Free Murder in Orbit by Bruce Coville

and I didn’t pay much attention to where I was heading. That’s not usually a big deal. The scooters have a pretty good range, and if you go flying off course, it’s no problem to get back. But when I returned my attention to what I was doing, I realized I did have a problem: The scooter wouldn’t respond to my commands.
    I twisted the steering mechanism.
    Nothing happened.
    I tried again, in the opposite direction.
    Nothing.
    I switched on the radio to call for help.
    Nothing. At least, not for a moment. Then, without my touching anything, the scooter suddenly shot forward, its speed quickly doubling, then tripling. Even worse, it veered away from the colony.
    That’s when I realized what was really going on: I had asked one too many questions in the wrong place and someone was getting nervous—someone who figured the best way to get rid of me was by sabotaging my scooter. This wasn’t just an equipment breakdown. It was another attempt at murder.
    Only this time the victim was going to be yours truly.
    I felt a commotion in my chest. Finally I realized it was my heart, trying to figure out some way to crawl into my throat.
    I twisted in my seat to look back at the colony. It was dwindling into the void behind me.
    Rapidly.
    Suddenly I found that I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t that I was running out of air; that , at least, wouldn’t happen for a while yet. It was just that I was so frightened my lungs wouldn’t work.
    All I could do was sit there, twisted in my seat and frozen with terror, as I watched my world disappear behind me.

Chapter 11
    The Stars
    The only part of my body that seemed to be working was my brain. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much use at the moment. All it wanted to do was tell me what was going to happen next. Against my will, I imagined myself hurtling past the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, on past the outer planets, out of the solar system, across the galaxy, into Deep Space, on and on and on, until I either crashed into a star (extremely unlikely) or space and time themselves finally came to an end. For one mad instant I consoled myself with the idea that at least I would finally get an answer to my question about the edges of the universe.
    Then some spoilsport in the back of my head whispered, “A fat lot of good that’s going to do a dead man, Bozo.”
    The words seemed oddly familiar. Where had I heard them before?
    Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t heard them, I had read them—in one of my grandfather’s books.
    The realization seemed to jolt me back into action. What would my grandfather do in a situation like this? More important, what would his great character, Lieutenant James D. Macdonald, do?
    I had read Gramps’s entire “Macdonald of Terra” series at least three times. The thing I always admired most about the hero of the stories was the way he never lost his cool when he was in a tough situation. (Having always been inclined to do something stupid first and then try to fix it later, I thought this was a great trait.)
    â€œOkay, Rusty,” I told myself. “Can the panic. Let’s examine the situation and see if we can figure something out. Start by taking a deep breath.”
    I followed my own advice and was surprised to realize how long I had been holding my breath. I had been so frightened I hadn’t realized my lungs were screaming for air. Now the inrush of oxygen almost made me giddy.
    I sat quietly for a moment, trying to regulate my breathing, to calm myself enough so I could think.
    When I was ready, I began to take stock of the situation.
    It was clear that the scooter had been rigged to get rid of me. I suppose if I had been a mechanical genius I could have changed the programming and gotten myself back on course for the colony. Unfortunately, mechanics and programming were not my specialty. I simply didn’t have the knowledge to change the course of this thing. I