Part 11 (1/2)

RACE 25.

RACETIME: 4 HOURS 24 MINS.

LAP: 11 [OF 20].

Race 25 was easily the most hard-fought race of the season so far.

No-one was giving an inch.

Those racers who hadn't yet qualified for the Sponsors' tournament were going all-out for the win. While those who had qualified were racing just as fiercely - they were well aware that if a pre-qualified racer won, it meant one less contender to deal with on Sat.u.r.day.

The intensity of the racing was simply furious.

And at Lap 11, Jason was still in it.

After narrowly avoiding a wild three-car crash on Lap 2, he had stayed in touch with the early leaders - Xavier, Varishna Krishna (a talented young racer from India) and Isaiah Was.h.i.+ngton - and now, after more than four hours of racing, he was well positioned in 4th place.

The ripple strips had caused chaos - if you took a turn too wide, you would edge over the top of them and suddenly your magneto drive levels would drain before your eyes.

The big crash on Lap 2 had been the direct result of the ripple strips, and it had taken out some of the contenders in this race.

It was Barnaby Becker's fault.

He had slid out over the ripple strips flanking the tight hairpin near the pits. He had stayed over the demag strips for almost five seconds, enough to deprive all six of his magneto drives of nearly all of their power. Out of control, he had slid back across the track, collecting two other racers - among them Ariel Piper - on the way through, ending all of their races.

Ariel wasn't pleased.

For his part, Jason felt he was handling the strips pretty well - not perfectly, but well. On any given lap, he might edge over a couple of them and lose a little bit of power. But judging by the similarity of their pit-stop schedules, it didn't seem as if any of the other contenders were doing any better.

Significantly, no racer had attempted to use the short cut.

The leaders completed Lap 11, and flocked into the pits - Jason among them.

He swung into his bay and the Tarantula descended on the Argonaut from above, its arms bristling with magneto drives and coolant hoses.

Jason gulped down some energy drink, breathed hard. Their pit stops had been good in this race. Their mag drives and computer systems seemed okay - And suddenly the Tarantula froze in mid-action. 'No!' Jason yelled.

Sally McDuff dived for the Tarantula's console, started tapping keys. 'The system's crashed again! d.a.m.n!' she yelled. 'I have to reboot!'

She typed fast on the computer.

Jason snapped round - to see Krishna, then Was.h.i.+ngton and then Xavier zoom out of the pits, one after the other, rejoining the race.

'Sally! Come on!'

'Almost there...!' she called back. 'Almost there!'

'G.o.dd.a.m.nit!'

The seconds ticked by - every one of them sinking the nails deeper into Jason's coffin.

10 seconds...

15...

20...

'Got it!' Sally called.

The Tarantula completed its work, then swooped up into the ceiling and Sally yelled 'Go! Go! Go!' and Jason floored it and the Argonaut shoomed back out onto the course - - to be met by a surprising sight.

Just outside Pit Lane, Jason saw Car No. 1 - Prince Xavier's black Lockheed, the Speed Razor - splayed

sideways in the centre of the track, stopped. Xavier was waving his fists at an orange hover car crashed into the

treeline nearby.

Jason deduced what had happened immediately. As Xavier had been exiting the pits, the hapless driver of the orange car - a perennial tailender named Brent Hurst - had been zooming by, completely unaware of Xavier emerging from Pit Lane. A near miss had ensued, with the Speed Razor fishtailing to a halt, while Hurst had missed the next turn, hit the ripple strips and gone careering off into the treeline.

By the time Jason had emerged from the pits shortly after, Xavier was powering up and so the two of them rejoined the race together, 20 seconds behind the leaders, with the Speed Razor just in front of the Argonaut.

Over the next three laps, try as he might, Jason couldn't narrow the gap on the leaders.

There were more pit stops, but since everyone was pitting more or less as well as each other, the lead time between the two leaders - Krishna and Was.h.i.+ngton - and the rest of the pack, led by Xavier and Jason, remained at about 20 seconds.

It was with the completion of Lap 14 that Jason realised. He was running out of laps.

There were only six laps to go, with most racers planning for two more stops, and he wasn't gaining at all. This was terrible. With an enormous 20-second gap to reel in, he just couldn't win - and he had to win this race!

Unless...

'Sally! Bug!' he yelled into his radiomike. 'Quick poll! Next lap, do we try the short cut?'

'Jason, I don't know...' Sally said. 'If you screw it up in there, we'll lose for sure.'

'We're already going to lose!' Jason said. 'Unless we get some galactic good luck. Bug?'