Jason sat in his cockpit, eyeing the superlong skyscraper and grandstand-lined canyon of Fifth Avenue stretching away before him.
‘Your legs will not fall from under you,’ he said aloud. The Bug didn’t hear him, asked what he’d said. ‘Nothing, little brother. Nothing.’
The crowd murmured - would Alessandro Romba win this race and take the Grand Slam? Or the two Frenchmen? Or perhaps even the young outsider, Jason?
Jason’s parents watched from the grandstand nearest to the Start-Finish Line. Sitting with them were Umberto Lombardi, Scott Syracuse, the McDuff clan and Ariel Piper. Henry Chaser was literally on the edge of his seat with excitement.
The starter for the final race of the Masters was always a celebrity, and this year it was the biggest movie star in Hollywood, Rosemary Anderson. To great applause, she pressed the start button.
Immediately, a loud electronic tone warned everyone that the start lights would ignite in three seconds.
Red light -
Yellow light -
Green light -
Go!
The world blurred.
Super speed. And Jason found himself pushing the Argonaut to new limits.
Skyscrapers became bridges, then houses, then open highway as the racers shot up Interstate 87, charging northward, with every piece of available land covered with spectators.
Then the landscape quickly became tree-covered hills, bridges and rivers and - all too soon - the Catskill Mountains came into view. And waiting for him at their base, Jason knew, was the entrance to the famed and feared Endless Tunnel.
Romba was in the lead, where he liked to be, while Jason and the two Renaults swapped and jockeyed for 2nd place, overtaking each other regularly - and all the while, the two French drivers flashed their razor-sharp nosewings dangerously close to Jason’s flanks.
And then Jason beheld the entrance to the Tunnel. It was a massive grey concrete arch, solid as hell, with a dark passageway behind it that yawned black. The opening was flanked by a sea of cheering spectators.
Shoom!
Jason rushed into the blackness.
Arched concrete pillars whistled by overhead in a dizzying display of hyper-repetition. Actually, they weren’t so much pillars as ‘ribs’ - the ribs of the octagonal tunnel.
The four cars roared like rockets through the winding passageway, banking with the bends, flattening out with the straights.
Romba - Jason - Fabian - Trouveau.
At certain points, ion waterfalls halved the width of the Tunnel, and they had to form up into single file to get past the glittering golden curtains - and sometimes weave left and right when a second or a third ion waterfall appeared directly after the previous one, but on the other side of the underground passage.
And then, gloriously, Jason burst out onto a superlong natural bridge that spanned a subterranean gorge. Bottomless black raced by on either side of the fenceless bridge. But before he could gaze in wonder at the spectacular scenery, Jason was plunged into claustrophobic tunnel-territory once again.
Forks began to appear in the tunnel system.
And for a time everyone just followed Alessandro Romba - trusting his navigator’s map-reading skills - but then Romba got ahead of the others and suddenly the Bug had to make the Argonaut‘s navigation calls.
But not for long.
Fabian - keen to stay in 2nd place and thus ensure that he won the Masters - started harrying Jason with the help of Trouveau.
The Argonaut sped round a bend, avoiding an ion waterfall, before - whoosh - it blasted out into an absolutely enormous cavern, the first of the Twin Caves, known as the Small Cave.
Stunning waterfalls blasted out from fissures in the side of the immense cavern, falling 700 feet down a multitiered rock wall before disappearing into darkness. Temporary underground hoverstands filled with spectators lined the cavern, their chants echoing in the massive space.
A wide bending S-shaped bridge snaked its way across the face of the multi-streamed falls - at some points dipping behind the curtains of rushing water. The hover cars on the bridge were dwarfed by the sheer size of the underground water system.
It was here that the two Renaults tried to finish Jason off for good.
The bending bridge was wide enough for the three of them, but it narrowed to a two-car-wide tunnel at its end.
Ominously, the two Renaults swept up on either side of the Argonaut.
Jason snapped left, then right. Saw Fabian at his left, Trouveau on his right - both of them so close that he could almost touch them.
A Renault sandwich.
‘Uh-oh…’ Jason said.
The Renaults had him exactly where they wanted him - in a technique they’d used so many times before to nail their rivals. All Fabian had to do now was push Jason onto Trouveau’s bladed nosewing.
Fabian started ramming Jason, forcing him right, forcing him towards…
…Trouveau’s flashing nosewing.
Jason rammed Fabian back, fighting the push - nervously eyeing the rapidly-approaching tunnel entrance ahead.
Then Trouveau also pulled in close, bringing his fearsome silver nosewing to within centimetres of the Argonaut‘s.
Jason swung his head left and right. There was nowhere to go. He was being run onto Trouveau’s blades and there was nothing he could do about it.
Any second now, they would have him…
Any second…
Fabian gave him a final push. Got him.
CHAPTER NINE
RACE 4: THE QUEST
SECTION: THE ENDLESS TUNNEL (OUTBOUND)
But as Fabian made the killing blow, Jason did something totally unexpected.
He slammed on his brakes.
The Argonaut slid backwards in the air and the result of this sudden action was as spectacular as it was surprising.
Fabian - previously pushing hard against the Argonaut - suddenly found himself pushing against nothing at all, so his car lunged forward in the air and before he could do anything about it, Fabian saw his own bladed nosewing shear right through Trouveau’s!
Trouveau’s eyes bulged as he saw his own nosewing drop away - at which point he lost all control of his vehicle and the Vizir veered to the right, speeding perilously close to the edge of the winding bridge and the deep drop below it, before it smashed with terrible force into the vertical concrete frame of the tunnel entrance at the end of the gigantic cave.
Car hit stone.
At 700 km/h.
In a single instant, the Vizir transformed from hover car to fireball.
The explosion rang out in the cavern - and the crowds in the stands rose in horror. Trouveau and his navigator would ultimately walk away from the crash, dazed and dizzy, saved only by their reinforced cockpit and anticrash features. The Vizir, on the other hand, would never race again.
It was left splayed across the right-hand side of the tunnel entrance, blocking half of the way.
As for Jason, he was still rocketing along at speed - his braking manoeuvre had only been brief, so he hadn’t lost that much ground on Fabian - and the two of them shot past the wreckage of the Vizir in single file, and disappeared into the two-car-wide tunnel at the end of the Small Cave.
The tunnel that led out from the Small Cave bent in a wide, wide curve to the right - testing each driver’s G-force-resistance like Liberty’s Elbow did - before it opened onto the second of the Twin Caves.
This was the Big Cave.
And it made the Small Cave look puny.
It was the largest natural underground space in the world, discovered only a few years previously, and it was utterly breathtaking. Towering waterfalls and rocky pinnacles as high as skyscrapers lined the superlong cavern.
Magnificent naturally formed aqueducts connected some of the pinnacles, and the water running down them spilled off their ends, spraying into the air before dropping away into darkness.
A gently-sloping bridge of rock ran all the way down the length of the mighty cave, st
abbed here and there by thin vertical waterfalls that over many years had cut clean through its edges, and it was along this that the racers sped, winding between the thin but powerful jet-streams of water.
Romba, then Fabian, then Jason.
To the roars of the crowds in the hoverstands, the three remaining racers blasted down the rockway and disappeared into the final section of the Endless Tunnel - a section that ended at Niagara.
Niagara Falls.
The sight, glorious. The sound, deafening. The crowds flanking the world’s most famous outdoor falls: massing and roiling and bursting with anticipation.
All eyes were glued to the tiny pipe-like tunnel that poked out from the base of the main falls, waiting to see which racer would emerge first.
Alessandro Romba did.
And the crowds went nuts.
Fabian blasted out next, followed last of all by Jason. The three cars banked quickly, sweeping up the hill on
the US side of the Falls, before they all stopped at the landward end of a long thin rail-less footbridge that extended out over the flowing river, at the very precipice of the Falls.
Jason leapt out of the Argonaut and, chasing Romba and Fabian on foot, he dashed out across the long narrow bridge.
Sitting on a platform at the end of the footbridge were four podiums and on each podium sat each racer’s trophy.
Romba’s trophy was the Italian flag. He snatched it and turned and began the run back to his car…and the return journey home.
Fabian’s trophy was typical Fabian: it was a poster of himself standing with the Marseilles Falcon. He grabbed it and dashed back to his car, pushing roughly past Jason as they ran past each other on the narrow bridge.
Last of all, Jason came to his podium.
And he beheld his trophy, crafted by his mother.
It shone in the sunlight like a treasure, haloed by the rainbow created by the spray of the Falls.
A small piece of soft wool.
Painted all in gold.
A golden fleece.
Like his classical namesake, Jason grabbed the fleece, turned, and then ran as fast as he could back to his chariot, and thus began the most thrilling hour of racing he had ever experienced in his short life.
CHAPTER TEN
RACE 4: THE QUEST
SECTION: THE ENDLESS TUNNEL (INBOUND)
Jason jumped into the driver’s seat of the Argonaut and hit the gas.
The little Ferrari roared off the mark, swinging in a wide circle in the turnaround at the top of Niagara Falls, before descending down the roadway to the base of the Falls, where it swung out over the river and shot like a bullet back into the Endless Tunnel.
Into the dark again.
Heading for home.
Roaring, charging, chasing, racing.
Jason hammered the Argonaut through the branch-like passageways of the Endless Tunnel, ducking left, veering right, now engaged with Romba and Fabian in a headlong race for home.
He saw Fabian’s tail-lights glowing red not far ahead of him - and suddenly, there came a voice in Jason’s helmet earpiece, a French-accented voice that shouldn’t have been there. ‘ You cannot win, boy.’
It was Fabian.
He must have discovered Jason’s radio frequency and now, in the crunch-zone of the race, decided to put in a taunting call. This was very improper, but not technically illegal.
‘ Why keep trying?‘ Fabian said. ‘You’ve done so well for a child. Why not leave the rest of this race to the men?’
Jason eyed the Frenchman’s tail-lights.
‘I’m coming after you, Fabian…’ he said firmly.
And he was.
He was gaining steadily on Fabian as they shot through the dark rocky tunnels, so much so that when they hit the Big Cave, the Argonaut sprang alongside the Marseilles Falcon on its right-hand side.
Fabian saw Jason and frowned -
‘Peek-a-boo,’ Jason said.
In reply Fabian rammed him.
But Jason swung wide, softening the blow.
This only seemed to enrage Fabian even more and as they shot up the long ramp of the Big Cave, Fabian slammed the Marseilles Falcon into the Argonaut again.
Jason, however, was up to the challenge, and he held his line as the two cars swooped up the bridge side-by-side and shot into the long sweeping (now) leftward curving tunnel that connected the Big Cave to the Small Cave.
Banking with the turn.
Flying hard.
Flying fast.
Fabian on the inside, Jason on the outside, their cars positively galloping, tearing the very fabric of the air with their speed.
And then, in a fleeting moment, Jason saw Fabian’s eyes in his helmet - saw them glaring over at Jason with pure derision and hatred.
‘I’m gonna get you, you little punk!’
‘Not today,’ Jason said.
‘And why exactly not?’
‘Because I’ve remembered something you haven’t,’ Jason said.
And as he said it, they rounded the final segment of the curve together, perfectly side-by-side - Fabian on the left, Jason on the right - and the thing that Jason had remembered suddenly came upon them.
The wreckage of Etienne Trouveau’s car.
It was still crumpled up against the entrance to this tunnel - now the exit - blocking the entire left-hand side of the track.
Fabian’s side of the track.
Fabian saw it too late - and his eyes boggled at the sight - and at the realisation that Jason had got the better of him; had deliberately got him to travel on this side of the track, heading straight for his team-mate’s wreck.
Fabian screamed.
Then he covered his head as the Marseilles Falcon exploded clean through the remains of the Vizir, sending pieces of the two Renaults showering out in a huge starshaped spray - while at the same time, the Argonaut shot past the double wreck in total safety.
The central core of Fabian’s car actually survived the trip through the Vizir - although unfortunately for Fabian, its wings, nosewing and tailfin hadn’t.
The battered remains of his car shot off the nearest edge of the S-shaped bridge in the Small Cave and sailed down into blackness…
…where, perhaps undeservedly, it would be caught in a safety Dead Zone, its race run.
Needless to say, the crash’s effect on the race, on the entire Masters Series, was electrifying.
Fabian had just DNF’d - meaning he would get no points at all for this race. His Masters Series was over.
Now the Masters would be fought out by the last two racers on the track: Alessandro Romba and Jason Chaser.
With the two Renaults out of his hair for good and flying on outrageous amounts of adrenaline, Jason now eyed the tail-lights of Alessandro Romba.
La Bomba Romba.
The No.1-ranked driver in the world, the man seeking to become the first racer ever to claim the Grand Slam, the man who this whole year had never been cleanly passed.
Until today, Jason thought.
A two-horse race.
Romba fleeing.
Jason chasing.
Chasing him as hard as he could.
Down the length of the Small Cave, then into the labyrinthine passages of the Tunnel.
Romba drove hard.
Jason drove perfectly.
And over the course of twenty minutes, he gained on the World No.1, moving within a car-length of him before - - sunlight assaulted them both as they blasted together out of the Tunnel.
Onto the Interstate now, sweeping left and right between the trees and hills - with Jason hammering on Romba’s tail, giving the World’s No.1 absolute hell. Then Jason made his move, tried to get past Romba on the inside left.
Romba blocked the move - legally, fluidly.
Jason tried again, this time on the right.
And Romba blocked him again.
Jason persisted, left, then right, searching doggedly for a gap, showing the World’s No.1 no respect.
> Then again Jason went left - and Romba went that way too - but this time it was a perfectly disguised fake and
Jason suddenly cut right…
…and zipped past Alessandro Romba as Romba overbalanced to the left!
The crowds lining the highway gasped.
Then they roared with joy, delighted at Jason’s skill. It wasn’t a crash or luck or some foul move that had got Jason past Romba.
It had just been damn good driving.
And suddenly, with only ten minutes left in the New York Masters, Jason found himself in the lead.
New York City rose in the distance.
Whizzing down the Interstate, Jason saw its high skyscrapers stabbing the sky.
He gunned the Argonaut, trying to shut out all thought of being in the lead, being out in front, being on the cusp of
achieving everything he had ever dreamed of.
Don’t think about winning! he told himself. Don’t jump the gun! Win the race first.
So he concentrated with all his might.
And in the final run-up to Manhattan, he actually extended his lead on Romba, moving at first a car-length, then a few lengths ahead of the Italian.
Then it was over the Broadway Bridge at the top of Manhattan Island and suddenly he was back in the city
and its maze of hard right-angled corners.
The assembled crowds roared at his every turn. Romba was now seventy metres behind him.
And as he swung out onto Fifth Avenue and realised that he had no more turns to take - that this was the end - that he’d done it - Jason allowed himself a half-grin. He’d done it…
And then a figure in the crowd watching Jason shoot down Fifth Avenue toward the Finish Line pressed a button on a remote control, triggering the pinhead-sized explosive device attached to the tailfin of the Argonaut.
For the second time that year - and for the second time in a Grand Slam Race - the Argonaut‘s tailfin spontaneously exploded.