Jerry Oltion - The Getaway Special

“You know,” she said, “there are times when I think humanity’s too stupid to live, too. Whenever I have to deal with politicians, for instance. Governments seem to bring out the worst in people. So do fifty-percent-off sales in department stores. But for every jerk, there’s a hundred decent people who will help you out in a pinch. And even the people you think are hopeless can surprise you. Did Allen tell you about Dale Larkin, the guy who bankrolled us?”

“No,” Tippet said.

“He’s a thief. Makes his living stealing money from banks. That’s not a good thing,” she added, just in case finance was different on Tippet’s world. “But when he heard we needed money to build our starship, he offered to just give it to us. No strings attached. We had to talk him into letting us pay him back.”

Tippet apparently understood the concept well enough. He said, “I’m not impressed by his generosity with what was never his in the first place.”

“It was his by the time he gave it to us,” Judy pointed out. “He didn’t have to part with it.”

“It wasn’t a hardship for him. Generosity when it’s easy isn’t as significant as generosity that costs the giver.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “But isn’t that the same question you’re up against? Letting us out of the cradle is going to cost you some security. So are you going to—”

“It’s not the same.”

“Sure it is. The stakes are bigger, but it’s the same argument.”

It seemed strange to discuss the fate of humanity so calmly with an alien who could snuff it out if he decided that was in the best interest of his own race, but Judy didn’t think hysterics would help her case any. Besides, she’d never been much good at hysterics anyway.

When Tippet didn’t answer, she said, “I’m sure there will be problems if you let us loose. That’s practically guaranteed. But it won’t be all of humanity causing trouble. The vast majority of us are going to want to be good neighbors, and we’re going to help stop the ones who don’t. We don’t want con men and carpetbaggers out there any more than you do.”

“ You don’t,” Tippet said. “You individually. But you don’t speak for your species. You can’t! You’re physically unable to. We’re having a very hard time puzzling out how this will affect negotiations with you as a group.”

“That’s why we have governments.”

“Which you have just admitted are composed of the worst specimens humanity has to offer. And from what’s happening on Earth right now, it’s also obvious that governments don’t heed the wishes of the people they ostensibly serve. Therefore, negotiating with a government would be an immoral act, by our standards.”

“But blowing us all up wouldn’t be?”

“It would be the worst thing we have ever done in the entire history of our race. But it may also be necessary. We still don’t know.”

And the longer they took to decide, the harder it would be to accomplish. Judy didn’t need to remind him of that; she was sure he knew it all too well. The fact that he and the rest of his hive had refrained so far was good news, but she suspected they had set a deadline: if they didn’t come up with a decision soon, they would err on the side of caution. Unfortunately for humanity, that meant they would start bombing before it was too late.

A flicker of motion out in space caught her attention. Two tiny specks of light had popped into being. They were too far away to see any detail, but it had to be Allen and Trent.

“Allen?” she asked.

“Here,” he said. “Keep an eye on Trent. He’s moving fast.”

It didn’t look like it. The two dots weren’t separating very quickly. Allen’s vector wouldn’t have changed much since he left, so he shouldn’t be moving more than a few meters per second away from the ship, but if Trent was moving relative to him, there should have been some proper motion. Unless…

“Holy shit, he’s coming straight for us!”

She barely had time to get the words out before the speck of light loomed into the distinct image of a four-wheel-drive pickup tumbling end-over-end as it swept toward them.

“Brace yourself!” Tippet said.

Judy grabbed on to the window frame, which yielded under her fingers like high-density foam rubber, but she kept her eyes glued to the pickup outside. It was obviously Trent’s: deep red with every chrome accessory he could bolt on to it. There was a new addition this time: a big metal box in back, faceted like the top half of a Lunar Module and polished to as bright a shine as everything else. He’d welded together an interstellar camper shell.

They had maybe five seconds until impact. There was no way the starship could get out of the way in time, not even with the hyperdrive. The truck was already inside the jump field. There was a little sideways drift, enough to see that it would hit somewhere toward the back of the ship. That might save the ship, but the pickup was moving fast enough to smash itself flat.

Four seconds. Three. Judy could see two faces through the windshield, Trent in the driver’s seat, and Donna sitting right next to him. Their mouths were gaping wide as airlocks.

Then they vanished, pickup and all winking out like they had never been.

Judy let out her breath. A second later, Trent’s voice came over the radio. “Whoo-ee! That was close enough to leave skid marks. Sorry ’bout that. Couldn’t hit the button quick enough.”

“Trent!” Judy yelled. “Trent! Are you and Donna all right?”

“Judy?”

“Yes!”

“Well I’ll be a son of a… Yeah! We’re fine. How’d we get… hell, I don’t even know where we are. And how did you get that big-ass spaceship?”

“Allen brought you here,” she said. “Allen, can you hear us?”

“I can hear you ” he said, “but not Trent. And I’m sure he can’t hear me, either. That was one little detail we forgot in the rush to go after him. The shortwave radio’s useless in vacuum.”

“Oh.” He was right. Without air, the microphone couldn’t pick up any sound and the speaker couldn’t make any. There was probably a way to patch it into a spacesuit’s intercom, but it would take cables Allen didn’t have.

“We hear him just fine now,” Trent said.

“Hey, I hear you now, too!” Allen said.

“Tippet must be relaying your signals.”

“Who’s Tippet?” Trent asked.

“It’s a long story. Hang on a second. Tippet, how are we going to pick them up?”

Tippet said, “Our relative velocity is not that great. We can use Jupiter’s gravity well to change our own vector and dock with them within half an hour. Trent, do you have enough air to last that long?”

“Yeah, easy,” he said. “We’ve got a tank and a half of that left. It’s parachutes we’re short of. The fuckin’ laser satellites nailed both of ’em when we tried to land. Pardon my French.”

“They shot at you?” Judy said. “I’d swear too. Well, hang tight, then, and we’ll be right there.”

“Uh, guys?” Allen said. “Maybe you could swing by and pick me up first? As long as you’re in the neighborhood, and have the right relative velocity and all. Just a thought.”

Judy grinned. “I don’t know,” she said. “How about it, Tippet?”

He was flying in tight little circles near the door. “Are you insane? Of course we’ll pick him up first. He would die of the bends if we—oh. That was humor.”

“Pretty lame,” she admitted, “but yeah.”

A moment later the Getaway blinked into existence a kilometer or so away—or rather Tippet’s ship moved that close to it—and then there was a minute or two of light thrust while the pilots matched velocity and brought the plastic tank in through the airlock.