Woody was sitting on the grass on one side of the starting area of the Pebble Beach racecourse. Across the track from him was a row of cars facing outward as if they were in a parking lot. Among them was the Black Tiger. They all seemed to be grinning malevolently. The Black Tiger was sixth in line, and there were twenty-two cars in all drawn up for the Le Mans start of the fifth event. That was the race to which he was committed--the race in which he was to be given his chance to recover and demonstrate his courage; the race in which he was to prove that the Black Tiger was, despite its record of accidents, a first-class racing machine. Woody was glad of one thing. Mary Jane wasn't nearby, nor were his father and mother, nor Rocky, Steve, nor Worm. His mother and dad were somewhere in the mass of spectators with Mary Jane. Rocky, Steve, and Worm were in the pit area forming his pit crew. He was glad they weren't with him, because in their presence he had to keep up a pretense of confidence. And right at that moment he hadn't a hairsbreadth of confidence in his whole body. It had been tough trying to hide his fears all morning while four other races were run. He had become so nervous with everybody wishing him well and fussing over the car that he could hardly do a simple little thing like adjust his racing mirrors to get a clear view of his rear and two rear fenders. Worm, he was sure, had noticed that he was nervous. But Worm hadn't said anything, and Woody was glad. Worm had just busied himself checking the ignition and the spark-plug gaps and taping the headlights. When Rocky had asked him how he felt, he'd replied, in a voice that didn't sound like his own at all, that he felt fine. Then Rocky had suggested that he look over the map of the track. But try as he would to memorize it, none of the details would stay with him. He told himself that it didn't matter anyway. He'd had enough racing experience to know that what the track looked like on paper wasn't at all what it was like when you drove over it. Turns that seemed like slow curves turned out to be pretty sharp. And there was no indication of whether they were banked or not. Furthermore, the map of the track didn't have anything to say about road surfaces. It didn't say anything about trees, and the Pebble Beach track was studded with trees. There were a lot of hills on it too, and most of the corners leaped up suddenly at you from behind a clump of trees or beyond the brow of a hill. That much he learned from talking to the other drivers. It was, they all agreed, the most difficult track in Southern California. Or as they put it--the sportiest. Tom Wisdom was sitting beside Woody in the sun, looking at his driving boots. He had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, but it had gone out. "Got a match?" he said, turning to Woody.