His absolute coolness rattled Jason.
Alone among the racers in the room, his sheer confidence was unsettling. It was said that the very best hover car racers behaved as if they owned the world: you needed a kind of narcissistic super-confidence and self-belief to propel yourself successfully around a track at close to the speed of sound.
Jason made a mental note to keep an eye on this boy in black.
He resumed his search for a place to sit.
A quick survey revealed that there was only one option and it was a strange one.
Over in the corner of the dining hall, seated at a table all by herself, sat Ariel Piper, the pretty girl he had seen at the Opening Ceremony.
Jason grabbed a tray of food and went over to her table.
As he arrived there, he realised that Ariel Piper was even more beautiful up close. He hoped she didn’t see his face flush slightly.
‘Hi,’ he said, ‘is it okay if I sit here?’
Ariel Piper looked up at him suddenly, as if roused from a daydream, as if she were surprised to hear a human voice so close to her.
‘Sure,’ she said sarcastically, ‘so long as you’re not afraid to catch cooties.’
‘Come on. I can’t catch cooties just from sitting near you,’ Jason said with absolute honesty. ‘You only catch cooties from kissing a girl - ‘ He cut himself off, blushed bright pink, before adding quickly: ‘Not that I came over here hoping to kiss you, miss.’
Ariel Piper snuffed a laugh at that, and examined Jason more closely. At seventeen, she was lean and graceful, and way too old for a fourteen-year-old like him. Never had Jason wished more that he was three years older.
Then she said, ‘You don’t know anything about me, do you?’
Jason shrugged. ‘Nope. Just that you’re a student here at the hover school, like the rest of us. I’m Jason Chaser, from Hall’s Creek, W.A.’
‘Ariel Piper. Mobile, Alabama.’
‘Why did you say that about catching cooties? Are you sick or something? Is that why you’re sitting over here all by yourself?’
Ariel gazed at Jason, a curious smile forming on her pretty face.
‘You race with girls back in Halls Creek, Jason?’
‘Sure. All the time. Some of the girl racers back home are the most vicious and dirty - I mean, competitive - racers in the district.’
‘Okay, then. Have you ever seen a girl racer on the Pro Circuit?’
That stopped Jason.
‘No…’ he said slowly. ‘No, I haven’t.’
Ariel said, ‘That’s because, until now, the Race Schools haven’t admitted girls, and since the Race Schools are the prime entry route to the Pro Circuit, there are no female pro racers. Mankind is funny. We’ve had all this progress, all these advancements in technology, equality and equal opportunity, but some prejudices die hard. People still see men and women differently in the world of sport.’
‘But entry into the School is pretty well set,’ Jason said. ‘You either get invited or you get an automatic exemption by winning certain regional championships.’
‘That’s exactly right,’ Ariel said. ‘And I won the SouthEast-American Regional Championships. After I did, I applied for entry into the International Race School. But the School didn’t admit me. They didn’t let me in because I was a girl.’
‘But that’s just stupid,’ Jason said. ‘If you can race a hover car, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re a boy or a girl.’
Ariel said, ‘Fortunately for me, Jason, the Australian High Court agreed with you. And they forced the School to accept me. It took a hell of a fight, but I got in.’
And suddenly the penny dropped, and Jason understood the presence of all the photographers and journalists at the Opening Ceremony, all focused on Ariel Piper.
He also now understood why she was sitting over here in the corner, all alone, ostracised. And he’d thought that he was an outsider because of his age.
‘And so now I’m here,’ Ariel said, ‘and I’m wondering if it was all worth it. In just one day, my mentor has treated me twice as hard as his male racers. Girl Mech Chiefs will at least talk to me, but they won’t risk eating with me. And forget about the male racers. Then there are all the sideways looks in the corridors and the pit area, the media attention, hell, even the Principal doesn’t want me here…’
She looked away and Jason saw that her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.
‘Hey,’ he said firmly. He tried to think of what his mum would say in this situation, and he got it: ‘No. Don’t cry. Don’t let them see you cry. Then they’ve won.’
That scored.
Ariel raised her head, sniffed once, sucked back the tears.
Jason said, ‘Ariel, I don’t know you that well, but I know this. You’re here. Now. At Race School. And the only thing that matters at Race School is one thing: racing. If you can hold your own on the racecourse, people’ll come round.’
She turned to face him. ‘You know, you’re pretty smart for a fourteen-year-old.’
‘I can be a little slow on the uptake,’ he said, ‘but just like on the track, I catch up. If it helps, and if you want me to, I’ll be your friend while you’re here, Ariel.’
‘I’d like that, Jason. Thanks.’
And with that, they started eating together.
CHAPTER FIVE
RACE SCHOOL,
TASMANIA RACE 1, COURSE 1
Race day.
The roar of hover cars filled the air.
Blurring bullets with racers and navigators inside them whipped past Pit Lane. Large floating grandstands filled with cheering spectators enjoyed the carnival atmosphere of the opening race of the Race School season.
Race 1 had been simply electrifying from the start. A crash on the first corner had seen two cars tumble into the banks of the Derwent River at 500 km/h. They’d touched as they’d turned, then flipped and rolled and bounced with frightening speed, shedding pieces of their fuselages as they skimmed the river’s surface, before they came to twin thumping halts, their racers (and navigators) safe in their reinforced cockpits and their cars now only good for a trip to the Maintenance and Rebuilding Shed.
Jason had never seen anything like it.
The pace of the race was far faster than anything he’d ever been involved in. The intensity was furious. It was the difference between amateur stuff and pro racing.
The race was indeed a ‘SuperSprint 30-2-1: Last Man Drop-Off’: 30 laps, and every 2 laps, the last-placed car was removed from the field.
Since there were 20 starters (a few racers had pulled out due to technical problems with their cars), that meant that the last two laps would be fought between 6 cars.
The course was tight - winding its way westward through the rainforests of lower Tasmania before returning to Hobart via the treacherous southern coastline of the island.
Such a tight course was brutal on magneto drives, which meant that pit stops would be required every seven or eight laps - creating a (very deliberate) dilemma near the end: did you pit near Lap 30 or did you try to get to the Finish Line on ever-diminishing magneto drives? Of course, if you were in the pits when everyone else crossed the Start-Finish Line to complete a lap, leaving you the last-placed car, you would be eliminated.
The first two cars eliminated were, naturally, the two who had crashed so spectacularly on the first turn - which meant that the remaining eighteen cars could drive in safety for the next six laps: the third elimination would not occur until the end of Lap 6.
Winding, bending, chasing, racing.
Jason saw the world rush by in a blur: the lush green leaves of the rainforests became streaking green paintstrokes. The sharply twisting road near Russell Falls - one of the great sights of Tasmania - became just another overtaking point, a spot where you could take someone under brakes.
Sweeping around the coastal cliffs and down the ocean straight.
730 km/h.
S-bending through a series of silver steel archways that jutted
out from the wave-battered southern coastline.
550 km/h.
Then braking hard to a bare 210 km/h to take the final turn: a wicked left-hand hairpin around Tasman Island, a tall pillar-like rock formation not far from the ruins of the 19th century prison at Port Arthur.
Then, finally, heading back up to the Derwent River - the home straight - hitting top speed: 770 km/h.
RACETIME: 15:00 MINS LAP: 5
The Argonaut screamed down the straight, swept round the deadly Turn One, and shot into the rainforest. It was Lap 5, and out of 18 cars, Jason was coming 10th and feeling pretty good.
Which was precisely when his left-rear magneto drive inexplicably went dead.
Immediately, his car lost some ‘traction’, became harder to handle.
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: ‘Damn 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 passing 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. Damn, 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.
‘Jason! My telemetry just went berserk! Both of your rear magneto drives just lost all power!’
Jason grappled with his steering wheel. ‘I kinda noticed that, Sally!’
Steel archways whistled past him, inches away, just as Washington’s car zoomed by, leaving the Argonaut in last place.
‘Damn it!’ Jason yelled. ‘We’re screwed! Goddamnit, we got so far…’
They were indeed screwed. With only four mags, Jason couldn’t maintain the high levels of speed and control necessary to keep up with the others.