officer."Sometimes I think you spent four years in the patrol academy withyour head up your jet pipes," he said. He fished out another cigaretteand took a deep drag.
"You've had four solid years of law; three years of electronics andjet and air-drive engine mechanics and engineering; pre-med,psychology, math, English, Spanish and a smattering of Portuguese, tosay nothing of dozens of other subjects. You graduated in the uppertenth of your class with a B.S. in both Transportation and Criminologywhich is why you're riding patrol and not punching a computer ortinkering with an engine. You'd think with all that education thatsomewhere along the line you'd have learned to think with your headinstead of your emotions."
Clay kept a studied watch on the roadway. The minute Ben had turnedand swung his legs over the side of the seat and pulled out acigarette, Clay knew that it was school time in Car 56. InstructorSergeant Ben Martin was in a lecturing mood. It was time for all goodpupils to keep their big, fat mouths shut.
"Remember San Francisco de Borja?" Ben queried. Clay nodded. "And youstill think I'm too rough on them?" Ben pressed.
Ferguson's memory went back to last year's fifth patrol. He and Benwith Kelly riding hospital, had been assigned to NAT 200-North,running out of Villahermosa on the Guatemalan border of Mexico toEdmonton Barracks in Canada. It was the second night of the patrol.Some seven hundred fifty miles north of Mexico City, near the town ofSan Francisco de Borja, a gang of teenage Mexican youngsters had goneroaring up the yellow at speeds touching on four hundred miles anhour. Their car, a beat-up, fifteen-year-old veteran of less speedyand much rockier local mountain roads, had been gimmicked by the kidsso that it bore no resemblance to its original manufacture.
From a junkyard they had obtained a battered air lift, smashed almostbeyond use in the crackup of a ten-thousand dollar sports cruiser. Thekids pried, pounded and bent the twisted impeller lift blades backinto some semblance of alignment. From another wreck of a cargocarrier came a pair of 4000-pound thrust engines. They had jury-riggedthe entire mess so that it stuck together on the old heap. Then theyhit the thruway--nine of them packed into the jalopy--the oldest onejust seventeen years old. They were doing three hundred fifty whenthey flashed past the patrol car and Ben had roared off in pursuit.The senior officer whipped the big patrol car across the crowded highspeed blue lane, jockeyed into the ultra-high yellow and then turnedon the power.
By this time the kids realized they had been spotted and they crankedtheir makeshift power plant up to the last notch. The most they couldget out of it was four hundred and it was doing just that as Car 56,clocking better than five hundred, pulled in behind them. The patrolcar was still three hundred yards astern when one of the bent andre-bent impeller blades let go. The out-of-balance fan, turning atclose to 35,000 rpm, flew to pieces and the air cushion vanished. Atfour hundred miles an hour, the body of the old jalopy fell the twelveinches to the pavement and both front wheels caved under. There was amomentary shower of sparks, then the entire vehicle snappedcartwheeling more than eighty feet into the air and exploded. Piecesof car and bodies were scattered for a mile down the thruway and theonly whole, identifiable human bodies were those of the threeyoungsters thrown out and sent hurtling to their deaths more than twohundred feet away.
Clay's mind snapped back to the present.
"Write 'em up," he said quietly to Martin. The senior officer gave aSatisfied nod and turned back to his citation pad.
* * * * *
At marker 412, which was also the Columbus turnoff, a big patrolwrecker was parked on the side strip, engines idling, service andwarning lights blinking. Clay pulled the patrol car alongside andstopped. He disconnected the tow bar and the two officers climbed outinto the cold night air. They walked back to the teenager's car. Claywent to the rear of the disabled car and unhooked the warning lightwhile Martin went to the driver's window. He had his citation book inhand. The youngster in the driver's seat went white at the sight ofthe violation pad. "May I see your license, please," Ben asked. Theboy fumbled in a back pocket and then produced a thin, metallic tabwith his name, age, address and license number etched into theindestructible and unalterable metal.
"Also your car registration," Ben added. The youth unclipped similarmetal strip from the dashboard.
The trooper took the two tabs and walked to the rear of the patrolcar. He slid back a panel to reveal two thin slots in the hull. Martinslid the driver's license into one of the slots, the registration tabinto the other. He pressed a button below each slot. Inside the car, amagnetic reader and auto-transmitter "scanned" the magnetic symbolsimplanted in the tags. The information was fed instantly toContinental Headquarters Records division at Colorado Springs. Infractions of a second, the great computers at Records were comparingthe information on the tags with all previous traffic citations issuedanywhere in the North American continent in the past forty-five yearssince the birth of the Patrol. The information from the driver'slicense and registration tab had been relayed from Beulah via thenearest patrol relay point. The answer came back the same way.
Above the license recording slot were two small lights. The firstflashed green, "license is in order and valid." The second flashedgreen as well, "no previous citations." Ben withdrew the tag from theslot. Had the first light come on red, he would have placed the driverunder arrest immediately. Had the second light turned amber, it wouldhave indicated a previous minor violation. This, Ben would have notedon the new citation. If the second light had been red, this would havemeant either a major previous violation or more than one minorcitation. Again, the driver would have been under immediate arrest.The law was mandatory. One big strike and you're out--two foul tipsand the same story. And "out" meant just that. Fines, possibly jail orprison sentence and lifetime revocation of driving privileges.
Ben flipped the car registration slot to "stand-by" and went back tothe teenager's car. Even though they were parked on the service stripof the police emergency lane, out of all traffic, the youngstersstayed in the car. This one point of the law they knew and knew well.Survival chances were dim anytime something went wrong on thehigh-speed thruways. That little margin of luck vanished once outsidethe not-too-much-better security of the vehicle body.
Martin finished writing and then slipped the driver's license into apocket worked into the back of the metallic paper foil of the citationblank. He handed the pad into the window to the driver together with acarbon stylus.
The boy's lip trembled and he signed the citation with a shaky hand.
Ben ripped off the citation blank and license, fed them into the sloton the patrol car and pressed both the car registration and license"record" buttons. Ten seconds later the permanent record of thecitation was on file in Colorado Springs and a duplicate recording ofthe action was in the Continental traffic court docket recordernearest to the driver's hometown. Now, no power in three nations could"fix" that ticket. Ben withdrew the citation and registration tag andwalked back to the car. He handed the boy the license and registrationtab, together with a copy of the citation. Ben bent down to peer intothe car.
"I made it as light on you as I could," he told the young driver."You're charged with improper use of the thruway. That's a minorviolation. By rights, I should have cited you for illegal usage." Helooked around slowly at each of the young people. "You look like nicekids," he said. "I think you'll grow up to be nice people. I want youaround long enough to be able to vote in a few years. Who knows, maybeI'll be running for president then and I'll need your votes. It's acinch that falling apart in the middle of two-hundred-mile an hourtraffic is no way to treat future voters.
"Good night, Kids." He smiled and walked away from the car. The threeyoung passengers smiled back at Ben. The young driver just staredunhappily at the citation.
Clay stood talking with the wrecker crewmen. Ben nodded to him andmounted into the patrol car. The young Canadian crushed out hiscigarette and swung up behind the sergeant. Clay went to the controlseat when he saw Martin pause in the door to the galle
y.
"I'm going to get a cup of coffee," the older officer said, "and thentake the first shift. You keep Beulah 'til I get back."
Clay nodded and pushed the throttles forward. Car 56 rolled back intothe police lane while behind it, the wrecker hooked onto the disabledcar and swung north into the crossover. Clay checked both thechronometer and radiodometer and then reported in. "Cinncy Controlthis is Car 56 back in service." Cincinnati Control acknowledged.
Ten minutes later, Ben reappeared in the cab, slid into the left-handseat. "Hit the sack, kid," he told Ferguson. The chronometer read2204. "I'll wake you at midnight--or sooner, if anything breaks."
Ferguson stood up and stretched, then went into the galley. He pouredhimself a cup of coffee and carrying it with him, went back to thecrew quarters. He closed the door to the galley and sat down on thelower bunk to sip his coffee. When he had finished, he tossed the cupinto the basket, reached and dimmed the cubby lights and kicked offhis boots. Still in his coveralls, Clay stretched out on the bunk andsighed luxuriously. He reached up and pressed a switch on the bulkheadabove his pillow and the muted sounds of music from a standardbroadcast commercial station drifted into the bunk area. Clay closedhis eyes and let the sounds of the music and the muted rumble of theengines lull him to sleep. It took almost fifteen seconds for him tobe in deep slumber.
* * * * *
Ben pushed Beulah up to her steady seventy-five-mile-an-hour cruisingspeed, moved to the center of the quarter-mile-wide police lane andlocked her tracks into autodrive. He relaxed back in his seat anddivided his gaze between the video monitors and the actual scene oneither side of him in the night. Once again the sky was lighted, thistime much brighter on the horizon as the road ways swept to the southof Cincinnati.
Traffic was once again heavy and fast with the blue and green carryingalmost equal loads while white was really crowded and even the yellow"zoom" lane was beginning to fill. The 2200 hour density reports fromCinncy had been given before the Ohio State-Cal football game traffichad hit the thruways and densities now were peaking near twentythousand vehicles for the one-hundred-mile block of westbound NAT 26out of Cincinnati.
Back to the east, near the eastern Ohio state line, Martin could hearCar 207 calling for a wrecker and meat wagon. Beulah rumbled onthrough the night. The video monitors flicked to the next ten-milestretch as the patrol car rolled past another interchange. Morevehicles streamed onto the westbound thruway, crossing over anddropping down into the same lanes they held coming out of thenorth-south road. Seven years on patrols had created automaticreflexes in the trooper sergeant. Out of the mass of cars and cargoesstreaming along the rushing tide of traffic, his eye picked out thetrack of one vehicle slanting across the white lane just a shadefaster than the flow of traffic. The vehicle was still four or fivemiles ahead. It wasn't enough out of the ordinary to cause more than asecond, almost unconscious glance, on the part of the veteran officer.He kept his view shifting from screen to screen and out to the sidesof the car.
But the reflexes took hold again as his eye caught the track of thesame vehicle as it hit the crossover from white to green, squeezedinto the faster lane and continued its sloping run towards the nextfaster crossover. Now Martin followed the movement of the car almostconstantly. The moving blip had made the cut-over across the half-milewide green lane in the span of one crossover and was now whipping intothe merger lane that would take it over the top of the police laneand drop down into the one hundred fifty to two hundred mile an hourblue. If the object of his scrutiny straightened out in the blue, he'dlet it go. The driver had been bordered on violation in his fastcrossover in the face of heavy traffic. If he kept it up in thenow-crowded high-speed lane, he was asking for sudden death. Themonitors flicked to the next block and Ben waited just long enough tosee the speeding car make a move to the left, cutting in front of aspeeding cargo carrier. Ben slammed Beulah into high. Once again thebull horn blared as the cocoons slammed shut, this time locking bothClay and Kelly into their bunks, sealing Ben into the control seat.
Beulah lifted on her air cushion and the twin jets roared as sheaccelerated down the police lane at three hundred miles an hour. Benclosed the gap on the speeder in less than a minute and then edgedover to the south side of the police lane to make the jump into theblue lane. The red emergency lights and the radio siren had alreadycleared a hole for him in the traffic pattern and he eased back on thefinger throttles as the patrol car sailed over the divider and intothe blue traffic lane. Now he had eyeball contact with the speedingcar, still edging over towards the ultra-high lane. On either side ofthe patrol car traffic gave way, falling back or moving to the leftand right. Car 56 was now directly behind the speeding passengervehicle. Ben fingered the cut-in switch that put his voice signal ontothe standard vehicular emergency frequency--the band that carried theautomatic siren-warning to all vehicles.
* * * * *
The patrol car was still hitting above the two-hundred-mile-an-hourmark and was five hundred feet behind the speeder. The headlamp bathedthe other car in a white glare, punctuated with angry red flashes fromthe emergency lights.
"You are directed to halt or be fired upon," Ben's voice roared outover the emergency frequency. Almost without warning, the speeding carbegan braking down with such deceleration that the gargantuan patrolcar with its greater mass came close to smashing over it and crushingthe small passenger vehicle like an insect. Ben cut all forward power,punched up full retrojet and at the instant he felt Beulah's trackstouch the pavement as the air cushion blew, he slammed on the brakes.Only the safety cocoon kept Martin from being hurled against theinstrument panel and in their bunks, Kelly Lightfoot and Clay Fergusonfelt their insides dragging down into their legs.
The safety cocoons snapped open and Clay jumped into his boots andleaped for the cab. "Speeder," Ben snapped as he jumped down the stepsto the side hatch. Ferguson snatched up his helmet from the rackbeside his seat and leaped down to join his partner. Ben ran up to thestopped car through a thick haze of smoke from the retrojets of thepatrol car and the friction-burning braking of both vehicles.Ferguson circled to the other side of the car. As they flashed theirhandlights into the car, they saw the driver of the car kneeling onthe floor beside the reclined passenger seat. A woman lay stretchedout on the seat, twisting in pain. The man raised an agonized face tothe officers. "My wife's going to have her baby right here!"
"Kelly," Ben yelled into his helmet transmitter. "Maternity!"
The dispensary ramp was halfway down before Ben had finished calling.Kelly jumped to the ground and sprinted around the corner of thepatrol car, medical bag in hand.
She shoved Clay out of the way and opened the door on the passengerside. On the seat, the woman moaned and then muffled a scream. Thepatrol doctor laid her palm on the distended belly. "How fast are yourpains coming?" she asked. Clay and Ben had moved away from the car afew feet.
"Litter," Kelly snapped over her shoulder. Clay raced for the patrolcar while Ben unshipped a portable warning light and rolled it downthe lane behind the patrol car. He flipped it to amber "caution" and"pass." Blinking amber arrows pointed to the left and right of thehalted passenger vehicle and traffic in the blue lane began picking upspeed and parting around the obstructions.
By the time he returned to the patrol car, Kelly had the expectantmother in the dispensary. She slammed the door in the faces of thethree men and then she went to work.
The woman's husband slumped against the side of the patrol vehicle.
Ben dug out his pack of cigarettes and handed one to the shakingdriver.
He waited until the man had taken a few drags before speaking.
"Mister, I don't know if you realize it or not but you came close tokilling your wife, your baby and yourself," Ben said softly, "to saynothing of the possibility of killing several other families. Justwhat did you think you were doing?"
The driver's shoulders sagged and his hand shook as he took thecigarette fr
om his mouth. "Honestly, officer, I don't know. I just gotfrightened to death," he said. He peered up at Martin. "This is ourfirst baby, you see, and Ellen wasn't due for another week. We thoughtit would be all right to visit my folks in Cleveland and Ellen wasfeeling just fine. Well, anyway, we started home tonight--we live inJefferson City--and just about the time I got on the thruway, Ellenstarted having pains. I was never so scared in my life. She screamedonce and then tried to muffle them but I knew what was happening andall I could think of was to get her to a hospital. I guess I went outof my head, what with her moaning and the traffic and everything. Theonly place I could think of that had a hospital was Evansville, and Iwas going to get her there come hell or high water." The young mantossed away the half-smoked cigarette and looked up at the closeddispensary door. "Do you think she's all right?"
Ben sighed resignedly and put his hand on the man's shoulder. "Don'tyou worry a bit. She's got one of the best doctors in the continent inthere with her. Come on." He took the husband by the arm and led himaround to the patrol car cab hatch. "You climb up there and sit down.I'll be with you in a second."
The senior officer signaled to Ferguson. "Let's get his car out of thetraffic, Clay," he directed. "You drive it."
* * * * *
Ben went back and retrieved the caution blinker and re-racked it inthe side of the patrol car, then climbed up into the cab. He took hisseat at the