Hover Car Racer Part 5

Race-spec hover cars customarily have six disc-shaped magneto drives on their undersides. Losing one is bearable, losing two is like driving a wheeled car on a wet road. Losing four is like driving on an ice-skating rink.

Jason's drive console lit up like a Christmas tree.

Sally's voice exploded through his earpiece: ' Jason! You just lost your Number 6 drive!'

'I know! What happened?'

'I don't know!' Sally's voice said. 'According to my telemetry screens, it just packed up and died, lost all power!'

'Bug!' Jason said quickly. 'What do you think? Bring her in?'

The Bug's voice came in through his earpiece.

Jason nodded: 'd.a.m.n right it'll be close. You sure we can make it?'

The Bug mumbled something.

'Good point,' Jason said. 'Sally: The Bug's right. We're 10th, a lap-and-a-half away from the next elimination. Everyone else is probably planning on pitting after Lap 8. If we pit now, we'll go straight to last, but if we can pull a good stop, we'll have a whole lap to catch up. And we'll be on a fresh set of mags. It's our best option.'

'Then come on in, my boys!' Sally roared. 'This is what it's all about! I'll be waiting!'

The Argonaut took the final Port Arthur hairpin perfectly, and as the leaders shot off down the Derwent on Lap 6, Jason pulled his car into Pit Lane.

He hit his mark perfectly.

The clock started ticking.

00:00.

00:01.

The pit machine - now christened by Sally as the 'Tarantula' - descended on the Argonaut, six of its arms removing the car's six underside magneto drives, while its other two arms respectively replenished Jason's coolant tank and recharged his compressed-air thrusters.

00:04.

00:05.

Jason was tapping his foot impatiently. Every second spent in here was a second lost.

Shoom!-shoom!-shoom!

The hover cars that had previously been behind him now whizzed past the pits.

'Come on! Come on!' he whispered.

00:08.

00:09.

A ten-second pit stop would be great.

Shoom!

Suddenly the last-placed car shot past the pits. They were now officially last.

The Tarantula was almost done. Only the coolant hose was still connected to the Argonaut. Jason, keen to rejoin the race, leaned forward on his accelerator, creeping forward - 'Pit Bay Violation! Car 55!' a shrill amplified voice boomed out from some track-side speakers. 'Fifteen second penalty!'

'What!' Jason yelled.

And then he saw the Pit Bay Supervisor - the teachers took it in turns to be Supervisor and today it was Professor Zoroastro, Barnaby's mentor and also the mentor of the mysterious boy in black. Right now, he was pointing at the Argonaut's front wings.

They were exactly two inches over the pit bay line. 'Oh, no way!' Jason shouted.

A red boom gate whizzed down in front of the Argonaut , preventing it from leaving the pits. A digital timer on the horizontal boom counted down from 00:15. Now every second seemed an eternity to Jason.

00:10.

00:09.

00:08.

Jason looked over at Sally. Behind her stood Scott Syracuse - his arms firmly folded.

00:02.

00:01.

00:00.

The boom gate lifted and the Argonaut shot off the mark, blasting back out onto the course.

The six brand-new magneto drives under him gave Jason a new lease of life.

The Argonaut flew like a bullet, gripping the tight turns of the rainforest section as if it were travelling on rails.

With its new mags, it had a grip advantage over the other cars, whose own magneto drives were now nearly six laps old.

Sally's voice: 'You're twenty seconds behind the second-last-placed car, Car 70, and gaining. Nineteen...now eighteen seconds behind...'

The Bug spoke.

'I know,' Jason replied. 'I know.'

They were gaining roughly one second for every kilometre. But the course was only 25 kilometres long.

At this rate - provided Jason raced an almost perfect lap - they'd only catch Car 70 right at the Start-Finish Line.

Whipping past Russell Falls.

Ten seconds behind.

Out round the cliffs, onto the ocean straight - just in time to see Car 70 whip around a faraway bluff.

Six seconds.

Weaving through the S-bends of the coastal arches - and suddenly, the tailfin of Car 70 was close.

Four seconds behind.

And then Jason saw the Port Arthur hairpin up ahead, saw the building-sized rock pillar that was Tasman Island.

That was the pa.s.sing point.

And he had new mags and the other guy didn't.

Car 70 hit the hairpin.

The Argonaut took it wider, cutting inside 70's line.

And the two cars rounded the curve together, flying dangerously close to the jagged rocky pillar - and the Argonaut emerged with its winged nose level with Car 70's bulbous snout!

The crowds on the grandstands leapt to their feet.

The local TV commentators went bananas at the audacity of the move.

Car 70 and the Argonaut raced down the Derwent side-by-side, neck-and-neck until - sh-shoom! - they crossed the Start-Finish Line together.

CHAPTER SIX.

RACETIME: 18:02 MINS LAP: 7.

The official loudspeakers blared: 'End of Lap 6, eliminated car is Car 70. Racer Walken.' The crowd cheered.

Jason floored it - while Car 70 slowed, its driver punching his steering wheel before pulling off into the Exit Lane at the end of the straight.

The Argonaut was still in the race.

RACETIME: 01:15 HOURS LAP: 25.

Almost an hour later, Jason was still in it. Coming in 6th.

The end of Lap 25 saw the final eight cars enter the pits more or less together.

Jason stopped the Argonaut on a dime. The Tarantula descended, did its stuff.

Entering the pits just in front of Jason had been the boy in black.

His car was a super-sleek Lockheed-Martin ProRacer-5, painted entirely in black and simply numbered 1. It was rather presumptuous to number your car '1', since in the pro world, that number was allotted to the champion of the previous year. But at Race School, a racer's number was his or her personal choice.

The Black Boy's pit machine worked with extraordinary precision - attaching new mags, filling his car's coolant tanks, pumping in compressed air.

And then suddenly the boy in black was gone, booming out of the pits a full three seconds ahead of Jason. It must have been a 7-second pit stop.

How did he do that! Jason thought. d.a.m.n, he's good.

The Tarantula finished and Jason jammed down on the collective, rejoining the race.

RACETIME: 01:21 HOURS LAP: 27.

Three laps to go. Seven cars left on the track.

The next elimination was the result of a huge crash out on the coastline: the car coming in 2nd had lost two mags while wending his way through the S-bends of steel arches - his mags had not been attached properly during his last pit stop and had fallen off.

The result was a 500 km/h frontal crash into one of the solid-steel arches. A shocking explosion followed, but the racer and his navigator had survived by ejecting a nanosecond beforehand.

Which meant that when the field next crossed the StartFinish line, that driver was eliminated - the fourteenth and last elimination of the race.

So now everyone had pitted three times - as such all were travelling on mags of the same age.

Six cars left. Two laps.It was now a dash for the Finish Line.

Superfast and supertense. One mistake and you were out. Pressure-driving time.

Place check: Jason was in 5th place.

The boy in black, in his sleek black Lockheed-Martin, Car No.1, was coming in first.

Jason could see Barnaby Becker - in his own maroon-coloured Lockheed-Martin up in 2nd place.

In 3rd, hammering at Barnaby's tail, was a French youth in a Renault X-700. The French driver was throwing everything at Barnaby, but Barnaby was foiling his every attempt to get past.

In 4th place was a red-and-white Boeing Evercharge-III. This was Ariel Piper's car, No.16: the Pied Piper.

Good on you, Ariel, Jason thought. Hang in there.

And then came Jason, followed by Isaiah Washington, in last place.

The six cars took the bend at the end of the straight and entered the rainforest for the last time. Past the falls and out to the ocean straight. Nothing in it.

Then they entered the S-bends of the coastal arches and suddenly, without warning, the Argonaut shuddered violently and its tail flailed out wildly behind it like a stunt car in an old movie skidding on a dirt tack and Sally McDuff's voice was blaring in Jason's ear.