Part 32 (1/2)

More early-morning practice.

Then Race 47: win (over Barnaby and Was.h.i.+ngton in a race that employed the Port Arthur short cut - the Bug remembered the correct way through; Xavier didn't race).

Race 48...second (to Xavier; in this race, Ariel bowed out with another technical problem, a few of which had started to occur lately).

Race 49...third (behind Krishna and Barnaby; Xavier hadn't even tried to win the race; he just cruised over the line in 10th place, needing only the one point to claim an una.s.sailable lead in the School Champions.h.i.+p).

And so, with one race left in the Race School season, Jason had charged up the Champions.h.i.+p Ladder: INTERNATIONAL RACE SCHOOL.

CHAMPIONs.h.i.+P LADDER.

AFTER 49 RACES.

DRIVER NO. CAR POINTS.

1. XONORA, X 1 Speed Razor 307 2. KRISHNA, V 31 Calcutta-IV 296 3. WAs.h.i.+NGTON, I 42 Black Bullet 278 4. BECKER, B 09 Devil's Chariot 276 5. CHASER, J 55 Argonaut 276 6. PIPER, A 16 Pied Piper 275 7. WONG, H 888 Little Tokyo 274 8. SCHUMACHER, K 25 Blue Lightning 273 Xavier was untouchable on 307 points, the Champions.h.i.+p his.

Varishna Krishna, on 296 points, was also going to New York no matter what happened in Race 50.

But below them, it was a six-way tussle for the final two invitations to New York. Any one of the next six racers could - depending on the finis.h.i.+ng order in Race 50 - could come in the Top 4.

Jason and Barnaby Becker were level on 276 points, equal 4th on the Ladder (and now one point ahead of Ariel, whose niggling technical problems in recent races had hurt her badly).

But they weren't truly equal - if Barnaby and Jason ended the season on equal points (for example, they both crashed in Race 50), Barnaby would beat Jason on a countback, since he had come 2nd in Race 49 when Jason had come 3rd.

In the end, for Jason, there was only one option in Race 50: he had to beat Barnaby Becker and, if he finished low in the placings, he had to hope some other results went his way. But with Barnaby's new allies also out there on the track, just finis.h.i.+ng Race 50 was going to be a tough prospect indeed.

To cap it all off, the final race of the year was the perfect kind of race to conclude the season.

Designed to test every hover car racing skill imaginable, it was to take place on the rarely-used Course 13 - a super-difficult track that began by stretching southward, down over the Southern Ocean along a superlong straight, before it transformed into a twisting and turning series of bends that weaved between the outer icebergs of Antarctica.

In that section of the course, racers could - if they were prepared to take the risk - opt to take one of three shortcuts between the bergs, but every short cut ran between two bergs that clashed together (thanks to an underwater mechanism), giving them the name: 'the Clas.h.i.+ng Bergs'. The standard course did not run through any clas.h.i.+ng bergs, but it was longer. High risk, high reward.

After that, the course turned back north, returning to Tasmania, where the racers had to slow dramatically to negotiate the tight highways of the island, before reaching the Start-Finish Line in Hobart.

Each lap took about 14 minutes. And since Race 50 was a 51-lap enduro - that meant a 12-hour race.

But there was one more feature to Race 50 that made it an absolute killer: not only was it a test of endurance and skill, it was also a test of race positioning - Race 50 was a Last Man Drop-Off race.

Technically, it was cla.s.sified as a '51-3-1 Super-Enduro Last Man Drop-Off' meaning: it would be fifty-one laps, and every three laps, the last-placed racer would be eliminated, until only four racers remained to fight out a six-lap sprint to the finish, a sprint that would involve one last pit stop.

Which made Jason's battle with Barnaby even more perilous: if Jason was eliminated at any time before Barnaby, Barnaby would be going to New York.

After all that, perhaps only one thing was truly clear.

Race 50 would be run on a knife-edge: it would be a dogfight of hardcore racing, under the ever-present threat of last-man elimination.

Race 50 made no allowance for mistakes.

It would be winner take all.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Jason woke with a start, gasping, sweating. Another crash nightmare.

'What is wrong with me?' he whispered aloud. He checked the digital clock beside his bed. It was 1:30am. It was the middle of the night - the night before Race 50. Just what he needed.

He sat up, and decided that sleep would be impossible at least for a while. He went for a walk, wandered down to a small enclosed garden overlooking the river, to gaze at the fountains there.

He sat down on a bench - and suddenly heard footsteps on gravel and voices in the darkness. He ducked behind a statue, listened. He could make out two voices. One old and deep, the other younger, slimier.

Older voice: 'Good work. You've slowed her rise up the Champions.h.i.+p Ladder.'

Younger voice: 'Only doing what I'm told.'

Older voice: 'But she can still finish in the Top 4. And this School does not want to see Ms Piper going to New York. It's been embarra.s.sing enough having her study here for the year - and then that Chaser boy gave her a whole heap of publicity in Italy - but it would be beyond the pale if she ended up representing the School in New York. I need you to make sure she doesn't.'

Younger voice: 'After the Becker incident at the tournament, we can't deplete her magneto drives with microwaves anymore. Worms and viruses in her pit machine have worked recently, but she put in a new firewall two days ago and it's a good one. That said, I think I can find a newer virus that can bring her system down.'

Older voice: 'Make it happen.'

There was a crunching of gravel and the two speakers were gone.

Jason's eyes were wide with shock.

He recognised both voices.

The older voice had belonged to Jean-Pierre LeClerq.

And the younger one: Wernold Smythe, the nasty grease monkey from the School's Parts and Equipment Department.

Jason returned to bed.