the elevator car. It was still attached to the tether. But the carbon nanotube ribbon had an uncharacteristic twist indicating it was not taut. Ian surmised the tether was so long, even if it had been cut further up near geosynchronous orbit, it would never bunch up. Instead, it would flutter like a piece of paper under the pull of Earth’s gravity. As it fell into the sky, wrapping itself around the upper atmosphere, the tissue-thin material would burn up before getting close to the surface.
    “That’s gonna be a heck of a sight,” he told himself.
    The car was a different story, though. Weighing in at nearly thirty-two thousand kilograms, Elevator Lift-Car 47 was nearly twenty meters long and contained five floors. The attached energy converters and power collection panel spread out to the one side of the structure, hinged to the drive cylinders clamped onto the tether. There were several panels missing from the collector surface, probably one reason for the earlier shuddering in the car. The elevator car hung off the opposite side of the roller assembly from the power panels.
    Ian turned his head to catch sight of the Earth’s surface. The car was going to burn up spectacularly. He doubted all the components would burn up though. It was the roller assembly, the most substantial portion of the entire structure, which Ian figured had the best chance of surviving the fiery reentry awaiting them all. He muttered, “Wonder what that farmer in Iowa’s going to think when a chunk of space