Free Murder in Orbit by Bruce Coville Page A

was trapped on a one-way trip to nowhere.
    I thought about Macdonald of Terra again. His philosophy, which I guess was also my grandfather’s philosophy, went something like this: If you can’t go through the door, blast open a window.
    Unfortunately, blasting open a window in this thing wouldn’t do me much good. Then I realized I didn’t need to blast open anything. The scooter had a spring-operated safety ejection system that didn’t depend on the regular power source.
    So I could get free of the runaway scooter. On the other hand, considering the difficulty I had experienced trying to move even two meters in the null-gravity of Dr. Puckett’s office, I couldn’t see much point in trying to “swim” back to the colony from this distance.
    That was when the answer hit me. When I had realized I was late for my session in the BS Factory, I had left Cassie in such a rush that I hadn’t bothered to take off the belt they had given me in Dr. Puckett’s office. I did have a way back!
    I looked over my shoulder again. The colony was already a long way off—and the distance was increasing rapidly.
    I had to move fast.
    Tearing up the seat beside me, I wrenched out the emergency space suit stored there. Even though I had had to practice using it in order to get my license, putting on the suit in the tight confines of the scooter wasn’t easy. My knees and elbows kept getting stuck in different places. After a while I realized that part of the problem was that I was three inches taller than I had been when I took the test. I began to curse the growth spurt that had pleased me so much earlier in the year. Trying to pull the space suit over my shoulder while my knee was wedged under the control console, I was struck by a vision of myself dying in this position. Would I float through eternity this way, doomed by my own adolescent gawkiness? It seemed both ridiculous and terrifyingly possible.
    And it made me so mad I was able to wrench the suit into position, though I gave my bad hip an awful twist in the process.
    I put on the helmet, locked it into place, and then strapped on the air tanks, which consisted of three smallish canisters welded together. According to the directions printed on the outside, I had two hours’ worth of air. I looked back again and wondered if I could possibly make it to the colony in two hours. With only the air belt to give me impetus, I would head back a lot more slowly than the runaway scooter had taken me outward.
    Trying to ignore my throbbing hip, I strapped on the propulsion belt, which I had removed before I tried to put on the space suit. Then I began the series of operations that would free me from the scooter. There were three separate steps. (Probably to keep klutzes like me from accidentally blowing themselves into space while traveling back and forth between the colony and the substations.)
    I finished the sequence.
    Nothing happened.
    I screamed.
    Wouldn’t you?
    I mean, I thought I had just kissed off my last hope.
    Even so, I felt pretty silly when I realized the only thing wrong was that I had performed the operations in the reverse order.
    I tried again.
    Victory! The top of the scooter blew off, and I could feel the rush as the air around me was sucked into space.
    I went with it.
    I was separated from the scooter. But my momentum was still away from the colony. I had to change that, and fast.
    I touched the propulsion belt and started slowing myself down.
    It happened slowly.
    Very slowly.
    I thought about screaming again. I could see my home floating in the distance, and I knew that once I had myself moving in the right direction I would eventually reach it. What I didn’t know was whether I would still be alive when I got there.
    I twisted around and watched as the scooter continued its mad flight to nowhere. I thought about what it would mean if I was still on the thing.
    I thought about throwing up.
    Fortunately, my recent